My only complaint about specialised module slots/modules being restricted to certain ships is that I think Frontier should be more playful with the concept. For example, we should be able to fit Luxury Cabins into Gutamaya ships, not just Saud Kruger ones. That would really fit in with the whole decadent vibe that the Imperials have got going. Also, these new Optimised Cargo Racks should also be able to fit on the rest of Zorgon Peterson's ships. So the Adder gets a cargo boost, and the Fer-de-Lance might be able to carry some cargo without compromising its combat potential too badly. I think it would make sense if Lakon ships could fit the new cargo racks too.
Vindication, a journey to future ship focused roles?
- Thread starter Nidoboros
- Start date
Passengers I think have the problem that there isn't enough distinctive types of passenger gameplay to justify 4 different classes of cabin [1]. It probably needs simplifying first to have room to add more interesting complexity.
- remove "business" and "first" class cabins, make luxury cabins available down to size 3, make luxury cabins have the capacity business does now.
- VIPs all require luxury cabins, bulk passengers are happy with economy, though you can put them in luxury if you really need the extra space.
Now there's room for the Saud Krugers to have unique "passenger facility" module slots - to be filled with observation decks, zero-g swimming pools, gourmet restaurants etc. - which give bonuses to the various VIP mission types. e.g. fitting a gourmet restaurant automatically succeeds at the "by the way I'd like 2t of booze" side mission, or an observation deck gives a bonus payout for "tourist" and "explorer" archetypes when you scan each beacon.
I know it's just a small thing but I'd really like to be able to build a "VIP Transport", using something like an iCourier... and have stuff to do with it.
Also, on a related note, I'd like to see ED introduce "contracts" as well as "missions".
The difference being that a "contract" would be time-based (so, lasting for 72 hours, a week or whatever).
These might be cargo-hauling, combat, mining or passenger contracts and, during that time, you'd get inbox requests from your client and you'd have, perhaps, 24 hours to fulfill their request.
Obviously, times zones and play-time would be an issue but I'm sure it'd be possible for the game to know when you're playing and send requests while you are playing.
But yeah.
You take on a VIP Transport contract and then, for the duration of the contract, you'd get inbox messages asking you to ferry the client around, getting them in and out of places, possibly hostile environments, possibly doing illegal things, and there might even be a bit of a story unfolding in the process.
There was a very early suggestion (long before Passengers actually released) that military passengers might require you to go and do some fighting - maybe they've hired you to help hunt down some ships, so they ask you to go to various systems and then of course you pick up the signal sources there.
I feel that Elite Dangerous' focus on highly-specialised ships combined with the bunchy nature of the mission generator makes that sort of thing tricky to implement satisfactorily without doing a lot of things differently - it's easy to make a ship that does one thing well, and it's possible especially with the larger ships to get one which does three or four things reasonably well, but you'd end up needing multiple different ships for different types of passenger mission, and ED then makes it clunky to switch between them if you're in the wrong one when you see a mission you want to do.