So, I have nothing to add on ship interiors as a matter of their addition. Obviously, the community wants it and hopefully one day they arrive. This is focused on how existing gameplay loops could finally be merged together into one cohesive, rewarding loop through making good use of those interiors.
Currently, gameplay loops for one of resources, money or influence in space don't really feed directly into loops on the ground, and vice versa. You get out of your ship, do your on foot stuff, get on foot materials, genetic samples and frontline bounties and their benefits are primarily felt on foot when you turn them in. How do you change this? Well, what if the player had features in their ship interior they could use to bring on foot content back into space with them? Example:
Basically, I think to make the current gameplay loops work, they need to merge into a central point eventually - the ship interior. That's where all the fruits of different labors could come together and directly help you in other labors, making the different forms of gameplay more coherent with each other. This could also extend to the fleet carrier interiors - maybe owners could have personal quarters accessible from the elevator where features like this could be first unveiled. If there's some common point of usage for all the different features the game has accumulated over the years and benefits from those different gameplay loops can cross that common point to help you in other spheres of gameplay, then your progression (and the game's feedback to your progression) will feel much truer and more valuable than it does now, which at time takes on the sensation of just a bunch of disparate bins for you to fill. Some bins are quite fun to fill for a while of course but marrying the different loops together in this manner would make them feel more like true professions that all work together towards your advancement.
Currently, gameplay loops for one of resources, money or influence in space don't really feed directly into loops on the ground, and vice versa. You get out of your ship, do your on foot stuff, get on foot materials, genetic samples and frontline bounties and their benefits are primarily felt on foot when you turn them in. How do you change this? Well, what if the player had features in their ship interior they could use to bring on foot content back into space with them? Example:
- Player gathers genetic sample not by just scanning, but our tool actually pulls physical material from a target
- You can take this back to a lab on your ship to sequence it - more genetic variation yields a more valuable result, but that is not mandatory (cut down on mindless walking from place to place to look at the same plant 3 times unless you really want to)
- Analyzing samples in the lab provides a few raw engineering materials (can be for both ship and on foot mats)
- Turn in various qualities of samples for rewards and use generated engineering materials on a ship-based workbench for your own buffs, to either your person, SRV or ship
- Player gathers some mats driving in their SRV, comes across a downed satellite, gets out and retrieves some equipment from it, takes the haul back to the ship
- Lab is used to decode some info from the satellite and provide engineering data
- Workbench/fabrication unit allows for taking the physical equipment and earlier gathered mats and using them to build some product you could sell, or build special ship module or suit buffs that rely on combined on-foot and ship mats (unlike the existing inventory tab crafts which rely on only ship stuff)
Basically, I think to make the current gameplay loops work, they need to merge into a central point eventually - the ship interior. That's where all the fruits of different labors could come together and directly help you in other labors, making the different forms of gameplay more coherent with each other. This could also extend to the fleet carrier interiors - maybe owners could have personal quarters accessible from the elevator where features like this could be first unveiled. If there's some common point of usage for all the different features the game has accumulated over the years and benefits from those different gameplay loops can cross that common point to help you in other spheres of gameplay, then your progression (and the game's feedback to your progression) will feel much truer and more valuable than it does now, which at time takes on the sensation of just a bunch of disparate bins for you to fill. Some bins are quite fun to fill for a while of course but marrying the different loops together in this manner would make them feel more like true professions that all work together towards your advancement.
