ship interiors - will they happen

[Lukaz_Chrom]

The whole discussion in the last couple of pages proves pretty clearly that it would be anything but tremendous.

So the ability to manually repair certain parts of your ship [especially considering the limitations of the AFMU] wouldn't be "tremendous" to you ... ok.
AH YES ofc, you showcased so magnificently that you would rather make changes to the existing AFMU JUST so we wouldn't need Ship Interiors

The fact that you had to come up with such examples as combat Mambas flown over long distances is a glaring sign of that.

Just ONE example my dude XD
Another would be the good old Exploration-Overheating, it happens often enough :/

And the issue of far-out module sniping ...
Guess that was really not your preferred example to "debunk" huh.

 

[galahad2069]

So the ability to manually repair certain parts of your ship [especially considering the limitations of the AFMU] wouldn't be "tremendous" to you ... ok.
AH YES ofc, you showcased so magnificently that you would rather make changes to the existing AFMU JUST so we wouldn't need Ship Interiors


Just ONE example my dude XD
Another would be the good old Exploration-Overheating, it happens often enough :/

And the issue of far-out module sniping ...
Guess that was really not your preferred example to "debunk" huh.

No, overheating absolutely does not happen often in exploration, and it's totally irrelevant 99.999% of the time even when it does.

Not sure what you are trying to say about module sniping.

Module sniping is not happening while you are exploring out in the black. In the Bubble where your modules might happen to be sniped there are repair facilities everywhere. AFMUs are useless in PvP situations anyway (and so would be manual repair if it was a thing). AX is the only kind of combat in which AFMUs and repair limpets are not totally pointless (but manual repair would be).

 

[metatheurgist]

I think the funniest thing is the argument that there has to be "worthwhile" features. I see nothing worthwhile from their last 2 game updates. PP nothing but a mindless grind for modules and pointless rank. Colonoscopy, pointless extension of the same old repetitive systems that don't actually deliver the ownership that the people that have asked for that style of game really want, with bonus mindless hauling grind.

 

[krylite]

It's long been discussed. Despite it all, I do believe ship interiors will one day come to ED. Frontier has gradually made progress on the kickstarter concepts and ideas depicted in the preconceptual paintings over the years. It just takes patience as usual and waiting for FDev and Frontier to realize enough time and resources and opportune times in a given year or planning to start on a new phase of major feature updates similar to what was done with Odyssey and fleet carriers in the past, and before that multicrew which was a precursor to the team feature applied with Odyssey (so multiple cmdrs in a hangar was eventually realized as was shown in one of ED's first trailers) , and fighter bays and npc and pc flyable fighter craft.

I'd think what's pretty tough and complex about ED compared to most other space themed games and slight sims out there is that there's ongoing layers of ongoing simulated structure in the game already from galactic and interstellar distances down to intrasystem and planetary distances and astrometrics, and that still has to exist with any new developments. I thought it was quite an achievment with Odyssey and settlements where there could now be combined ships and air and on foot combat going on in the same instance over a settlement while the planet continues to rotate and the suns could set and rise all the while. No other spacesim today has this well realized this combined level of concurrent 'fidelity' in background simulation which makes ED so unique and bar-setting still.

Like take the old running microsoft flight sim games. The scope is the entire world, and then miles of detail around the central active player object. Then there's an added optional layer of internal cockpit with some premiere 3rd party addons like the pmdg planes and other expensive addons that took years to make for each particular product plane. Some of them make use of the internal area for 'passenger interiors'. But it's still mostly a singular player experience that's not quite the possible populated structure of npcs and pcs in an instance like ED has, nor is there a simulated ongoing solar system, except for maybe moon and sun 2d positioning.

So what could be a first step for ship interiors in ED? I would think something very basic and in a function like Starfield. Docked and stationary ships, then opened up to a few rooms. But once moving, players and npcs are automatically put into stationary positions and the interiors are no longer free roaming while in flight. Similar enough to what's going on with cockpits and bridges now currently, except maybe one or two more rooms or hallways added per ship. It could be made where one could be situated at seatable spots in certain rooms as a passenger, while another player or npc crew, autoflies to a destination similar to the apex taxi system way of navigating. Then it could be cancelled at anytime, with 'blackout screen' transitioning and entering normal mode, the pilot is put back into the pilot seat to take over because the ship is already flying.

I don't really mind which comes first, first types of interiors to ships, or further development of planetary features , atmospheric worlds, even curated lore cities and habitable planets. I would even like to see (apartment) rooms on stations, or even in orbis rings, where you could walk in the yards under the glass of the orbis wheels , or one could have and grow a small plot of land. Walk and relax in the parks in stations, etc.

 

[DemiserofD]

As menitioned, imgaine you barely survive a far-out fight with a module-sniper and your Generator is at 10% ...

If you survived, then there's no need to repair it. You'll waste ten minutes doing what you can do in 3 minutes of travel time to get to a station. The only time it could even theoretically be worth it is if you somehow were way out in the black where there are no stations nearby AND you're going to get shot at sometime soon - conditions that are incredibly rare at best.

That's the basic problem with most interiors suggestions. They only add worse ways of doing what we already have plenty of better options to do. Why bother having, say, a 'map table' inside our ship when we can just press 5 and open the galaxy map? It's a lot of dev work for, essentially, nothing. And before you ask, yeah, there are doubtless a few, rare, isolated circumstances where interiors could be worth using. But they're incredibly niche things(like getting shot at thousands of light years from the bubble), which doesn't lend itself to being a good dev investment.

Remember, I'm not against the idea if it were free, I just don't see it being worth the effort, when we're just adding a sub-par way to do what we can already do. IF we had a decent reason for interiors to exist in the first place, then you could justify any number of sub-features. Cosmetics, repairs, interior salvage, etc. It's just that none of those things - not even combined - are worth the development effort on their own. Because, again, you're going to end up spending as much dev time doing that as you would for something like Colonization or Thargoid Spires, which provide thousands of times more playtime.

Are you telling me you know why and how everybody outfits their ship? or that is some form of "I think that is the correct way to do it" ?
If I don't fit repair limpets or AMFU the only thing that means is that I need other modules in these slots more, but in no way shape or form it means I don't need to make repairs.

If someone went to a conflict zone without weapons, and then complained that they couldn't do any damage, are you going to add some new way of doing damage to the game? Or are you going to tell them their build is wrong?

If you build a ship that will need repairs, and you don't include the existing means of repairs, then yes, it is objectively the incorrect way of building that ship.

 

[DemiserofD]

I think the funniest thing is the argument that there has to be "worthwhile" features. I see nothing worthwhile from their last 2 game updates. PP nothing but a mindless grind for modules and pointless rank. Colonoscopy, pointless extension of the same old repetitive systems that don't actually deliver the ownership that the people that have asked for that style of game really want, with bonus mindless hauling grind.

It might not be for you, which is fair - but you can still look at it rationally and analyze how many hours of playtime each one has prompted. Powerplay 2.0, for example, probably took less total dev time to implement than ship interiors would, but has provided probably hundreds of thousands of hours of player engagement. Colonization we can be even more accurate about, since we know the statistics. 983,599,593 units of cargo delivered in the first week translates to something like 218,577 hours of gameplay.

Even if you used ship interiors regularly, you'd not get numbers like that for months, because there just aren't that many opportunities to use ship interior content.

 

[metatheurgist]

"gameplay"

 

[Lukaz_Chrom]

If you survived, then there's no need to repair it. You'll waste ten minutes doing what you can do in 3 minutes of travel time to get to a station. The only time it could even theoretically be worth it is if you somehow were way out in the black where there are no stations nearby AND you're going to get shot at sometime soon - conditions that are incredibly rare at best.

Relatievely rare, yes, completely depending on your style that is ...
But 100% not so "increadibly rare" as to completely devalue this argument.
And who the hell sais it would have to take 10min XD

It should take 1 min at most. This is not "Space Engineers".
Even within civilized systems that would make it worthwhile.

+
Don't forget, Ship Repair is just ONE argument in favor of Ship Interiors.
ONE among countless

 

[DemiserofD]

Relatievely rare, yes, completely depending on your style that is ...
But 100% not so "increadibly rare" as to completely devalue this argument.
And who the hell sais it would have to take 10min XD

It should take 1 min at most. This is not "Space Engineers".
Even within civilized systems that would make it worthwhile.

It would take 9 minutes because that's how long it would take an AFMU. An AFMU can repair 0.28 integrity per second. A 7A power plant has 144 integrity. That's 514 seconds of repairing, and it'll use up an entire 4A AFMU's ammo, so that'd be ALL you could repair unless you synthesize. If you could manually repair faster and more effectively than an AFMU, why ever carry an AFMU? You basically trade the one for the other, and they're not going to just invalidate content like that.

Don't forget, Ship Repair is just ONE argument in favor of Ship Interiors.
ONE among countless

Not in this thread. If there are more suggestions elsewhere feel free to post them, but I haven't seen them in the past 100 pages.

Look, I don't like being a downer. That's not my point or my goal. My point is that if you want interiors, we'll need better suggestions. Things that add core value enough to justify adding interiors and thereby justify all the other minor stuff like this; stuff which isn't worth it on its own, but which could be added relatively easily once interiors ARE justified.

We need out of the box thinking. That's what I was aiming for with my exobiology lab idea - it just wasn't enough, either. We need ideas that will multiply existing content without detracting from it. Ideas that REQUIRE interior content to happen - many of the proposals don't actually require interiors to happen, like Salvage, which can happen perfectly well just on the outside of ships.

Something truly revolutionary. Not just the same old four ideas over and over again.

 

[DemiserofD]

Although, now that I think about it, one potential pathway forward would be if they were planning on retooling the Engineering Process anyway, they could shift that towards being done via minigames in the interior of ships.

The thing is, even though engineering is not unbearable anymore, it's also not particularly engaging. It's basically a shopping list, which is particularly annoying early on, when you don't have anything at all.

If they were willing to completely rework the engineering system, I could see it being changed so that you could basically go into your ships internals, and manually engineer the inside yourself, replacing pieces and modifying things via a series of mini games. It would need to be fiendishly complex, so that players would actually need to experiment and swap parts in and out over a prolonged period of time in order to eventually figure out their ideal setup.

But that would be the sort of thing that could actually justify interiors. It's not just content that can be done anywhere, it's directly impacting the inside of your ship, justifying the existence of the inside of your ship. And it interacts with huge portions of the rest of the game.

You could merge this with my other idea, about the exobiology lab, and maybe change engineering materials so that you get consistent effects with human parts and data, and randomized effects with Elemental materials and alien plants.

This would increase the complexity of engineering, add far more depth to exploration and exobiology, and the only sacrifice would be a gameplay element that very few people actually like.


However, it should be noted that this is talking about a fairly massive and complex change to the game. It may not be sacrificing anything that people particularly like, but the current status quo is at least stable. Even if the risk is minimized, it would still be a risk. One I am uncertain that they would be willing to take.

 

[amigacooke]

My point is that if you want interiors, we'll need better suggestions.

We don’t really. No one came up with reasons why more ships were needed, even though to me I couldn’t see the point of more ships that do slightly different things to the 30 or so already existing ships.

However, those who are paid to come up with gameplay, FDevs, had a stroke of genius and came up with SCO (and late access to extract money). Perhaps they might be able to do better than us when it comes to ship interiors? It was Frontiers idea after all, one they used to encourage customers to buy a LEP.

 

[Lukaz_Chrom]

It would take 9 minutes because that's how long it would take an AFMU. An AFMU can repair 0.28 integrity per second. A 7A power plant has 144 integrity. That's 514 seconds of repairing, and it'll use up an entire 4A AFMU's ammo, so that'd be ALL you could repair unless you synthesize. If you could manually repair faster and more effectively than an AFMU, why ever carry an AFMU? You basically trade the one for the other, and they're not going to just invalidate content like that.

Well 1. because you can use an AFMU in battle while I don't see you standing up repairing stuff in mid-battle XD
also 2. if I MANUALLY go there to repair stuff, why would the same rules apply to me as to some automated system ? Honestly ... strange argument to begin with.

Not in this thread. If there are more suggestions elsewhere feel free to post them, but I haven't seen them in the past 100 pages.

So I guess none of these count:

They are more than just a feature a this point,
they are a symbol of listening to the community,
a new dimension of immersion,
the final blow to ScamCitizen,
the final and long awaited turning point for Odyssey,
the fullfilling of an ancient promise,
and a Gold Mine for Elite itself ...

Guess they don't

 

[Coolgroove]

If someone went to a conflict zone without weapons, and then complained that they couldn't do any damage, are you going to add some new way of doing damage to the game? Or are you going to tell them their build is wrong?

I'm going to tell them - genius of fun! Ever heard of Ramming, FAS, Cutter Slap, etc ?

Or do you want to tell others how you think they should play a sandbox game?

 

[Andy Gee]

I find it really weird when someone tries to explain to me that my wishes and needs for a game content are too minor or poorly thought out or incorrectly prioritized. Feels to me like the famous: "You are holding your phone wrong!".

 

[metatheurgist]

Who decided we should get PP (1 & 2), Colonoscopy, PMFs, fantasy engineers or squads? I don't remember anyone saying "Please! let me haul thousands of tons of crap personally!!!!".

 

[Andy Gee]

Colonoscopy

Perhaps put a Trademark on it - Colonoscopy™? I have a sinking feeling it might be worth it...

 

[Staarlord]

Something like this could probably be versatile/adaptable enough to accommodate - a living quarters with terminals and equipment rack, a flexible cargo bay room with SRV / Fighter bay / Dropship hangar (or better if the function of dropship could do just regular cargo bay without any extra modules) that changes it's layout and available vehicles for interaction depending on modules fitted, a PP room, and 1-3 (depends on ship size and slots size/possible modules) extra rooms for other modules with possible gameplay / minigames. It could be enough space to put gameplay in and varied enough to give the feeling of actual interior for immersion.

I don't think we need to access actual cargo holds, or refineries, or controllers, etc. Cargo holds maybe someday way into the future, if there are ways to load them and a possibility for at least some form of extended contraband gameplay, but for initial implementation - no need.

Passengers are probably out of the realm of possibility, simply because it is possible to have a lot of them on some ships and to place and render that much would probably be hard. As much as I would love passengers gameplay, but without severe cut downs I don't think it's realistic. Maybe there could be only a limited number of interactable NPCs in a separate room (leaders of groups or something like that) with other passengers not visible, plus VIP/First class. But that also could be something for the future additions with specific gameplay for them.


Something like that I would love to have. Could seal the rooms to make oxygen reserves last longer. Possibility to vent an atmosphere in specific rooms/sections for 'some' purposes. Yep, if there is a framework for something like that - the gameplay can follow.


If for everything to be completely seamless, without faking anything - yes. But if there are some fakery involved, hidden loading screens behind animations, decreases and increases of details, etc - no overhauls are needed, Game Engine can do it, obviously it would require not a simple development process and quite a creative approach to designing this fakery to be subtle enough, but I think it could be done to be perceived as seamless without much disruption to the process of movement and play.


On that I can only say - Very Yes to limpets size/mass, never made sense to me, apart from - ok, they are of a similar volume so for the sake of simplicity we are going to count them as the same mass because that is how cargo holds are working in the game. Would be nice if that was looked at again, maybe make cargo in volume units and only items/commodities that have ~1 ton mass add to ship mass, or something like that. But apart from that - I'm not really qualified to talk about cargo, as hauling is very mind numbing to me and no amount of extra static details could change that, haha.

Exactly. Fractions of a ton/ unit or something at the very least. 1T of limpets will have the capacity of something like 24-48 repair limpets, making it only necessary to carry a C1 or C2 rack in a combat ship. This, especially when extended to commodities, can even help small ships be more lucrative for cargo runs. You can't make good money in a Cobra for example and yet? A Cobra is famous for both combat and hauling/ making credits in the Elite universe. I mean it's what Jason and Alex Ryder used as a hauler and it's what pirates used to steal from haulers lol

 

[Coolgroove]

From another PoV:

Starting from Ultima Online times to current times there is one very lucrative constant for absolutely any MMO-type game - casual players are the backbone of financial success, simply because out of all player type - casual are a majority.

Every usual MMO game that didn't attract casuals flopped. No exceptions. The most prominent example - Wildstar, although as with any other flop there is a combination of many factors that led to that end, the main starting point for decline and eventual switch to F2P and consequent problems was absolute focus on hardcore, and dismissal of casual players interests in the process.

No it is not about a dead game, Elite is vary far from that and moves in an opposite direction with all the renewed development and interest in it, and most importantly - Elite in that regard has quite a bit of a safety shield - it is a very niche game, so it can progress without focusing on any other characteristic for player types except - space sim enjoyers. But all that untapped potential for casual audience is still there for the taking, and as practical examples of many other multiplayer games over more than 2 decades show - casuals pay for stuff much easier than any other types of players. Overwhelming majority of players in various games who are playing the fashion game, or interior decorators, or skins collectors, etc. - are casual players.

The best thing about it - for Elite, there is no need to cater to casuals, no need to change the whole game to appeal to that type of players. Only a place for casuals to have their casual gameplay is needed.

Ship Interiors are very good for that, both in gameplay they could provide and a cosmetics value they can give for players who value exactly that. Ability to build a base, or a farm or something like that is the second best, simply because it is disconnected from the rest of the game (comparatively to ships that everybody uses), can't be accessible by a new player from the start, but it has similar possibilities for cosmetics. No other feature comes even close for that.

So, Ship Interiors can generate a lot of publicity, can attract very financially interesting types of players, can open the game to a much wider audience, can fulfil the longstanding vision and bring many old players back. New players = new game sales, all players = more potential cosmetic sales. All that is very good for the health of the game and future development.

 

[DemiserofD]

We don’t really. No one came up with reasons why more ships were needed,

Sure they did; the new ships effectively multiply existing content in many cases. The cobra Mk5, for example, is the only small ship large enough to allow effective trading to all those Odyssey settlements with only small pads. Its mere presence increases the number of places you can go by something like 33-50%. The Python Mk2 basically DOUBLES the number of pvp ships that are viable in the meta. The new ships are actually more than justified gameplay-wise, especially since they're just adding ONE new ship at a time, not adding interiors for ALL ships.

Well 1. because you can use an AFMU in battle while I don't see you standing up repairing stuff in mid-battle XD
also 2. if I MANUALLY go there to repair stuff, why would the same rules apply to me as to some automated system ? Honestly ... strange argument to begin with.

You can only really AFMU module reinforcements in battle, since anything else is much too slow and takes way too much ammo. And yes, I would actually expect a module that takes upwards of 256 tons of cargo space to be faster than a single guy in a space suit, oddly enough.

I'm going to tell them - genius of fun! Ever heard of Ramming, FAS, Cutter Slap, etc ?

Or do you want to tell others how you think they should play a sandbox game?

I knew you were going to talk about ramming the instant I posted that, but it was late and I was tired. I think you understood my POINT. The game offers existing tools to achieve these things. If you don't use those tools and then complain, you are objectively being unreasonable, simple as that.

I find it really weird when someone tries to explain to me that my wishes and needs for a game content are too minor or poorly thought out or incorrectly prioritized. Feels to me like the famous: "You are holding your phone wrong!".

We can be 100% objective about this. Do the math, calculate how much ROI a feature will offer relative to its investment. Colonization, for example, generates something like 50 hours of content per station, minimum, not even accounting for time flying around finding rarer commodities. By the first benchmark it had already generated a total of something like 250,000 hours of player investment.

By contrast, what's the most we might expect out of the interiors people have proposed thus far? Even if we did EVERYTHING suggested(repairs, salvage, cosmetics, map tables/etc), we're still only looking at maybe a few minutes spent in your ship interior per day. That's hundreds of times slower - or, the ROI is hundreds of times worse.

Although, now that I think about it, one potential pathway forward would be if they were planning on retooling the Engineering Process anyway, they could shift that towards being done via minigames in the interior of ships.

The thing is, even though engineering is not unbearable anymore, it's also not particularly engaging. It's basically a shopping list, which is particularly annoying early on, when you don't have anything at all.

If they were willing to completely rework the engineering system, I could see it being changed so that you could basically go into your ships internals, and manually engineer the inside yourself, replacing pieces and modifying things via a series of mini games. It would need to be fiendishly complex, so that players would actually need to experiment and swap parts in and out over a prolonged period of time in order to eventually figure out their ideal setup.

But that would be the sort of thing that could actually justify interiors. It's not just content that can be done anywhere, it's directly impacting the inside of your ship, justifying the existence of the inside of your ship. And it interacts with huge portions of the rest of the game.

You could merge this with my other idea, about the exobiology lab, and maybe change engineering materials so that you get consistent effects with human parts and data, and randomized effects with Elemental materials and alien plants.

This would increase the complexity of engineering, add far more depth to exploration and exobiology, and the only sacrifice would be a gameplay element that very few people actually like.

It's interesting nobody really wants to comment on this, either.

 

[DemiserofD]

snip