From the information contained in Kay Ross's talk on last night's Discovery Scanner livestream many people will already have twigged that the terrain features on all the landable planets that we're currently familiar with from Horizons are going to change with the launch of Odyssey.
To be clear what I mean by this is that notable planetary features like canyons, mountains, ridges, valleys, craters, etc that we're currently familiar with will almost certainly no longer exist in Odyssey in their current form. Don't get me wrong, these kinds of features will all still exist, but they'll be in completely different locations and arrangements.
Since one of the consequences of this is that all pre-existing "race tracks" (by which I mean interesting planetary locations that have been scouted, mapped and bookmarked by the racing community as good places to hold SRV or canyon based ship racing events) will cease to exist in their current form, Frontier were kind enough to reach out to me on Wednesday asking if I could spread the word on this subject. For the avoidance of chinese whispers I think it's best if I simply quote that message directly.
I have some news which will affect future Buckyball (and other organised) races in Elite that I want to share with you.
It’s no secret that planets will change a lot when Odyssey lands. Given the way the Stellar Forge produces landscapes on each planet, the update will mean a regeneration of all land formations (canyons, ridges, valleys etc.) on planets which have them. To a large degree, the regeneration will be random (working within certain criteria for each planet such as being an ice world). Unfortunately, this means existing race courses are very likely to change.
While it’s possible some planets will remain great for racing, we imagine this will mean groups like the Buckyball Racers will want to find new places to determine courses. We’d like to offer our support here in particular. If any of the racing groups choose to hold a racetrack discovery competition or similar, we’re more than happy to sponsor them with prizes and promotion to help re-establish this key part of the racing community.
So, when Odyssey launches, things like the existing Buckyball
"Pomeche Ridge Challenge" and
"Cortes Drag Strip Challenge" will come to an end, their scoreboards will be frozen and we'll begin a search to find new venues for these challenges with fresh new leaderboards.
Although I will be sad to see these much loved locations go I totally appreciate the need for this (it's kind of a consequence of a very complex procedural generation algorithm, there's a butterfly effect, so if you change the algorithm even slightly, let alone with the large changes no doubt required for Odyssey, you're going to get completely different results coming out of the other end). Personally I'm very excited by this prospect and can't wait to see what this new world looks like!
So, what existing planetary features will you be most sad to lose and what new features are you must loooking forward to finding?
