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Alpha1ce

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This is a big one. Might need to wait for full mod support if it's possible at all.

 

Once you guys figure out how to alter/create biomes...

 

Starfields Mars shows from planet view both of these massive planetary features. But when you travel there it just has the standard "rocky desert" biome.

 

 

[Olympus Mons] is the largest volcano in the solar system. Over twice the height of Mt. Everest.. it is truly huge.

 

[Valles Marineris] (the large feature that looks like two scratches across the surface of the planet) Is the largest above water canyon in the solar system, reaching almost 7km deep in places.

 

 

Sadly, neither of these features show up when you travel to the surface. Even though they are visible from the planet view.

 

This is a MASSIVE missed opportunity. Even if you only make one part of it a biome you can travel to with a crazy legendary monster at the bottom of the trench. Or at the top of a long climb to the top of the volcano. Or maybe a hidden city. I don't know. Just SOMETHING. It would have to be a big mod. But we should be taking full advantage of things like this, since Bethesda was lazy here..

 

I'm sure someone on here has plans for some big added content mod. It would be really cool to see these features utilized in some way.

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Starfield doesn't do planets- full stop. Starfield does a square flat instance, of limited size, with pre-created elements randomly seeded and blended together.

 

So real geographic elements from real planets are not a good fit for this system. You could not surface travel to them- EVER. The engine doesn't allow this technically. You could do some form of ex-volcano mountain tile, but the engine does climbing very badly as well. If you baked in a climbing system (paths, tunnels, elevators and the like), at the top you would NOT see any form of correct vista- as I said the engine does not do planets. Instead you'd see the very crude edge of the square instance, and that would look awful.

 

The mods wanted for Starfield are the mods that fix the game, and add content simpatico with what the engine does well enough. Nobody is going to turn this game into the game a person may have imagined (foolishly given Beth's very limited technical abilities) before it released.

 

For this kind of content, go to steam and check on the various space/astronomy sims. I get what you're really after- all the fun of a Beth open world game, and the ability to have some of this happen on an actual spherical continuous planet. Every modern flight sim handles this - No Man's Sky does this. Beth could have done so, if it employed A-quality coding talent, by blending the old engine with a brand new one for the cosmic scale stuff. But Todd hires for reasons other than experience and talent, and this is what we get as a result.

 

I must admit, the pre-release videos and misleading statements from Todd's team had many of us suppose the game had a spherical continuous environment ability. Sadly the released game was disappointing in so many technical directions.

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from a laymen point of view I must admit,

 

I understand that altering an entire planet is out of the question. But I have noticed that when I land my ship in a selected area and run about 3000 units in one direction it stops me and says "you cannot travel any further" I'm assuming this is what you're meaning when you say that Starfield lacks "spherical continuous environment ability"

 

So when you scan a planet and it already has some areas that are set to appear, "mining station, fracking station, abandoned facility or outpost" that are always going to be there on that planet. And I do understand the one building listed is the only one that will be there every time and the rest of the locations within that 6000ish unit circular area you are allowed to explore are randomly generated. I'm not sure what the name is for those little 6000ish unit spaces around your landing area, so I'll just call them mini biomes. Is it not possible to create and alter one of those? like having the entirety of Valles Marineris altered is of course out of the question. But is it possible to place one of these little "mini biomes" somewhere along it and just have that 6000ish unit circular space represent it with a big canyon in this particular mini biome with whatever you wanted to add?

 

And as for climbing, yes of course scaling 7km is crazy, but there are some pretty high locations. The mission on mars where you have to get to the top of the antenna for the bounty hunter has you pretty high up. I also have the bad habit of wishful thinking so I have climbed to the top of many towers and communication antennas hoping there would be something at the top.. So I can say from my own experience that big changes in elevation (although it is just from ground level going up, not down) within a mini biome are in some sense possible.

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