Utterly Shocked at Alliance Starport

[InMemoriamSirocco]

Just leaving this here for consideration:

Starports in Frontier: First Encounters: http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/changes/orbits.html

Starships in Frontier: First Encounters: http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Ships/ships.html

 

[lysan]

As always there are people who love to hammer procedural generation as boring, I see it in this post too. Let me just remind those who have this impression that this is not the case.
Life, the world around us is made the same way. Build upon rules and with variations however within the rules. The human eye and brain can easily pick out patterns, actually we are damn good at it. That is why it's very difficult to make the magic work by the snap of a finger.

Text to speech, sounds robotic, because it is robotic. However its a great way to make different vocal appearances. Another method would be to let x amount of people record the same text and then pick the best ones out. I'm sure this could be done early cheap as there is a lot of people who would do it for free. (stations announcements)

Yes, Designing even an outpost takes a huge amount of work. However I can assure you that there are people out there who can pull it off. So how do they get paid? Well make a contest, it's done before in other games.

I really want ED to shine, and I firmly believe that the foundation is rock solid. Yes we got a house, yes we got a chair or two but that is all.

 

[nexxo]

Croudsourcing creative content would be an excellent idea, and easy to do. Set up a website where people read out a set of lines which is recorded by the webcams microphone and then sent back to Frontier as an .MP3 file. A bit of selecting, post-processing et voilà. Similarly Frontier could release some SketchUp files with a bunch of modular station building blocks. People can then arrange them into pleasing shapes and send them back. Or people could design their own in SketchUp and submit them. Elite: Build Your Own Galaxy.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Is there any lore reason for the stations to be different? Or would it not make sense that a bunch of settlements (regardless of allegiance) would build stations to the same specifications? Just asking, lore has never been a strong point for me.

If you look at the ships and read the newsletters from some time ago we were introduced to the aesthetics of ship design - The Federation were functional and to the point; Empire was flashy and flamboyant; Alliance was somewhere in between.

Given that you would expect the same for the stations - Square; angular and "to the point" for the Feds and something a little more flashy for the Empire.

 

[Zak Gordon]

With all the 'love' and dev time going towards the Federation and Empire, i expect we will see more specific Alliance stuff as the game matures.

 

[JeffRyan]

If you look at the ships and read the newsletters from some time ago we were introduced to the aesthetics of ship design - The Federation were functional and to the point; Empire was flashy and flamboyant; Alliance was somewhere in between.

Given that you would expect the same for the stations - Square; angular and "to the point" for the Feds and something a little more flashy for the Empire.

Agreed, looking forward to the 'night lights' as well, Alliance, sprawling, federation, square cities, Empire, circlely and beautiful. These little things help.

 

[Aquila Oculus]

Agreed, looking forward to the 'night lights' as well, Alliance, sprawling, federation, square cities, Empire, circlely and beautiful. These little things help.

Oh don't tease me.

The day that update comes will be a gooood day

 

[Nyken]

Posting here to be able to be subscribed. The thing is, with procedural generation, YOU still have to create the content to fill the game. Like you have to make the pieces. Even something as simple as a slider choice in the procedural engine as to "How many rings does this Orbis have?" "What type of foliage is in this Coroilis?" "Does it have two seperate docking entrances, making for entry from both sides?" Why do so many of these starports have only one entrance? "How many entrances does this Star Port have?" You can make a starport with only front entrances too. Three front entrances and two back entrances. Just that alone adds a whole set of variety as it can make combinations like, 2 on the front, 3 on the back, 1 on the front, 4 in the back, 2 in the front, 2 in the back. Even just THAT alone would add 10x more variety than what we see now, without even changing the base starport design. So I hope people don't blame procedural generation itself. They need to blame the creators for not making enough pieces for the software to put together.