Planet fall

[sillls]

Ever since X2, we have had videos of ships landing on a planet.
Any chance that we will see this in the game?

[Duncaroos]

I have never seen X3 or X4 having videos of ships landing on planets... Do you have examples?

[sillls]

These videos are on the start of X2.

[alt3rn1ty]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO2zyiU ... eRefresh=1

Near the end of the Intro.

I think its been discussed a few times (since 2006 anyway), but IIRC the conclusion has always been probably not going to happen.
There was a planet lifter ship at some point, and maybe you could go down to a very limited area of a planet but could not go far .. I cant recall if this was Egosofts work or a mod, or maybe it was part of those discussions as a proposal for limited access to a planet surface.

But anyway the best we have in X4 is those little videos that play on completion of Terraforming, showing the results of your efforts planetside.

[Alan Phipps]

This discussion seems relevant.

[MegaJohnny]

I have never seen X3 or X4 having videos of ships landing on planets... Do you have examples?

I'm an X3:R baby, so my brain jumped to the brief, fairly janky chase sequence on... some Argon planet? I suppose that's the last "proper" in-game section featuring a planet surface. X4 does have depictions related to terraforming, which I probably shouldn't spoil here, so depends how you count those.

Here is someone's longplay of the X3:R story with that chase timestamped.

[sillls]

This discussion seems relevant.

I see...

[Lord Dakier]

It's never going to happen in X4 and I wouldn't expect it in any near future titles. Bethesda with all their funding and development time given to Starfield didn't include seamless space-to-ground transitioning. It's a very costly gimmick that becomes rather irrelevant really quickly.

This is not to say I don't want to see it, but I'd rather Egosoft put their resources into simply bringing us more content.

[Raptor34]

It's never going to happen in X4 and I wouldn't expect it in any near future titles. Bethesda with all their funding and development time given to Starfield didn't include seamless space-to-ground transitioning. It's a very costly gimmick that becomes rather irrelevant really quickly.

This is not to say I don't want to see it, but I'd rather Egosoft put their resources into simply bringing us more content.

Transition isn't the biggest issue. Like in 5 seconds I had an idea. You dock on a ship, and you get to see a fixed image of entering atmo through view ports. It'll take like a couple minutes or whatever is reasonable, faster with SETA. This is because the background simulation continues running at the same time, so you don't have to worry about speeding time up or landing taking seconds or something nonsensical.

The bigger issue is now Egosoft now also need to model the planet too, and also what exactly do you do there. If it's just some shops you walk around, then it's kinda pointless and anything good down there can be done with expanded station interiors.
And if you get to fly around... Then the issue just got way bigger.

[vvvvvvvv]

I have never seen X3 or X4 having videos of ships landing on planets... Do you have examples?

X3 reunion had a planetary mission where you flew through a city. It was horrible.

Ever since X2, we have had videos of ships landing on a planet.
Any chance that we will see this in the game?

The reason why there are no planetary landings in space games is because modeling planets is difficult. Either planet will have nothing, i.e. it will be just rocks, an then there's no point to land... or it will have enough stuff on it to overwhelm artists regardless of your budget.

Basically, for what can be done procedurally see space engine. The planets are sort of interesting, but they're really, really old-school looking.

For an interesting planet you'd need rivers, cities, etc. Modeling a city is GTA difficulty, and modeling a procedural city is MSFS difficulty. If you just make a single interior with external landscape visible through window, then it is just a loading screen and no longer worth it.

[Lord Dakier]

The bigger issue is now Egosoft now also need to model the planet too, and also what exactly do you do there. If it's just some shops you walk around, then it's kinda pointless and anything good down there can be done with expanded station interiors.
And if you get to fly around... Then the issue just got way bigger.

That's just it though. You're going through all this work and for what? Planet-based combat would be cool, but it's never happening with Egosoft's current budget. It's a relatively small company operating a niche game, and that's perfectly fine, they appeal to a core bunch of players.

I have always liked comparing Creative Assembly to Egosoft. I've played the products of both companies for years and Creative Assembly is far larger now than Egosoft. Still, despite massively expanding its design scope, it has also commercially failed more. Sure they've made a lot more money, but they've also made a lot more losses. I'd have to double-check, but last time I did on average their games weren't any more net profitable now than when they were far smaller, before SEGA's £200m cash injection. That creates an environment of huge risk, which came back to bite them when they had to lay off staff.

Egosoft keeps the overheads small. I respect that position and as a supporter of the company, I'd rather see more efficient design than unnecessary additions. Planets are precisely that, for now at least.

[Realspace]

To me, the only meaningful planetary interaction would be (ONLY) small rocky moons, procedurally generated, where the player can set bases and stations to extract minerals.

I don't think this would make gameplay that different from X as it is now but would make mining a lot better, adding a layer of immersion and interaction, instead of sending ships to points of the map. Maybe some rovers that go to mine on the surface to return to the station, the station can be a hub from where ships bring the raw or processed materials to other stations in space.

X2/X3 had stations on the big asteroids to extract minerals, I liked that concept and would love to see it used again in an expanded way, together with the actual X4's free miners roaming asteroid belts (maybe this latter having less resources than moons).

Another idea to increase gameplay would be to have procedurally generated gas giants where you can NOT land (nothing to land on btw) but whose atmosphere you can interact with, entering a thick cloud of gases, blizzards, etc. These planets are quite easy to create, there was an old Russian space-sim (I think was named Tarr Chronicles or something like that) that had these procedural atmospheres, very very cool. Instead of the local fogs X4 has now that make zero sense. (BTW I managed to create something similar in my xrsge mod with actual X4 assets, planet + fogs covering it).

[Fahnenjoker]

I would never expect something like in Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous in X4 regarding planets. But I would really like it if it could be handled like in Freelancer, where you "dock" with a "landing gate", a landing cutscene plays and then you can visit a small number of placed around the landing pad, like a bar, ship seller, ship modder and trader. So planets would be infact kind of like space stations. That would be enough and would not be so hard to pull off, but it would add a lot of immersion, because different planets are part of the appeal of SF and outer space.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Fahnenjoker: All that dev work just to include a new planet gate asset that functions exactly as almost every X4 station does now?

It's unlikely that the planet gate model would be race-specific (as the case now with generic station production models), so don't expect much difference in contribution to immersion or exploration. Sure, there could be a few different video cutscenes of planet landings etc associated with them - in a similar way to the Terraforming completion cutscenes, but those do not appear over and over in your game. The planet landing cutscenes would probably soon pall after a few viewings of repeats and then be skipped or described as a waste of gameplay and/or dev time.

It's a nice aspiration for a future X game maybe if it can be done well and with lots of variety, but I don't think X4 is a viable candidate now. Just my personal opinion of course.

[Fahnenjoker]

@ Fahnenjoker: All that dev work just to include a new planet gate asset that functions exactly as almost every X4 station does now?

It's unlikely that the planet gate model would be race-specific (as the case now with generic station production models), so don't expect much difference in contribution to immersion or exploration. Sure, there could be a few different video cutscenes of planet landings etc associated with them - in a similar way to the Terraforming completion cutscenes, but those do not appear over and over in your game. The planet landing cutscenes would probably soon pall after a few viewings of repeats and then be skipped or described as a waste of gameplay and/or dev time.

It's a nice aspiration for a future X game maybe if it can be done well and with lots of variety, but I don't think X4 is a viable candidate now. Just my personal opinion of course.

In Freelancer you could just skip them, but it I never did, cause they were short and sweet:
https://youtu.be/BQ6gEbLMeW8?feature=shared&t=931

The point is not the landing cutscene though, that could be very short or even just a cut to black. The point is walking around on a small patch of a planet with a skybox around and a little bit to explore. I know there are X purists who despise even walking around space stations and just wanna "be" a spaceship basically, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees this as immersion increasing.

[birdtable]

Walking around on a planet ,,rocky or not would be the most immersion breaking introduction to X4 .... God forbid the 2D table top space game is enough ,, watching geometric shapes moving around , What I find hard to believe that in a "Space Simulation" a large number of players play on this table top I suppose we could collect different coloured rocks as a mini game or see how far you could throw a rock ,,, No Planet Landings....Well not in my lifetime hopefully.
EDIT ,,, X4 as it stands is a beautiful game, no other game/simulation is like it .. leave it alone... But then I have just flown through Antigone Memorial on the landing deck of a Cobra ,,,,

[vvvvvvvv]

Walking around on a planet ,,rocky or not would be the most immersion breaking introduction to X4

X3 reunion. 21:30.

https://youtu.be/sRzoz4OQ15s?t=1293

[Raptor34]

EDIT ,,, X4 as it stands is a beautiful game, no other game/simulation is like it .. leave it alone... But then I have just flown through Antigone Memorial on the landing deck of a Cobra ,,,,

Very true.
You'll think you'll not want it, then you get it and realize how good it can be.
With that said, for something like this, Egosoft should start small, like with DLCs. Rather than going with something like a full game, i.e. X-Rebirth and nearly tanking the company.

Just try it out with limited budget and time to see whether it would be feasible to expand it further, and also put something of a taster into the hands of the players. If they can actually feasibly deliver something good, then sure go ahead. If it sucks up too much time and money, then you can cut it off and see whether it can become feasible later.

[NightIntruder]

I've been interested in this topic for some time. There was a guy on YT named @subtolld who did the following test ( Realspace was that you? ):

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

So, having planets in that particular shape presented above is possible even today as proved. What are all the limitations in creating a false planet instead of a sector - I don't know. For example, would it be possible to create a gravity simulation on a planet? That's a lot of work, and on top of that there's the creation of completely new buildings as a bare minimum. It's possible, but only if some modder decides to go down this path, because he likes the new range of possibilities for creating missions, immersion in the game, or he just wants to prove to himself that he can do something THAT big.
I personally doubt that Egosoft will go down this path. But X4 has a thriving modding scene. Maybe we'll be able to enjoy planetary landings someday?

[Fahnenjoker]

Walking around on a planet ,,rocky or not would be the most immersion breaking introduction to X4 .... God forbid the 2D table top space game is enough ,, watching geometric shapes moving around , What I find hard to believe that in a "Space Simulation" a large number of players play on this table top I suppose we could collect different coloured rocks as a mini game or see how far you could throw a rock ,,, No Planet Landings....Well not in my lifetime hopefully.
EDIT ,,, X4 as it stands is a beautiful game, no other game/simulation is like it .. leave it alone... But then I have just flown through Antigone Memorial on the landing deck of a Cobra ,,,,

Who said anything about walking on rocky terrain?

Here some example landing spots from Freelancer:

https://swat-portal.com/forum/gallery/u ... -large.jpg
https://swat-portal.com/forum/gallery/u ... -large.jpg
https://swat-portal.com/forum/gallery/u ... -large.jpg

If you limit the player from leaving the area, this is would essentially just be "space stations" on the ground. Should not be that hard to pull off.