The potential pitfalls of proper atmospheric worlds.

[Buggy Boy]

I'm sure there would be plenty, when you think about it, but it shouldn't be anything too difficult to solve, it may just increase the game's footprint by a hefty amount though.

Currently, no landable planet has any liquid on the surface. Why? Because the atmosphere is purposefully kept very thin, so liquid can't stay in a liquid state, right? Well... I'd say that's possibly technically incorrect. While we shouldn't expect liquid water to exist in lakes on thin or no atmosphere planets, other types of liquid do exist and I'm sure some could indeed exist in a thin atmosphere and low gravity environment, especially on planets close to their sun or in otherwise more extreme conditions, e.g. in close proximity to a gas giant. I'm no chemist so I wouldn't like to speculate which types of liquid they would be, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't some out there in the real galaxy.

So let's say we have slightly thicker (or much thicker) atmospheres, and we have lakes and seas of liquid - that usually implies some sort of hydro cycle, so then you need to have clouds and rain, and weather patterns that look convincing, wind and all the effects those might have on the ship (some planets in our own solar system have horrendous wind speeds and crushing atmospheric pressures, and on Jupiter it's said that it rains diamonds - try scooping those for profit as your ship gets ripped to shreds!)

Then, if we do have convincing water on atmospheric planets, and trees and such, beasts too, what happens when the player interacts with them? Try landing in the sea - what happens? The ship sinks, back to the rebuy screen? Or would the ship just refuse to touch down? Lots of awkward questions and decisions, which will always end up annoying a portion of the player base I'm sure.

It's interesting to see how many promises were made during the kickstarter and even since then, but when you think about what some of them would have involved it opens up just more questions.

[Bullpup]

Firstly there's the modelling of the entire periodic table under all combinations of temperature, pressure and gravity. Then the interactions of those elements - something that few scientific institutions have even attempted and in many cases would be total fantasy speculation.

Finally - and this is the real killer for Frontier - you have to create gameplay around the above. Frontier doesn't have game designers, so in the meantime the activity would be something like "collect 1000000000 cubic meters of solid argon to unlock a 1.3% cooler plasma accelerator" or maybe a rank system where if you scan a 10000000000 samples of liquid copper you get Elite V in probing which does nothing.

[Sighman]

One option people were discussing on a stream the other day: imagine if we could visit water worlds (100% covered), build a spaceport on the surface, then navigate below water.

That would avoid the problem of a whole planet of vegetation, since it would just be a featureless water planet. You could have rain and clouds, but you could have an underwater craft for mining, diving, or gameplay of some kind.

You could do something similar with gas giants, where you can only enter the atmosphere and maybe build a cloud city/starport.

Both would avoid the issue of approaching an entire planet full of vegetation.

[UnderNewManagement]

Originally posted by Sighman:

One option people were discussing on a stream the other day: imagine if we could visit water worlds (100% covered), build a spaceport on the surface, then navigate below water.

That would avoid the problem of a whole planet of vegetation, since it would just be a featureless water planet. You could have rain and clouds, but you could have an underwater craft for mining, diving, or gameplay of some kind.

You could do something similar with gas giants, where you can only enter the atmosphere and maybe build a cloud city/starport.

Both would avoid the issue of approaching an entire planet full of vegetation.

at one point i convinced myself the dolphin was going to get the ability to "land" on water worlds and dive under.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Bullpup:

Frontier doesn't have game designers

Here's an interview with someone that you claim doesn't exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YicQ2CkwIOQ

[wolf]

Looking at existing trees (the domed ones @ planetary ports), it wouldn't be a nice experience landing on a wookie planet

[spam]

Just an impractical fantasy, but I hope they will use some of the tech they've developed in their games like Planet Zoo, and stretch it into something usable for atmospheric planets. Maybe start with terraformable worlds and put earth animals (planet zoo assets?) in them as terraforming progresses, would save them from trying to develop an infinite number of alien life forms (like No Man's Sky).

Key issue, beyond the design work, would be how to do that sort of thing for a whole planet while keeping it smooth and workable on a potato powered computer.

[anaris]

you can't really have liquid without gas. liquids experience natural interchange with the gas phase at their surface layer; the density of earth's atmosphere is partly a consequence of there being water here, and thus water vapour. Any temperature above absolute zero has some interchange, and temperatures close to the centre of the liquid phase temperatures are going to have substantial amounts.

so while it's theoretically possible to have liquids without atmospheres, they sort of by definition create an atmosphere, and thin atmospheres would thicken.

the flight model of the game is also designed to be realistic, and space flight models are like.... thousands of times simpler than the ones where you have an atmosphere. I think one would have to compromise the simulation/realism aspect to have an atmospheric flight model without variations by atmosphere type, but one that has variations per atmosphere type is going to be demanding on systems, to say the least.

[anaris]

Originally posted by Sighman:

Originally posted by Bullpup:

Frontier doesn't have game designers

Here's an interview with someone that you claim doesn't exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YicQ2CkwIOQ

i think they're distinguishing games designers as a specific kind of person who works on the game; senior projects director might not qualify

[Planewalker]

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

Currently, no landable planet has any liquid on the surface. Why?

Because unfortunately the current iteration of the tailor-made version of the cobra engine that elite uses is not geared to handle fluids and/or liquids. Quite simple fact.

Originally posted by anaris:

i think they're distinguishing games designers as a specific kind of person who works on the game; senior projects director might not qualify

The original quotee was being disingenuous unfortunately; it was meant as a denigration.
Also lol at Piers not being a game designer. Lmao even =)

[anaris]

The original quotee was being disingenuous unfortunately; it was meant as a denigration.
Also lol at Piers not being a game designer. Lmao even =)

they clearly believe that the game has coders, people who plan and execute projects etc, so "game designers" has to be a category that is not one of those things.

i have no interest in who piers is or what he does, or whoever that guy is, but your interpretation doesn't make sense

[Sighman]

Originally posted by anaris:

The original quotee was being disingenuous unfortunately; it was meant as a denigration.
Also lol at Piers not being a game designer. Lmao even =)

they clearly believe that the game has coders, people who plan and execute projects etc, so "game designers" has to be a category that is not one of those things.

i have no interest in who piers is or what he does, or whoever that guy is, but your interpretation doesn't make sense

I chose the Piers video because it's a recent one.

You'll find an older interview with Senior Game Designer Tom Kewell on the way he worked on the Scorpion, but unfortunately he left the company early last year and if I linked to that one I just knew the OP would come back with "Aha! See, no game designers!" as if Tom was the only one.

Also, I didn't want to waste half an hour digging up more interviews with other game designers (like the guy who did the UI) because why should I? Clearly there are game designers working on Elite, whatever their official title, and showing just one interview with one game designer should have been enough to fact check that particular nonsense.

[Bullpup]

Originally posted by Planewalker:

The original quotee was being disingenuous unfortunately; it was meant as a denigration.
Also lol at Piers not being a game designer. Lmao even =)

It was obvious tongue-in-cheek sarcasm meant not to denigrate but to prod Frontier into focusing more on gameplay. It's a publicly traded game developer, so it's ludicrously impossible for them to not have anyone on the payroll doing game design. Pretending not to have understood that is the only thing "disingenuous" here.

If Frontier focused more on game design we wouldn't be bar filling, wasting hours collecting tokens that spawn once in a blue moon, and grinding the exact same simple action thousands of times. Their other IPs would probably not have been flops either. Toxic positivity costs real jobs and stops good games becoming great.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Bullpup:

Originally posted by Planewalker:

The original quotee was being disingenuous unfortunately; it was meant as a denigration.
Also lol at Piers not being a game designer. Lmao even =)

It was obvious tongue-in-cheek sarcasm meant not to denigrate but to prod Frontier into focusing more on gameplay. It's a publicly traded game developer, so it's ludicrously impossible for them to not have anyone on the payroll doing game design. Pretending not to have understood that is the only thing "disingenuous" here.

If Frontier focused more on game design we wouldn't be bar filling, wasting hours collecting tokens that spawn once in a blue moon, and grinding the exact same simple action thousands of times. Their other IPs would probably not have been flops either. Toxic positivity costs real jobs and stops good games becoming great.

I would suggest that complaining about every new feature, leaving negative reviews, commenting and crapping on the game multiple times in youtube comments, claiming the game is dead, claiming Frontier hasn't adding anything new for ten years, claiming all the new ships are cash grabs, complaining about ARX and telling new players not to bother with it in the first place would harm the game a lot more than so-called 'toxic positivity' - which has zero effect on anything.

[Das Trojanische Pferd]

Originally posted by Sighman:

One option people were discussing on a stream the other day: imagine if we could visit water worlds (100% covered), build a spaceport on the surface, then navigate below water.

That would avoid the problem of a whole planet of vegetation, since it would just be a featureless water planet. You could have rain and clouds, but you could have an underwater craft for mining, diving, or gameplay of some kind.

You could do something similar with gas giants, where you can only enter the atmosphere and maybe build a cloud city/starport.

Both would avoid the issue of approaching an entire planet full of vegetation.

that would be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ horror game do you even know whats going on in our oceans? ♥♥♥♥♥ scary......

I dont want to know what evolution would do on a waterworld.....

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Das Trojanische Pferd:

Originally posted by Sighman:

One option people were discussing on a stream the other day: imagine if we could visit water worlds (100% covered), build a spaceport on the surface, then navigate below water.

That would avoid the problem of a whole planet of vegetation, since it would just be a featureless water planet. You could have rain and clouds, but you could have an underwater craft for mining, diving, or gameplay of some kind.

You could do something similar with gas giants, where you can only enter the atmosphere and maybe build a cloud city/starport.

Both would avoid the issue of approaching an entire planet full of vegetation.

that would be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ horror game do you even know whats going on in our oceans? ♥♥♥♥♥ scary......

I dont want to know what evolution would do on a waterworld.....

Who knows, maybe thargoids live in ammonia oceans. Enjoy!