New ships. Connect the community.

[Apk_Canor]

Dear developers. If you don't have the energy, time and resources to create new ships (and much more), there are specialists, artists, 3d designers, programmers, etc. among your loyal players. Why don't you make an announcement and use the help of your fans?

 

[Vardaugas]

Legalities. Quality assurance. Development standards. Corporate secrets. ETC.

 

[HRDiagram]

It would be nice to have a contest where people design a ship, and the winner makes it into the game.
As stated several times before however, 99.9% of the products would be below biowaste level with IP infringements larger than the galaxy.

 

[Apk_Canor]

Legalities. Quality assurance. Development standards. Corporate secrets. ETC.

This is regulated by signing the offer.

 

[Apk_Canor]

It would be nice to have a contest where people design a ship, and the winner makes it into the game.
As stated several times before however, 99.9% of the products would be below biowaste level with IP infringements larger than the galaxy.

So 0.1 percent can still be?

 

[DemiserofD]

So 0.1 percent can still be?

Given the number of players with the technical skill to do such a thing, that 0.1% would be less than one ship design. You might luck out and get a good one, but it would by no means be a guarantee.

 

[FutronBob]

Frontier already has a number of unused ship designs in their concept art, some of them dating back to the launch days. The likely holdup is how much work is needed to actually model and texture them in-engine, create their flight model, balance the internals, weight, etc. Stuff that Frontier would still have to do anyway with such a contest.

Not saying it's not a good idea, I think it would be quite fun to see what the community comes up with. But it's not going to lighten Frontier's workload in any way. In fact, organizing, running, and judging such a contest would probably take far more of Fdev's time than simply hiring a concept artist outright.

Still though, it would be a fun community engagement project. We had something similar several years ago with a paintjob design contest, although that's a much easier thing to judge and implement than a full blown new ship.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

What? and have people people flying around in <name your favourite franchise> unlicenced ship here?

The game would get sued out of existence.

 

[Rubbernuke]

And see the game pumped with these?

 

[SCiARA]

my centurian kestral would do the colonia run in 100 jumps

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Would still like an Elite: Dangerous version of this one though!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the imperial Trader! Heck, I'd be happy for the feds to have the panther clipper , if we could have this.

 

[Ski'Thor]

Would love to attend on a design contest.
Building a ship takes month (according to the video from Fdev) in order to get a ship to life.

 

[Gordon Freeman IV]

It would be nice to have a contest where people design a ship, and the winner makes it into the game.
As stated several times before however, 99.9% of the products would be below biowaste level with IP infringements larger than the galaxy.

Minecraft regularly does this. Why not fdev.

 

[Jonkarra]

I do think we need semi regular new ships. Maybe a couple of new ships a year or even every couple of years. Then fill the ARX store with goodies for it!

 

[Zak Gordon]

Frontier already has a number of unused ship designs in their concept art, some of them dating back to the launch days. The likely holdup is how much work is needed to actually model and texture them in-engine, create their flight model, balance the internals, weight, etc. Stuff that Frontier would still have to do anyway with such a contest.

Yep. 47 ships overall:

FFE Ships - Elite Wiki

wiki.alioth.net

Not sure how many are left to be added to ED, but there are a number, so it is not the lack of ships that Frontier could do (as in it is not due to lack of idea's from them) but more the time and effort (=cash) required.

I'd like some non-jump capable ships myself (like cargo/passenger runners for just in-system) to have a harder start option (you had that in Frontier and FFE with the non jump drive eagle start on Mars (iirc), but an almost impossible situation to progress from as the in-system economy was basically non-existent)

Once we have used up the cannon ships, then why not have a competition from time to time to introduce the best of the community designs? ED was crowdfunded, and there will certainly be professional level design talent in the fan base.