I realized that a much better example than F&E's concept of "combat density" of a fleet battle line, that few if any of you are familiar with, are ARPGs.  In an ARPG, like Diablo, you have a limited capacity to carry things back to town to sell or store in your chest.  So you ignore all the "white and blue stuff" (unless it is useful too you for crafting or some other reason) and are generally only interested in the "yellow and gold stuff".  A thousand things drop in between visits to town, but you usually only care about a dozen of them.

It might be counter-intuitive, but instead of reducing the minerals on planets maybe you should be increasing them, heavily weighted towards the ones that usually aren't even worth picking up.  The "white and blue stuff".  The more "white and blue stuff" there is, the more obvious it is too the players that they shouldn't be trying to pick up everything.  And they are already familiar with this concept from ARPGs like Diablo and Path of Exile.

I like the landing change, sounds great.

One possibility to cement what you were saying, Frogboy, about different difficulties would be to alter the landing target square thingy. Once you unlock the "land anywhere" ability, you still have the landing minigame, but on a flat plane it's easy with a large target square to land in, but the rougher the terrain you aim for, the smaller that target square gets, making it harder to land without taking damage.

And beside that is the effects of wind/weather, which would alter how hard it is to aim within those squares on the way down as you get buffeted.

The new universe exploration view with realistic planets gets a big old HELL YES from me. That feels like space, and I love it.

That said, I am very, very, very much not a fan of the planetary exploration shown in the latest video. So Mars is a tiny, dizzying asteroid now? Besides genuinely making me feel dizzy and disoriented, the sense of scale in the video is abominable. It doesn't look or feel like an intentional exaggeration... it's like you just don't care.

I understand that we don't want literal planet-sized planets but surely there's something that can be done to make planetary exploration more rational? Maybe shrink the size of the ship and make the physical characteristics of the planet less extreme? You know, so it's still obvious that things are exaggerated but not... whatever the heck this is. I just can't suspend my disbelief with the wild, unbridled extremity of what is being presented.

Maybe the lander could get smaller but I don't think the mountains should be less extreme because their purpose is to be a barrier.

I think the planets should not get any smaller or else they look like asteroids like you said.  If the planets get bigger then the radar needs to be able to be upgraded so you aren't wandering endlessly looking for stuff.

We will be landing on so many planets that my main concern is planets being optimized for not being tedious to explore (not too many things on the planet and the planet not being too large) rather than how cartoony they look.

I concur with veraxus and seldon on most of those points about scale and barriers.

Making the lander smaller (and slower) would go a long way towards assuaging a lot of the concerns about scale. If planet sizes are not going to change, I think it would be an easy and acceptable compromise to just make the lander smaller. And I don't just mean a little smaller, probably a lot.

Changes in elevation should probably also be legitimate obstacles until such time as the lander can be upgraded with enough power to climb them. Same goes for descending; you should probably take damage if you go too quickly down a steep hill and hit the surface with too much speed.

Yes we are looking at test footage but I'd hate to see the lander being this fast zoomy thing barreling across the landscape and flying into the air above mountain peaks on the first time out. I'd imagine the landers would mostly be slow and struggle to get up even small inclines at first, more like our contemporary Mars rovers, until we obtain better tech.

I don't know if I agree that the starting lander should be slow and struggle up hills.  Gameplay-wise Star Control 2 did not have a lander speed upgrade and that is good if you don't want the early game mining to be slow.  Lore-wise this is a lander that can go to and from orbit even from the start, so it should not be slow.  Maybe a compromise could be the lander starts out fast enough to mine minerals fast, but not dodge aggressive wildlife.

How well does the lander dodge wildlife when you use the boost to fly into the air?  It sounds that would dodge any wildlife except maybe the worms because those worms could be huge.

Guess we didn't play the same Star Control 2. The lander absolutely had a speed upgrade. As well as an upgrade to protect against wildlife. And several others.

Yes, but even at its slowest speed, it didn't take that long to traverse the whole planet. And that's important - people are talking about making the planetside game longer in SCO but IMO it's already too long - it took Brad a good 3-4 minutes to drive all over Mars picking stuff up. Multiply that by hundreds and hundreds of planets in game and you'll be thoroughly sick of it very quickly. In SC2, you usually spent no more than a minute on a planet, and often considerably less. That's a good measure stick for SCO.

Let's not assume what players will or won't do. Some may visit for ten seconds to get one mineral deposit. Some will want to thoroughly explore. Seen speed runs where landings are made just for exotics and radioactives. I used to play that way too. Doesn't mean everyone else is going to.

There were many lander upgrades in SC2. When you first start out, they are vulnerable, slow, and can't carry much. It would be nice to see that carried forward with new dynamics. If players tire of being vulnerable and slow because they want to stripmine a system in five minutes, then they should seek out lander upgrades, and if they would rather get resources blowing other ships to pieces, they should seek out combat upgrades.

Gameplay should be challenging enough to incentivize players to upgrade, not just make it convenient so they don't get bored. Not that SCO should be tedious but there are plenty of games that involve "grinding" nowadays and it doesn't seem to curb their popularity.

This. Planets are throwaway. The only time you spend longer than a minute, is when there's bio or some energy signal and you're reading.

All of these new discussions make me realize another disadvantage of Discord over using forums.  When potential customers come to the forums to take a look at what is going on, if everyone is using Discord then the forums look dead.  Like nobody cares about the game.  I know that the social media generation likes Discord better than forums, but I really see a lot of reasons for forums being better.  I've mentioned some others before, too, like discussion being archived where in Discord it is really just all lost.

Sometimes the old ways remain better;-)

Time isn't challenge.

It's tedious and not challenging.  It adds nothing to the game but time.

Sorry, guess I forgot that all best games get praised for how little time they take.

A game being long because of engaging writing and storytelling is one thing.  A game being long because you have to spend 5 minutes driving around a planet (multiply by hundreds) looking for "candy" is a different story entirely.

Completely agree. Anything more and planets start becoming a grind. If I want that I'll pick up a F2P mobile game and lose the next year of my life.... oh wait, I did that.

Is the lander games purpose to soley collect resources?  I think it would add more depth to the lander game if you happen to encounter hostiles of maybe the hostile faction in the game if there is one.  Also at the same time pushing for a reason to upgrade your lander.  Another cool thing would be if you could scan for anomalies and send your lander to investigate.  Sorry if this was said before me, just downloaded it from the vault.

This exactly.  The thing that drives me most in games is narrative and exploration. I’d be most inclined to explore because I have a narrative reason to do so (explore strange new worlds and new civilizations, and all that)... for instance, maybe I have a clue about an alien ruin being in a particular system, which itself could be a clue about something else. I’d even go so far as to say that, with a sufficiently upgraded lander, some planetary landings might resemble super melee - eg recover a kidnapped diplomat from an alien military base.

Heck, maybe planets could have certain geographical features that have no use at one point, but which come in handy later. For example, a planet with a strange plant that serves no apparent immediate purpose, but turns out to be another diasporated (it’s a word, now!) alien species long-lost home world. Just some thoughts.

or the mothership can support multiple lander types.  You can have an aquatic lander for water worlds to scan for life and resources only to be met with giant sea creatures.  Or need to travel underneath the mantel of a planet and need a lander like the one from that movie i can think of the name right now.  I think i'm getting ahead of myself tho.

Just chiming in to say that the lander game actually looks pretty fun, would be interested in some degree of combat with boss fights (sandworms bursting out on a desert planet anyone?), keeping that arcadey feel.

As a purely resource gathering game, still excited about it, but as has already been pointed out, closely monitor the time it ends up demanding. Going planet to planet in Mass Effect 2 was fun the first few times, but I absolutely dreaded it by the mid-game, and still consider it the only black mark on that entry in the series. At least Mass Effect 1 let you break up the monotony with side quests and baddies to shoot.

Note that I also see opportunity for a little platformer-esque action with this. Perhaps a quest that leads you to ancient ruins you have to hop around in to unlock.