No this is not another thread about legs and atmospheric planets.
I remember David Braben talking about atmospheric planets, he said that adding colored skies and nothing else would have been disappointing, same for legs. The complexity of these features is in providing interesting gameplay.
Now when I think about all the features added to exploration in Beyond I can see that FDEV did exactly what David adivesed to avoid.
I think about Lagrangian Clouds have cool sparks and lightning fx. But what's the gameplay associated? You just see your shields going down if you stay in the middle of the thunderstorm. What else? Ah yes you can take a selfie with your ship in front of some coloured clouds. Same for brain trees and other biological POI's. You drop your SRV, shoot the scanner at it, shoot the lasers at it to farm materials... and then??
FDEV only added graphical models and effect with zero content. The only gameloop added to exploration is the notorious FSS. Even the surface probes are quickly repetitive as the shooting path is the same for all planets.
Now I don't like people who complain and don't suggest anything, so I think a lot could be added to exploration in the small updates before 2020 because they don't need to make revolutions to add new interesting gameloops:
1. Lagrangian clouds should be more common and aggressive, they should be attracted by your ship and create a magnetic field that operates as a supercruise interdictor and pulls you out of supercruise, they should be a danger to escape, not a touristic center for desktop generators. When you see a lagrangian cloud in your FSS you should be terrified! Not all of them should be aggressive though. So they should keep a line of mystery that makes you wonder why some of them attack.
2. The planets should be populated with remains of extinct civilization. Landind at these spots you could scan data or collect alien manufactured materials. These materials and data should be able to randomly give some boost performance to the ship, like a 200%-400% FSD range increse, able to synthesize boosted heat sinks, or improve supercruise performance when injected (better acceleration for example), partially repair your ship, improve SRV perfomance and so on.
Sometimes when you jump to a new system you should drop directly in a lagrangian clouds. You drop and you should wonder where the hell are you?
3. Add USS's in the black far from the bubble with stranded explorers. People asking for help because they ran out of materials or fuel. Here I see a problem with the current mechanics because we can only transfer fuer with limpets. This is just stupid because if you don't have a fuel transfer limpet controller you're out of this game loop. If we have cargo space we should be able to synthesize fuel containers with iron and nickel and refill these containers from our fuel tank. The explorer in need will ask for a couple of tonnes of fuel so you farm the containers, refill them with fuel from your tank and jettison them. The explorer will collect them and he will reward you giving you some tip where to find for example a lost camp or a crashed ship where you can find interesting or valuable stuff nearby, or simply credits.
4. Add crashed sites in the galaxy where you could inspect huge crashed ships, maybe also some alien ones belonging to old civilizations. Some of these ship could have some hidden danger that needs to be destroyed (with weapons) or deactivated by disabling generator or other stuff.
5. Escape pods. I see here a complete new profession as a life guard. Give the FSS an extra module that can be fitted as an utility mount that can detect stranded escape pods in the FSS interface on planets and at crashed sites, add USS in the black with escape pods so we could have a new profession where you act like a saviour and go around the black looking for stranded escape pods. Turn them in and receive a much higher rewards for escape pods collected outside populated space or far from the bubble. There could also be a multiplier based on the distance from the bubble, for example an escape pod collected at Beagle Point would reward you 50x more than an escape pods found at 1000 LY from Sol.
I remember David Braben talking about atmospheric planets, he said that adding colored skies and nothing else would have been disappointing, same for legs. The complexity of these features is in providing interesting gameplay.
Now when I think about all the features added to exploration in Beyond I can see that FDEV did exactly what David adivesed to avoid.
I think about Lagrangian Clouds have cool sparks and lightning fx. But what's the gameplay associated? You just see your shields going down if you stay in the middle of the thunderstorm. What else? Ah yes you can take a selfie with your ship in front of some coloured clouds. Same for brain trees and other biological POI's. You drop your SRV, shoot the scanner at it, shoot the lasers at it to farm materials... and then??
FDEV only added graphical models and effect with zero content. The only gameloop added to exploration is the notorious FSS. Even the surface probes are quickly repetitive as the shooting path is the same for all planets.
Now I don't like people who complain and don't suggest anything, so I think a lot could be added to exploration in the small updates before 2020 because they don't need to make revolutions to add new interesting gameloops:
1. Lagrangian clouds should be more common and aggressive, they should be attracted by your ship and create a magnetic field that operates as a supercruise interdictor and pulls you out of supercruise, they should be a danger to escape, not a touristic center for desktop generators. When you see a lagrangian cloud in your FSS you should be terrified! Not all of them should be aggressive though. So they should keep a line of mystery that makes you wonder why some of them attack.
2. The planets should be populated with remains of extinct civilization. Landind at these spots you could scan data or collect alien manufactured materials. These materials and data should be able to randomly give some boost performance to the ship, like a 200%-400% FSD range increse, able to synthesize boosted heat sinks, or improve supercruise performance when injected (better acceleration for example), partially repair your ship, improve SRV perfomance and so on.
Sometimes when you jump to a new system you should drop directly in a lagrangian clouds. You drop and you should wonder where the hell are you?
3. Add USS's in the black far from the bubble with stranded explorers. People asking for help because they ran out of materials or fuel. Here I see a problem with the current mechanics because we can only transfer fuer with limpets. This is just stupid because if you don't have a fuel transfer limpet controller you're out of this game loop. If we have cargo space we should be able to synthesize fuel containers with iron and nickel and refill these containers from our fuel tank. The explorer in need will ask for a couple of tonnes of fuel so you farm the containers, refill them with fuel from your tank and jettison them. The explorer will collect them and he will reward you giving you some tip where to find for example a lost camp or a crashed ship where you can find interesting or valuable stuff nearby, or simply credits.
4. Add crashed sites in the galaxy where you could inspect huge crashed ships, maybe also some alien ones belonging to old civilizations. Some of these ship could have some hidden danger that needs to be destroyed (with weapons) or deactivated by disabling generator or other stuff.
5. Escape pods. I see here a complete new profession as a life guard. Give the FSS an extra module that can be fitted as an utility mount that can detect stranded escape pods in the FSS interface on planets and at crashed sites, add USS in the black with escape pods so we could have a new profession where you act like a saviour and go around the black looking for stranded escape pods. Turn them in and receive a much higher rewards for escape pods collected outside populated space or far from the bubble. There could also be a multiplier based on the distance from the bubble, for example an escape pod collected at Beagle Point would reward you 50x more than an escape pods found at 1000 LY from Sol.
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