More engaging docking animation/structure

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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I absolutely adore the new redesign of Jita4,4. One of the most engaging things in a space game are intricate greebled and immerse looking backdrops. I have spent time flying around Jita4,4 in particular and I would love to see more of it. I’d be very interested in a ship compatible docking structure inside respective stations, designed compatibly. So what do I mean with this?

In the ship docking space the ship is after this design change not “suspended in mid-air”. The ship is rendered attached to a ship compatible docking crane. The camera pans and rotates around the ship, allowing the player to swivel around an exceedingly complex and detailed harbor environment. In this space you can see the established background (even though some of these backgrounds have become a bit stale…) but you see various other compatible ship-types, so a docking environment specified for frigates, destroyers, cruisers, etc. In this environment there would be a docked cavalcade of similar type ships, as well as other ship types on other consistent structures. Ideally, these would be animated, and ships would be depicted with opened up access ports, bulkheads, cargo bays, loading drones, ammunitions cranes, cargo components, ore handling. The goal should be to strongly emphasize the size and scale of the ships, so the structures should be animated, illuminated in this manner, with blinking lights, port-sized sound effects, chattering voice channels, clunking noises. In many cases you can see inside the ship innards, and inside the transparant access tunnels of the gantries, reloading and refueling struts, with dangling harbor cabling. Hydraulics, bridges and port service facilities are visible, suggesting a rush of frantic actvity and lots of things going on even inside the station port environments. The activities and animations should be race based (keenly looking forward to redsign of stations taken over by [pirate] factions such as blood raiders, triglavians, player owned citadels, moon bases, etc.) and should depict different diorama’s depending on functionality - say variations based a bureaucratic, industrial, science, military, bureaucratic infrastructures. The animations should also show something of everyday life inside the stations, i.e. night clubs, commercial advertising graffity, maybe even some ships being severely damaged and in the process of being dismantled. The animations should ideally cycle over several minutes so as to not become stale and boring over time.

Some industrial/trade players spend a lot of time in-station and this would service their interests. Clearly this is not going to be a similarly dead-ender animation such as the aborted ambulatory endeavour. The benefits for game advertising purposes and player involvement should be very distinctive - a lot of these station animations should pop up on youtube and gaming channels, and serve to seduce people in to giving eve online a serious try. Also depicting the range of other vessels available literally in size and design comparisons inside the station should make starting players gluttonously desiring to want to actually own these other ships eventually, just because of how awesome the other vessels look in station. Imagine being a started player in a venture rotating the station camera up to see a comparatively gargantuan rorqual docked up the station innards.

  • Optionally I’d love it to be possible to move the camera around a little along predetermined paths so we can move around a bit in station, but that would be a comparatively complex upgrade.

  • AGAIN OPTIONALLY docking should be adjcent to various massive vault doors that intermittently shows the space outside the station, say a gas giant or star nebula, to emphasize activity, ships departing and arriving.

  • EVEN MORE OPTIONALLE - players should have the option to witness a more elaborate undocking/docking animation (fastdock versus cinematic dock). The ship disconnects from umbilicals, gantries, loading cranes, etc. , and slowly moves away, or is hauled by tugboats to outside the station, with appropriate sirens, warning holographics, venting steam, etc etc. Again, I emphasize the potential for this to act as an ‘ambassador graphic theater’. This kind of stuff will be depicted on countless youtube vids.

Ideally the animations should extend in-station time when undocking by a good 15 seconds, to show the vessel undocking and manouvering in station to the outside, with appropriate sound design.

Right now the vessels in-station looks decidely sterile. That has been the case for more than a decade and this redign should reflect the changes in game design and ESPECIALLY the graphic immersive design in other competing game franchises.

I understand that any decorative design or redesign proposed to CCP is routinely met with dismissibe biting hostility. Any time and effort spent by CCP on is interpreted by old time players as some kind of betrayal to their screeching demands on ‘fixes’ of all kinds of ongoing ‘issues’. I am one of the players that vehemently disagrees. I am in this game for the simulation, the immersion, the narrative, the design - and I seek to represent players with the same inclinations, desires and sentiments, without wanting to belittle the needs of the more players with a more pew affinity.

Here is some moodboard suggestions to wet your respective appetites:

Thanks to CCP for implementing this idea.

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That sounds like an immersive feature, even though it would probably destroy my potato PC.

I would live to see that implemeted. Lotsa lore could be added

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Before they do this they need to roll back the change that allowed ships to unload without docking, otherwise, what’s the point.

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Can I just have WiS back

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