To be honest, I was hoping for walking for season2 MORE than Horizons - but that's not to say landing on airless planets isn't amazing in itself, my teenage self still has goosebumps when the ship touches down and the engines power off.
Much like "landing on planets" has been tiered off,
-airless & lifeless
-atmosphereic & lifeless
-gass giants
-water worlds
-earth-like.
I can assume walking around will also be split up, Frontier already have stated
1) Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships as one expansion
2) Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of starports
but there might even be finer levels to these as well.
As the sliding block puzzle of development goes, horizons does make a bunch of sense in preparation and laying down framework and foundations for larger things.
1) we complete the background sim with planetary outputs shipping to orbital outposts.
2) the planets are just lovely to be on. A future update will require these creations of airless planets, to be wrapped in atmosphere
3) stress testing the deployable fighters (multiplayer).
4) stress testing multiple players in the same instance - in the same ship
5) stress test NPC avatar creation (those portraits have given a tonne more atmosphere to the game).
6) stress test passenger missions and their gameplay, modules and mechanics.
So when we start walking round, the majority of the things we expect to see should work out of the box.
I don't expect to see NPC's walking/floating round the ships day 1.
I honestly suspect they will be confined to quarters.
I expect to see the rise of the breaching mechanic - that when the ship "explodes", it's just the hull rupturing venting out explosive gases.
Breaching is mentioned by the unknown artefact proffessor, and it was spotted as a statistic in the engineers life stream before the beta launch.
This breach gives the player x-amount of minutes of air (depending on the class of Life support) to patch up, and/or kill off the boarders.
How this is going to gel into season1 players....I have no idea
I expect assassination missions, where boarders have to come onboard to finish the job.
(one crew member plays defence, whilst the other patches the hull)
As mentioned in the future of elite dangerous, they mentioned
- zero-gee combat
- clearing up toxic goo and other hijinx.
- exiting the ship and repairing it from the outside
- seeing the damage done to your ship from the inside (hole in the side of an anaconda and watching cargo tumble away) [dev diaries].
These last two depend on the hinted at "damage model", so I expect this may come online with the same season that introduces walking around.
Passengers in season2 also add an interesting twist. Customer satisfaction. (yeah more progress bars and hoops)
Can't get those high-profile VIP missions, if you just stuff passengers in the cheapest modules....right? And you got to grind up that rep for getting passengers where they want to go, and see the right sights and give them some bonus planetary gee's for some rest and relaxation.
But then my brain goes into overdrive.
Can we buy in communal area's, lounges, conference rooms - I expect some ships to come built in like the anaconda.
But could I convert som cargo space in an adder / Cobra for some VIP rooms and a room with a sofa and chessboard for some extra brownie points.
What about our own cabins?
Would these be in-game finaries bought with in-game cash, or frontier-store-page real world money (like eve's captains quarters)?
Much like "landing on planets" has been tiered off,
-airless & lifeless
-atmosphereic & lifeless
-gass giants
-water worlds
-earth-like.
I can assume walking around will also be split up, Frontier already have stated
1) Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships as one expansion
2) Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of starports
but there might even be finer levels to these as well.
As the sliding block puzzle of development goes, horizons does make a bunch of sense in preparation and laying down framework and foundations for larger things.
1) we complete the background sim with planetary outputs shipping to orbital outposts.
2) the planets are just lovely to be on. A future update will require these creations of airless planets, to be wrapped in atmosphere
3) stress testing the deployable fighters (multiplayer).
4) stress testing multiple players in the same instance - in the same ship
5) stress test NPC avatar creation (those portraits have given a tonne more atmosphere to the game).
6) stress test passenger missions and their gameplay, modules and mechanics.
So when we start walking round, the majority of the things we expect to see should work out of the box.
I don't expect to see NPC's walking/floating round the ships day 1.
I honestly suspect they will be confined to quarters.
I expect to see the rise of the breaching mechanic - that when the ship "explodes", it's just the hull rupturing venting out explosive gases.
Breaching is mentioned by the unknown artefact proffessor, and it was spotted as a statistic in the engineers life stream before the beta launch.
This breach gives the player x-amount of minutes of air (depending on the class of Life support) to patch up, and/or kill off the boarders.
How this is going to gel into season1 players....I have no idea
I expect assassination missions, where boarders have to come onboard to finish the job.
(one crew member plays defence, whilst the other patches the hull)
As mentioned in the future of elite dangerous, they mentioned
- zero-gee combat
- clearing up toxic goo and other hijinx.
- exiting the ship and repairing it from the outside
- seeing the damage done to your ship from the inside (hole in the side of an anaconda and watching cargo tumble away) [dev diaries].
These last two depend on the hinted at "damage model", so I expect this may come online with the same season that introduces walking around.
Passengers in season2 also add an interesting twist. Customer satisfaction. (yeah more progress bars and hoops)
Can't get those high-profile VIP missions, if you just stuff passengers in the cheapest modules....right? And you got to grind up that rep for getting passengers where they want to go, and see the right sights and give them some bonus planetary gee's for some rest and relaxation.
But then my brain goes into overdrive.
Can we buy in communal area's, lounges, conference rooms - I expect some ships to come built in like the anaconda.
But could I convert som cargo space in an adder / Cobra for some VIP rooms and a room with a sofa and chessboard for some extra brownie points.
Would these be in-game finaries bought with in-game cash, or frontier-store-page real world money (like eve's captains quarters)?
Last edited:
