Listening to the latest Lave radio podcast (thanks for another great show btw) I think everyone is still being to optimistic about the time frames and expectations for 'planet landings' and other future expansions.
We know FD have a 10 year plan. I suggest it 'could' look something like below.
Note that I have assumed that each 'Season' lasts a full year and contains 'a full games worth of content per season'. By that I mean I can imaging it will take a full years worth of effort for the main ED Dev team (100+ devs) to create it in a way that it will feel worthy of being called a full price paid expansion.
You will note that each expansion adds a new 'domain' to explore, new game mechanics, vehicles and misc associated content. Each domain needs to be as rich on content as the initial 'space' domain was while still expanding and enriching the existing universe.
When responding, please focus on the likely dev time required to do each of these seasons well so each is enjoyable in its own right. So how realistic or not do you thing my uneducated estimates are? Yes I do think all of this could take 10 years to do it right. Happy for it to be done sooner of cause!
ps. I threw in some wild speculation for a few features I would like to see. The order is based on what I think is sensible and ensures each season has a nice variety of new content worthy of a price similar to Horizons.
Year 1 - Space
Year 2 - Horizons - Airless Planets
Features as already announced
Basic Crafting - e.g. adjusting weapons stats
Inc. Thargoids incursions into normal space
Year 3 - Space Legs
In Ship & Dock areas
Personal Hanger
First person combat
Exploring derelicts etc
also Player managed 'powers'
Multiple characters allowed
Year 4 - Atmospheres
Flying in atmospheres / Landing on atmospheric worlds without life or cities
inc worlds mid terraforming with associated infrastructure
Flying through and around clouds
'Cloud Cities' in gas giants
Space Elevators
Atmospheric flight only ships
More realistic sun corona
Solar research ship that can get closer to stars
Mining clouds
Weather / Lightning / Aurora
Also - new procedural / customisable ship designs
Year 5 - Planet Life
Landing on planets with life but no landing near or entering large cities
Full range of life
Varied procedural Biomes based on science and environment
e.g. takes account of micro climate at that location
Hunting, Trading and Collecting life
Collect personal cabin Pets! (inc trumbles!)
Conservation (Eco terrorist attacks on hunters / miners)
Exploration
Science Missions
Reward for discovery (al a No Mans Sky)
Some non-technology native intelligent species
think Ewoks!
Basic barter system with natives
Trading collected indigenous artefacts
also Fully Explorable Stations
Owning cabin in stations
Year 6 - Cities!
Fully Explorable Cities on planets
Faction Territories/Countries on planets
Wars/conflict between these factions
Owning and managing stations
Building depots / outposts in space and on land
Year 7 - Species
Introduces a couple of PLAYABLE species!
Also New economy. Everything fully self craftable / tradable including auction house
also Head up display improvements (option to view the universe in various non-visible light)
e.g. in radio spectrum. This will make space a lot prettier without breaking realism
Year 8 - Subterranean
Caves, surface mining
Improved 'geology'
Scan for sub surface minerals
Then mining them
Full Realistic Mining
Landscape deforms based on quantities of materials removed.
Size and density of Asteroid fields reduce with mining
Open cast and deep mines
Sub-surface cities
research stations
geo-thermal energy
military bases
Settlements in the sides of canyons, mountains and craters
Ability to for our character to 'climb' when exploring first person on surfaces
Year 9 - Underwater
Underwater Life / Cities / Ships etc
More life to survey / hunt / collect etc
also Mega Structures such as orbital rings
Year 10 - Witch Space (Thargoids)
Playable Thargoids!
A whole new domain of sub-space
Thargoid mega structures / cities in witch space
I put this last as I'd rather see the normal domains of the galaxy complete before they invent new ones.
Year 11 - Ring World civilisations discovered in far corner of galaxy
fully explorable ring-worlds
part of a Large scale invasion of an advanced species from Andromeda
Year 12 - Full moding of your own galaxy content
FD starts selling the raw galaxy engine (the stellar forge) for use in other games such as Star Wars, Star Trek and Star Gate
Also we take the fight back to Andromeda having reverse engineered their technology.
Year 14 - ED Universe. Player owned galaxies
This is should be really easy to do btw.
All we need is the Galactic Hyperdrive back and the a new 'seed' for each galaxy.
pps ... all the above is pure speculation in case that wasn't obvious! Feel free to submit you own versions of the 10 year roadmap.
edit: corrected 'FD to 'ED' dev team.
), però sperare non fa mai male. Preferirei comunque che Frontier non si cimentasse in fps, perché non mi sembra proprio il loro campo.