That's down to the individual. Some people like to have a home base where they store all of their ships in a home system. Not too sure I will use it, but I have seen enough requests to know that others will.
I can still picture things like:
Flying a fighter into a small shaft in a surface structure to breech that structure, then perhaps landing said fighter, exiting it to crawl through duct work to reach the interior.
Or, conversely, taking an SRV in to a garage structure, like those found at planetary installations, then getting out to make entry into another part of that facility.
I can also see exiting an SRV to collect specimens of non-terrestrial life, or to run a hand-held scanner to further analyze surface life on a planet in more minute detail than our SRV's, fighters and ships allow... but again, it seems to me you'd need the ground beneath you before you start worrying about the order of the horse or the cart.
But yes, Elite's mechanics are quite limited - even the addition of Core, Abrasion and Sub-surface mining aren't particularly radical departures from pre-existing mechanics - which actually fall back to the Remote Flak Launcher introduced with the AX Weapons and Thargoids (press and hold the fire button, then release).
Yes, there's some truly epic gameplay to be had, but given what we've seen in the past four years, can you see something truly impressive arriving next year? eg: Even the sub-surface mechanics you mentioned made it through design and internal testing being all but pointless.
I'm pessimistic, but still have a glimmer of hope.
Well, let's see...
For those who care about Space Politics, especially those who have their own Player Named Factions, being able to tie themselves to a particular planet, especially in the "home system" of their named faction, would give them a significant vested interest in the well-being of that system.
Traders might well want a mid-way stopping off point along a favored route where they could simple rest a bit, or perhaps affect repairs to their flying warehouses after an encounter with hostiles.
Researchers might like to be able to set up camp in an area where they plan to conduct long(er) term research.
Pirates may well like to set themselves up a little hidey-hole somewhere near to their favorite hunting grounds.
Tour Guilds might like to set up shop either far, far, far away from their talking cargo, or central to an area they prefer to operate from.
Explorers might like to stop their wanderings a while, and have somewhere to set down, put up their feet and just rest from the road.
Needless to say, there are plenty of good reasons for wanting to establish a little place of your own in the vastness of space, why else venture into it?
Next year? No. Frontier already knows what we're getting next year. In two to three years? Definitely.
As I said, I think they are both as important as each other. Having the means to add that gameplay for me is just as important. So I will be happy with either and I really like your ideas and agree that is what FDev should be looking at in the long run. I doubt they will have all of that in place at the beginning and probably should concentrate on one area to make it fully featured as possible.
Understood... And until we know what the mechanics/purpose of any proposed base building is it's hard to comment... But...
"For those who care about Space Politics, especially those who have their own Player Named Factions, being able to tie themselves to a particular planet, especially in the 'home system' of their named faction, would give them a significant vested interest in the well-being of that system." - Flying all the way down to a planetary base is time consuming. What's wrong with a space station or a Fleet Carrier?
"Traders might well want a mid-way stopping off point along a favored route where they could simple rest a bit, or perhaps affect repairs to their flying warehouses after an encounter with hostiles." - Flying all the way down to a planetary base is time consuming. What's wrong with a space station or a Fleet Carrier?
"Researchers might like to be able to set up camp in an area where they plan to conduct long(er) term research." - What mechanics/gameplay are in ED of any depth to merit this?
"Pirates may well like to set themselves up a little hidey-hole somewhere near to their favorite hunting grounds." - Flying all the way down to a planetary base is time consuming. What's wrong with a space station or a Fleet Carrier?
"Tour Guilds might like to set up shop either far, far, far away from their talking cargo, or central to an area they prefer to operate from." - Flying all the way down to a planetary base is time consuming. What's wrong with a space station or a Fleet Carrier?
"Explorers might like to stop their wanderings a while, and have somewhere to set down, put up their feet and just rest from the road." - If base building is of depth and consumes time, why build a based during a fairly transitory visit?
"Needless to say, there are plenty of good reasons for wanting to establish a little place of your own in the vastness of space, why else venture into it?" - To my mind, to go and build a base on a planetary surface that requires any time/effort is at the moment contrary to basically all the gameplay currently in ED? And certainly not complimentary to it.
Until we see what this supposed base building actually is it's hard to say... But colour me concerned!
Well, I might want to go to a spot outside of the bubble, which I plan to search quite intensely, maybe mine, maybe use as a base of operations for any number of activities.
So I set up my base out there, and transfer some ships and modules over, then use it to explore the local area, mine a bit, and pirate from a somewhat nearby, but remote location on the edge of the bubble.
I mean... You could do all of that much better with a carrier, assuming they too, have storage of some kind.
I do see your point though.
The fact that they're still in space.
Or, let's as this: Why do Navy personnel go on Shore Leave?
Why do so many episodes of popular/famous sci-fi shows spend so much of their time on the surfaces of planets (Star Trek/Star Wars), or in search of a particular planet (Battlestar Galactica/Lost in Space)? Because we are, ultimately, terrestrial beings. We need gravity, it's health for us. Space is not, space hates us and wants us dead.
As a species, we want to populate and multiply, and a ship or station has only a finite amount of space for that sort of thing.
Space stations require a tremendous amount of administration and are generally immobile. We'd miss out on too much game play to play Space Station Administrator, and that's just not in keeping with what Elite is at its core. Not that I don't think it would be a fun distraction, but it wouldn't stay a distraction, it would become too much of a focal point, much in the same way too many people have forgotten there's an entire game here and are hyper-focused on BGS as if it were a game in and of itself. But at the very least, it does force them to engage in aspects of game play. What would a station administrator do?
Yes, it takes some time and the slightest bit of effort to set down on a planet. It also would likely take a lot of currency - and there have been plenty of callings for credit sinks for quite some time now. Establishing a planetary installation would also mean upkeeping it, which would once more force us back into our ships, to collect materials, resources and supplies necessary to maintain it. It would also mean accumulating credits, which would once more mean hitting the ship, getting out there to do things.
Yes, I realize many of these things could be accomplished via a Fleet Carrier, really all of them COULD, but I suspect they won't. I suspect Carrier functions will still be rather limited in scope, as compared to the features and functions stations and planetary installations offer - and that can easily be expanded to a personal, surface base as well.
The leak is intentional. I've always believed so. They wanted to share some info with us but didn't want to be bonded with promises and realistic expectations.
I like everything and all proposals about atmospheric planets, but I don't think we need an accurate model of erosion. At this point I think it's better if FDEV focus on gameplay mechanics rather than adding more stuff to Stellarforge.
Yeah, I think legs would be a nice feature but unless there's new exploration gameplay and a complete mission system overhaul the risk will be that after few days/weeks everyone will just stop going around and we will all go back to our regular deck routine.I can't wait for my space legs commander to clip out of the cockpit and go tumbling off into the void, or get stuck between two rocks on a planet. I think you should temper your expectations a little
I agree. Base building could be a nice optional feature too improve personal RPG but from a meaningful point of view they will add nothing to Fleet Carriers.
I hope there will be base building (every additional content is welcome) but I hope it will not be one of the MAIN content of the NEW ERA.
On the other hand I'm afraid that base building will just be an excuse to sell additional cosmetics.
I 100% disagree. They would have no reason to tell us about games releasing in 2020 and 2021. Intentional leaks are rarely this far into the future. The same effect would've been achieved without the other games.
How should we know or understand their reasons when most of them have appeared nonsense to us?
We just have to give up and realize that we simply don't work there so we should not expect to know always everything.
It's speculation as usual after all.
Without erosion, the planets will just look like non-atmospheric planets with a different coloured sky, or if the erosion is the same for every planet, again, they will all look very samey. Sorry, but I will have to disagree here.
I suspect the people who work on the Stellar Forge are an entirely different team than whose who work on missions, ship design, combat, etc. It's not an "either / or" scenario.
Two teams, one bank account
It still requires manpower investment.Doesn't matter, or do you think they make redundant the stellar forge team and rehire them when needed. They are employees, and will continue to work on it. There will be a seperate team for missions as the skill sets will be different.Two teams, one bank account
I don't get the point tbh.
Why should we care about a realistic erosion model when we already have canyons and mountains in airless planets?
As it stands now erosion can be added by the artist with few parameters without the implement a full realistic model.
The biggest difference imho will be in the atmospheric composition: unlimited visibility or light haze versus foggy or turbolent huge hurricanes, toxic clouds, red sky vs blu sky, flat desertic or rocky planet versus big lakes and mountains or oceanic worlds versus icy and freezing planets.
In the bubble even the economy would drive the main difference between planets rather then the erosion.
Imagine an industrial/mining world with huge mining sites and big factories, a thick fog/smog and dark skies
A technological industrial planet would have instead big cities, high skycrapers and futuristic structures.
An agricultural world instead would look like a paradise planet with green hills, crop fields, a lot of lakes and rivers.
...and so on...
I don't think the stellar forge team is as big as during the initial development. I think they only have few people, that would also explain the could only add few meaningful content to exploration last year in terms of "things to discover" and still the lack of comets... all those kind of things.
Was it "renew"? Oh, my bad, but we still don't know what that means in the context of the game. It still doesn't preclude the possibility of wide sweeping changes. I'll happily take the idea that I'm reading too much into it. It was only a thought that briefly occurred to me anyway, and is very likely unfounded.