If you implement it in a limited fashion
It shouldn't be implemented in any limited fashion. It can be implemented in the fullest it can be with the rest of the mechanics of the game. But there is absolutely no reason to change all other mechanics just to have easy NPC boarding player ships all the time, because as you've said - it would be annoying.
players will complain about not being able to do it
There will always be a possibility to do it. But the chances of success in a random situation are close to none with how the game work. In missions / signal sources / events arranged for that - not a problem, and the player would expect it, both to do it and to be on a receiving end. And players can do it with other players in the same arranged manner too. So "not being able" doesn't look like a thing, it's more of being unlikely aside from situations where player explicitly agree to it.
With how majority of players in Elite are - I don't see how there could be many complains that one player cannot easily force other player into a boarding action. And if somebody wants for NPCs to do it to them - the can go for it easily. If they don't want it - it won't happen.
There is really not that much to complain about even if someone would be hell bend on doing it.
Implementing it just makes people less happy.
Nahh, people are going to have fun!
But being impossible in most cases also means it's not worth implementing.
It is worth it. Because it is mainly for the player to do the boarding action, with all the gameplay options it provides. As for player being boarded - maybe as an encounter/event with Thargoids described in the message above - will be fun for a lot of players.
Decorating your interior is a very niche subset of the playerbase, not worth doing things for on its own.
Yeah, that's a bad assumption. Every MMO that sells cosmetics survives / earns / profits because of players who decorate things. But I do agree, on it's own, just as a space for decorations - not worth it, because players need to do something with it, be in it, to want to decorate it and then change previous decoration for new ones. That is why there must be gameplay and there are plenty of ideas and possibilities for it.
but without detracting from the broader game.
That is one of the main good things about interiors - if there is an option to teleport out/in - the feature won't detract from anything, and if players don't want that part of the gameplay they can completely avoid it, while at the same time it can be available to the fullest to players who want to enjoy it.
For example, doing internal ship repairs COULD work - but what if it's not very fun?
Well, not very fun for one player and very fun for another. It's not possible to make everything very fun for everybody. Just like not every player likes combat, or exploration, or hauling... it's ok.
It could be fine to do every so often, but if it provides real gameplay benefits, like being able to explore without an AFMU, then players will feel compelled to do it, regardless of whether they want to.
That's how beneficial features work - they give benefits to be compelling. On top of that, AMFU doesn't add any mass, works conveniently from the menu and exploration ships don't really suffer from shortage of slots aside from a very few "but I want to do it in that ship" scenarios. So there is a parity, either player wants more immersion in they gameplay (manual repairs) or more convenience (AMFU).
against their will, instead of the existing and perfectly decent gameplay loop we already have.
wow, wow, wow, nobody is forcing anybody against any will. AMFU is there, second option for repair minigame is just that - another option to consider. Otherwise with your logic it means that right now players are forced to use AMFU? C'mon.
Ideally, ship interiors would add entirely new content, which doesn't severely impact other aspects of the game players already
That is exactly what ship interiors can do, and what majority of ideas here are about.
but there are very few options for that.
There are a lot. Especially if, just like a base mechanic for gameplay on planets is ability to walk around a planet, there would be EVA to access all the possible gameplay for interiors in space.
The only one I can imagine is on-foot engineering, diving deeper into exobiology.
Delve deeper into this thread - it'll expand your imagination.
I explored that idea here:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-a-potential-niche-for-ship-interiors.634436/
But to sum up, the basic idea was that all exobiology samples would become randomized engineering materials, but with unknown effects. Players would need to do experiments on them in an internal lab, where they could discover new effects that could then be applied to their armor or weapons. These labs would have windows looking out over the planet in most cases, creating a warm and bright 'home' to run home to, out in the Black. Players could also grow samples of plants in an internal garden, for both re-usable benefits as well as aesthetics.
See, you are into exo-bio and deeper gameplay/connection with engineering, and also into having a place you can call 'home' in the game. In the same way there are a lot of players who would like to make their ship much more of a home then it already is, with ability to enter/exit it (EVA) and all the gameplay that it can provide.
But is that enough for players? I doubt it. After all, my post saw literally no interest.
I would assume it's because many players would see all that as a one part of the whole 'Base Building', and on it's own it is probably too niche. But as a part of building a lab in your base to have that gameplay - it is interesting. It could be fun for ship interiors, although it looks like a better fit for a base.
