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As I was moving objects around in my Sorosub last night, I realized how silly it was that we have to launch our ships in order to move around in them. After all, if we needed to retrieve something that was stored on a ship, wouldn't it be more practical to board it, retrieve what we need, and then disembark instead of boarding, launching, and then landing again?

Currently there are three options when selecting a ship at a Starship Terminal: Launch Ship, Travel, and Manage. I propose that a 4th option be added: Board Ship. This would be an instanced "hanger" type world that we could not walk around in except in our ship, but outside the windows and cockpit we could see other random ships, NPCs, cargo boxes, and of course, the hanger doors. Think like the Theed starport, with shuttles and a few NPCs milling about. This way, we wouldn't have to launch our ships and sit in orbit of the planet just to retrieve something from our cargo hold, then turn around and fly back to the station to request landing permission.

There would have to be at least two different hangers that would be displayed outside the windows of your starship: one for Imperial and one for Rebel. Neutral pilots could conceivably have the Imperial hanger displayed since they're neutral, but the Empire would never allow X-Wings and TIE Fighters to be parked next to each other. Heck, they'd probably never let an X-Wing land on Coronet in the first place, and I've always assumed that the Rebellion has just been bribing station comm officers to allow them landing clearance. We'll just assume that the Rebellion has their own "secret" hanger for all intents and purposes. These separate hangers would increase immerision, and being able to see other starships parked alongside your own--even if they are dynamically generated and don't correspond to any actual player ships--would be nice to see before launch. The Imperial hanger could have Stormtroopers patrolling, Imperial banners hanging from the walls, TIE Fighters hanging from racks, maybe a Lambda shuttle or two, TIE pilots milling about, etc. Rebel hangers could have rows of Rebel starfighters, Rebel soldiers, etc. Further cosmetic additions could be made on a planetary basis, from the color of the sky outside the hanger door to planetay-specific banners or decorations.

In this hanger "world" there would then be two options to chose from: Disembark and Launch Ship. Disembark would put you back in the spawn point for that starport, and Launch Ship would display a short launching sequence similar to the hyperspace cinematic, and then you would find yourself orbiting the planet as if you'd used the Launch command from the Starship Terminal. I've walked around in my Sorosub and I haven't really seen a door or loading ramp, and I haven't been in any of the other ships you can walk around in, so I don't know if there are any corresponding points there, either. In any case, a place like that would be a good point for a control panel with the "Disembark" command. Launch Ship can only be done from the pilot's chair. For fighters that don't allow for the pilot to leave the command console, there isn't much of a point of boarding your ship prior to launch, but why exclude them? Launch Ship and Disembark would be accessible from the default cockpit display.

So, what do people think? Good suggestion? At all practical? Tecnically feasible using the game's mechanics?

Oh yeah, and please raise the item limit from 75 in my starship, but that's a topic for another day.

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psikobunny wrote:

You're suggesting this to cut down on loading time? Is that my understanding? Well you'd still have to load into an instanced hangar, so I guess I'm missing the point...

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Not loading time. I don't mind sitting at the loading screens and being dumped into an instanced hanger. My complaint is launching your ship, leaving the controls, retrieving something (or dropping something off), going back to the controls, flying back to the space station, and requesting landing permission. Why did I have to take off in the first place? Shouldn't I be able to board my ship while it's still docked?

Simple and easy to impliment.

"Simple" does not always denote "easy to impliment" when it comes to software.

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Mallecho wrote:
"Simple" does not always denote "easy to impliment" when it comes to software.

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Clearly you don't know anything about software development, particularly with this game.

Software development is a simple and quite easy process in which the primary developers just wave a magic wand and all the required changes are made to the game. That's one of the primary reasons why people are so frustrated with the developers, in that they're not doing enough wand-waving. I demand that the developers wave their wands and get this in!

Seriously, though...I tried to make my proposal as similar to existing game mechanics as possible so that it wouldn't require rewriting things from scratch and code could hopefully be borrowed, but then again, I'm not one of the devs. Hopefully they'll see the benefit to something like this and slip it in at a future date.

Great Idea!

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Darter wrote:

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Mallecho wrote:
"Simple" does not always denote "easy to impliment" when it comes to software.

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Clearly you don't know anything about software development, particularly with this game.

Software development is a simple and quite easy process in which the primary developers just wave a magic wand and all the required changes are made to the game. That's one of the primary reasons why people are so frustrated with the developers, in that they're not doing enough wand-waving. I demand that the developers wave their wands and get this in!

Seriously, though...I tried to make my proposal as similar to existing game mechanics as possible so that it wouldn't require rewriting things from scratch and code could hopefully be borrowed, but then again, I'm not one of the devs. Hopefully they'll see the benefit to something like this and slip it in at a future date.

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Oh, I love your idea...and I do agree that it would seem possible to make it work under existing game mechanics (at the very worst you don't see anything but black through your windows).

The comment about simple and easy just struck a chord with me because we just put some software into beta and I've been listening to "Isn't this a simple/easy change?" for 2 weeks.

should replace the launc button

then when u get on a MP ship, with your crew u can do yer pre-flight briefing, assign roles etc.. then the pilot sits in the chair and gets the launch option.. click launch and a nice cutscene plays showing the ship taking off (cutscene = local(clientside) movie file (have 1 for each planet/ship combination) so no lag/loading for the movie itself and space zone can load in background) .. would be nice to see yer YT take off from a tatt SP like the falcon