ship interiors - will they happen

[galahad2069]

Your just talking about PvP and that happens anyway, so no difference.

There is much more to the game than just PvP.

I was talking about a PvP scenario proposed by someone I was replying to.

BTW the fact that there's more to the game than just PvP is irrelevant when you are talking about a hypothetical feature which isn't only supposed to work in a single player environment. This is still a multiplayer game.

 

[Markov Chaney]

So it totally fails to model the physics of inertia? That's not a good thing.

I'm confused. The first Lantern Light video shows that the ship can't match rotation with the station. So I am unsure what Coolgroove means here but nothing about the physics of the ship looks wrong here.

The wild behaviour of the station because they're not designed to deal with neutron stars is different, I too would assume it would lose alignment at that point and the rotation of the station would be independent of the implied rotation from the orbit. So that aspect of angular momentum has been ignored here, but you know, all sims have an envelope where they are expected to be accurate and if you go out that envelope, all bets are off. Even synthetics and twins used in aerospace and defence have that problem.

 

[galahad2069]

What a low branch trolling argument you have.
It would the same with you stating FACT YOU CANT LAND ON PLANETS IN ELITE DANGEROUS AT LAUNCH.
Until the FACT you can land on certain planets in elite dangerous horizons the following year.

Stop strawmanning.

So stop assuming the placeholders today (like an exploding ship)

The exploding ship is not a placeholder. It's literally why you are shooting at ships. To make them explode. LMAO

won’t lead into additional gameplay loops in future releases in the same way like flying into a planets magically resulted in orbital cruise for some of the planets for the players who opted into horizons the .

It won't. You can bet your boots.

The pilots dead ship is already in the instance with the other players already. Why would you need to respawn a new ship. The ship just looses its pilot and comes to a full stop.

I'm not sure if you know what you are talking about. Dead ships absolutely don't stay in the instance. They just explode and cease to exist. Even disabled (not dead) player ships disappear pretty much instantly as soon as the owner has logged off. If you were to put a ghost ship there after the CMDR has dropped out of the P2P connection, there would be a chance for them to log back in the instance, in which case there would be a duplicate of their ship.

Combat logging with NPC results in self destruction (because there i no one in the instance).

No, it does not. NPCs are not permanent, so there is no one left to hold the single player instance if you leave.

The returning pilot,will be met with an updated rebuy screen.

That would be a good way to prevent combat logging, I would be totally okay with that solution, but we all know that fdev will never implement such a thing. What they did was pretty much the opposite (they effectively legitimized clogging when they added the menu log timer), which is a clear indication of what they are and are not willing to do.

Long story short, as long as clogging exists, it's not worth it to try and waste dev time on a PvP boarding feature. Even if disabled ships of cloggers did not vanish, that would only leave a PvE scenario no PvPers would care about.

If their ship is still “unavailable”, they get to respawn back at their ship in whatever state the ship is in until their suits air supply runs out, use the life pod (forfeiting) or scuttling the ship.

'Whatever state' includes the ship having been blown into smithereens. And what if their ship is still being boarded/looted when the owner logs back in? Can they still fight back on foot? Remember, they did not necessarily clog. It might have been a genuine disconnection for whatever colored snake reason. Oh, and let's not forget the existence of modes. They can just decide to relog into Solo. Can they? Why not?

learn how to disable a ship properly, and not just blast it.

There's too much RNG in that (module damage).

And to the auto-self description not triggering before another player fires their final volley, well you just land in the dead defenceless ship state. well again; gitgud and avoid being shot, or set your 30 second self destruct timer on much earlier, but that’s on you being a poor player. Gitgud son.

Nobody needs an auto-self destruct mechanism to kick in in order to be able to destroy a ship. Thousands of hull hitpoints can evaporate in mere seconds under sufficient firepower and that's the way it's supposed to work. It would look extremely stupid if a ship on low hull survived a fully procced TC plasmaram and ended up in a "dead defenceless" state instead. Surviving for a long time on low hull is not much of a question of gitgud, it has way more to do with how laggy you are.

 

[Staarlord]

I was watching Obsidian's video about how interiors might be implemented and I guess I never really thought about the broader impact it could (or should) add to current gameplay loops. He postulated ways it could be leveraged from a gameplay perspective, whereas I tended to believe that FDev (based on what we've seen of on-foot gameplay) would just add it as a novelty and mostly to shut people up lol.

When FDev implemented SRV, it was swiftly made a standard, in that it became the real only lucrative way to find/ earn raw materials for ship engineering, and unlocking Guardian weapons/ modules. Sure, you can get materials from laser mining but not efficiently and nor reliably.

When FDev implemented Odyssey, they segregated the gameplay mechanic from space, such that you really have no reason to ever get out of your ship when you even so much as dock at a port. I imagined us getting out to get missions from an actual NPC. You don't travel somewhere and stop just to stay in your car after all, do you? If I were to drive to the electronics store (apart from contact delivery during the peak of COVID), you wouldn't just roll down the window and shout to the store, "kindly bring me my HDMI cable please and thanks!" Chance are? You are getting out of your car to get what you went to the place for. I mean, knew not to expect getting up in an apartment or anything like that, though, why not? If you logged off on-foot near a friendly settlement, why wouldn't they have a room you could get up in? If you logged off in your ship while in space, why not spawn back there? I did imagine the potential of someone or something loading things onto your hold however. Whether those were little droids/ bots or people.

That said? On-foot became its own disconnected world and a means to earn on-foot things, such as engineering materials needed for personal belongings. I still really never get out of my ship because there's never a reason to and I didn't want to open up into a whole disconnected experience but I think the most off-putting thing was that even so much as a simple bounty contract behaved completely differently, in that I could not just go and take out a Wanted target and be on my way, as then? The entire facility would descend down onto me and attack me alongside the Wanted target. They didn't seem to care that the other guy was Wanted but they sure scanned me for a status, so you're forced into this whole stealth mechanic, which I found frustrating, since I'm not into the stealth genre even a little bit. So the few powerplay settlement things I did do? I made no secret of and racked up a wanted bounty on me. Basically? I'd start out by getting in my Scorpion and mowing security force down until they're down dropping people in and then I go in and do the thing/ gather the data I went there for.

I would be super into on-foot/ ship interiors, if? I had to wake up at a next nearest medical wing upon death, call my ship from a space port, load cargo, go to an actual ship showroom floor, or shopping district and buy ships and upgrades, visit professor Palin, in-person, have things for friends to do on my Cutter, and get my (space/ on-foot/ SRV) missions from an actual contact (in addition to the broader mission board options, which should also be on-foot). Kind of like a certain title that shall not be named, whereby it's all one seamless experience i.e. On-foot is ship interiors--is space flight and may even be more than one of those things at once (getting out of your seat, having a stretch about the cabin, while eating and hydrating during space flight). It's how you create a living and breathing world.

Right now? It's clearly evident that on-foot is entirely optional, as it tells you "get out, if you enjoy raiding settlements an scanning bacteria enough to engineer your entirely separate on-foot things."

When you add all of these things together in a cohesive package? And even add gameplay mechanics, such as bombing runs? There really are no on-foot versus space mission types. It's just "missions." Currently, for example? We do not have the option to bomb settlements, or otherwise performance aerial assaults and so? Settlement missions are strictly on-foot, so that only further defines the lines between each mission type. Especially since you're not going and extracting commodities and putting it on your ship, physically. If we had the option for aerial assaults? It gives us the option to soften up defenses and then land and tie up the loose ends.

 

[Coolgroove]

So it totally fails to model the physics of inertia? That's not a good thing.

I'm confused. The first Lantern Light video shows that the ship can't match rotation with the station. So I am unsure what Coolgroove means here but nothing about the physics of the ship looks wrong here.

So, one of the main arguments against ship interiors very often repeated - game engine cannot handle interiors attached to the ship, whatabout fast speed, whatabout objects/player model inside at high g/fast maneuvers, whatabout etc.

When you're outside Lantern Light - you can clearly see how fast it spins. So fast that it is impossible to match it. The speed and rotation very nicely illustrate any ship turning maneuver in the game, as all movements in the game governed by the same vectors library/mechanism.

When you're inside that station - turn FA OFF and your ship is no longer aligned with the station rotation. When you turn in back ON - ship will instantly be aligned with the station movement and is going to spin with the station. No matter how close or far from the center of rotation the ship is, no matter the angle, no matter if the ship moves or completely stationary, no matter any combination of these conditions - as soon as FA is ON the ship instantly aligned with the station. Amount of commanders inside the station (who are spinning, stopping, blowing up and respawning) also doesn't affect the performance in any way.

That means, that this vector library/mechanism of the Game Engine is perfectly capable of aligning any object with other objects, no matter the speed, angle or vectors directions. So, for anybody who doubted if the Game Engine could handle interiors implementation where they are not a part of the ship model but something attached to the ship - yes, Game Engine can do it. And with that, the last technical myth that often used to block an idea can be put to rest, as it is no longer valid.

Ship interiors could be as a part of the ship model, can be additional models attached, objects (items, interiors objects, player/NPC models) can also be aligned. Game engine can do it.

As for desync type of issues - same as with any other part of the game - that's now game networking works, nothing to be done about it. These problems are not the reason not to have flying ships, not a reason not to have all other gameplay and modes, and so, reasonably, it is not a reason not to have interiors.

As for gameplay effects being inside an interior when ship moves and/or high G turns - Magic/magnetic boots are there, Blackout/high G effects (stops movement) are there.

As for EVA - when inside the ship magnetic boots always ON, when step outside - EVA mechanics kick in.

As for loading the interiors - It is possible to increase / decrease details of objects based on distance and conditions (internal/external cam, concourses windows). But even if completely seamless transition won't be possible for some crucial technical reason - elevators are basically animated doors that are used in place of a loading screen - airlock or other interiors doors 'unlock' animations could be used in the similar way. Also, if you drop out on a planet very far away from the Odyssey settlement (so it is no where near being in the view) and then fly to it (not in SC) - it'll load without any loading screens or problems. That means that the Game Engine has a way to make transition seamless or at the very least a way to fake it subtle enough to be perceived as seamless. If there is a will - game design can figure out the way, tech is capable.

With that - the answer to the question - Can Ship Interiors be done with current Game Engine? - Yes, everything that can be ready, with what there is in the game right now, is ready and capable.

Of course, as with any other feature - actual assets need to be modeled, mechanics coded, etc. - the usual game development flow.

That is what my initial post was about.

As for how physics are broken is some parts of the game - none of that has anything to do with what is needed technically to implement interiors, and those are problems for those specific parts and how they were implemented.

 

[thistle]

So I may as well throw my tuppence worth in again.

• yes fdev could do interiors, anything from basic static-only in limited rooms to full physics eva and boarding. Why? Because it's just design and coding, they're professionals, they can do anything within the code with time and resources.
• will they? imo probably not, due to the above.

But I could be wrong.

None of these back and forth arguments about technical issues none of us have a clue about will change anything. fdev will have their plan and will implement it I'm sure.

For a 10 year old game.

 

[Jinx Chrome]

Right now? It's clearly evident that on-foot is entirely optional, as it tells you "get out, if you enjoy raiding settlements an scanning bacteria enough to engineer your entirely separate on-foot things."

Introducing this separation and keeping it, is FDev's greatest sin. Understandably, they had to build a lot of stuff separate from the 'Horizons' game to make Oddy a DLC. But going forward they should have worked on the integration of materials, missions, UI etc. to make it feel seamless and incentivize players to move to Oddy. Since they haven't done this, Odyssey play feels disconnected from Horizons.
On the other hand, they could make ship interiors now a separate DLC or add-on to Odyssey so that players can decide how to play:

1. If you don't have the interiors DLC, no changes
2. If you have the 'interiors' expansion: ship interiors are enabled, gameplay loops exist
   1. for everyone who does not like to walk through interiors: use blue circles like before
   2. fringe scenarios like boarding a PvP ship (if that ever becomes a thing): If the boarded player has the 'interiors' expansion: play the loop and fight in the galley, fight in the cargo space, fight in the cockpit. If they don't have the expansion: the boarded player's ship explodes in their instance, they get a rebuy and the boarding group can play the loop in a generated ship with NPC players.

I don't see too much of an issue with such an approach. The 'interiors' DLC may be a paid one and to counter the argument "too few players will buy it", my argument is: "add additional ARX-based eyecandy and build new missions and CGs around the interiors so that players feel the urge to get it".

 

[Coolgroove]

I would be super into on-foot/ ship interiors, if? I had to wake up at a next nearest medical wing upon death, call my ship from a space port, load cargo, go to an actual ship showroom floor, or shopping district and buy ships and upgrades, visit professor Palin, in-person, have things for friends to do on my Cutter, and get my (space/ on-foot/ SRV) missions from an actual contact (in addition to the broader mission board options, which should also be on-foot).

You can visit professor in person but I understand what you mean perfectly. Elite has a lot of disconnected things and I would love for more cohesion in this incredible imaginary world.

As a start, not even much needed to be done. Make NPCs and boards on-foot give both on-foot and ship/SRV missions. Make generated mission chains, not even with some complex story, just a follow up mission - completed mission on foot, the next is to do something in a ship. Got mission for a ship, then can complete it in interface with no follow up, or go to a contact in person for a possible follow up. Found some black boxes or pods in a signal source - turn them in in station menu just for credits, or get to a contact in person for a possible mission. etc. Game system for mission could work very nicely to connect at least some of the disconnected modes.

And yes, Ship Interiors can expand and enhance the whole experience (not only with missions) to the whole new level. There are many ideas in this thread that fit this specific goal very nicely.

 

[Woakes]

Stop strawmanning.

You started it with naming Fact of the current status quo obstinately ignoring that software can get updated altering said status quo.

The exploding ship is not a placeholder. It's literally why you are shooting at ships. To make them explode. LMAO

Again, that status quo can change.
Whether you want that change or not.
It can still happened. Much like landing on planets (horizons), or walking around them(odyssey) you can participate or not.

It won't. You can bet your boots.


I'm not sure if you know what you are talking about. Dead ships absolutely don't stay in the instance. They just explode and cease to exist. Even disabled (not dead) player ships disappear pretty much instantly as soon as the owner has logged off. If you were to put a ghost ship there after the CMDR has dropped out of the P2P connection, there would be a chance for them to log back in the instance, in which case there would be a duplicate of their ship.

Living ships are already in the instance.
All you are doing when the pilot logs off (for whatever reason) is just maintain the existing ship in the instance without a player controlling it.

No, it does not. NPCs are not permanent, so there is no one left to hold the single player instance if you leave.

Exactly my point I was highlighting by having one set of rules pvp and players verses NPC

That would be a good way to prevent combat logging, I would be totally okay with that solution, but we all know that fdev will never implement such a thing. What they did was pretty much the opposite (they effectively legitimized clogging when they added the menu log timer), which is a clear indication of what they are and are not willing to do.

See, told you my
Solution adds to the game.

Long story short, as long as clogging exists, it's not worth it to try and waste dev time on a PvP boarding feature. Even if disabled ships of cloggers did not vanish, that would only leave a PvE scenario no PvPers would care about.

Exactly. They are happy to blow up the ship, And leave the instance. Win for the victim who can fix their ship and not loose their cargo/passenger run.

'Whatever state' includes the ship having been blown into smithereens. And what if their ship is still being boarded/looted when the owner logs back in? Can they still fight back on foot? Remember, they did not necessarily clog. It might have been a genuine disconnection for whatever colored snake reason. Oh, and let's not forget the existence of modes. They can just decide to relog into Solo. Can they? Why not?

Hence the rebuy screen feeding you into
The desired scenario.

The defenceless ship state, exists for as long as the life-support timer exists.
So if you have a class A, the defenceless ship state lasts for 25 minutes. Unless resolved by the pilot, or resolved by pilot death.

The player spawns back on the existing ship if they do choose.

If they can’t reconnect to that instance or choose to go to solo. That’s a decent question.

Then they might only have the option to respawn back on a station.

There's too much RNG in that (module damage).


Nobody needs an auto-self destruct mechanism to kick in in order to be able to destroy a ship. Thousands of hull hitpoints can evaporate in mere seconds under sufficient firepower and that's the way it's supposed to work. It would look extremely stupid if a ship on low hull survived a fully procced TC plasmaram and ended up in a "dead defenceless" state instead. Surviving for a long time on low hull is not much of a question of gitgud, it has way more to do with how laggy you are.

Similarly for Odyssey when you recreate the scene from Tim Burtons Batman when let loose everything your ship has and it just slides around the onfoot NPC’s.

You see it in sci-fi movies with exposed segments of the ship.
The expanse had rain-gun slugs ploughing through the hull and grazing past people.

Basically you blow out the ships air, power, flight. Remember all those damage models for all the ships Frontier bragged about, but that they only ever implemented it ingame for the anaconda?

yeah.
So twisted hunk of metal, and you with blaster cowering inside, or taking a flying a leap at the other guys airlock. (Yeah that would be silly but, doable).

 

[galahad2069]

That means, that this vector library/mechanism of the Game Engine is perfectly capable of aligning any object with other objects, no matter the speed, angle or vectors directions. So, for anybody who doubted if the Game Engine could handle interiors implementation where they are not a part of the ship model but something attached to the ship - yes, Game Engine can do it. And with that, the last technical myth that often used to block an idea can be put to rest, as it is no longer valid.

The rotating motion of a station is very predictable, it's a very simple function of time, totally independent from player inputs, network hiccups or anything like that.

If you really want to see how (in)capable of handling the interactions of two independently moving objects the game engine is, I can recommend a better experiment. Disembark on a planet surface, jump on top of your friend's ship and tell them to take off and fly around.

You can repeat the experiment in a laggy instance for extra comedic effect.

 

[Fizzatron]

Regardless of whether it's just cosmetic or has actual game play mechanics, I think they should add ship interiors using the same mechanic as the new ships: pay for early access, everyone else gets them later. More opportunity for FDEV to finance the game's development. And if you have no interest in the ship interiors, AND they still give you a choice of going instantly to the pilot seat (like Starfield), you can ignore them when you get them for free.

I was thinking the same thing, though something not too expensive, being that there's a lot of ships to interiorize - maybe release in packs of five, and sweeten the deal with interior skins like we have with Fleet Carriers. I'd wonder if that's taking it a bit too far though? But, ship interior supporters are very vocal and passionate so if this bridges the gap between getting them and not, then I would say it's worth it and I would pony up for early access to support the development of them, as long as the price asked is reasonable of course.

 

[Coolgroove]

If you really want to see how (in)capable of handling the interactions of two independently moving objects the game engine is, I can recommend a better experiment. Disembark on a planet surface, jump on top of your friend's ship and tell them to take off a fly around.

You can repeat the experiment in a laggy instance for extra comedic effect.

Did that, and it looks more like unfinished part of the game, something unintended, than indication of what is possible. Especially with LL example.

Laggy, desync, etc. - was already answered above.

The rotating motion of a station is very predictable, it's a very simple function of time, totally independent from player inputs, network hiccups or anything like that.

In default station conditions - yes, as it rotates around one axis, mainly, as other axis of station movement are very very slow to factor in any performance or capability calculations.

In case of Lantern Light - you can clearly see that it rotates not as a regular predictable station. The center of rotation is a clear visual indication. Speed on all axis are very different from default conditions and they are very fast. With ship inside, moving at any direction in FA OFF - also not very predictable vectors. In any part of that station space, no matter how close/far to the center of rotation, which also factor in vector calculations. FA ON - and everything is aligned perfectly and instantly.

Moving in space in a ship is movement on the exactly same axis, nothing extra. Predictability changes, and speed at which change can happen is the main factor. Lanter Light show that it is not an issue.

 

[Fizzatron]

Fdev are not going to implement a lootable ghost version of player ships after its owner has disconnected.

Given the nature of adding ship looting to the game I would suggest this would be a good thing to implement.

I think it would be good if it was possible to take command of the ship and fly it to a black market shipyard to sell. Meanwhile, for the 'victim', they just get a rebuy screen as if they got destroyed so that nothing is actually lost apart from cost of rebuy (and any cargo). The main problem to implement this that I see is how to prevent it becoming a credit exploit and/or ship/module duplication method - if players are allowed to loot and keep ship modules, or the ship itself.

I guess the duping part could be prevented by the ship being stolen property that can only be sold for credits/materials/commoditiies, but the credit exploit would be a lot trickier. Using friend/squadron list would allow for different outcomes for friendly vs hostile interactions in this situation, and maybe also count the times this interaction occurs within a time-frame and overall. This way the game can spawn in an insurance investigator with in game consequences such as having to pay full price for the rebuy and/or losing engineering features when rebuying.

Not only are they unwilling to do so (you can see how destroyed player ships don't even drop engineering materials), but they could not even possibly implement it consistently, because not every disconnection is a genuine clog.

That is a tricky thing but I think there's enough log data to establish within a reasonable bounds whether a ship would have made it or not, which would lead to...

How would it even work?

1. CMDR Victim is disconnecting.
2. Game recognizes the disconnection (which takes some time).

The time taken is the tricky part, but a possible solution would be to start a timer that overrides connection issues to prevent long pauses.

3. A ghost ship is rendered. It 100% sure would not go seamlessly, so expect weird visual artefacts.

I don't know why that would be a problem at all. After all, the ship is in the multplayer instance already with all features present. What can change due to a disconnect?

4. CMDR Evil Ganker prepares to board.
5. Turns out it was only a wonky connection, not a full DC.
6. Ghost ship starts to move again (??).
7. CMDR Victim decides to menu log, the DC is now complete.
8. CMDR Evil Ganker boards the ghost ship.

A series of events that can be avoided if a CLogging event, or a disconnect (given certain criteria) in a combat scenario counts as using an escape pod, leaving the ship behind for the loot.

9. CMDR Victim decides to relog and come back to the instance.
10. CMDR Victim's ship has effectively been duplicated now.

I think in this situation the CLogging CMDR should be presented with a rebuy screen, as above. Problem solved and hopefully lesson learned.

The game could even record if the ship was destroyed after the fact, in the alternate situation that there was a disconnect with no fighting or the PVP fight is paused while network issues are resolved. This way, the game will know to return the CMDR to their ship rather than a rebuy screen.

 

[metatheurgist]

So I may as well throw my tuppence worth in again.

• yes fdev could do interiors, anything from basic static-only in limited rooms to full physics eva and boarding. Why? Because it's just design and coding, they're professionals, they can do anything within the code with time and resources.
• will they? imo probably not, due to the above.

But I could be wrong.

None of these back and forth arguments about technical issues none of us have a clue about will change anything. fdev will have their plan and will implement it I'm sure.

For a 10 year old game.

I can't believe the things they did spend time and resources on. Including the current grindfest.

 

[jojon]

The situations with a ship flying inside the docking drum of a station, and a person standing on top of a hovering ship, with the way things work currently, differ in terms of parenting.

In the former case, the ship is for all intents and purposes a part of the station, and you could shake the station around like a feather duster, and the ship wouldn't budge relative to the station, even though there is no visible physical connection between the two -- they are held together firmly by maths.

In the latter, you have two independently moving objects, neither directly parented to the other, interacting through imperfect collision detection and physics simulation (EDIT: ...and with keyframe animation doing its own thing on the character, independent of the physics sim and sometimes conflicting with it).

Were the game to let you walk around inside the ship, you would more than likely be parented to it, like the ship in the station in the first case, as is indeed the player camera whilst seated in ship/SRV.

 

[thistle]

I can't believe the things they did spend time and resources on. Including the current grindfest.

Well that's reasonable and as someone who really just wants more planets/atmos/exploration discoveries etc added I would agree to an extent. But I suspect from fdevs perspective the player base that is likely to keep the game going and making money are the grinders, who grind out carriers, grind out multiple titan destructions etc, and the success of the game for a few more years might be targeted at them, rather than something I'd honestly prefer. But maybe we will both be pleased with what they come up with next.

I don't imagine it will be ship interiors though. But I'm normally wrong.

 

[thistle]

Were the game to let you walk around inside the ship, you would more than likely be parented to it, like the ship in the station in the first case, as is indeed the player camera whilst seated in ship/SRV.

True.

Then there's EVA and

 

[jojon]

True.

Then there's EVA and

EVA with only one's own ship, parented to it, would be one thing; When there are others, the question is when and where you have handovers to the next nearer one, or if maybe one keep everything -- ships and avatars alike, in the instance coordsys as long as one is outside...

It tends to be the handover points from one frame of physics simulation to another that can cause glitches -- especially when there is keyframe animation that does not exchange notes between itself and the physics sim (e.g. suddenly a walk cycle frame clips your foot fully into a box, which the sim interprets as a high speed collision in need of commensurate rebound. ).

 

[Kaocraft]

Look I think fixation on presumed technical limitations is putting the cart before the horse. Technical limitations are only thus because of the level of investment that has or hasn't been put into overcoming those limitations, which in the end is a matter of developer interest.

They haven't done it, and maybe they never will do it, but they (by which I mean the original devs who are mostly gone now) sure were excited about the prospect of doing it when they first started publicly talking about Elite: Dangerous as a project.

It also doesn't have to be prefect, or comprehensive, to be better than it is. Walking around a parked ship in the station or on a planet surface is better than not at all. Even walking up the stairs or climbing the ladder into the door to your ship is better than a blue circle fade to black teleport into your cockpit as it is now.

There's an entire continuum of improvements to the navigability and interactivity of the in game environments which could be made, and they don't have to be justified. They are self-evidently always better. It's better to have different kinds of station interiors rather than just one. It is better to have different looking chairs inside of imperial ships vs federal; we didn't use to have that and they serve no game play purpose but they make the world we play in more coherent and fun.

Frontier didn't have to let us have freelook inside our cockpit. They could have restricted the game to forward facing view only. In such a hypothetical scenario, the arguments against adding freelook inside of cockpits would not look substantially different than the arguments being deployed in defense of the status quo right now.

And indeed, before the introduction of the external camera, these kinds of arguments were deployed against even something as basic as being able to look at your ship from the outside.

You don't want it? Fine. you don't think Frontier will do it? OK. You don't think it's possible, or that it is an inherently pointless or game breaking feature, a worthless dead-end path that it would be idiotic to even ask for, much less expect? That is a very very silly attitude to take towards a game which has been running a procgen 1:1 milky way galaxy playspace live for 10 years and has just now introduced mechanisms for players to colonize their own star systems.

 

[Markov Chaney]

So, one of the main arguments against ship interiors very often repeated - game engine cannot handle interiors attached to the ship, whatabout fast speed, whatabout objects/player model inside at high g/fast maneuvers, whatabout etc.

When you're outside Lantern Light - you can clearly see how fast it spins. So fast that it is impossible to match it. The speed and rotation very nicely illustrate any ship turning maneuver in the game, as all movements in the game governed by the same vectors library/mechanism.

Oh yes fair, nice explanation of what you meant.

When you're inside that station - turn FA OFF and your ship is no longer aligned with the station rotation.

Oh you mean: go through the letterbox, and when you're there looking at all the pads "below" / outwards, flip FA off. So suppose you've gone off-axis, like you're hovering at the height of the pad numbers, and you flip FA off. Does the ship observe a classic O'Neill cylinder / Rendezvous with Rama fall to the pad? Or does it fall to the pad as if there was artificial gravity?

One thing to remember about FA ON is that also has to choose what it's using as a frame of reference, so the fun starts when FA is using one frame of reference, the game is using another one, and the Cmdr's brain is using a third one. That's where objections to how this all might work with ship interiors should come from?

When you turn in back ON - ship will instantly be aligned with the station movement and is going to spin with the station. No matter how close or far from the center of rotation the ship is, no matter the angle, no matter if the ship moves or completely stationary, no matter any combination of these conditions - as soon as FA is ON the ship instantly aligned with the station.

Do you think that means the game engine is working with the station's frame of reference when it's inside the station?

That means, that this vector library/mechanism of the Game Engine is perfectly capable of aligning any object with other objects, no matter the speed, angle or vectors directions.

... provided you've been consistent about frames of reference. Coriolis is a classic example of where that immediately gets more subtle than it looks. An in-game example is how everyone complains that the ship jerks when you lift off a pad. It should, that's accurate to Galilean physics in a rotating station. But people come on this forum and say "that's not right, why is it janky?"

So, for anybody who doubted if the Game Engine could handle interiors implementation where they are not a part of the ship model but something attached to the ship - yes, Game Engine can do it.

I'm happy it can do any frame of reference. My question is, can it do more than one at a time?

As for desync type of issues - same as with any other part of the game - that's now game networking works, nothing to be done about it.

It's how this game's netcode works, other netcode patterns are available and are very different. This game does do bizarre things like put slow-time checkins on blocking threads, so you know, not perfect, and it does evolve even in recent years. The only fundamental about netcode is the speed of light in glass, everything else is extremely dependent on use case and multithreading from hell.

As for gameplay effects being inside an interior when ship moves and/or high G turns - Magic/magnetic boots are there, Blackout/high G effects (stops movement) are there.

Actually am happy you could handwave it if we did get interiors, but again, busting out new lore isn't as easy as it looks. Mag boots are good for acceleration and maybe jerk, but what about jounce? Look how carefully the TWA air hostess has to walk when she serves Heywood Floyd his drink.

As for EVA - when inside the ship magnetic boots always ON, when step outside - EVA mechanics kick in.

Yeah, but you're shifting frame of reference at that point. Your idea is quite neat from that point of view because if airlock exit is always seen as the point you have decoupled from the ship, your suit can switch to an orbit frame of reference at that point.

I agree all the asset stuff and streaming/loading of those is completely achievable. You can already walk from the ship to Vista Genomics, after all.

As for how physics are broken is some parts of the game - none of that has anything to do with what is needed technically to implement interiors, and those are problems for those specific parts and how they were implemented.

Some of it is relevant, see above.