Make settlements more interesting.

[tajador]

I think using procedurally-generated software to populate the galaxy is a great start, but I would love to see the developers hone in on parts of the game and improve them, making them more unique. You could start with settlements, since the cookie-cutter nature of them kind of kills the desire for exploration and farming in Elite.

Some suggestions:

Give players different ways to interact with the settlements - for a ecological/scientific facility, give us unique missions that require us to find new exobilogy, or mining, or harvesting exploration data. Rewards could be rep, but also suit/weapon schematics or materials.

Make the settlements unique to their faction - imperial settlements, or even starports could match the aesthetic of the imperial ships. Maybe the differences in laws and morals could also reflect on what we see. Pirate settlements that are seedy and lawless.

Make the NPCs more interesting - "entertainment" settlements could be fun with unique NPC at the bars, and we could buy drinks and see a (PG-rated) show of some kind.

Conflict and fighting over settlements is actually a lot of fun right now, I enjoy it. But maybe gives us rewards other than money, like weapons schematics, engineering supplies. Allow us to use the settlement later with improved rep to gain new kinds of missions.

Bigger cities that are fun to explore and have unique character and flavor, this would only need to be in iconic places (Colonia, Sol, etc.) where lots of players go, obviously not across the galaxy.

Anyone else?

 

[Terry Daniels]

Bigger cities that are fun to explore and have unique character and flavor, this would only need to be in iconic places (Colonia, Sol, etc.)

Yes, I like this idea and I think the majority of settlements are likely to get better facelifts, faction style, imperial, luxury vs industrial etc, like the starbases did over time.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Yeah, a bit more uniqueness between settlements would be nice.

 

[TScal12]

Variety is always great, I hope they start including proc gen in more of the game, they clearly have experience with it as seen in the Stellar Forge

 

[Misty_Dark]

Also those abandoned settlements, where we today just drive with an SRV and scan the towers, we could now exit the SRV and enters the buildings and interact with terminals etc. add various exploration options to either restore power or to break open doors, etc, to reach different areas/rooms in the base.

Could be a nice break for explores to pick some faith distress call and find an abandoned settlement, that was built from the remains of a ship. Where you could find "salvaged" exploration data, that you can sell, and perhaps some procedural generated last log book entries, on what went wrong with here...giving us potential hilarious reasons why everything went wrong..

 

[zikolach]

Also those abandoned settlements, where we today just drive with an SRV and scan the towers, we could now exit the SRV and enters the buildings and interact with terminals etc. add various exploration options to either restore power or to break open doors, etc, to reach different areas/rooms in the base.

Could be a nice break for explores to pick some faith distress call and find an abandoned settlement, that was built from the remains of a ship. Where you could find "salvaged" exploration data, that you can sell, and perhaps some procedural generated last log book entries, on what went wrong with here...giving us potential hilarious reasons why everything went wrong..

I guess Horizons settlements will eventually be changed, but not earlier than both clients are merged (and console version is released).

 

[Misty_Dark]

I guess Horizons settlements will eventually be changed, but not earlier than both clients are merged (and console version is released).

probably, but they could also add new Odyssey ones in parallel to the old Horizon ones. so one offers on foot exploration and the other SRV exploration. Just like they have done with normal settlements.