Would people go out of their way to spend time on a planet where they can do... nothing... but look and wait?
It would be enough for
me, but not everybody. Probably not even the majority. I'm something of a PG nerd, and I've said almost from day one that being able to just land my ship on the edge of an alien lake, or a forest plateau, or a mountain, would be enough for me. Sitting there, be it it for 30 seconds or two hours, knowing that I'm looking at a unique view that can never be exactly repeated (even by me, let alone anyone else). And that I can experience an effectively infinite number of such views by moving my ship to the next escarpment, or the next valley, or the next continent, or the next planet, or any planet within a 70,000 light year radius... you could take away most of the rest of the game and that would still be enough for me.
But like I said, I'm a PG and visuals junkie and am well aware that I don't speak for everyone. For most normal gamers, some sort of content is going to be required. PG wildlife and settlements? A long-term prospect at best, I fear. Waiting for someone to deliver fuel or other resources? A fun diversion for both parties if you're 150ly from the edge of colonised space, but a bit of a drag if you're half way to Sagittarius A.
So what about something on a smaller scale?
The
Traveller RPG had something called wilderness refuelling IIRC, where spacecraft with suitable displacement and buoyancy could land on bodies of liquid water and float like ships, pumping water through catalytic splitters to obtain hydrogen fuel. Since the
Elite universe also uses hydrogen fuel, maybe this is something that could be looked into. Of course
ED also has the more convenient stellar fuel scooping which IIRC
Traveller did not, but it only takes a little imagination to posit a scenario whereby a fuel scoop becomes damaged and unable to scoop from stars or gas giants, but whose converters can still process water or any other liquid with a hydrogen component. It would make a trip back to human space a little more interesting if instead of scoopable stars, commanders had to look for landable planets with water or hydrocarbon oceans.
You could extend this further by having advanced auto-repair modules that could be replenished by locating the right sort of mineral deposits from which on-board nanotech could manufacture replacement parts. It's perhaps a bit too "find leaf A and flower B to make potion C" but (for explorers at least) it would give a reason other than wanderlust to land on alien worlds. Dare I say it's even tangentially related to the "crafting" mechanics so many MMO fans seem to want, albeit limited to self-preservation rather than profit or expansion.
Of course with the benefit of hindsight all of this speculation feels like the heyday of the DDF: lots of what-ifs? with very little chance of any of it coming to fruition in the short or medium term. I'm under no illusions that if the Gamescom announcement has anything to do with planetary landing it will be anything more than the "airless moons" David Braben has already mentioned. Still, parking my ship on the edge of a grey canyon might be fun for a while. And good practice for if and when those mountains become accessible...
