Scanning for surface signals, investigating planet-side POIs, looting wrecks and dealing with scavengers are my favourite game loop(s) in the Odyssey update.
Unfortunately, this aspect of the game feels quite undercooked and light on content. This is a shame, as it's one of the few areas that really brings together everything that's really strong about Odyssey all at once: exploration, combat, looting, and getting up-close-and-personal with a variety of amazing vistas.
I realise these are not (all) changes that can me made overnight, but I feel development in this area would pay huge dividends. These surface locations are one way to inject a lot of life and variety into the game, outwith just settlements.
I have a few suggestions for ways I think it could be improved. Feel free to add others.
Variety of surface POIs
This is probably the most lacking thing at the moment. Crash sites, for example, are the same three templates, with the same layout every time (ruined SRV or crashed Sidewinder / Eagle with rubble, a couple of crates and a data core in precisely the same positions every time). The deja-vu is strong, and there's very little feeling of "oh man, I wonder what I'll find", which should be a big part of the fun of dropping down from orbit into the unknown.
I would like to see every ship in the game represented at crash sites and distress beacons, at varying frequencies, and with variations of each type. Sometimes an Anaconda faceplanted into loose soil, sometimes one broken in half with containers spilling out, etc.
Horizons assets for a lot of these already exist, though I accept they would need tarted up for on-foot closeup view.
Related to this, some limited internal areas of crashed ships would be an amazing addition. I'm not asking for ship interiors, as such. Just like a few wreck versions with holes torn in the hull, leading to a few mangled, explosion-gutted corridors with panels to cut, loot to steal, and maybe a scavenger or two lying in wait. Maybe in some wrecks, the power core is melting down and you only have a certain amount of time to cut the panels, grab the loot/mission item, and get out before it goes boom.
More variety should add more unpredictability, both in the contents of surface POIs and in what can happen when you're there.
Surface POIs that make sense
Surface POIs should tell a logically consistent story.
No more wrecked Condors surrounded by cargo containers (Condors can't carry cargo).
No more Nav Beacons crashed on a far-flung moon (there's like one of these per inhabited system, what are three broken ones doing on this one undiscovered planet light years from civilisation? They could be broken-down exploration probes or something instead).
More interactivity with Escape Pods
There's so much more that could be done with these.
For example, what if we could scan them on-foot with the Profile Analyser and get information on the inhabitant?
Maybe that Escape Pod is a beefy payday containing a wanted criminal, and I can hand his cryo-sleeping carcass in to the cops for the bounty.
Or maybe it's a wealthy diplomat whose family have a substantial reward out for his safe return to X starport.
More interplay between space gameplay and surface salvage / S&R
At the moment, space gameplay and Odyssey surface stuff feel pretty discrete from one another.
What if, say, black boxes found with floating wrecks in space could be interrogated, and would sometimes spit out the locations of loot stashes?
What if NPC comms chatter sometimes gave away the location of a high value POI?
What if following the trail of a ship assassination mission sometimes led, not to a pirate lord's ship in orbit somewhere, but to the pirate lord himself holed up in a surface hideout?
Unfortunately, this aspect of the game feels quite undercooked and light on content. This is a shame, as it's one of the few areas that really brings together everything that's really strong about Odyssey all at once: exploration, combat, looting, and getting up-close-and-personal with a variety of amazing vistas.
I realise these are not (all) changes that can me made overnight, but I feel development in this area would pay huge dividends. These surface locations are one way to inject a lot of life and variety into the game, outwith just settlements.
I have a few suggestions for ways I think it could be improved. Feel free to add others.
Variety of surface POIs
This is probably the most lacking thing at the moment. Crash sites, for example, are the same three templates, with the same layout every time (ruined SRV or crashed Sidewinder / Eagle with rubble, a couple of crates and a data core in precisely the same positions every time). The deja-vu is strong, and there's very little feeling of "oh man, I wonder what I'll find", which should be a big part of the fun of dropping down from orbit into the unknown.
I would like to see every ship in the game represented at crash sites and distress beacons, at varying frequencies, and with variations of each type. Sometimes an Anaconda faceplanted into loose soil, sometimes one broken in half with containers spilling out, etc.
Horizons assets for a lot of these already exist, though I accept they would need tarted up for on-foot closeup view.
Related to this, some limited internal areas of crashed ships would be an amazing addition. I'm not asking for ship interiors, as such. Just like a few wreck versions with holes torn in the hull, leading to a few mangled, explosion-gutted corridors with panels to cut, loot to steal, and maybe a scavenger or two lying in wait. Maybe in some wrecks, the power core is melting down and you only have a certain amount of time to cut the panels, grab the loot/mission item, and get out before it goes boom.
More variety should add more unpredictability, both in the contents of surface POIs and in what can happen when you're there.
Surface POIs that make sense
Surface POIs should tell a logically consistent story.
No more wrecked Condors surrounded by cargo containers (Condors can't carry cargo).
No more Nav Beacons crashed on a far-flung moon (there's like one of these per inhabited system, what are three broken ones doing on this one undiscovered planet light years from civilisation? They could be broken-down exploration probes or something instead).
More interactivity with Escape Pods
There's so much more that could be done with these.
For example, what if we could scan them on-foot with the Profile Analyser and get information on the inhabitant?
Maybe that Escape Pod is a beefy payday containing a wanted criminal, and I can hand his cryo-sleeping carcass in to the cops for the bounty.
Or maybe it's a wealthy diplomat whose family have a substantial reward out for his safe return to X starport.
More interplay between space gameplay and surface salvage / S&R
At the moment, space gameplay and Odyssey surface stuff feel pretty discrete from one another.
What if, say, black boxes found with floating wrecks in space could be interrogated, and would sometimes spit out the locations of loot stashes?
What if NPC comms chatter sometimes gave away the location of a high value POI?
What if following the trail of a ship assassination mission sometimes led, not to a pirate lord's ship in orbit somewhere, but to the pirate lord himself holed up in a surface hideout?