As i said, the focus for Star Citizen is to simulate everything. Its not all about graphical fidelity, but how that details affect gameplay too. You wont have something like boarding ships or managing ships by multiple crews in Elite, their engine and all systems wont do that without serious reworkings.
I read the FAQ of SC (im a backer), but did you read ED's one? In the initial release you will be able to hite NPC crews and later on player crews for larger ships.
Ship wont be made by modules that can be disabled or damaged like in SC, so for example if You board ship in SC and You gun down a module that is responsible for life support You can suffocate rest of the crew, You can also damage this module in combat and in every ship that module will be in different place, because location of such a module has to make sense.
You can target and damage specific sub systems, like cargo hatch, drive, weapons, power distribution, shield generator, life support, power plant. The anacondas, a larger ship in the game has hull damage since alpha, missiles will literally open up its belly open and you can see inside. The cargo will fly out too.
Of course everything on the ship and in the ship changes its weight and its distribution so its affecting flight model.
And this goes for everything, from weapon movement, to engines movements, to flight control systems, landing gear to systems managing stealth systems or shields.
And this kind of details will be used in all interactive object in the environment too.
We'll see in the large scale of the game, they have a long way to go from a tech demo to the actual game. But if ED can model all celestial bodies affecting flight, i dont see why additional mass by the crew members wouldnt affect the flight model.
And everything will be tracked and manage in persistent universe, so in combat You have tons of physics and interaction You will never know about that You have to sync with clients and this why DFM network backend is so complicated.
At this point for both games its too early to tell. But why do i have a feeling that SC mmo side will turn off a LOT of "little" details like you say? Latency will be fucking crazy otherwise.
In Elite You will have just few blocks with preset characteristics as a ships.
Im not sure what you even mean. Customization? Again, check.
And i can assure You that expanding from Elite to SC will much harder than from SC to Elite, because Elite will have to change everything to get it working, from all assets to all physics,
wtf lol
ok sure. in SC they just press the button and its done. SC is entirely crafted and will be more akin to an arena actually even with boundaries. They are going for the cinematic look environment wise, not "simulation". Changing THAT to an actual simulation of celestial bodies, i dont think it'll be easier.
Will you be able to manually fly (not a cutscene) into a planet's atmosphere? And not just to a spaceport, but anywhere on the planet's surface? And eventually even take a walk around a lush forest or whatever is generated? SC needs an entirely new engine for just that, you dont work with models to get this done, from a far away planet to landing on it seamlessly, its done with algorithms and cryengine is not designed for this. I dont see that as the optimal way of doing things.
In the end, im stopping (really) talking about ED here, but cmon, at least check the FAQ a bit.
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