Question(s) about Odyssey...

[Lightspeed]

I expect for technical reasons the separator will be "getting out of the chair", and that the visual improvements as well as the ability to land on worlds with 'tenuous atmospheres' will apply across the board, Odyssey or not.

Technical reasons aside, even from a purely marketing standpoint that would be desirable. Being able to get up close and personal to the new content and see it first hand without quite being able to experience it would likely motivate a purchase for a lot of people who would otherwise be "on the fence".

Put another way, if it can be experienced while remaining in VR, expect everyone to get access to it as part of the base game. If it's 'flatscreen only' (i.e. on foot), it's Odyessey exclusive.

That's my reasoning, but we'll see how it plays out. They've got to tell us eventually, right?

Tenuous atmosphere planets could be blocked just as they all were for Dangerous users v Horizons.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Likely to be a split of missions as for ships with (a) cargo ... fetch or take ; (b) attack x at y; (c) explore for science. We were promised that such missions would be fairly close to the base, so we don't have to keep walking for days as our energy reserves drain.

Like those star citizen box missions? Yeah that should be good. Do we drop them under the yellow srv landing lights and teleport them up? Cool.

 

[varonica]

Havent the planets showing in trailers been ones that are currently unlandable?

Yes, people have visited the planets and taken screenshots for comparison.

 

[Lightspeed]

No, you can't just nudge a dial in the cobra engine a tiny bit because that engine has nothing to do with the decision as to whether a planet has atmosphere or not, that's determined by the stellar forge. Systems are run through an evolutionary process from gas cloud right through to planet formation and all the other necessary processes that make up a solar system, and it's during this evolutionary process that determinations are made as to whether or not a planet will have atmosphere, and I would not suggest nudging the stellr forge just a little bit and hoping the entire galaxy doesn't go pear shaped! The cobra engine handles how things will look, not what they are!

Ok ... nudge the Stellar Forge then. They did that for planetary colors ... took them a while, but they know how to do it.

 

[varonica]

Tenuous atmosphere planets could be blocked just as they all were for Dangerous users v Horizons.

Almost certainly that, I agree, some people are suggesting new bases and walking on current planets but I can't see new bases, I mean they are going to be flat out implementing enough new content when they release tenuous atmospheres. But then that does raise the question of, will the current bases and planets be accessible by APEX? Or will APEX only work for tenuous atmosphere and stations in space, so a person on foot could never, for instance, get to Mercury, that would feel strange also!

I could see new bio only appearing on tenuous atmosphere planets, that would encourage Horizons players who otherwise might not upgrade to Odyssey, but there's really no reason to limit the new stuff to tenuous atmosphere only unless the bio relies on atmosphere. They could introduce new species of bio for airless bodies while they are at it, there's lots of questions that need answering, the Alpha shoulb e interesting, lots of experimentation to do!

 

[varonica]

Ok ... nudge the Stellar Forge then. They did that for planetary colors ... took them a while, but they know how to do it.

No they didn't, the planetary colours are due to the Cobra Engine not the Stellar Forge, the shaders and textures, as demonstrated by Old Duck's mod are nothing to do with the Stellar Forge. That's why Non-Horizon players just see blurred landable planets while Horizon players see craters and etc, it's two different things entirely, I'm not sure why I have to keep explaining this. And this is all apart from the fact the FDEV has already stated that making changes to the Stellar Forge could produce unpredictable results galaxy wide including and up to a complete reset of the galaxy. That's why we still have the star cubes, they don't want to play with it because that will require running the Stellar Forge from the very beginning and rebuilding the galaxy, the same applies for changing solar systems. Yes they have tools the can use to manually adjust things to a certain extent, but anything that requires changes to the Stellar Forge itself is dangerous.

 

[FlyingBrickyard]

Tenuous atmosphere planets could be blocked just as they all were for Dangerous users v Horizons.

They could, but I see that as less likely.

The whole "new planetary tech" and granting of the ability to cross the exclusion zone of Horizons made that a much easier demarcation to make.

With Odyssey I'm not so sure, because the updated surfaces will be rolled out across the board* and it seems like there'd be a good bit more mingling. It'd be simpler to allow it, and just keep you stuck in the chair. But I may be wrong, it could be done via a new 'planetary approach module' and otherwise kept as-is, with anything marked as 'atmosphere' being off-limits.

I still think that's unlikely though, given that functionally speaking 'tenuous atmosphere' planets are airless worlds with a prettier sky, but otherwise no different than what we have now. The VR/non-VR divide also plays into this, because it really feels like from a technical standpoint Odyssey isn't so much an expansion as it is an entirely different sub-game that uses Elite as a front end.

I'm deeply speculating at this point, but in my view a whole bunch of circumstantial evidence points toward everything but 'flatscreen', on-foot content getting rolled into the core of Elite.

* I suspect this is ultimately what drove them to roll Horizons into the base game - it became too difficult to integrate up to 3 versions of any given planet, so they flattened the products into one, and will roll out those changes to a unified base.