General What to do inside the ship

[Scoobe87]

I have been monitoring the ship interior debate. I agree that having interiors for the sake of having it is a waste of dev resources. Instead, I would recommend discussing what makes sense to do inside the ship.

Suggestion 1: The game thus far has been designed around the limitation of being in the cockpit chair. Certain functions seem out of place in the cockpit chair in my opinion. The FSS function and planet scanner fade into another screen currently with different controls. It sort of makes sense that you could get up and go to a console to engage it. The controls also might be more intuitive as well.

Drawback is that currently it is easy, hit a button and go. Dedicated explorers might find it cumbersome to continuously get up and go to a console which I understand.
At the same time, it can provide more motivation to explore with a friend in multi-crew.
Another thought is that these consoles could be built into explorer ships without using an internal. The consoles on non explorer ships would still have the console, but would need the internal purchased and installed. Maybe when they access it just says "No antennae detected" This could provide some additional ship differentiation and bonus to the explorer ships.

Suggest 2: Temporary ship buffs. We collect tons of things on Odyssey planet missions but they are currently just fodder for upgrades and engineering. What if some of those parts collected could be inserted into panels on the ship to provide a temporary functionality with the ship? Optical lens buffs a single laser by 10% but produces 10% more heat, 3x energy packs to buff shields by 10% for 30 mins or until depleted to 100%, etc. Maybe to keep it simple, they use the current engineering mechanics and associated trade offs.

Drawback is that it could disrupt pvp balance. Another is that small ship cockpits may not have the space for multiple panels for inserting these components.
A benefit is that new players can have access to a small amount of engineering before they unlock the engineers by doing these temporary buffs.
Another potential design is that certain ship types offer certain buff types. Example: Combat ships have mechanisms for combat related buffs, but not jump drive or explorer related temporary buffs. Vice versa for explorer ships. Multi-purpose ships maybe have a mix, but not all for each.

Suggestion 3: Synth. Think it makes sense to be on a console. I know it changes the combat mechanics a bit and I am not married to the suggestion. It just seems a little weird to be replenishing bullets etc without going to a console.

Suggestion 4: Bounty hunting. The mechanic to scan a nav beacon and find a ship marker seems ripe for something for a console in the ship interior. I think a console with a minigame or some kind to find the ship you are looking for would be pretty cool. Maybe re-use the FSS mechanic to find ship ID's instead of planets.

I am not a big fan of the repair suggestion. Just sounds tedious and your not going to do it in combat anyway. Though one thing is fire. Fire on a space ship is deadly. Boosting away, jumping up and grabbing a fire extinguisher to put out a fire would be critical and very real danger. Its something you make take the chance to tackle while getting hammered. Or use the same mechanic on settlements, purge the atmosphere in the ship to put out the fire. But then you have to go back to a console to reboot the air system to bring it back or something.

Sorry if variations of this have been suggested, I just been seeing the debate now raging but few are talking about what the interior would actually provide.

 

[Scoobe87]

Suggestion 5: Pulse wave analyzer on a console with a much further range and a way to launch probes to or remote scan suspect asteroids and get readings on the console. Would be a bit more engaging and productive than spamming pulse waves and weaving around.

 

[indust]

I've thought about this too. Good example comes to mind from the game, Escape from Tarkov, where you build your own hideout in a small bunker as you progress - unlocking crafting tables and other stuff with money and with materials that you find in the world. Just brainstorming on the good suggestions by OP above:

Armory table / crafting station, for special ammo for on-foot weaponry and modifying loadouts. Silencer and a scope should be manageable in my ship's armory...
Data analyzing station, read data packages (instead of just receiving a message and a stack of credits, a hacking minigame?), e-breach crafting, exploration data, watching cat memes etc.
Synth station, for ship-related crafts that we have right now.

 

[kinemator]

I must say that I don't like any of this suggestions. It just moves something which we already have to other UI in other part of the ship - feels cumbersome. I would guess that even if we get ship interiors you won't be able to move inside during travel. If ship interiors will be created as DLC then it would be another reason why existing functionality can't be moved.

Ship interiors could be used in salvage gameplay(crashed ship or damaged ship in space), bounty hunting and stealing gameplay(catching alive), maybe smuggling(crafting some shielding material for illegal cargo or using other cargo to hide it).

 

[indust]

I must say that I don't like any of this suggestions. It just moves something which we already have to other UI in other part of the ship - feels cumbersome. I would guess that even if we get ship interiors you won't be able to move inside during travel. If ship interiors will be created as DLC then it would be another reason why existing functionality can't be moved.

Ship interiors could be used in salvage gameplay(crashed ship or damaged ship in space), bounty hunting and stealing gameplay(catching alive), maybe smuggling(crafting some shielding material for illegal cargo or using other cargo to hide it).

Good points and I like your suggestions.

 

[JTFireblaze]

In your own ship?

The basics I think:

• Personal quarters/cabin with a terminal. Quite honestly mostly for immersion and RP.
• Navigating the hangar bay and SRV bay to allow direct interaction and deployment
• An airlock for real armstrong moments
• Cockpit/bridge
• A lift system to connect them all.

Honestly, being able to do everything from the cockpit does put a dampener on most ship interiors gameplay. I also think removing the functionality from the cockpit is a bad idea.

AFMUs make "whacking it with a wrench" repair games kind of redundant. Same with repair limpets versus an Arc Welder tool with EVA repairs. Even putting out fires, it's probably quicker and safer to just vent the atmo, since everyone on board would have a remlok suit with life support.

However, immersive alternatives to these actions would be nice.

Having the left and right cockpit terminals available around the ship could be cool. Nav panel at a Navigation Officer's station, Module panel at an Engineer's.

And then there's the whole "no artificial gravity" thing. Would make moving around a ship mid combat particularly challenging, lorewise. When in (normal space) flight, everyone should be strapped in to a chair.

For scavenging from ship wrecks and derelicts though? Good lord yes. Some of these ships are probably as big as some FPS levels. There are so many opportunities for scavenging, avoiding environmental dangers like electrical wiring, exposed sections of a battle damaged ship, fires...

 

[Ameeleean]

My answer to question of what to do inside of ship is: maintenance (meaning repairs also) of modules that are inside of ship (power plant, life support, power distributor) and ability to use Passenger Cabin (if installed) as a personal house on ship where You could simply rest, or be able to install crafting tools in case of Odyssey owners. For things like armor or thrusters You would have to go outside.

I know AFMU exists and can take care of repairs but it cannot fix Power Plant or restore ship integrity.

 

[Susp3kt]

There's alot you can do inside a ship without adding tedium like other people have suggested. I agree having places you need to go to add unnecessary mini-games probably isn't the play, although I personally wouldn't mind it I can definitely see how it would get annoying after the 5th nav beacon scan.

Here's my suggestions.

Combined Arms.
-You and 2 other friends are doing a ground-legs mission. You pick up your friends in your ship and go near a mission area, where you drop them off and get ready to complete the objective. Whether that be to clear out an enemy installation or assassinate a particular person or to simply steal a valuable item.
Now you have multiple options

• Drop off your friends and do strafe runs on your enemies, using the interior of your ship as a temporary troop storage and utilizing the combined power of infantry and air to get a tactical advantage. This could be used for missions where you have to clear and enemy base or perhaps ambush an enemy squad or convoy.

-You could even add anti-aircraft guns that enemies or enemy players could use to take out aircraft from the ground, making infantry want to prioritize a target in order to allow their friend to come and help them with the rest of the infantry. Alternatively have anti-infantry that needs to be bombed by an SRV or ship to be cleared effectively.

• Bring a combat SRV in your ship to help clear the base, bringing Land, Vehicle, and Aircraft into a fight. Ships could even come and drop off SRVs Halo Warthog style for infantry to use, or hell just have someone drive an SRV out of a ships cargo hold mid-air and land in the middle of the carnage to massacre the enemy infantry.
• You could have assassination missions where it is almost impossible to kill all enemies and the goal is to kill 1 enemy and make a quick getaway before your overrun. This could lead to players having a designated pilot come and pick up their friends, with their friends jumping into the interior of the ship so that pilot never has to technically land, just a very low hover allowing a quick take-off and quick getaway.

Immersion

• I mean hell you have a lot of space and a lot of options for RP opportunities. I don't really need to go into detail here.

Everything that comes with having a spaceship.

• Someone already suggested having an airlock, you could allow people to jump out into space. This could be used for boarding disabled enemy vessels or manually mining valuable items off of asteroids. You could have NPC rescue missions where they path find into your airlock. Maybe we could leave our ship and potentially board Thargoid vessels for xenobiology.
• Maybe board manually controlled turrets.
• Leave your friends to die in space.
• Be left by your friends to die in space.
• Explore derelict ships and stations.

There's a lot of options...

 

[Flippimonkey]

Each ship should be like player housing. You can do and decorate all kinds of things.

I think that each ship should be categorized by types: combat, exploration, trade, and mining. They should have modules to help out with those jobs and some that can be left up to the player. Of course the number of "slots" should be based on ship size. I would make it modular like the rest of ship components. So expand on existing game play styles to adding new things and supporting game play. Finally I would add bonuses for doing basic actions like eating, sleep, and study. This would allow for temporary buffs, and learning things. The learning things being crafting, hacking, sample analysis, etc.

There could be a lot added to the game and game play that support and are supported by interiors. I don't mind having to run through my ship. If there was more to do then I wouldn't mind because I would be out doing more. In fact the excuse used about being under attack makes no sense. First the on-foot weapons are way out of whack and should do little to no damage to a ship, unless they are anti-ship weapons. Even so then players will plan around it. So hiding ones ship or having multiple entry points or even using ships specifically for missions or jobs that don't require size but speed. Common sense to me is if I thought things might go sideways on a mission then I would grab an Eagle or Courier so I can go in, run out, hop in, and take off.

I can dream can't I?

 

[Scoobe87]

I must say that I don't like any of this suggestions. It just moves something which we already have to other UI in other part of the ship - feels cumbersome. I would guess that even if we get ship interiors you won't be able to move inside during travel. If ship interiors will be created as DLC then it would be another reason why existing functionality can't be moved.

Ship interiors could be used in salvage gameplay(crashed ship or damaged ship in space), bounty hunting and stealing gameplay(catching alive), maybe smuggling(crafting some shielding material for illegal cargo or using other cargo to hide it).

I get your point and you are correct. It would feel cumbersome today because the development was forced to have all functionality from the cockpit seat. To a certain extent, having an interior to the ship where functionalities dispersed to other areas would have made sense had that been an option from the beginning. This creates a barrier to doing it now in terms of justifying any gameplay development to an interior.

Personally, I really want an interior but sort of agree with the developers that it needs to offer something in terms of gameplay. But if we are unwilling to evaluate the long standing gameplay elements of the cockpit prior to Odyssey and accept some trade offs, I fear it will never happen.

But as this thread has highlighted, if we can get enough justifiable new gameplay content identified, maybe the scales can still tip.

 

[Scoobe87]

And then there's the whole "no artificial gravity" thing. Would make moving around a ship mid combat particularly challenging, lorewise. When in (normal space) flight, everyone should be strapped in to a chair.

I might push back just a little on the artificial gravity and g-force point just a bit because we make some trade offs already for an enjoyable experience. For example, there is no sound in space yet we hear ships, weapons, etc zip by. Now we have footsteps and alarms on planets with no atmosphere. So on occasion, I'll push the "I believe" button on my forehead as long as it doesn't cross too far into the arcade realm.

 

[tanner1ie]

The possibilities are endless and i'm sure the devs could think of plenty cool thing to do with them that i and other games haven't, but overall i want to borrow elements from the X series, Mass Effect, Rebel Galaxy, Star Citizen, various films and tv shows and my and Frontiers own ideas...

For each ship to have set and customisable public and private areas, both functional and for emersion, though with shortcuts to speed things up or skip walking around the ship in an emergency or if you don't have time, which are maybe upgrades themselves...

Firstly i want to be able to hire a crew of both permanent and temporary members, to see any fighter crew, passengers, mission related npcs, doing their own things and to interact with and to see things change based on the way i outfit my ships (for example mission and trade related cargo, SRVs and fighters etc).

For hired crew to add permanent and temporary buffs to the performance and functionality of ships and be able to take full control of ships, so i can choose when to fly them personally, when i want to role play, socialise, explore, enjoy leisure activities, have my character sleep and overall get my Mass Effect and Star Trek on! .

For example, simply having individual crew members hired or onboard let's you assign them roles and permanently buffs your ships and unlock functions, while interacting and improving relations with them adds various permanent and temporary buffs.

I want to have of course the bridge/cockpit, personal crew quarters, senior and junior and guest crew cabins, a galley/mess hall, dependant on ship size, a bar, traders, dancefloor, arcade, observation lounges etc.

Engine room, powerplant, main engineering, science labs, crew and public meeting rooms, long range navigation/analysis, areas for existing in game Engineers like Felicity Farseer to come on board and work out of when improving your ship.

Crew to work different shifts, maybe for your character to have to eat sleep and rest or burn out.

In an emergency, or when you're short on time, to be able to beam round the ship to instantly take control and do things the "old fashioned" way.

To see crew running around repairing things and putting out fires during and after combat.

Maybe have a dedicated security team to police guests on board, squables between crew members and to repel hostile boarders, with regular crew and friendly guests also fighting invaders.

Again overall, the possibilities are endless and only limited by our imaginations! .

 

[Danieros]

I do like those suggestions, you show clear concern about the why we should be doing things in a more complex way.

I think it's fair to preserve current function to those who wish to keep doing things as they are right now.

A function that uses extra cockpit interiors gameplay to move around and engage with the tool should be either an entirely new one (so no old vs new debates) or an improved version of an existing function (so those who wish, can simply keep doing it the old way... but there's a clear benefit to doing it the new way).

 

[nicedevill]

Mining asteroids doesn't need to be done exclusively from our cockpits. Once we find an asteroid with the stuff we want to mine, we could switch to some other console dedicated to mining and maybe even make mining more interesting and fun.

'But it's faster from our cockpits!' applies to this too, sure, but we will never improve or enhance Elite's gameplay with this kind of thinking, in my, humble, opinion.

 

[CMDR Reaper]

Also the 3 seashells minigame.

 

[nicedevill]

Personally, I really want an interior but sort of agree with the developers that it needs to offer something in terms of gameplay.

And both, interiors and associated gameplay, are on devs shoulders. Avoiding serious talk about ship interiors just because there is no gameplay that will support it, is a bit of a 'Catch 22' situation, don't you think?

 

[Tryohazard]

I personally think the interior should be purely aesthetic unless the devs want to add uses not yet in the game. Given that we cannot have a home on a planet, our ship is pretty much all we have as one, and it would be nice to know it a bit better and decorate for the sake of the roleplay aspect. I would find it very cool to see the inside of a Beluga liner. As the current enter-exit system works for the ship and SRV, it would be nice to have that but also the option to use the provided door.

 

[Scoobe87]

I do like those suggestions, you show clear concern about the why we should be doing things in a more complex way.

I think it's fair to preserve current function to those who wish to keep doing things as they are right now.

A function that uses extra cockpit interiors gameplay to move around and engage with the tool should be either an entirely new one (so no old vs new debates) or an improved version of an existing function (so those who wish, can simply keep doing it the old way... but there's a clear benefit to doing it the new way).

I agree. If both methods are preserved, there needs to be some small benefit to get up and do it from the console. Maybe something like the FSS and planet scanner are combined so as you discover moons you can launch probes to map them. Maybe thats not a small benefit but I agree with the intent Maybe something more subtle is a longer range pulse wave analyzer that provides a scope in 360 degrees and keeps track of the rocks you have scanned.