Is Exploration too easy? Galactic center reached already before launch

[Gibbonici]

very good posts here, thank you guys for your input!

i once again have to emphasize that the thread title is misleading
what Zulu did was an achievment and i'm sure it was not easy

this thread is mainly about it being too fast and the involved mechanics being too simplistic

Indeed, and without Zulu's run at the core in gamma we (and more importantly, FD) wouldn't have known any of this until it was far too late. Being realistic, I doubt there's anything FD can do about it before release, but I'd hope that they are considering changes for soon after release.

And as Zulu has said himself, and as anyone who's been on the FGE TS while he was on his trip will agree, it wasn't a walk in the park. It was a real achievement of endurance and grit (I swear at one point SPACE MADNESS was causing him to actually hallucinate ), but the fact remains that if one man can push himself to the core in a week, within a couple of months the greatest mystery in the galaxy will be a well-trod tourist destination. Nobody wants that.

 

[Kernel Kwatz!]

The thing is, provided FD are still going to implement caps on jump drive ranges, the big, vast expedition would widen out naturally due to the need to build up supporting systems. This is still, ultimately the goal though, because, like has already been said, a straight shot to the core misses most of what's out there.

This is a truism though. Obviously the entire universe has not been explored. But the important thing here is the distinct impression that the journey to the centre of the galaxy is representative of any other journey in the galaxy. Sure there will be variations in systems (star types, numbers of system bodies) and astronomical phenomena but unless something changes I don't see how the role of explorer will be attractive in the long run.

I applaud the effort that went into getting to the centre but now I believe that I can stay within my little group of systems and experience just about the same set of astronomical phenomena that anyone else will wherever they are (with rare exceptions like the galactic centre of course).

 

[Toscaner]

I disagree. It's what long-range exploration should be. It should require planning, organisation and teamwork to do successfully, while closer exploration (within say 3000LYs, still a vast, vast area) should be doable with less planning and risk. As the frontier expands due to closer exploration, the more distant regions would become available for the less intensive kind of exploration.

The problem is that even with ED's 400 billions star systems, unless more depth and challenge is brought to the exploration game very soon after launch, the exploration game will be dead within a year as everything worth discovering will have been discovered.

yes, that's my fear, and i think you are very generous with one year, i'd give it a few months tops

 

[Toscaner]

Looks to me they just placed a minimum playable amount of features in the whole exploration mechanic. I mean, even the fuel mechanic is less than it was in FFE. We can't refuel at gas giants. There are no types of fuel - imagine how much more complex the entire exploration activity would be if they just fleshed out fuel mechanics?

-refuel at gas giants; safer, but lower quality hydrogen with impurities. Not all gas giant types are suitable.
-refuel at stars, but at your own peril. None of this "oooh, is it getting hot in here?" - you're skimming the surface of a giant ball of thermonuclear fire! Those are nuclear explosions, trillions of them, going off right there! Sure, nice clean fuel, but do you even dare to contemplate such a thing? That's what refueling at stars should be like. At the very least, make it so you have to chase ejecta (that's actually already there, your scoop ratio goes up if you fly into a prominence).
-fuel refineries; hey, why not. Then give the players the ability to sell purified fuel, or transfer it to other players. There, an extra mining mechanic plus logistics.

Anyone remember military drives? You used to power them with military grade fuel, which was some sort of radioactive material. You know, like the ones you can mine? And refine? How about making it possible to fit powerful military drives that run on beryllium or some such, then you need to actually mine and refine that stuff to power your ship. You get longer ranges, but the fuel source is harder to come by. Choices, choices.

And that's just fuel. And it's not even that hard to code in, aside from gas giant refueling visuals. The rest is literally just changing text strings, conditions and adding a few UI tweaks, mostly based off the existing refinery modules.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -



First, he was not in a proper long range explorer ship. A Cobra is not it. A Cobra with no auto-repair system to boot (he said he forgot to pack one and took the docking computer instead). An Anaconda would shrug off those interdictions and use the bounty credits to light its cigar.

Second, interdictions far beyond inhabited space are a problem in themselves. What are pirates doing in the core, exactly? Waiting for that one exploration ship to come by every hundred years? Not to mention that finding other ships that far out takes the excitement out of the whole experience. It's like exploring a new planet and finding it teeming with bandits... well. I guess you're not really exploring the unknown, are you? Not only is the system obviously already explored, it's actually plagued by pirates.

looks like it.

and yes, fuel mechanics alone would allow for so much more diversity
initially i imagined the fuel system to be more diverse, that you'd have to find certain stars and planets that would allow you to refuel. and you'd always hope for the next system to have such a resource you could collect. now it's just like a gas station in every system.
maybe they should have just made it the other way around. only refueling at brown dwarfs and not at the fusion stars.

 

[Gibbonici]

Looks to me they just placed a minimum playable amount of features in the whole exploration mechanic. I mean, even the fuel mechanic is less than it was in FFE. We can't refuel at gas giants. There are no types of fuel - imagine how much more complex the entire exploration activity would be if they just fleshed out fuel mechanics?

-refuel at gas giants; safer, but lower quality hydrogen with impurities. Not all gas giant types are suitable.
-refuel at stars, but at your own peril. None of this "oooh, is it getting hot in here?" - you're skimming the surface of a giant ball of thermonuclear fire! Those are nuclear explosions, trillions of them, going off right there! Sure, nice clean fuel, but do you even dare to contemplate such a thing? That's what refueling at stars should be like. At the very least, make it so you have to chase ejecta (that's actually already there, your scoop ratio goes up if you fly into a prominence).
-fuel refineries; hey, why not. Then give the players the ability to sell purified fuel, or transfer it to other players. There, an extra mining mechanic plus logistics.

Anyone remember military drives? You used to power them with military grade fuel, which was some sort of radioactive material. You know, like the ones you can mine? And refine? How about making it possible to fit powerful military drives that run on beryllium or some such, then you need to actually mine and refine that stuff to power your ship. You get longer ranges, but the fuel source is harder to come by. Choices, choices.

Great ideas! I'd also like to see some kind of turbulence effects when scooping of stars, especially hot, active ones. It might not be realistic, but it would make star scooping far more involved, not to mention terrifying.

Also, I'm totally into the idea of bringing mining mechanics into exploration. Being able to mine and process certain minerals into fuel substitutes (requiring specialised refinery modules and power plants) is a good idea. it would also be good if we could manufacture various module ammo (such as heat sinks and repair module ammo) from mined resources.

Make it so that one ship isn't able to do everything at once and straight away you've got a cooperative chain working that demands teamwork.

 

[Argon Shadowstar]

Isn't the whole purpose of a public beta/gamma to allow them to gauge this stuff? They've probably already got some changes in mind. Frankly, I would like more science-related stuff to actually interact with in unexplored space, and hidden objects to find in systems. I love exploration, but in the end this is a game. ED is not just Space Engine with another coat of paint. Mechanics are key.

Maybe planet exploration/landing will open up some new opportunities for exploration mechanics. I've always felt that the most interesting thing in space is all those crazy planets.

I do agree that finding NPC ships that far out is really dissapointing. If anything, the only NPC's we should find past a certain distance would be the very rare Thargoid. I would be ok with the pirate population gradually dropping as you get farther from civilized space, but really you should never really see any farther than maybe 1000 parsecs from the core worlds. I guess it's a matter of keeping things interesting, but another mechanic could easily be substituted for random pirate attacks - possibly a mechanic that would actually be challenging to a properly equipped exploration flagship. Pirates hardly are. Maybe anomalies...

 

[Alric]

I doubt there's anything FD can do about it before release, but I'd hope that they are considering changes for soon after release.

While it wouldn't be ideal by any stretch of the imagination, I'd like to see them put in absolutely basic drive degradation for launch even if it makes very long range travel completely impossible to start with. Just a something that wears your drive down by a certain amount per jump. This would put a soft limit on extreme range travel - but in a believable way - until the game is ready for it.

Then there's time post launch to all the features that would let you maintain your drives en-route, along with other things like jump route discovery which would be much more disruptive to add when people are already out there. Meanwhile people could at least be working on gathering the ships and equipment for their voyages once those features are in.

 

[Argon Shadowstar]

While it wouldn't be ideal by any stretch of the imagination, I'd like to see them put in absolutely basic drive degradation for launch even if it makes very long range travel completely impossible to start with. Just a something that wears your drive down by a certain amount per jump. This would put a soft limit on extreme range travel - but in a believable way - until the game is ready for it.

Then there's time post launch to all the features that would let you maintain your drives en-route, along with other things like jump route discovery which would be much more disruptive to add when people are already out there. Meanwhile people could at least be working on gathering the ships and equipment for their voyages once those features are in.

I agree, I actually liked the random failures you'd sometimes get in Frontier/FFE if you let your ship get too worn down. It was a nice challenge. Apparently there was even the possibility of random failures occuring if you had your maintenance done by shoddy engineers (low tech ports?). With this kind of system, if the quality of service at the backwater stations outside of civilized space was bad, equipment failures would be a common occurence for explorers. Perhaps there would be a way to service your ship yourself (better quality but time consuming), but if not, out on the frontier you wouldn't necessarily have a multitude of ports to choose from for your work. You might just have to put your ship in the hands of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Mechanic.

Of course, a feature like this isn't fun unless you have choices. If you have high-quality parts to begin with, they'd be less likely to break-down anyway. And I would lobby for giving the player the option to service some parts manually. I think one of the devs hinted at this sort of thing being a possibility when they add in the ability to get out of your ship. Of course, if you're terrible at doing that kind of work (either a skill stat or make it a minigame), you might just have to go with the local yokels for your repair work. But hey - maybe you'll end up at a port with a real ace of a tech who can give you a deluxe fixup that'll keep you going all the way to the core.

To be honest, I never was able to determine how much of a gameable difference there was in the service quality in Frontier/FFE. I just knew that on a few long trips, I had my scanner or the occasional thruster fail. That made the rest of the trip a bit more interesting. Try landing on a high-gravity world with a broken bottom thruster. The damage I sustained from landing was more expensive to fix than the damned thruster.

 

[Johnny Kelso]

Just spotted this thread, and I have been ranting about this subject on another thread

I won't repeat myself...but I don't think exploration should be about "being first to get there". It should be about the journey and not the destination. It should be about adventure and discovery, not jump, jump, jump (x100s)...got there.

 

[HoshiQaVam]

There's a pretty big difference behind actually exploring and just trying to reach a specific system like this guy has done. He's basically just jumped from system to system, only stopping to refuel and not actually exploring the majority of the systems he travels too. That means the only dangers are obviously only going to be heat damage from refuelling and being incredibly unlucky with interdictions around the star (both of which he did have issues with and almost died on numerous occasions).

I don't think it's particularly fair to use that as an example of how difficult exploration is (or isn't) especially considering it was achieved by using a specialised exploration cobra. To do that for most players would obviously require earning enough cash to get a ship with decent jump range before they can even consider attempting it.

Either way, it only becomes "exploring" when he's reached the centre and actually has a look around.

 

[Argon Shadowstar]

There's a pretty big difference behind actually exploring and just trying to reach a specific system like this guy has done. He's basically just jumped from system to system, only stopping to refuel and not actually exploring the majority of the systems he travels too. That means the only dangers are obviously only going to be heat damage from refuelling and being incredibly unlucky with interdictions around the star (both of which he did have issues with and almost died on numerous occasions).

I don't think it's particularly fair to use that as an example of how difficult exploration is (or isn't) especially considering it was achieved by using a specialised exploration cobra. To do that for most players would obviously require earning enough cash to get a ship with decent jump range before they can even consider attempting it.

Either way, it only becomes "exploring" when he's reached the centre and actually has a look around.

Exactly. He has only just begun to explore. When I watched that video, the first thing I looked for when he jumped into Sagittarius A* was clues about planets and other objects that might be hiding nearby. I think most of us know by now how to spot undiscovered planets in systems. That's what exploring should be about. You can land a plane in the Amazon, but you haven't discovered anything until you actually go into the jungle, have a look around, and manage to find something actually noteworthy.

 

[azdour]

I really hope that as an explorer that being in a group is optional in going out into unexplored areas. For me I love exploring and sure it demands planning, but have to be in a group - no thanks - the game is designed around one ship and its pilot. Groups are nice but please do not constrain us.

 

[Gibbonici]

While it wouldn't be ideal by any stretch of the imagination, I'd like to see them put in absolutely basic drive degradation for launch even if it makes very long range travel completely impossible to start with. Just a something that wears your drive down by a certain amount per jump. This would put a soft limit on extreme range travel - but in a believable way - until the game is ready for it.

Yeah, I'd agree on that. It's a lot better to make something impossible at release and then add stuff that makes it possible after release, than to release it as it is and nerf it after the fact.

You can't take things away from gamers as they'll just rage long and hard and take it as some kind of personal vendetta against them. It's better to start out nerfed and add possibilities over time.

 

[_Flin_]

I really don't see the problem at all.

So one dedicated player (that by the way traded over 7 million credits BEFORE taking off) gets to the galactic center, in a ship with 77% hull and a half broken canopy. He managed to not crash his ship.

Will Zion Ravescene get back? We will see.

He jumped back to back to back and fired up his Advanced Discovery Scanner.
Gamma is 10 days old, or 240 hours. I don't know how many hours he played. I guess around 100 - 150.
So why shouldn't anyone reach the galactic centre in 100 hours?

Of course Sagittarius A* would be the main target on the dedicated explorer's list. Others - like VY Canis Majoris - have also been visited.
I am rather surprised that it took so long. I was counting for people to reach it in 5 days.

Exploration is easy, although time consuming. Traveling is easy. Advanced Discovery Scanners are easy.
The biggest turn down currently is that there really isn't anything to find out there. Apart from astronomical objects, which features may be cool, or just be a few numbers on a sheet.

EDIT: To all that want limited exploration: Why the heck should I have 400 Billion stars when I cant visit them?

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Just spotted this thread, and I have been ranting about this subject on another thread

I won't repeat myself...but I don't think exploration should be about "being first to get there". It should be about the journey and not the destination. It should be about adventure and discovery, not jump, jump, jump (x100s)...got there.

This is what it "should" be for you.

You, on your own, can have goals and journeys and preferences all you like.

Others will have other goals and hunt other achievements. Please refrain from making your personal preferences mandatory for everyone, by having a dogmatic stance on what exploration should be.

It's like saying "car racing should be in a car that is lighter than a ton", when racing can happen with Nascars, formula 1, or even trucks.

 

[exioce]

While I applaud the achievement, I echo the huge amount of disappointment evident here that the exploration mechanics are so very underdeveloped. Additionally, seeing a novice Eagle already at the galactic core was the dumbest of dumb things. It probably wasn't even equipped with a fuel scoop, so how it got there is a mystery*

*Not really a mystery: poor code

 

[Argon Shadowstar]

While I applaud the achievement, I echo the huge amount of disappointment evident here that the exploration mechanics are so very underdeveloped. Additionally, seeing a novice Eagle already at the galactic core was the dumbest of dumb things. It probably wasn't even equipped with a fuel scoop, so how it got there is a mystery*

*Not really a mystery: poor code

I would be surprised if they just left it the way it is right now. Braben has always loved exploration and astronomy, it's evident in every game he's ever made. Ok, so there's a lack of content right now, but looking at most MMO's, historically they are not generally very content-rich during pre-release. Most MMO's don't get the majority of their content until after release. Whether ED is actually an MMO or not is arguable - it seems to be one of several games that's falling into this new Pseudo-MMO niche that seems to be developing. But whatever it is, I think it's reasonable to expect exploration to become more interesting as time goes on. I should mention that Exploration is still a relatively new feature as well.

 

[exioce]

I would be surprised if they just left it the way it is right now. Braben has always loved exploration and astronomy, it's evident in every game he's ever made. Ok, so there's a lack of content right now, but looking at most MMO's, historically they are not generally very content-rich during pre-release. Most MMO's don't get the majority of their content until after release. Whether ED is actually an MMO or not is arguable - it seems to be one of several games that's falling into this new Pseudo-MMO niche that seems to be developing. But whatever it is, I think it's reasonable to expect exploration to become more interesting as time goes on. I should mention that Exploration is still a relatively new feature as well.

Question is, should we accept the current trend among developers to release clearly unfinished underdeveloped games as The Way Of Things or should we actively and vocally push against that trend? Their whole "We'll fix/develop the game later" reasoning doesn't sit well with me because often-times that "later" is several months or years down the line, and sometimes "later" doesn't come at all.

ED will be released in two weeks. It will have many enjoyable aspects. But it will be a 50% complete product at release, optimistically.

 

[Gibbonici]

Question is, should we accept the current trend among developers to release clearly unfinished underdeveloped games as The Way Of Things or should we actively and vocally push against that trend? Their whole "We'll fix/develop the game later" reasoning doesn't sit well with me because often-times that "later" is several months or years down the line, and sometimes "later" doesn't come at all.

It is the way of things now that PCs are so powerful, games are so ambitious and budgets are so stretched. Unless we want to be paying £70 at the gate for our games (and banks/investors want to stump up cash on that premise), this is the only way niche games like this are ever going to be made.

But this is for a different thread.

 

[rootsrat]

Disclaimer: I did not read the linked thread (want to avoid spoilers). However in general I agree with the statement that "Getting From A To B ≠ Exploring". It is my understanding that someone set off from populated systems and reached the center of the galaxy. Well, they've only reached a system. Galaxy center is not 1 system, it's thousands of systems.

To actually explore the center of the galaxy would take years with the current mechanic. So no, I do not agree that exploring is too easy. Getting from point A to B may be easy if you have a ship with fuel scoop and all you do is system hopping, but that's not what the game is all about

 

[JosiahD]

Great ideas! I'd also like to see some kind of turbulence effects when scooping of stars, especially hot, active ones. It might not be realistic, but it would make star scooping far more involved, not to mention terrifying.

Also, I'm totally into the idea of bringing mining mechanics into exploration. Being able to mine and process certain minerals into fuel substitutes (requiring specialised refinery modules and power plants) is a good idea. it would also be good if we could manufacture various module ammo (such as heat sinks and repair module ammo) from mined resources.

Make it so that one ship isn't able to do everything at once and straight away you've got a cooperative chain working that demands teamwork.

While I get your desire for teamwork from the perspective of the great expedition, the last thing we need is for exploration into the far reaches to DEMAND, or require, it. The last thing we need killed off here is the solo explorer. Sure, make things easier maybe if you explore as a group, supporting each other with refuelling etc, but DON'T demand that teamwork is a neccessity for exploration thanks. The OP has shown that solo exploration can be very satisfying and rewarding and while I doubt I will venture so far in my exploration efforts, I for one don't want to feel it's not viable without the support of a team behind me.