My problem with exploring is that it's too fast. Point the ship at a gas giant 100ls away and a few seconds later beep - You know everything about it. Fly in scan, a few minutes later you have pointed at the nearest bodies, ignored the asteroids and are blasting out to your next system.
Exploration need to be slowed down.
- Should have to go into orbit around each item to be scanned.
- Scanning should take a minimum of 30 seconds, the bigger the item the long the scan time.
- Cash should be awarded not only for the type of planet scanned but which might be found on it
- Asteroids could be hiding useful stuff (derelicts, minerals etc)
- Should have to come out of FSD to scan
Scanning a busy system could take an hours game time. Need to make it so that every potentially scannable item could be a big payout. No more "oh I don't scan asteroids or icy moons"
- There would have to be a lot more potentially interesting things to find while scanning
- Cash rewards would have to be much greater to balance the time taken for the extended scanning.
To explore a system you need to feel like you know it, not just flit in and out.
Also need to be able to filter on the galaxy map unknown systems. Systems which are totally unknown should be shown in red (biggest payout). Known systems green (zero payout), stale systems (not been scanned in a while - medium payout) yellow.
S.
Yes to a lot of this. I realise below Distance says no
But I'd disagree with him.
What I do think is there needs to be "Tomy's My First Exploration" game, which like the current one is very easy - for those who want to dip their toes in it should require very little capital and time investment. As it stands the current point and click version, and the whole idea of First Explorer makes sense in this context.
In this context it should be more like preliminary scouting - finding something that's worth coming back to do a deeper dig in to.
For people who want to make a career out of Exploration there is where ideas like above should step in. Space IS vast and a single solar systems should feel like something that takes a while if you want to do things properly. One system should be able to make a tidy profit after spending time in it - but not all solar systems, maybe every 1 in 20 should actually be worth the effort.
We're nearly 60 years since the launch of the first Satellite and we're still only finding out about the outer reaches of our solar system, let alone our own planet.
I'd suspect in 3300 we'd be a lot better at it, but it still shouldn't take minutes to discover everything we need to know about a solar system and move on.
It's why USSs should be a lot more interesting too - currently their mechanic is boring, when really it should be tied to exploration more tightly - finding interesting rocks (like finding very rare 90-100% gold/palladium for example), old wreckages, abandoned outposts, glimpses of alien life - old and living.
People want a Sim and a Game and at the moment it feels like neither marks have been hit.
Edit: Oh I almost forgot to cover my original point too! In that in doing the above, it should always come with an element of danger! If you spend the effort in scanning down a system - there should be risks to it too to gain the rewards and have an ever-present threat of death.
One way to mitigate the risk too is when you die, if you make your way back to the system right away have a chance of finding your old ship and recovering the data you've already gained so you don't have t start from scratch - would be nice anyway.
