Hello guys, on this post I'd like to share some ideas for mods to streamline landings, take offs, (un)boarding startstations and add a planetary aproximation animation to the game to increase immersion so maybe some of this catches the interest of a modder with proper knowledge. Let's start!

Direct Landings and Take Offs

One of the things I find clunky about the game is that to in order to perform some actions, you are required to press a key, lose control of the game to watch an animation, press another key to do another action, lose control of the game again, and then take it back for the next section. This is specially problematic on orbit-surface transitions and on (un)boarding startstations, where you have to press a button to land/dock, and another to get out of the ship/take off.

Let's see the approach R&C Rift Apart took with this, a game without seamless planetary transitions and no space gameplay, just a sci-fi game with different levels as planets:

https://imgur.com/h3bgPj3

Travel goes like this: You press a button and you enter your ship. Once inside, we select where to go and the game takes off, land, and get us out of the ship on a single button press. It is not a tennis match between us and the game just to take off and get to the next part.

How do we translate this to Starfield, a game with a thousand planets, space exploration, cruise mode and grav jumps while retaining the current options? Here is my concept:

Take off:

https://imgur.com/hT4C96T

Landing:

https://imgur.com/IYR4WV3

Boarding:

https://imgur.com/liEqGBG

As you can see on this concept, we can take off directly from the ship's bay and get out of the ship directly from the planet orbit. We can board a startstation directly when we dock.

What came to my mind is a third prompt on the ship's door bay "Space - Take Off", a second one when landing "Space - Land and explore" and a third one when docking and going back to the ship from a startstation. "Space - Board" from space, "Space - Undock" when looking at the startstation door to go back to the ship.

I also added a character walking "animation" instead of popping out on the planet surface. I also think a third prompt is the cleanest option just in case sometimes you actually need to do something on your ship before proceeding to the exploration.

Why? As many of us know, one of the Starfield main problems is how the content is segmented and the amount of loading screens. The purpose of this mod would be to simplify and unify the loading screen that is going to trigger going to space, since the ship on a planet's surface is either a player home or an activator to go to up there, all while retaining immersion and space gameplay that would be lost by directly fast travelling from outside the ship to save on loading screens.

Animated Planetary Aproximation

The second mod that came to my mind is to add an ingame, not prerrendered animation (so we will have a black screen after it anyways) of our ship approaching the planet. Right know, there is a hard black cut as the transition, and I think thats really lazy on Bethesda part. Here is how a complete landing sequence would take place combining this animation and the mod idea above this, using the R&C animation:

https://imgur.com/de8P9lY

I don't know if is feasible to do, but I feel it is more realistic than an SW Outlaws/No Man's Sky approach.

Why? Immersion basically, an animation there would ease the lost of continuity due to the loading screen.

Gimme your thoughts guys, have a good one!