The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread

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Some of the posts are getting a tad off-topic. Still think planetary landing will be awesome. :3

-- Just, to the 'real' civilisations out there in the Cosmos: Keep in mind that if you show yourselves; humanity will tear itself to pieces out of sheer terror. ;-) But it's all good. The monkeys should learn some humility. Bring it on!


Thanks :D

image-text: "He's going all out."

The question is not what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

The question is what happens when an unstoppable force and immovable object meet human civilisation.

Quick tip: Humanity will never achieve any such force or object.
 
I think planetary landings would be cool if there's a real gameplay point to them. Like maybe a planetary control metagame, an addition to powerplay that has us doing supply runs to the surface for mining or other ops. Or maybe assassination missions that take us into a planet's atmosphere, fighting in and around canyons and whatnot. But the last thing I would want is planetary landings that are simply the same old missions given out on the bulletin boards, but just require landing on the planet instead of in the station.
 
So many ED gamers that never played the original Elite Frontier. The only reason Elite became what it is today is because of Frontier and it's planet landings, not to mention all the other missing features from EF that aren't in ED yet.

Imagine finally getting a real Bounty mission where you have to actually track down your target instead of waiting for that random USS to pop up. Frontier lead you on some good bounty missions as opposed to the thin USS structure in ED. With the addition of planet landing we should see much more diverse missions rather than what is thinly applied now.

Not to mention in EF when you land on a planet you better make sure you have the thrust to negate the gravity, so you don't pancake. Those rare resources you found to mine could be worth it if you upgrade that thrust.

I don't expect ED to have actual planet landings as EF did. I'm sure they'll just be a few USS spots you can safely fly to and the location of them will be limited, with no concern for gravity or other real aspects of space flight.
 
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I know planetary landings and exploration is a paid expansion but I think we need to be realistic about what it will actually be.

I think that there is very little chance of it being anything like no man's sky in terms of content, that team has spent years on the game and it's still not finished.

I think we will most likely get the ability to drive around planet's and shoot wildlife and collect resources or mine, but I doubt we will have access to mega cities and massive npc populated areas.
Most likely baron planet's will be fully procedurally generated terrain with rocks and the ability to mine, but planet's with life and cities will probably be limited in explorable area due to the requirements.

But if they even manage that I'll be impressed!

I still think the planetary landing expansion is at least 12 months away

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i,as it stands the current game is not exactly a technilogical feat when you break it down(painted backdrops ect) so i think all the goodies we want will make it that AAA space Opera.

Painted backdrops?

Do you mean the galaxy when out in space?

It's not a painted backdrop, DBOBE even states in a video that the stars in the background are rendered correctly in terms of where you are in the galaxy and their individual orbits around Sag A, so definitely not just a painted backdrop.... That's one thing they did pretty awesomly IMO
 

That's exactly what I'd want to see when we have atmospheric entries in planets. Not just higher-resolution planetary textures but interesting, dramatic and *not copied and pasted* terrain. I'd worry that the above might be too CPU intensive when combined with all the other CPU-side stuff going on in ED, but if they could generate this while entering the atmosphere, it'd be pretty amazing.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRioyNyPmyY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS-VWmoYhDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwVCDO8wFrI&list=PLaGYYZCnkE9bNGSSdNUdTMRkOI3UomjA7&index=5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7LlHqPZQhw&list=PLaGYYZCnkE9bNGSSdNUdTMRkOI3UomjA7&index=8

And these last two are from a name you may recognise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc9o_ldmlVs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynXwvSqsCek

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All those are just to give a glimpse of how it was in the previous two Elite games, and sure it looks pretty primitive compared to ED in terms of graphics, but you had a lot of emergent gameplay come out of Planet Landings and also a large does of role play potential in terms of the 'realistic' notion you could land on planet bodies. To my young mind back then it was an awesome progression in the series, and ED has felt lacking to me because of it not being included.

I'd be happy with a more or less carbon copy into ED from those earlier games, that was fun enough and certainly not a too complex thing to do, but obviously a bit more depth and interest to go along with ED's general better graphics would not be a bad thing.
 
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Someone Clue Me In...

Planetary landings. So, in my head, it will go like this -

We approach the planet we wish to land on. Undoubtedly there will some mechanic where we have to approach at the right trajectory to avoid smearing our ships across the upper atmosphere. Then there will be some kind of loading screen thinly veiled as something else, a fiery 're-entry' sequence or something similar. Like hyperspace, but with more orange. Then we are flying our ships in the atmosphere of the planet, which will be awesome. We select a a city or port or something, then we land at our chosen destination, all very cool.

Then what?

We can't get out our ships. How will it be different from being docked at a station? What will be the point?

With the current game mechanics, and given that walking about and leaving our ship is officially 'a very long way off', I just don't get why people are so hyped about planetary landings. I am in no way knocking the idea, it does sound cool. But I am having trouble envisioning where FD are going with it.

Am I missing something? I guess it will make exploration a damn sight more rewarding, but other than that...I don't know. Is it just a stepping-stone to greater things?
 
I like the idea of having to approach at the correct trajectory sadly I think there is utterly ZERO chance of that being added as the moans of people who destroyed their ship entering the atmosphere would melt the forums. So it's going to have to be dumbed down so you just fly at the planet I guess.
 
I hope we can manually fly into the atmosphere. But I doubt it'll work like that and it is a damn shame. Part of what made Frontier so great was that seamless transition from planet to space and back.

But if you must know... what I really want is something gut-wrenching like this...

[video=youtube;Yn45pl8yXzk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn45pl8yXzk[/video]
 
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OP, I am with you here. There's no point getting planetary landings except for some new flight mechanics. Some people seem to envision surveying detailed aspects of an entire planet, how big are planets, I can't see them going into much detail.
 
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