I think a tourist beacon as a first footfall, should and would work just as a planetary POI works ingame at this moment, appearing only when probing the planet or when in close proximity, no need to show it as a System POI, which is very doable.. the OP is just sugesting, not announcing a New feature, no need to panic..
Who else agrees? First Footfall should be something more?
- Thread starter Staarlord
- Start date
A flag with my CMDR name on it... hmm... but only if all the planets I've first-footfalled (is that a word?) already could have the flag planted retroactively.
That would only happen if Elite went full PES, though one should never go full PES...
A different viewpoint (literally and figuratively) would be that being able to plant a first footfall beacon would encourage those to find particular places of note on a planet that may become beauty spots or something. However, I would also suggest that being able to bookmark and share planetary coordinates would effectively achieve the same thing without cluttering up the system maps further, or having a system where a threshold of x amount of visitors who bookmark and favourite a particular spot auto generates a permanent beacon that can be viewed on the planet view portion of the map like settlements etc...
I don’t think you’re exploring correctly. And I did suggest a filter for that.
Also it doesn’t have to be treated as a station signal it can be a simple highlight over the body that the commander touched down in, you fly up and surface scan it as usual and it appears as a surface signal. Not a separate entry on your system panel that appears the moment you jump in.
God forbid they introduce base building you’ll go nuts if you can’t handle carrier signals.
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Would have been cool if it was like Kerbal and you could choose the location to plant your flag and other players could visit it as a POI. Also with custom flags like custom guild emblems in various MMOs.
Probably briefly after a first footfall period there'd be no flags, an encounter with a new world would just be a bunch of drones dropped on it to rip out the resources. Another boring rock to crack to make some batteries for your space Teslas.
Perhaps as an incentive for explorers to visit such spots, each flag planting site could have a cache of manufactured materials for every CMDR who encounters them for the first time. Such things are very hard to come by out in the deep black, especially if you're unwilling to blow up other explorers and innocent tourist ships.
I agree, but that seems to me as another issue?
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Simply like Kerbal Space Program, you can type up a quote for your flag. I think it would at least be a reason to go exploring.
Trust me that first footfall thing wares off after a few hundredI am not an explorer and only occasionally visit a previously unexplored planet. Therefore, I could be pleased with a small detail - that my character on the first time discovered planet will fall to his knees.
O7
Exactly. Out in the black, nearly every landing is a first footfall. Imagine the weight of all those flags that nobody will see. My jump range will be very limited.
Time to brainstorm this complicated proposal
1. Commander exits SRV/Ship onto a planet for the first time.
2. Record coordinates to server along with the first footfall (additional single field delimited by a comma or two fields, one for each coordinate).
3. Another commander visits said planet, the game shows a POI "First Footfall Location". Selects it. Quick passive scan. It shows who did it. Commander then lands near it and can see the flag if they want. Or, they can just ignore it.
Just pointing out that it's not much of a brainstormer to come up with the mechanic for this so that it would sit well enough within existing infrastucture and work well enough to permanently record/display the exact location someone stepped out for the very first time. But the concept that we'd then potentially get to know/share some very interesting flag locations/vistas would be a neat touch. Additional feature: Any commander who has been granted immortality in the game in some fashion automatically has all their flags switched to an awesome shrine/memorial with their name (and an optional epitaph).
Some of the responses to this suggestion have been a little dramatic, considering it's not the worst idea I've ever seen here and actually is very much in the spirit of the game. Chances we'll see this are slim though. First footfall has generally always felt like an afterthought to me, compared to the much more lauded first explored, despite having much more physical weight in the game world than an imaginary "I woz 'ere" sign in a map.
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Let's brainstorm this, but from a technical point of view: I'm hoping my maths is good today!!Time to brainstorm this complicated proposal
1. Commander exits SRV/Ship onto a planet for the first time.
2. Record coordinates to server along with the first footfall (additional single field delimited by a comma or two fields, one for each coordinate).
3. Another commander visits said planet, the game shows a POI "First Footfall Location". Selects it. Quick passive scan. It shows who did it. Commander then lands near it and can see the flag if they want. Or, they can just ignore it.
Just pointing out that it's not much of a brainstormer to come up with the mechanic for this so that it would sit well enough within existing infrastucture and work well enough to permanently record/display the exact location someone stepped out for the very first time. But the concept that we'd then potentially get to know/share some very interesting flag locations/vistas would be a neat touch. Additional feature: Any commander who has been granted immortality in the game in some fashion automatically has all their flags switched to an awesome shrine/memorial with their name (and an optional epitaph).
Some of the responses to this suggestion have been a little dramatic, considering it's not the worst idea I've ever seen here and actually is very much in the spirit of the game. Chances we'll see this are slim though. First footfall has generally always felt like an afterthought to me, compared to the much more lauded first explored, despite having much more physical weight in the game world than an imaginary "I woz 'ere" sign in a map.
There are 400 billion system in the galaxy.
Of which approx 1% have been discovered. That's 4 billion systems.
Each system has between 0 and 50 bodies. Let's say that an average of ten are landable. That's 40 billion bodies that have been discovered.
Of those that have been discovered, let's say 10% have been landed on, as aposed to just discovered. That's 4 billion bodies.
To store at lat/long requires two double precision floating point numbers at 8 bytes each. So to store the flag position for 4 billion flags would take 64 billion bytes or roughly 59GB of disk space on the servers.
I'm presuming that there is at least one backup / clone of the database, so that is 118GB of disk space, just to have a flag. That is the storage needed to log the current flags. It will only grow.
Let's brainstorm the practical side of things, comparing the current system with the proposed system:
You come across a body in the system, after doing a FSS, in the current system you can go to the system map and discover who has first footfall on that body.
If you are an active explorer you have come across around about 10 systems and with an average of 10 landables per system that is 100 landable bodies. How many of them have you searched to see if you could have first footfall? How many have you then looked at the commander's name to see if you recognised it? Remember, this is all possible with the current system. How many of those are you going to bother to fly down to, knowing that you will not get first footfall, to take a look at a flag? Not many and certainly not worth 118GB of storage that FDev have to pay for on the server, no matter how cheap it is. As the system stands at the moment there is a "I woz 'ere" marker, it just isn't a physical flag at a precise position on the body.
Now I'm not saying that first footfall should not be something special, and certainly the first time that it happens. However, I have nearly 700 first footfalls to my name at the moment. An animation of me planting a flag the first couple of times would have been nice. After 700, that would become tedious. Would I visit the flag for another commander's first footfall. Probably for the first one I came across, but after that no. I'd be be more interested in what I could discover, rather that what someone else had discovered. Would I land my ship, get out the SRV and do a short drive just to see a flag stuck in the ground with someone else's name on it. Nah sorry, not the most exciting thing to see. First footfall is great the first couple of times it happens, but when you get deeper into the black they are very common and since you are the first person to land on this body in the last 8 years, how long do you think it will be before the second person lands, and the third, and before someone else lands that can be bothered to look at your flag.
I just don't think a named POI would be that great compared to a name against a body that we currently have. Certainly not worth the development and storage cost that would be involved. Perhaps I'm being a little selfish, but I'm only interested in what I have discovered and not what others have discovered. I could not give a diddly squat whether someone else discovers my first footfall after me.
I'd be more in favour of commander's adding a POI that was really interesting, not just a first footfall. A "here is something interesting" rather than "I woz 'ere" marker. Of course you can already do that with https://edastro.com/poi/
Just needs that functionality integrated into the game and it show up on the HUD and star maps. Mind you, you would need it moderated to stop the idiots will the humour of a three year old.
Just needs that functionality integrated into the game and it show up on the HUD and star maps. Mind you, you would need it moderated to stop the idiots will the humour of a three year old.
no changes = low content gameplay enjoyers
Seriously how many folks are going to actually take the time to land to look at someones flag? Soon as i see a first footfall im out of that system and moving on.
O7
Something in your comment and the general vibe of forums constant "There's nothing wrong with the game" vs "There's something wrong with the game", triggered me a brief flashback
