Could we ever see open-air landing pads on Area 18? It seems like a bit of a waste to have all that flat space around the ports that's clearly marked for ships to land and take off from, yet not be able to land in those spaces.
TL;DROpen-air pads are mostly meant for AI traffic, but some locations could have them as costly premium parking where the ship stays and isn't safe like in a hangar; it's left open.
If you look at the landing zones, specifically the spaceports, a lot of the landing pads and stuff you see, it's meant to be for AI traffic, because we do want to have this movement of all kinds of ships coming and going. Most places are a little static at the moment. So many of those pads would be used for that. In the end, when it comes to landing for the players, we do spawn our ships in and out, and we ideally don't want to have them just pop out of existence. So it could be that in some locations we do have landing pads, but it's like premium parking, because your ship is going to stay there. It's not going to despawn. You're going to pay quite a bit of money because you're literally occupying one of those magic 42 numbers that exist, right?
It's also about the safety, right? In a hangar, you're in the hangar, the door closes, you're safe. Whereas if you land on a pad, you've got to lock your ship, and it's not going to despawn, like Andreas said. It's going to stay there, so someone might do whatever they want to do with it. So it's down to the player, really.