Exploration totally broken

specialsymbol · Jan 20, 2015

Ok, there are two things that simply don't work with exploration:

1st
Ship integrity. My ship integrity went down to 44% after exploring a SINGLE system that had planets at the outer sun, which was 0.17LY away. The loss is some 227000 credits in repairs plus change for the paint.
Are you kidding? That not only never pays off, it does also mean that when I'm up for some serious exploring (for the fun of exploring, NOT TO MAKE CASH) I'll explode after the second or third big system!

2nd
I totally accept that you need to go from planet to planet to scan them. But having the scanner scan for 30 seconds and then some more for analyzing the data? That's simply boring. It doesn't add anything. It's neither adding to realism (because what difference do 30 seconds make) nor does it add to fun (which I frankly expect from a game).

What do you think? Is exploration broken or not?

micky1up · Jan 20, 2015

specialsymbol said:
Ok, there are two things that simply don't work with exploration:

1st
Ship integrity. My ship integrity went down to 44% after exploring a SINGLE system that had planets at the outer sun, which was 0.17LY away. The loss is some 227000 credits in repairs plus change for the paint.
Are you kidding? That not only never pays off, it does also mean that when I'm up for some serious exploring (for the fun of exploring, NOT TO MAKE CASH) I'll explode after the second or third big system!

2nd
I totally accept that you need to go from planet to planet to scan them. But having the scanner scan for 30 seconds and then some more for analyzing the data? That's simply boring. It doesn't add anything. It's neither adding to realism (because what difference do 30 seconds make) nor does it add to fun (which I frankly expect from a game).

What do you think? Is exploration broken or not?

hey exploring is dangerous deal with it

shabbyj · Jan 20, 2015

No, it is not broken as you can do it. It does however need some tweaking.

Firedshot · Jan 20, 2015

I think your ship needed repairing before you left?
Scanning a system is radar or sonar which would quick but seeing what some thing is takes longer. It might be boring but it's a way to balance the money making in the game.

Kayweg · Jan 20, 2015

You don't explode.
I did a 25.000 ly trip through over 1.200 systems and didn't.
Exploring and mining are bare bones, FD acknowledged that.
What we have now isn't the final word.

elaverick · Jan 20, 2015

I'm on my way back (2500ly left) from the galactic core. My hull integrity is at 81%. If you're down to 40 something from one system then you're doing it wrong

Dakron Nova · Jan 20, 2015

So not really totally broken then, in fact probably working as designed at the moment.

But, you feel it could do with some changes.

Belsameth · Jan 20, 2015

Yup. Exploring needs some serious love. They payout, compared to the time and cost, is rather bad. Scanning planets is also about as interesting (and as dangerous) as watching paint dry.

Agony_Aunt · Jan 20, 2015

Exploration is most definitely not broken. There could be some buggy systems which should be reported. Like someone recently reported a planet that was actually half way into its sun.

There is a whole thread dedicated the topic of scan times somewhere over there --->

Taking damage when exploring is a very small risk, and should only happen if you are really careless or stupid... for example, my attempt to see just how close i could get to a neutron star - the answer to which is, not very, and yes it can hurt if you are going too fast.

OnePercent · Jan 20, 2015

needs minor tweaking, not broken, the aim for exploration was to never farm lots and lots of systems, But to land on planets and REALLY explore, thats where you get the payoff, sadly we'll have to wait for more depth to get added for exploration to really become a payoff.

Agony_Aunt · Jan 20, 2015

Belsameth said:
Yup. Exploring needs some serious love. They payout, compared to the time and cost, is rather bad. Scanning planets is also about as interesting (and as dangerous) as watching paint dry.

While i agree exploration needs some love (like many areas of the game) and as we understand, most areas are going to get some love according to announcements, the scanning is not a problem for me. I get a thrill when scanning an interesting world, and look forward to seeing the results. For example, with earthlikes and water worlds, will they have a good balance of oxygen and nitrogen?

If you are scanning rocks... well, that is boring, but its also not really profitable, so don't do it. I don't even bother scanning metallic worlds most of the time. Too much effort flying to them all, when i can be onto the next system looking for more interesting objects.

Payout is ok. Its a low risk occupation. You've just got to learn what is worth scanning and what isn't.

Spar · Jan 20, 2015

Exploring is fine, yes it needs some love but the basics are there. What is totally is Wear and Tear. When W&T exceeds the cost of the Insurance buy back of the ship then something is wrong and FD need to acknowledge that and do something about it.

mollymawk · Jan 20, 2015

Actually watching paint dry can be quite dangerous.. Intoxicating fumes, heavy metals etc

A particularly enthralling paint can keep you there so long you may get muscle pain in neck and back. I find large bean bags are good for those all nighters.

Allant Doran · Jan 20, 2015

Wait, so your HULL was at 44%? Or your ship's ''Wear and Tear'' was? You can ignore Wear and Tear if you're just exploring. As for hull, well, you just seemed to have done something wrong. I can explore many, many systems and not take hull damage.

As for the boredom of it, maybe it's just not your thing? I don't find it any more boring than other games I play, though it's also not the most exciting thing in the world. I just love seeing what kinds of systems I can find. It's got nothing to do with me having a ton of interaction to do.

Then again, I do wonder if a lot of these sort of complaints come from the more modern gaming mindset of ''Why didn't this thing give me Xp / a minigame / something for my trouble''?

scubaian · Jan 20, 2015

I'd recommend you give up with exploring now if it's already annoying you, it gets worse. The scan times maybe irritating - traders don't have to put up with 'realistic' loading and unloading times - so why should explorers have to put up with 10 minutes worth of watching a spinning graphic in order to survey a large system. BUT, this isn't even the most irritating thing. Just wait till you try and sell all that survey booty when you get back

I'm actually pretty happy with the payout as it stands and it's pretty cool playing the riskiest game in town.

R3tCrick3t · Jan 20, 2015

10k ly round trip 72 playing hours 6,8 mil profit (in a freaking python) you wont make the money you make trading but its so much more fun

xondk · Jan 20, 2015

Personally depending on what the technical details are, I think scanning time should be affected by sensor quality, how much I am not sure, but it just kinda makes sense that if you have the best sensors for your ship (highest class and A quality) then your scanning time should be less then if you have the worst, right now only thing sensors seem to do is increase radar range, which is.....limited in effectivenes, since you can at least most of the time see ships far off due to engine trail/light.

specialsymbol · Jan 20, 2015

micky1up said:
hey exploring is dangerous deal with it

That's bull. It means you may travel to the end of the universe to explore - exactly one system. Great.

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Firedshot said:
I think your ship needed repairing before you left?
Scanning a system is radar or sonar which would quick but seeing what some thing is takes longer. It might be boring but it's a way to balance the money making in the game.

Definitely not. My system was all at 100% when I left. I did one (1) jump to the system and explored it, then another jump (a single jump!) out of it. One hour SC for .17 LY (and a little more between for another sun) reduces integrity to 44%.

scubaian · Jan 20, 2015

I've explored dozens of systems on the current jaunt and still at 100% hull. You are doing something wrong.

specialsymbol · Jan 20, 2015

Belsameth said:
Yup. Exploring needs some serious love. They payout, compared to the time and cost, is rather bad. Scanning planets is also about as interesting (and as dangerous) as watching paint dry.

I don't really care about the money. It would be great to see some reward, especially for long range exploration (not only depending on inter-system distance, but also intra-system distances), but I just want it to actually work.
Right now it doesn't work.

That's true, scanning is as interesting as watching paint dry. And as much fun.

Someone mentioned to make the Auto Maintenance Unit more useful by allowing it to repair ship integrity - it would take some time and would only work when out of SC. Fine with me! Make it consume a load of energy then so that you need to turn of the thrusters. That'd be the real thing!
Even better would be if you could refill the AMU by mining the correct metals - that would be even more of an incentive to do some serious exploration, especially of the (right now) worthless asteroid belts. And it would make you truly a deep space explorer.

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scubaian said:
I've explored dozens of systems on the current jaunt and still at 100% hull. You are doing something wrong.

Did you explore big systems or only lucrative ones?