These are my thoughts exactly.
Also, when ever I see someone say SPACE LEGS! It always reminds me of this:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8Bi2RLiphY
It sounds like a good enough idea, until you really start thinking about it.
It also reminds me of the mob mentality in the early years of Guild Wars 2 (no idea how it is today, stopped playing that) someone would come up with an idea and if it got enough momentum on the forums the developers would implement it, regardless of how terrible it might be and if they had to take it away days after, true story.
In many respects, I wish FDev woudl take a leaf out of that book, there have been numerous great suggestions that have been ignored and possibly even forgotten abour on this forum over the years.
I don't think people realize how much ED was made for macro detail. If we could get up and walk just around the landing pads we'd be welcomed to PS2 era graphics. As is you simply cannot get up and close to these assets.
So everything would have to be reworked, and that would translate in higher system specs to run the game. RIP consoles right there, although this could be a paid expansion for PC only. Even assuming all that, we are still looking at considerable time and money investment for what? People WILL get bored of it soon enough all while complaining it wasn't done right and it should have been done in this or that way.
Have you seen the thread about the game assets being modelled in 16k resolution of detail, and presumably downsampled to current levels of detail. Even if you caught something that looked like Quake 1 levels of detail by using the free cam just now, you would have to bare in mind that in much the same way as the pilots head is not modelled in VR, or barnacles etc are one way mirrors in those weird clipping glitches as they have no inside rendering, because you are normally tens of metres away from the landing pad corners will have been cut there to increase game performance with current hardware.
Now before someone label me a nay sayer, here's how I think it could work, just so I can put the other side of the coin forward:
A feasible way to do it would be to from the Station Services menu select and option to go inside the station.
That would load up an area where you could walk around and see other commanders walking around. Basically black screen before you "walk out the elevator." Same to get back into your pilot seat. That right there would cut on not only walking time but also the problem of having to model the ship interiors and the landing pads nice enough for someone to walk in them an see them up close.
Once inside the station, there would be lounge areas, contacts, shops. The NPCs in these could be just standing with idle animations, so no worries about colliding with players.
These areas could be modular and be rendered like a dungeon crawler game, that would mean with relative low work (all things considering) we could have a good variety of station interiors so they wouldn't all look the same, by having a good variety of not only the geometry of these modules, but also the textures applied to them. A bar scene for example can looks massively different depending on the textures used without even changing the geometry, it can be given a dive bar look, or a sophisticated feel.
Add in windows on these instances with NPC ships coming and going and boom, lovely place to be.
Sorry - but that sounds absolutely deplorable, and totally out of kilter with what FDev have suggested "legs" gameplay would entail. Just look through this thread for some of the great suggestions of what it should be and quotes of what has beenmentioned, hinted at, or alluded to by FDev. The fade to black transitions to SRV/SLF are just a place holder becaue the game doesn't allow the pilot to walk around their ship. The SLF might stay a black screen because of telpresence, its not like you need to walk to and physically climb into the fighter to fly it, and due to their lack of landing gear its not like you could use it as a mode of transport to fly to a destination. However the SRV was designed for boarding and disembarking.
On the lounge areas FDev could even put games for players to challenge each other, like darts, pool, cards where you could bet your credits and maybe even your ships! I believe this to be essential, because having simple NPC contacts to provide the services you can already get from your chair would make this whole thing a huge waste of time. Player interaction would be key and that normally boils down to shooting, which would mean Fdev would have to develop a shooter game...
Having these bar games would, from a developing point of view, be easier (in my opinion) while providing that interaction people are craving, specially when you consider they can already shoot each other's ships and turning ED into yet another shooter game would add nothing.
It is widely accepted that the missions you could get from an NPC mission giver in a quet corner of a shaddowy bar would be off the books, riskier, more rewarding, possibly including first person play. So its not going to be the case that you walk to a bar to meet an NPC to shake hands on the deliver X tonnes of survival shelters missions on the bulletin board. These would be where your relationship with BGS factions would come into play, if you were friendly enough with the blue hand mafia of hip 16852 (randomly generated names for faction and system) they might tell you that they have a chopshop in section 672D of the station where they sell stolen modules at a substantial discount. Or you might get wind of a drug dealer in a higher security area of space, like Aisling territory, where there is no black market and the commodoties such as narcotics and slaves are prohibited. The idea about playing bargames to bet credits/ships etc, while potentially interesting, who wouldn't want to win a conda in a game of cards - very han solo - while entertaining, would be very unlikely in the game as introducing gambling like that would almost certainly increase the games PEGI rating age restrictions. It would also open a mechanic for gold farming, "gimme £150 via paypal and I'll throw (as in deliberately lose, not as in host the game) a game of cards with you where you can bet on my fully engineered FDL.
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