Still dreaming of ship interiors

Whenever I read this, no natter if from players or FDEV, it just baffles me. Should potential ship interiors really involve that, then it's only due to deliberately bad design. Important places that you need to go to often would naturally be placed near the lift connecting entrance and cockpit = short paths. Areas requiring less frequent visits could be deeper within the ship. That said, we humans have already developed horizontal fast transport in spaces as well, not only vertical. Heck, our lift capsule could also move in a horizonal shaft midship. Ship interiors, even large ones, don't have to be tedious, unless you deliberately make them tedious. Then again, that is exactly what we've come to expect from FDEV, right ? Tedium, repetition, grind. And yet still I want ship interiors.....
FDEV considers staring for 20 or more minutes at space dust flying by while traveling to a space station as gameplay, therefore placing the only exit at the back of a conda would be a viable option to extend the game experience.
 
Is this the only interesting thread thats going? Here's one from the past. Historically its a very popular idea.


I really doubt frontier have the steam to do anything new with elite for a while, but i guess we can dream actually its more fun to be playing those games as it will never come.

Subnautica is a great reference for:

  • The gameplay that apologists demand you invent when noone has mentioned subnautica. I think everyone doesn't mind the concept if you suggest it as an option. Just in case, its player housing with blueprints + materials dispensed in the elite sandbox as elaborately as you want them to be. I think it was important to mention in the last thread that elite dangerous graphics and art style should be used, not literally changing the pixels of elite to look like subnautica. Though it pretty close if you look at odd suits and weapons. Anyway.
  • What the experience of docking a smaller craft in a larger one could feel like.

X:Rebirth (and probably x4) is a great reference for:

  • How to avoid the famous arf doom of boredom declaration for ship interiors. I think its a pretty keen point that currently in odysee, exactly what he claimed would be boring after x times you still have to do, just outside the ship, not inside. It doesn't compute in my head how i can't not be bored with both odd and ship interiors..
  • Solution, have a radio to in base npc's, and an instant teleportion back. Transport missions specifically cannot use the shortcuts. Works great in that game. What about use telepresence if you don't want to walk back, and your full self if you need to?

If only frontier played games at all, i think they would have a chance to be so inspired for elite based on neighboring games.
 
so i got edo for my bday a few days ago... finally caved and figured if i want the game to be better then people need to get paid for it probably

first thing i did (after being shoehorned into a tutorial)? got out and looked at my moth. my great ship i put so many hours into sharpening into a precision instrument, and here she is from the hangar bay:
2022-05-11_00-15.png
i just walked around her for, like, a solid 5 minutes. taking it all in. woooooooow. hundreds and hundreds of hours, credits and materials and it was like looking at her for the first time all over again. the scale of the thing!!!!! this is MEDIUM SIZED and it's so... huge!!!

then i went up to the concourse, bought some suits and guns, threw a srv bay in it and flew out to a planet to gaze at her some more from the ground with my friend:
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just... in awe. still. i made this. this is mine. it's enough to make you cry.

i yearn for the day i get to walk around the interior and make it every bit mine as the exterior. edo is just a taste of what's to come
EDIT: and also the day i get to make coffee on my bridge using the coffeemaker i payed 126m+ for. yeaaaaa boiiiiii lessgoo
 
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Pretty sure I've seen predators attacking herd animals in NMS, but it was a loooong time ago. Not truly a food chain though.
They do. It's relatively rare though, predators are not that common in NMS.

Subnautica has a kind of food chain to. It's really well done, even though it's obviously fake.

Oh, and Kenshi also has one ! Animals need to eat or they die of hunger. Usually, however, the prey is you. And, huh, they kinda eat you alive.
X:Rebirth (and probably x4) is a great reference for:

  • How to avoid the famous arf doom of boredom declaration for ship interiors. I think its a pretty keen point that currently in odysee, exactly what he claimed would be boring after x times you still have to do, just outside the ship, not inside. It doesn't compute in my head how i can't not be bored with both odd and ship interiors..
  • Solution, have a radio to in base npc's, and an instant teleportion back. Transport missions specifically cannot use the shortcuts. Works great in that game. What about use telepresence if you don't want to walk back, and your full self if you need to?

If only frontier played games at all, i think they would have a chance to be so inspired for elite based on neighboring games.
X rebirth is the example of "how NOT to do ship interiors" IMO. Without even mentioning the "grandma" meme, you are forced to go there because reasons. You don't go there because you want to, only because the game force it upon you, and it's very arbitrary. And they added "secret" to claim there is gameplay associated. It's all gamey and poorly done IMO.
On the other hand, X4 did it properly and it's really part of the game flow. This is an example of "interiors done well". They skipped the useless room and kept the one that are nice. Hangar bay of the carrier ? Yes. Bridge ? Yes. Crew bathroom ? No. The place that matters. There is little else like watching a hundreds meters long carrier fighting and send his 100 fighters (which you can all fly individually BTW) when you are standing on the main deck.

In X4 it also serve a purpose, you can board derelict and claim them for yourself, or repair your ship for free. You can always repair them another way, it's just something you can do.
 
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X rebirth is the example of "how NOT to do ship interiors" IMO. Without even mentioning the "grandma" meme, you are forced to go there because reasons. You don't go there because you want to, only because the game force it upon you, and it's very arbitrary. And they added "secret" to claim there is gameplay associated. It's all gamey and poorly done IMO.
On the other hand, X4 did it properly and it's really part of the game flow. This is an example of "interiors done well". They skipped the useless room and kept the one that are nice. Hangar bay of the carrier ? Yes. Bridge ? Yes. Crew bathroom ? No. The place that matters. There is little else like watching a hundreds meters long carrier fighting and send his 100 fighters (which you can all fly individually BTW) when you are standing on the main deck.

Really? Theres zero impact to that room in rebirth apart from a 4 second unskippable cutscene. It only exists when you want it to, or need to talk to someone in it (which is a reason) otherwise. X rebirth is the best :) I think the trick is to control 6 axis from your joystick, and use wsad and surrounding for throttle. Its great. Its ship interiors. Sure you can't customise it, but its atmospheric enough. Would you complain if the skunk was a sidewinder or cobra? Id take that.
 
I dunno if they changed it, but when it released X rebirth forced you to get in those interiors for no reasons whatsoever. Want to trade anything ? Need to dock because future people don't have phones. Want to hire people for your ship ? Need to dock. Also, some unique items forced you to dock and crawl around looking for them.
And then you had like 3 different faces for NPCs, leading to an invasion of grandma clones.

In X4 it's seamlessly integrated. When you dock in a station the door open, you can go outside or not. You can use the com or go on foot. Whatever. Stuff like changing ships need you to walk though, until you have the teleporter.


Fun fact, X rebirth was so poorly received at the time, it was the most downrated game on steam and the amount of refund forced them to change their global policy. See, at the time refund where on a case by case basis, and you had to contact support for it. Eventually they auto granted refund for X rebirth to alleviate the overload. A few weeks later they made the system we have now (auto refund for less than 2h played and less than 2weeks after purchase), after people who had their refund refused contacted the EU to intervene.

Yet they survived, learned and made X4, a good game on its own.
Kinda like NMS.

Maybe Fdev will pull the same with Odyssey. I have my doubts, but still, it's possible.
 
I dunno if they changed it, but when it released X rebirth forced you to get in those interiors for no reasons whatsoever. Want to trade anything ? Need to dock because future people don't have phones. Want to hire people for your ship ? Need to dock. Also, some unique items forced you to dock and crawl around looking for them.
And then you had like 3 different faces for NPCs, leading to an invasion of grandma clones.

Oh yeah, well i only started playing around 2016, and i modded things i didn't like out so.. but to your points.. inventory wares you can trade without docking, cargo is via a dedicated interface. Its definitely a choice on what you feel like i do both quite often. Hiring people is fascinating. Ever since starting i downloaded a mod that added a dialog option to show their skills for free, but i no idea that was only previously available via smalltalk. I'm a freak, i love that small talk game. So im actually trying a start doing it normally. I also have mods that automatically skill up npcs (without gifts and 3 levels of smalltalk winning for the books) so its not that brutal. In practice, when you go to one dock, you have access to all the npcs at all the docks on the station, so you just fly to one dock, use the show skills mod on all the npcs, hire what you need or fly to the next station. Yeah those crafting mats.. never got that far but don't mind crawling around. Yes i modded out the grandmas. Modded in yisha even too, i don't find her annoying. If anything.. the game has aged very very well, check out the top subscribed steam workshop mods.. i think you can expect to mod out anything you might not like.

Believe it or not.. given elite dangerous has nothing but flat 2d windows 3.1 interfaces.. those 2013 interiors with dodgy npc's are max immersion.

Fun fact, X rebirth was so poorly received at the time, it was the most downrated game on steam and the amount of refund forced them to change their global policy. See, at the time refund where on a case by case basis, and you had to contact support for it. Eventually they auto granted refund for X rebirth to alleviate the overload. A few weeks later they made the system we have now (auto refund for less than 2h played and less than 2weeks after purchase), after people who had their refund refused contacted the EU to intervene.

Yet they survived, learned and made X4, a good game on its own.
Kinda like NMS.

Maybe Fdev will pull the same with Odyssey. I have my doubts, but still, it's possible.

Yeah that sounds familiar. Don't think frontier are the refunding type of company for some reason.

This probably explains it but rebirth is the only x game i played. Apparently its better to think of it as a freelancer game (that actually got finished) set in the x universe.
 
You should try X4 really. I say it's better than X rebirth in every way possible. You can have more than one flyable ship (you can fly everything), the UI is just plain better, the graphics are better....
Yeah that sounds familiar. Don't think frontier are the refunding type of company for some reason.
They don't have a choice though. It's all steam. EU law say you have 2 weeks to refund something you bought.
 
Whenever I read this, no natter if from players or FDEV, it just baffles me.
It was a tongue in cheek joke, but with a little bit of reality mixed in...

I'm per se not against ship interiors (why would I be), but I happen to think that there are a lot of other things that might bring more to the game. I'm however firmly for space EVA and boarding ships to arrive at some point.
 
i just walked around her for, like, a solid 5 minutes. taking it all in. woooooooow. hundreds and hundreds of hours, credits and materials and it was like looking at her for the first time all over again. the scale of the thing!!!!! this is MEDIUM SIZED and it's so... huge!!!
This all by itself is IMO worth all the fallout from adding space legs. Not so much the pew pew but rather just stepping out of your ship and to admire it's outside. I briefly tried ED in VR and it's even more impressive to see your ship from the outside, it makes it appear even more enormous and impressive..
 
Well you are a space ship, because you can't get up from your seat and walk about.
With Ship Interiors you can feel like a Pilot flying a space ship.
<<< Has been getting up from my seat and walking about my cockpit since I got in VR in 2016.

edit:
Even before then, I still felt like a pilot flying a space ship. After all, thanks to head look, I could look around my cockpit and see my hands and legs, and those hands would react to my actions in the real world. Control panels would even pop into existence when I looked at them. VR just allowed me to take my first step into a larger world.
/edit:

I'd still prefer to be able to land on full atmospheric worlds, including the proper life bearing worlds, over ship interiors.

Especially if there's nothing to do in them but look at the pretty pictures.
 
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<<< Has been getting up from my seat and walking about my cockpit since I got in VR in 2016.

I'd still prefer to be able to land on full atmospheric worlds, including the proper life bearing worlds, over ship interiors.

Especially if there's nothing to do in them but look at the pretty pictures.
Problem: Atmospheric planets with life are way beyond the scope what FDEV can ever manage. Recently they can't even get CG rewards right. Ship interiors are something they might barely pull off, with a year of fixing afterwards again. Feels to me like FDEV are too much of a publisher for other studios than a development studio themselves these days.
 
<<< Has been getting up from my seat and walking about my cockpit since I got in VR in 2016.

edit:
Even before then, I still felt like a pilot flying a space ship. After all, thanks to head look, I could look around my cockpit and see my hands and legs, and those hands would react to my actions in the real world. Control panels would even pop into existence when I looked at them. VR just allowed me to take my first step into a larger world.
/edit:

I'd still prefer to be able to land on full atmospheric worlds, including the proper life bearing worlds, over ship interiors.

Especially if there's nothing to do in them but look at the pretty pictures.
So you can move your camera around a space ship. You are still a space ship.
 
1. Customizing the ship interior making it your home.
2. FPS boarding/defending/looting.
3. Social and RPG play.
1. I'm not a fan of turning ED into The Sims
3. Coming soon 'Elite Dangerous: Dinner Party' - host your own select gathering from the comfort of your own ship!

2. This sounds like it has potential, but in reality it's just an invitation for more asymmetric PvP.
As a trader/explorer, what would be my motivation for engaging in defensive gameplay?
What would I do with a ship once I'd boarded it? Steal some cargo? We already have hatchbreaker limpets for that.
It's a nice idea, but I can't see how it would work in practice
 
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