The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread

Sire

Sire
Was wondering whether is better to invest in an umbrella or in a pair of sunglasses... or maybe a set of rain tyres.
 
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Khelder

Khelder
I had to fly down to Sydney this morning for work. I had a window seat so as the plane descended I watched the landscape roll by, the clouds capping the tops of hills, etc. You know what I was thinking... soon. :)

I was going to ask what people were looking forward to the most with planetary landings. Was it going to be simply being able to approach a planet and see it in closer detail? the descent? the landing? flying over the landforms? the exploration in vehicles? what? I hadn't really thought specifically about the weather. But I would love to struggle with a tricky descent in bad weather. We'll have to wait for atmospheres of course. But we can dream.
 

CMDR Alonso

C
I'm thinking, this is not as much about weather as it is about atmospheres.

What would happen if (when "landing" in gas giants is a thing) we get inside the atm of a as giant with, let's say, 80% of it's atmosphere being inflammable? I'm imagining a giant fire ball would replace the planet
 

Arry

Arry
CMDR Alonso said:
I'm thinking, this is not as much about weather as it is about atmospheres.

What would happen if (when "landing" in gas giants is a thing) we get inside the atm of a as giant with, let's say, 80% of it's atmosphere being inflammable? I'm imagining a giant fire ball would replace the planet
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You would need the right combination of chemicals for ignition to take place, but at the same time, it is a very scary prospect.
 

lysan

lysan
I don't know if there is a fleshed out design scope available for the public. However I remember that we would get weather on atmospheric planets and that the flight model would be different. Where that will leave us I don't know.
 

t3l3c0n

t3l3c0n
Ravenov said:
If no one does it before i get home, I am so going to photoshop a Cobra on to that...
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Sorry to steal your thunder but I'm bored at work and couldn't help myself

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Kzak

Kzak
Arry said:
You would need the right combination of chemicals for ignition to take place, but at the same time, it is a very scary prospect.
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You'd need to introduce a massive (on the scale of billions of tons) of chemicals, likely, to induce large-scale ignition. Remember Jupiter and the Shoemaker-Levy comet that impacted it in the nineties? Fireballs bigger than Earth from the impacts, but they didn't set fire to the entire atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker–Levy_9
 

Soliluna

Soliluna
777Driver said:
Unfortunately the rocky moons and planets in horizons will have zero weather. The devs stated one of the reasons we have to wait for atmospheres is because they want to do weather affects correctly.



Here's to the future with blind landing's due to sandstorms on desert worlds, severe icing and engine flameouts on icy worlds, windshear and severe turbulence when landing on floating bases in waterworlds, torrential rain lashing down on the canopy whilst wrestling the ship against insane crosswinds. The mind is the only limit, planet Earth has enough interesting weather to keep a pilot on his toes for his entire career.. Alien weather will be something special
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Yeah, I think this is where the game will become phenomenal. The diversity of potential weather conditions alone - even without consideration to how it affects the ship - shows so much promise. Particularly with how gorgeous the procedural generation has been so far.

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Arry said:
When it comes to planets with Atmosphere, there will be places that only the toughest ships will be able to fly and some that will just become no-go areas. Wind, which requires air/gas is a very destructive force. Look at the Grand Canon, the theory that it was created buy a group of Scotsmen, looking for lost change is a myth. Most of the wear and tear was created by winds moving sand etc. If you have ever seen a sand blasting paint remover in action, then you'll understand the shear power of such forces. 5 mins moving around in winds of hundreds of meters per second, throwing dust and sand at the hulls and superstructures of ships, will strip nice new ship skins in seconds and then the whole ship, to its base elements in minutes.

We all like a bit of Atmosphere, but some will be, nothing less than deadly and that is before we consider, any that contain naturally corrosive elements, such as Venus, which is basically thought to have an atmosphere made of acids.
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I have shield :>
 

Edith_The_Hutt

Edith_The_Hutt
Iskariot said:
I feel you have the wrong idea about the timescale.

Terraforming a planet would take generations.
The installations to do it would probably strain corporate budgets, let alone the budget of individual players.

"See the continuous evolution of plants and animal species"? LOL.

How long do you plan to play this game? 100 million years?
Even the Cambrian explosion took around 25 million years.
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As per the Elite in-universe timeline the terraforming of Mars took 20 years to have a breathable atmosphere (or 120 years if you count the first attempt) and that was more than a thousand years before the E:D setting. While I don't think that the scope for individual players being able to terraform worlds will be included (or particularly interesting at that rate) I could happily see a multi-year terraforming event being in a future expansion.
 

Fifty Pence

Fifty Pence
Hmm

I'm not sure I buy into the whole "get out of your ship and have a pint at an alien bar" thing. The game-play needs to be fun - yes, but serve a purpose. There is nothing in the ED outer space-aspect of the game that is pointless, save Easter eggs like finding voyager!

I also think that the planet surface game-play should in no way mimic the space missions and tasks; what could be more dull than after mining asteroids for three hours for a few thousand credits, landing on the surface to mine some more - even if the rewards are slightly higher. No, the missions need to be new and fresh. As mentioned in other threads, finding a rare artifact or simple life (plant / microbe) for large rewards is fine, but perhaps with a variation in the game-play; some kind of homing beacon that beeps more rapidly when you're getting "warmer" (which you have to save for, or complete a mission to earn....), but otherwise no clues as to whether you're going the right way... in fact, Elite: Dangerous' game-play would become vastly more exciting if equipment was earned on a pre-requisite basis. How much more fun if you had to acquire special landing gear before you could land on certain surfaces to complete new missions, special shields before you could enter certain atmospheres..... Special shields, or cloaking devices to ensure your ship is not found or destroyed whilst you go off exploring in your buggy (or otherwise.....). What about a special view mode to see heat signatures or movement before you can scan/collect? Converting water/lava into fuel for those that have run dry in a system with planets, but no yellow sun.... But you have to find it first whilst your ship is dying....

Anyway, I agree that cities are a big ask if we're going to fluidly leave space for a planet with a realistic feel. This will be difficult for Frontier - let's face it there are - what? - less than ten varieties of space station.... even now, and only two main types? Try expanding that to a city that isn't the same on every planet...

Perhaps start with caves, canyons, and possibly the ability to land on or go UNDER water (nod to Star Trek: Into Darkness!). It has to be graphically pleasing, yes, but this soon gets boring if the player loses interest in the game-play choices. We've all seen a movie that was all special effects and absolutely no story <cough cough Skyline / Battleship>. Do you watch them twice....? The immersive feel of the game is short-lived if the game-play is all: go down to the surface, scan the air for human habitation prospects and be paid for your scanning...ooooh exciting (sarcasm).

So, there is obviously going to be a surface rover (if you've seen the Horizons trailer), and Frontier are going to allow you to send it out and do....something. Get lost probably! I really hope they make the journey worthwhile.

On a separate note, inter-system travel can be very time-consuming as you sit there watching the minutes count down, waiting for the little dot to become a planet. I've always hoped you could save up for a <say> 50,000,000+credits drive that halves the super-cruise journey time. You could then only be interdicted by pilots (human or otherwise) that have invested in the same equipment. Well I hope the journey to the surface, whilst undoubtedly fun the first 20 times, is not equally as time consuming. I can imagine you dropping out of supercruise at a certain distance and then it taking 10-15 minutes to land. I guess we'll have to see.

All said, I can't wait to see those horizons flatten-out for the first time!
 

IronGremlin

I
Kristov said:
Some people are saying it ruins the game however, and that's part of what I was addressing, but only a part.

The rest is exactly what you stated, that the game doesn't cater to casuals, because it doesn't. It doesn't cater to anyone, it's a sandbox universe game, missions are a mini-game inside the game world, they are not THE game, just a mini-game. People who don't have any time to devote to doing missions don't have to, they suffer no repercussions for that, they simply don't get the benefits of doing missions, if there are even any benefits for doing missions. Rank in the Federation and Empire is gained by doing missions for specific factions allied to them, and all that rank gets you is access to some ships, ships that aren't even the best possible ships for their price ranges/tonnage/mission profiles. And anyone can get the rank to access those ships by doing a single mission at a time as they have the time to do them, it may take them a longer time frame than someone who's able to devote hours at a time to doing missions for this specific purpose, but the time spent will be the same for both as it takes the same amount of missions regardless of doing them in batches or one at a time.

Power Play, easy enough for a casual player to do it as well, an hour here or there during a week is enough to get to rank 4 and keep it without any issues at all. I spend maybe 2 hours a week doing PP specific things like delivering reports, delivering fortification supplies or fighting in Crime Sweeps, none of which are time sensitive other than needing to be done between the start of the PP week and the end of the PP week. PP isn't a mission driven thing, it's a specific action driven thing, delivering reports, killing enemies, fortifying with supplies, things you can do with an hour's play a few times a week for rank 4 quite easily. Rank 5 is the only rank that requires some effort, and if you are a casual player, well, if you want that 50 million credit salary a week, you should have to do something more than just show up once in a while, don't you agree? Don't ALL of you agree with that?

And again, missions and Power Play are mini-games inside Elite Dangerous, you can do them or not without it having any negative effects on your gaming. Getting credits, earning ranks in Trade/Exploration/Combat can all be done without touching a single mission or ever bothering with PP. You can earn enough to own every single ship in the game and outfit them however want without doing a single mission, although to get access to Faction specific ships you will need to do some missions for those specific Factions, but you can take as long as you like to do that, it's not a 'you must complete X number of Faction missions in X time frame or ELSE!' thing. Do 1 mission for the Faction every few days, or better yet, don't do any missions, just make contributions to the Faction, you know, those 'help repair our station in the name of' that pop up on the BB? Those are the BEST way to get good rep with a Faction, and they take 0 time to do. So if you just HAVE to have a Federal Dropship or Imperial Clipper, start making contributions to the Factions whenever you see them pop up, you'll get there eventually, without having to do any actual missions at all.

If you want to actually have a direct influence on the BGS, you need to devote time to that, sorry, but that's just how it is, and they shouldn't change that to cater to people who can't or won't devote any time to it, as it's not exactly a little thing to change the socio-political landscape on a single planet, much less for an entire star system or systems. People who actually want to do that aren't casual players to begin with, they WILL find the time to devote to the game to do those things, it means something to them for whatever reason.

The OP didn't do missions because of a feeling that they take too long to do. It's been pointed out that that is a misconception, most missions take a few minutes to complete, only a few take longer, and you can easily avoid them while doing lots of other short time missions.

I noticed that people feel like missions are a big part of the game and if they can't do them they are missing out, or that they need to be MORE whatever to make the game better, and I pointed out that the missions are just a mini-game, Elite Dangerous is a real sandbox game, there is no overriding directive to do any specific thing, you can roam about and do whatever you want at any time and progress in the game however you want.
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You're missing the point.

As casuals, we don't like getting locked out of content.

That sucks.

I don't think it's good game design to restrict access to rewards or content based on the percentage of my waking hours I can dedicate to playing a video game.

With powerplay, I get it, mostly, because it's a competitive multiplayer activity on a cycle. I still feel like I should be able to get at least something for being generally helpful in small spots infrequently, and currently you don't really get jack if you can't play at least once a week.

With anything else, I see no real upside to having negative consequences to not being able to play for several hours at a stretch on a regular basis.

The thing I do for fun in my off time shouldn't constantly punish me for having real world responsibilities.

Yes, I'm spoiled - I want to experience the whole game that I paid for. That sure is entitled.
But I don't really think the whole game is going this direction, frontier has already talked about alternative reward structures for powerplay, and I suspect that as missions and content get more varied, this phenomenon will decrease in severity.
 
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