new system map joy :D

tihkal

tihkal
I am really liking the new system map changes. Exploration no longer feels like hard work. This system would a have been a nightmare to explore in 1.2. Only gripe is you loose ur galatic map plotted course but its a easy fix if u make a note of it and have it ready to paste in before you jump. Good stuff now all we need is something to find other than balls of rock/gas/plasma and i would be really happy not really expecting that in the current build been here since alpha no rush just fluff really. Really struggled with exploring at first but then i remember Iain M Banks and now working my way through all of his audiobooks while i explore and loving it. (Currenty 14k away from civilized space on my way to the core and beyond in a A graded combat specced Anaconda 20ly jump range its gonna take a while no rush really want to be Elite when i get back if the scanner gods are kind :p

CMDR Stoffel piloting the "Cosmic Stoor!!!"

is there a Explorer VOIP server if not feel free to add me get boring in the black :p

explorecore.jpg

Combat - Competent
Trade - Elite
Exploration - Pathfinder
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
dognosh said:
kidding, but some of our super explorers will grunt at your statement :D
Click to expand...

I'm a little cool about what I imagine (my PP upgrade is taking a long time) this new mechanic to be ..
I really really hope future patches will limit the ability to target from system map ONLY to previously discovered objects.

Being able to click system map objects in populated / explored / discovered systems, is absolutely fine by me ..
Making total sense, it will help a with navigating CORE systems, trading, mining .. no problem.

My problem is that for unexplored systems, there's now no search in finding that far away dwarf star that, up until now, you knew was there but had to discover from orbit lines and flying up out of the periapsis plane ..

No matter how many times I do it, seeing that "wandering star" for the first time is for me a special moment, mostly because it took effort to locate (is that really the one? adjust trajectory to confirm, YES it's moving against the background, the galaxy suddenly feels very three dimensional .. take aim .. will there be other bodies in orbit ..?)

Now there's no need for any of that .. fly in, click, point, wait and it's yours. I pray this is not the case (but as mentioned haven't tested it yet) and imposing it yourself (NOT targeting from map, deliberately) is just too geeky for a dangerous Commander to bother with. Why bother, all the challenge has been taken away.

If people want to farm discoveries, they could (in previous builds) only need to drop into the system, discovery scan, log 99% of the objects, warp directly out again, leaving those far off objects for other people to discover perhaps. But I think it removes a lot of interest (and fun) from OBJECT EXPLORATION, to make the position of those far away objects totally automatic (pure point and click).

I really really hope future patches will limit the ability to target from system map only to previously discovered objects.
 

CMDR DoubleSkulls

C
I'm sorry but it requires an enormous amount of suspension of disbelief that the computer navigation systems can identity all the bodies in a system, their gravity, orbital periods etc. but not be able to assist in navigation to them. We have after all just spent 1.5m CR on a state of the art system scanner. That it doesn't integrate with navigation, in a thousand years time, would be weird.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
CMDR DoubleSkulls said:
I'm sorry but it requires an enormous amount of suspension of disbelief that the computer navigation systems can identity all the bodies in a system, their gravity, orbital periods etc. but not be able to assist in navigation to them. We have after all just spent 1.5m CR on a state of the art system scanner. That it doesn't integrate with navigation, in a thousand years time, would be weird.
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While this is true, there is also the other side, that this is a game and (imo) there should be SOME mechanic to exploration other that "just" going there. The previous system wasn't ideal .. it told you there was a distant Star (and what it was) .. but if you travelled there, just occasionally you'd find small planets in orbit. They would add themselves to the system map, as you found them .. for me, that's a proper discovery.

In the ideal world, an unexplored system would show a body with a question mark, beyond range of the discovery scanner. It's then up to the explorer to discover position and identify that object. If the scan told you that the primary star is under gravitational influence of SOMETHING (unknown that, more believably then, can't be targetted by computer) that would cover BOTH (the gameplay and the realistic sim) aspects?
 
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Kancro Vantas

Kancro Vantas
Well, like it or not...the orrery view for system map is still on the list and developing. That one will give us a 3D rendition of the system including our position....so get ready to have it even easier in the next few months.

I never had a problem spotting planets from the nav, and if selecting them from system will cancel my long route, I dont think I will be using this much.

Maybe when I go back to civilization this feature will help me. For the time being, it really doesnt. But i get how people can get "lost in space". :D
 

CMDR DoubleSkulls

C
Winterwalker said:
While this is true, there is also the other side, that this is a game and (imo) there should be SOME mechanic to exploration other that "just" going there. The previous system wasn't ideal .. it told you there was a distant Star (and what it was) .. but if you travelled there, just occasionally you'd find small planets in orbit. They would add themselves to the system map, as you found them .. for me, that's a proper discovery.

In the ideal world, an unexplored system would show a body with a question mark, beyond range of the discovery scanner. It's then up to the explorer to discover position and identify that object. If the scan told you that the primary star is under gravitational influence of SOMETHING (unknown that, more believably then, can't be targetted by computer) that would cover BOTH (the gameplay and the realistic sim) aspects?
Click to expand...

I think we agree that we'd like there to be more than there is today, but for me that's about making the information uncovered by the ADS less reliable for determining which bodies to scan. Making travelling to a given body more or less complex doesn't make a big difference IMO, and its just annoying others who benefit. For the vegans it won't matter - they want scan everything. For the carnivores/omnivores (which I'd consider myself most of the time) I think making it less easy to work out what are the potential high value bodies would be good.

So what I'd propose is that the ADS does not provide the detailed images and sounds it does today. The information should be the mass, radius, orbital period and semi-major axis. It should show a standard image and sound for stellar objects, another one for all the gas giants/water giants and another one for all the rest (MR/HMC/WW/AW/ELW/IW/RWs and RIWs). Then, as an explorer, if you want to cherry pick you'll need to look at the type of object, the semi-major axis, the type/heat of the star etc. to work out if its likely to be a high value body. Then the scan would reveal all the other information.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
CMDR DoubleSkulls said:
So what I'd propose is that the ADS does not provide the detailed images and sounds it does today. The information should be the mass, radius, orbital period and semi-major axis. It should show a standard image and sound for stellar objects, another one for all the gas giants/water giants and another one for all the rest (MR/HMC/WW/AW/ELW/IW/RWs and RIWs). Then, as an explorer, if you want to cherry pick you'll need to look at the type of object, the semi-major axis, the type/heat of the star etc. to work out if its likely to be a high value body. Then the scan would reveal all the other information.
Click to expand...

Yes, we do agree. And hopefully after all the love, combat (and mining) just got from power play, exploration will get a little bit of attention too now. DBOBE is reputed to be an astronomy nut and 99% of the PG galaxy is COMPLETELY undiscovered, even now.

Orrery would be nice to have in game, esp. if treated similar to what I'd propose for local map, and only discovered objects shown (even if discovered by other people). Orrery won't make much diff to the type of play I'm suggesting, because you won't be able to do detailed navigation from an orrery that omits undiscovered objects, and even then navigation can't be as fine tuned, as you need to be in the cockpit, to find planet / stars transiting .. by this method as follows;

[video=youtube;itkIhPRxAPQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itkIhPRxAPQ[/video]

The moment when you spot the planet (without using a scanner, eg. it's out of range) for the first time really is kind of beautiful ..
Please do try it, once ...
 

Galten75

Galten75
Winterwalker said:
Yes, we do agree. And hopefully after all the love, combat (and mining) just got from power play, exploration will get a little bit of attention too now. DBOBE is reputed to be an astronomy nut and 99% of the PG galaxy is COMPLETELY undiscovered, even now.

Orrery would be nice to have in game, esp. if treated similar to what I'd propose for local map, and only discovered objects shown (even if discovered by other people). Orrery won't make much diff to the type of play I'm suggesting, because you won't be able to do detailed navigation from an orrery that omits undiscovered objects, and even then navigation can't be as fine tuned, as you need to be in the cockpit, to find planet / stars transiting .. by this method as follows;

The moment when you spot the planet (without using a scanner, eg. it's out of range) for the first time really is kind of beautiful ..
Please do try it, once ...
Click to expand...

When I started exploring I only had the Intermediate DS and had to manually figure out most of the systems I explored to get to all the planets and stars. Fine the first few hundred systems but got extremly time consuming and repetetive after a while. I said it a before. Add new and interesting stuff to explore instead of changing the bread and butter that most of us will do thousands and thousands of times during our gaming.

// G
 

CMDR DoubleSkulls

C
TBH that does not feel like its going to be repeatable enjoyment. If you did that in a system it feels like it would take hours for even relatively dull systems. If you want to do that fine, there is nothing that stops you exploring with an intermediate scanner. Just please don't try to impose that on me!

One of the great things about exploration is that there is no right way, and the galaxy is so vast whatever anyone does for exploration is unlikely to impair anyone else's enjoyment. In the 1500 systems I've been through, I've probably had less than 10 with tags on since I got outside the bubble, and one of those was Sag A.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
Galten75 said:
When I started exploring I only had the Intermediate DS and had to manually figure out most of the systems I explored to get to all the planets and stars. Fine the first few hundred systems but got extremly time consuming and repetetive after a while. I said it a before. Add new and interesting stuff to explore instead of changing the bread and butter that most of us will do thousands and thousands of times during our gaming.

// G
Click to expand...

Yup ..

Docking is similar in a way .. you dock several hundred times, and then a docking computer which you can hopefully now afford, makes sense. You're right as you see the game differently to me, after your 100's of hours of gameplay .. Although I'm a kickstart backer, I'm playing a week.

I think it's good to have both perspectives, and allow detailed exploration to a new save, and also, allow the more advanced commander (save slot) to invest in secialist modules, speeding up the exploration process.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
CMDR DoubleSkulls said:
One of the great things about exploration is that there is no right way
Click to expand...

I think you hit the nail on the head. With exploring as newly implement (powerplay) there now IS now a right way .. that's point and click.

It's a step backwards for the game as a whole in my view to make that freely available in all (unexplored) systems. The new mechanic (which is a form of advanced navigation, from system map) could almost have required a module (not quite but almost) and reminds me of satnav .. the essentil skill, needed to be a good pilot, gives way to blind trust in the tech (fine unless the tech breaks down ... as it does, see number 6!).

I suggest the same point. As you're an advanced player you might not want to search for bodies manually any more, and I understand that 100% .. From now on though, any noob to the game will never have the same experience as you did, finding planets without scanner, they'll just point and click (As a result, they won't be as skilled, and won't be such a worthy opponent .. or ally)


edit addition: losing route doesn't encourage (skilled) manual exploration as, likely as not, you're on a more or less random heading, if looking for unexplored space .. losing route data is just a pain in proverbial (and doesn't make immersive sense either, in terms of ; my ship computer can only remember one thing at once)
 
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Orange Sheets

Orange Sheets
Not utilizing my flame thrower or anything like that, I just gotta ask that why the said system woudl have been nightmare to explore? I mean, only one belt and even that is near its' sun. Those small high-metal contents are effortless to pick off the belt and all the rest can be easily deducted from the side panel ('1').

If you intend to scan everything, that is. Otherwise the main stars valuables are easily picked from side panel list (3rd and 5th). Flying close to the B-sun, the terraforming candidates are a binary and possible the one with third longest distance from B.

If on the other hand one wants to pick the planets from the systems menu, then maybe one from the A-sun while checking the map first time and then one from the B-sun while flying the distance (if longer that 2000ls'). And this because on average it takes just too much time to get the map data from servers to be able to effectively pick targets from there.

As I see this, this new feature in system map is purely for cherry picking while hauling for distance in medium pace.

tihkal said:
I am really liking the new system map changes. Exploration no longer feels like hard work. This system would a have been a nightmare to explore in 1.2.
Click to expand...
 

Zeeman

Zeeman
dognosh said:
Oh dear, get ready for flames as soon as you said :



kidding, but some of our super explorers will grunt at your statement :D
Click to expand...

I actually did kind of enjoy working out which planets to go to based on the orbit lines. Still, kinda cool.

Ziggy Starduster said:
Yeah.

System map becomes a chore to operate and the galaxy map, which was readable in a blink of an eye has become a squintfest
Click to expand...


Oh good, I thought it was just my eyes failing me.
Z...
 
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