I know some of these were already said before but I would love to see industry and other things coming to Elite Dangerous, it would add so much gameplay mechanics. It would also make a lot of content feel usefull and not just to make more credits. Yes some of these are based off of other games but it worked well in some of them. I believe that adding more diverse things to work towards would ensure that a game like Elite could last another long while.
Here are my thoughts anyways:
-Industry:
- Create ships, ship equipment and decorations (different from the store bought ones). Materials requests could be contracked out to NPCs or Players
But
- Needs a lot of materials and credits to buy the equipment and to create the items.
-Ressource procurment:
- Mining would remain roughly the same but adds different gas/dust particles from either space clouds or planet geysers, mineral mounds and "caves" (Caves don't need to be explorable and only used as a visual queue to build mining facilities)
But
- Can be sold in huge amounts to player owned or npc industries to lower the price of items and mats / materials can be prevented from reaching industries to raise item and material costs (technically bgs)
-Create/accept contracts (Bounty Hunting/Private investigator):
- Cmdrs could create contracts for items, materials, security, destruction/prevention of delivery, lot finding, etc.
But
- Has a fee to create or cancel contracts to prevent some scams. (I.e. Payment is set aside and can only be removed if canceled prior to someone accepting the contract, and Cmdrs accepting contracts only get payed after the delivery is completed, if items are requested to be transported an insurance fee could be payed to the contract creator before starting and reimbursed on delivery )
-Intel gathering (Spying/Private investigator):
- Cmdrs could steal, gather or buy information about materials being moved , items, structures being built, whereabouts of commanders or land plots getting discovered and sold and then either sell the information for profit or use it themselves.
But
- Information can be well guarded/hidden and requires patience,deductive reasoning, tracking skills and sometimes credits to discover. Also some information should be lies to add more research for more difficult jobs.
-Thievery:
- Cmdrs could steal anything from industries and stores (if player owned, insurance could be offered)
But
- If caught doing illegal jobs a Cmdr could be placed and a wanted/warning list and "prevent" them from going near certain areas or have system security attack them as soon as discovered (Stealth is always an option to avoid this)
-Research:
- Comdrs should be able to receive credits for discovering new things using materials gathered through out the universe. Or just finding new anomalies.
But
- Research is extremely expensive and although a single Cmdr can do it, it should require a lot of people, materials and credits to fund. (This could also be used to release new equipment and ships)
-Cmdr/Squad owned stations / Planetary bases / material gathering equipment:
- Cmdrs should be able to build custom (to some extent) structures. (Contracts could be sold to build these, slowly if NPCs are used to create it or faster if supplied by players)
But
- Should be more expensive that a carrier and cannot be moved unless dismantled. They should also require a lot of real time to build.
-Surveyor
- Cmdrs could plot prices of land on planets (within reasonable lot sizes) and use them for whatever they desire to build or sell them to other comers.
But
- In order to create a plot and sell it you need specialized equipment that costs credits to purchase or be created (I.e. 1 times use items such as flags or whatever)
And needs to be listed on a lot market. These lots would go from useless (i.e. rock cliffs) to extremely valuable (a lot of materials in that area)
And of course all of this should be on a "want" basis and never forced on Cmdrs. Some of these features already exist to some extent in the creation engine (Space stations and ground bases are basically snapped together by Frontier, just let players do it. I know its a bit more complicated than that)
I don't know it might be me but adding all these without removing NPCs could bring back a lot of tired players and also bring in new ones.
What are your thoughts and ideas Cmdrs?
Cmdr Drubay out,
o7
(Edit: Formatting)