The big problem with selling more early-access ships is that it's not very sustainable in the long term. You can absolutely sell them for a few years, but gradually goodwill for continuing development will wane, and the profit per sale will diminish, relative to the investment.
The problem is that ship content is largely well developed. Adding a new ship tends to REPLACE an existing ship, rather than expand things overall. If you add one ship and invalidate another, the net is zero.
But there's a place where this isn't the case, and that's Odyssey. On-foot content is extremely under-developed at the moment, where players have fairly boring and limited weapon options, and boring and limited numbers of enemy types. This is ripe for further development - and further sales, if it can be made fun.
A perfect example of this being done well was the multiplayer of Mass Effect 3, of all things. That game released 5 DLCs, each of which added 5-8 unique suits and at least that many weapons, plus new enemy factions and difficulties - and it was ENORMOUSLY fun. You had railguns, chainguns, grenade pistols, flechette shotguns, beam laser rifles...the list goes on and on.
Elite would need to first rebuild Odyssey to actually be fun to engage with, of course. Right now, it's nothing but endless rocket or plasma spam, effortlessly killing everything. They'd need to create and add new enemy types, diversify the factions, redesign bases to make for better combat arenas...
But once that work is done, new weapons and suits could be released on an almost indefinite basis, offered for pre-release for the standard few months before going to public access. This isn't like the game in space; this wouldn't have any real costs. And even better, an on-foot weapon or suit has a much smaller and cheaper FX cost!
The problem is that ship content is largely well developed. Adding a new ship tends to REPLACE an existing ship, rather than expand things overall. If you add one ship and invalidate another, the net is zero.
But there's a place where this isn't the case, and that's Odyssey. On-foot content is extremely under-developed at the moment, where players have fairly boring and limited weapon options, and boring and limited numbers of enemy types. This is ripe for further development - and further sales, if it can be made fun.
A perfect example of this being done well was the multiplayer of Mass Effect 3, of all things. That game released 5 DLCs, each of which added 5-8 unique suits and at least that many weapons, plus new enemy factions and difficulties - and it was ENORMOUSLY fun. You had railguns, chainguns, grenade pistols, flechette shotguns, beam laser rifles...the list goes on and on.
Elite would need to first rebuild Odyssey to actually be fun to engage with, of course. Right now, it's nothing but endless rocket or plasma spam, effortlessly killing everything. They'd need to create and add new enemy types, diversify the factions, redesign bases to make for better combat arenas...
But once that work is done, new weapons and suits could be released on an almost indefinite basis, offered for pre-release for the standard few months before going to public access. This isn't like the game in space; this wouldn't have any real costs. And even better, an on-foot weapon or suit has a much smaller and cheaper FX cost!