Landable Water Worlds

[Lngjohnsilver1]

Hi FDev,

I believe, correct me if I am wrong, that previous discussions on your Q&A sessions have indicated that you have a plan to introduce more landable worlds in the future releases of the game. GREAT!

Might I suggest considering water worlds in the first instance. Why?

1) ease. A water world requires no potential population, but could, in the future, be populated. However, it could still be the location of outposts.

2) wildlife. You do not necessarily need to populate a water world with wildlife. It could be a porto-amoeba soup water world rather than having to programme in wildlife of any sort or the fluid (which may not neccesarily be H2O) does not support life e.g. methane, ammonia, etc.

3) URV - the underwater reconnaissance vehicle. Direct translation of the SRV to a URV. Simply drop down to a 'hover point' above the water surface and deploy the URV which offloads into the water and zips about like a ship in the depths. Call the ship back for a surface water dock when required to leave.

4) All water world movement variables directly replicate form a space navigation system. The 6 axis mode of movement.

5) Common. You already have quite a few water worlds in the universe so we know the planetary population already exists.


Ought to be easy right? Please say yes.[up]

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Soon™

 

[Flash_Baggins]

Water has pretty complicated fluidic dynamics, given the rest of the game I should imagine its a bit harder than what you are suggesting

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

nah - piece of cake! All you have to do is model the surface badly, everything else happens below the surface and its pretty much of a muchness under water.

 

[Lestat]

question where do you land the ship if it a water world?

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

3) URV - the underwater reconnaissance vehicle. Direct translation of the SRV to a URV. Simply drop down to a 'hover point' above the water surface and deploy the URV which offloads into the water and zips about like a ship in the depths. Call the ship back for a surface water dock when required to leave.

You do not 'land' per se, the automatic pilot places you at a 'hover point' that allows surface deployment and recovery of your URV.

 

[Hydrino]

Don't hold your breath.

I love it when folks say "easy" and "piece of cake" in relation to some new ED game feature, especially as big as water worlds. First off I would not want a badly implemented water world and much less a badly implemented underwater driving simulator for the empty water world. I can already do 6dof flight in empty space and drive on planets- without gameplay the last thing I want FD to put effort into is letting us drive under-water. So much of the game already needs a second pass and fleshing out, this would just be a totally bad move by FD.

When this topic came up early days the dev response was that it is interesting and of course the scope of ED is practically limitless so it could fit in at some point. But this was indicated as possibly a very far in the future update after the other big ticket items FD has mentioned as their highest desires. In other words, only after FD expands the game to include the surfaces of all planet types and then walking around and interacting with NPCs.

But hey, it's a suggestion in the suggestion thread. Who knows?!

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

You do not 'land' per se, the automatic pilot places you at a 'hover point' that allows surface deployment and recovery of your URV.

Water worlds will still have land, though it may all be under water. They will also have atmospheres, so atmospheric flight has to be a thing. landable waterworlds will happen in the game, maybe even before landable earthlikes. But we will get to land on snowballs and desert worlds with atmospheres first.

Startrek Voyager had a waterworld that didn't have any land, even deep under water. but it was artificial.

 

[Jaylem]

Hmmm...is this Interstellar inspired by any chance? the whole hover and deploy thing kind of reminds me of Thunderbirds a bit. and when you do, how do you get it back into the ship?? unless you put little floats on the landing gear and slip it back in like a fighter bay haha.

Also, what would be the point of this? unless you are savaging wrecked vessels. the 'Sea' floor is where all the good materials would be...which at some depths be ridiculous to approach without pressure/ time issues. much faster to do planetary surface landings to obtain the same goal.

However your idea is still pretty damn awesome! I do like the more interactive approach on what appears to be beautiful yet useless planets.

Keep the ideas coming Mate!

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

Water worlds will still have land, though it may all be under water. They will also have atmospheres, so atmospheric flight has to be a thing. landable waterworlds will happen in the game, maybe even before landable earthlikes. But we will get to land on snowballs and desert worlds with atmospheres first.

Startrek Voyager had a waterworld that didn't have any land, even deep under water. but it was artificial.

I'm not sure if there exist waterworlds with no land in Elite. Some of them are not terraformable even that all conditions fit. Saturn's moon Europa will be a flying ocean in some million years when our sun becomes a red giant so there is no reason that pure flying oceans without any solid core shouldn't exist in space
But even than they may contain life. So there is a difference between waterworlds with solid core (even when very very small and thousands of km underneath the surface) and those without who are just flying oceans.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

I'm not sure if there exist waterworlds with no land in Elite. Some of them are not terraformable even that all conditions fit. Saturn's moon Europa will be a flying ocean in some million years when our sun becomes a red giant so there is no reason that pure flying oceans without any solid core shouldn't exist in space
But even than they may contain life. So there is a difference between waterworlds with solid core (even when very very small and thousands of km underneath the surface) and those without who are just flying oceans.

I suspect that the ridiculously high pressures at the core of a flying ocean would be sufficient to form ice cores, regardless of the temperature. Except for small bodies, which I doubt would last for long.

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

By 'water worlds' I meant worlds with no landable land surface. Presumably all water plants require some form of 'core' so yes there would be 'land' or at least planetary crust beneath the waves, but my point was no landable surface above water.

Yes - thunderbirds, my thoughts exactly and yes, much like the SRV or higher, the 'bay' extends below the ship and you simply pop on board to be lifted into the belly of your leviathan (see what I did there - and also a great sci-fi book about a water world!)

What would we do there? Dunno, depends on FDev, just another option for mucking around the galaxy... bases, sunken ships, mining - whatever! Maybe even undersea combat!

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

Well - in don't like to brag and i don't like to boast but talking about water... https://youtu.be/ZgFNUQpNCGk

 

[trollson]

A true water world is more akin to a gas giant than terrestrial world. There may be a rocky core - but it is deep down, and most of the mass and radius is liquid (in various states). There is the potential for continents of ice, subject to temperature and pressure, but they could also be barren places if the world-ocean does not contain enough minerals (possibly from meteors, or in solution since formation). Anyway, you'll be glad to know that all ships in Elite will be capable of "landing" and going underwater. Coming back up is another matter...

 

[MarcusVatta]

I think the main problem with water worlds is atmosphere. We already have water worlds with no atmo, technically

Personally, I'd like to see the existing worlds with more and more atmosphere. Maybe 25% of earth to start? Not many clouds, no precipitation, light winds. If I know Frontier, they're going to want to model erosion from both wind and water throughout the planets' history, and there are dozens of different atmospheric gas combinations that will need to be simulated and rendered. Then iterate over time, increasing that to add more clouds, precipitation, storms, and wind.

Unfortunately, that approach would leave water worlds to last. Water worlds have thick atmospheres, and their weather systems would be second only to gas giants.

 

[DanGriswold]

I want more planetary landings so badly I ache with it. I really do hope this has been in development for quite some time already because I can only imagine how difficult it must be to implement (especially to the degree of complexity and robustness that FD would want). If they haven't started yet, I doubt we'd see any kind of atmospheric landings until the year after next. But, fingers crossed for 2.4 (ha ha, I mean Season 3).