Exploration Overhaul: Why Mecahnics is more important than Content

[Ziljan]

In every exploration request thread I see the top priority people have is merely asking for more varied stuff to see in the Galaxy. While I think this a good idea in principle, I also see that this kind of improvement focus won't solve the fundamental flaws of exploration:

2 Fundamental Problems:

A) scanning is as fun as watching snails race at a dentist's waiting room
B) there is no structure or cohesion of exploration into the existing economy or into power play mechanics.

So what would ED look like with new/varied exploration content? The same only slightly less samey:

NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS: Since there will always be a finite number of unique objects, simply having more objects in the galaxy only increases the number of things for people to get bored of looking at.

MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS: New items won't change the way interact with them, we'll still be passively scanning them while watching Netflix or reading a book. Occasionally pausing to stifle a yawn.

TWO MANY NEEDLES IN TOO MUCH HAY: The problem with adding unique content is that ther are 400 billion star systems. Who will ever find it? How many will ever see it? You could simply add that same content to enough systems so that people will find it more regularly, but then it is no longer unique, and finding it the 2nd time will cheapen the first experience.


My Solution:

1) Make exploration meaningful and integral to the ED economy by:

-adding missions that involve real exploration, such as surveying for a mining company, locating sources of specific gas reserves in Gas Giants or terrestrial atmospheres, or simply helping a minor faction locate a nearby unclaimed ELW. Etc etc
-have exploration data add Merits for systems that are within the power borders of any of the major factions, eg this finally would give a practical reason to expand your sphere of influence!
-there are many ways to incorporate exploration, yet FD only has fetch missions for explorers above a certain rank which is a travesty!!!

2) Make scanning fun!!

-add new kind of scanners and limpets that give more military and commercial intel that can be sold to different types of groups for different types of rewards (CR, Merit, Influence, etc)
-change the scanning mechanic so that your skill at scanning determines the amount of reward you get. This can be done in a number of ways such as a mini-game, doing a orbit around a planet, requiring better aim, or closer range, requiring better passive lighting such as scanning the brighter side of the planet, subtracting spurious signal sources to get a cleaner signal, etc


Until the core mechanic of exploration is repaired, then simply adding more types of distant meaningless spheres to the galaxy zoo won't make exploring better.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Don't treat it like a this or that equation. One needs the other. Proper mechanics without varied content is just as rotten as Varied content without proper mechanics.

 

[Roqinn]

I agree some things need to change. But, how would you change scanning to be interesting? I am mean all you have to do is target an object and wait. As for the joining of exploration into PP, they could have missions to explore systems to find good candidates for new bases, but that is just exploring with a possible time limit to turn the mission in.
So, I'm good at pointing out the flaws or hard points and less good at finding creative ideas most of the time. =/

I agree with Ziggy that one needs the other.

 

[Ziljan]

Don't treat it like a this or that equation. One needs the other. Proper mechanics without varied content is just as rotten as Varied content without proper mechanics.

Oh I definitely agree that the game needs more content. And I say as much above. However, the number of different objects will always be limited, and the human brain can detect patterns in even complex signals and get bored. This is a flaw of PG, that it can only create within a rule set. Creating a rule set that is more complex than the human minds ability to perceive the pattern is a HUGE ask from a video game. And even if it worked, we'd be stuck with the problem of the Galaxy being beyond human comprension and people would complain that exploring was suddenly too difficult and too random. Some would love it, most would hate it. Like Jazz or Bach.

So having more content is a balance between decipherable gameplay and organic depth/breadth.

Meanwhile, having deeper exploration mechanics that tie into the existing game is a no brainier that will help everyone, even non explorers. Yet the focus for most exploration posts seems to be on new content. I want new content as much as anyone, but I think that prioritizing things like comets and accretion disks is a dead end dream. What we need is a reason to care about these items (and every other currently existing celestial body) after the shiney new paint dries off. We need to interact with these objects in way that really matter and compel us to keep exploring even systems that have been name-tagged to hell and back.

- - - Updated - - -

how would you change scanning to be interesting?

Read section 2 of my solution.

 

[Leper Messiah]

Gotta agree that scanning needs a major rethink, a current pet peev of mine. Better missions would be cool and the extra content too as mentioned.

 

[Ulysses_W]

Once again, I have to agree with Ziggy. But, I'm not going to rep him (again) because he might think I'm stalking him or summink.

 

[b0rg9]

I like the idea of creating a purpose for scanning.

For instance, currently I have been going out of my way to the blue/white and white stars (A, B, O...) looking for "Metal Rich" planets. In my own narrative in my head, I am doing this because these would be the best for metal resources for future stations, etc. It would be wonderful to actually have this in the game, so that if I accepted a mission that favored finding these type planets before embarking, I would have a purpose other than, "Lets go over here -- or maybe over here -- and find stuff until I'm tired of finding stuff".

 

[Sapient6]

TWO MANY NEEDLES IN TOO MUCH HAY: The problem with adding unique content is that ther are 400 billion star systems. Who will ever find it? How many will ever see it? You could simply add that same content to enough systems so that people will find it more regularly, but then it is no longer unique, and finding it the 2nd time will cheapen the first experience.

Sort of tangential, but supposing that FD had added some unique things to find on day one: let's take an absurdly high number of things, say 10,000 unique things to be discovered. 10,000 is a pretty small number in a 400 billion star galaxy, but unique things are unique things and require some hand-crafting, so really that's a huge number. So if they had done this and then hid them around the galaxy, the most likely result would be identical to our current experience: nobody ever ever finds any unique things.

I know that's along the lines of what you were saying, but I felt it could bear a little more contemplation about what the size of that particular problem is. The only way to get that Unique Thing count high enough for it to be likely for a player to some day see one of the unique things is to have the unique things be things that are procedurally generated. That sounds fine until you consider that the result of that is likely to be about as unique as Diablo style loot.

-change the scanning mechanic so that your skill at scanning determines the amount of reward you get. This can be done in a number of ways such as a mini-game, doing a orbit around a planet, requiring better aim, or closer range, requiring better passive lighting such as scanning the brighter side of the planet, subtracting spurious signal sources to get a cleaner signal, etc

While I would very much like to see scanning become a more engaging process, I think any approach that felt like a mini-game would actually make things worse. As would any approach that was overly fiddly or taxing.


Keeping in mind just how much surface scanning explorers can end up doing in the course of a single session, the worst possible outcome would be for explorers to decide not to scan things because they are bored to death of the scanning process. I mean, sure, we're there right now, but right now WE CAN LOOK AWAY. Forcing us to do something tedious and penalizing us if we're not paying 100% attention to that tedious thing would be a bad direction to go in.


I think the answer might be actually be to improve the visual representation of surface scanning.


Pop up a close-up view of the object with some sort of scannery-looking thing going on, while next to the close-up view of the object we see details of the object being filled out (the same details that end up in the system view afterward).


This approach is still ignorable, but it adds something. For one thing, because we are penalized for flying within visual range of stellar bodies this will give us a little more sense of "exploration". Meanwhile, if we're just BORED OF IT, we can do whatever side activity we want (for me: scanning is when I fill out my notes on the system I'm in and the last thing I scanned).

 

[iain666]

Something more involved and related to scanning could add something - but (for reasons Sapient6 mentions) I would hate to see it become all of scanning. Maybe the DSS could occasionally ping you an 'anomaly detected' message that required you to do the next level of scanning if you wanted to find out what it was (and it might reveal something worth extra credits or just a varied enough list of interesting things that you can think 'cool' a few hundred times before you get bored with it), or perhaps the bonus payout on a terraforming candidate requires a second level of scanning to identify prime landing sites for the initial expedition or some such and that is some kind of mini-game type thing.

I struggle to see how much it can be generally integrated with PP or the wider economy. Exploration specific missions to turn in particular types of data on the fringes of the bubble or unpopulated systems within it, yes I can buy that. A determination that there is or is not an earth like planet in some system 38,000ly from the nearest inhabited system? I really don't see how that can plausibly have an effect on what's happening day to day in populated space.

 

[Gut Rumble]

Why scan at all.......Just fly around the galaxy looking at beautiful things and chilling out . take screenshots like holiday snaps.
.
But if your going to make it a job....well then

 

[Oopsie Daisy]

It would be nice if there was a little more to exploration than simply honking and only bothering to scan high valued objects. But isn't that all we really ever do in the real world? Head out to somewhere unknown, look around, pay special interest in only certain things, make a map, keep a log, and move on? But the ADS does seem like a cop-out to me.

 

[CMDR AKIRA MASAKARI]

I think more mechanics are required too, and they should invilve some skill like a minigame or piloting skills. I hope something will be introduced with lvl 3 scans or "penetrative scans" (I didn't invent the name).

But also better visuals and variety are needed. There are only a couple of models for nebulae, but in reality they can have infinite shapes. And those black holes scream for some visual effect and some danger. Junst to make few examples.

As it is now honestly exploration in itself is super boring and grindy, and nothing is appealing after the first few 1000 system visited. And going far requires only the patience to witstand the grind. The only reason that keeps me going is all the metagame in this very forum, and the projects like erimus mapping. We are even forced to copy data in excell sheets if we want to keep it, becouse the ingame way of handling data and the map itself is obscure at best.

Exploration really needs some love and quick, otherwise only a bunch of,people obsessed with astronomy will stand in the long run.

 

[iain666]

Why scan at all.......Just fly around the galaxy looking at beautiful things and chilling out . take screenshots like holiday snaps.
.
But if your going to make it a job....well then

If you don't scan you won't know if it's a water world or an earth like, or just one of them pesky blue HMCs...

(plus you know, credits. They're not desperately important but if we're not going to go trading we do need to accumulate some for ship repairs and upgrades)

 

[Ziljan]

Sort of tangential, but supposing that FD had added some unique things to find on day one: let's take an absurdly high number of things, say 10,000 unique things to be discovered. 10,000 is a pretty small number in a 400 billion star galaxy, but unique things are unique things and require some hand-crafting, so really that's a huge number. So if they had done this and then hid them around the galaxy, the most likely result would be identical to our current experience: nobody ever ever finds any unique things.

I know that's along the lines of what you were saying, but I felt it could bear a little more contemplation about what the size of that particular problem is. The only way to get that Unique Thing count high enough for it to be likely for a player to some day see one of the unique things is to have the unique things be things that are procedurally generated. That sounds fine until you consider that the result of that is likely to be about as unique as Diablo style loot.



While I would very much like to see scanning become a more engaging process, I think any approach that felt like a mini-game would actually make things worse. As would any approach that was overly fiddly or taxing.


Keeping in mind just how much surface scanning explorers can end up doing in the course of a single session, the worst possible outcome would be for explorers to decide not to scan things because they are bored to death of the scanning process. I mean, sure, we're there right now, but right now WE CAN LOOK AWAY. Forcing us to do something tedious and penalizing us if we're not paying 100% attention to that tedious thing would be a bad direction to go in.


I think the answer might be actually be to improve the visual representation of surface scanning.


Pop up a close-up view of the object with some sort of scannery-looking thing going on, while next to the close-up view of the object we see details of the object being filled out (the same details that end up in the system view afterward).


This approach is still ignorable, but it adds something. For one thing, because we are penalized for flying within visual range of stellar bodies this will give us a little more sense of "exploration". Meanwhile, if we're just BORED OF IT, we can do whatever side activity we want (for me: scanning is when I fill out my notes on the system I'm in and the last thing I scanned).

Nice post, and I like your idea of enhancing the scanning mechanic, and this sounds like one of the best passive scan ideas I've heard. Just to clarify, if there was a so-called "mini-game" for scanning as well, I think it should be in addition to the current scanning mechanic but not replace it. I did offer other solutions besides a mini-game, and non of them would require any more constant attention than we already give. They might require better angling for better lighting of your target by the parent star, or some kind of interaction with the scanning results. But all of it should either be optional or an engaging addition to the current gameplay without any penalties (only enhancements) and all at what ever pace the explorer decided to set for themselves. Ideally, any new scanning mechanic would tie into specific missions so that it would be somewhat different from normal exploration and therefore not tedious. If the new mechanic became more popular than the old one, then maybe we could decide whether to replace the old one entirely.

If I had my way, a deep surface scan would become a separate mechanic and would involve the players attention. Meanwhile the old bonuses for DSS scans would be rolled into the passive scan CR/object rate so people could stick to the old way of playing without losing anything. We'd scan far fewer objects and each planet would be like something of a puzzle that we would have to figure out. So it wouldn't get tedious but would instead give each system its own personality. We could do it at our own pace, or just do a normal scan. The new DSS mechanic would only have a very similar income as normal passive scanning, but if you put more effort/skill into the scanning process you could increase your income a bit.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe the DSS could occasionally ping you an 'anomaly detected' message that required you to do the next level of scanning if you wanted to find out what it was

I like it.

 

[goemon]

interesting thread and good reasoning in here. rep for everyone! the idea of implementing different scan procedures i like a lot - if you want to take a closer look to an object/ find out something special... so, not obligatory. any implementation of flying close/ to the other side/ engage with that object i'd like to see (and would deliver even more great screenshots )

for those additional/different scanners: maybe it could be like (not the mechanic! -) with frame shift wake scanner, kill warrrant scanners or frameshift drive interdictors: i don't put them on every travel, but if i go bounty hunting, i put a kws, if i'm policing i put an inderdictor and a fsw and so on... modul space is rare and mass even more on exploring ships!

concerning missions: i wrote a suggestion some days before: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=165987 , i'd appreciate very much to know what all of you think about it.

 

[Sapient6]

I did offer other solutions besides a mini-game, and non of them would require any more constant attention than we already give.

You did, and I thought your post was excellent. I think we've been thinking along similar lines as to how we'd like to see the exploration side of the game improve.

I singled out that one mini-game mention because it's something that has come up before, and it's something that I initially thought would be a great improvement to the exploration experience. It's an attractive idea that scanning could become this deep, immersive thing we do, but the more I thought about that the more I thought about the mini-games in other games I've played and their tendency to sour over time.

 

[Leper Messiah]

How about a specific FSD for explorers with special "hand waveium" tech for overcoming gravity wells? Just give a bit more "juice" for acceleration and deceleration, make it use more fuel (obviously) and needs max pips to engines.

Using that device we could get within visual range of planetoids and I think that would make the process a LOT better as well, scanning a little pin of light isn't the most engaging thing to do! Also getting closer to a planetoid adds a certain (low admittedly) level of risk needing concentration to not get too close?

I'd also like the "scanning progress" to be visually represented by a circular bar inside the HUD element that highlights the current target, that fills as the scan progresses.

 

[Cmdr Raz]

First of all, some great ideas in this thread, rep to all!

I think the balance between the passive scan (boring, but you don't have to look (I play games on my phone while scanning)) and mini-games (possibly aggravating when performed thousands of times) is hard. But perhaps it could be combined, so that the mini-game bit is something that can be handled while travelling between planets (say, calibrating the scanner for the specific object or some such), so that it doesn't add additional time to an already time consuming proces.

I suppose a cheap fix would be to cut down scan times based on rep (faster the closer you are to elite status), but that might discourage some of the more casual players/explorers.

As for the FSD proposed (or trolled... I can't tell ) by Leper Messiah, I wouldn't mind an explorer FSD with a few advanages, much like the military grade FSDs of the old games (where fuel produced toxic waste when used). In fact, explorer modules for a lot of things would be nice, special scoops etc. I wouldn't even mind if they also made versions for bounty hunters and traders

EDIT: Tsk tsk, said "rep to all" and then didn't, boss got in the way, something about... "wohurk" or something like that... anyway, /fixed

 

[Allitnil]

At the risk of stating the obvious, what we need in exploring is some actual exploring! Right now it basically boils down to surveying and space tourism. And whilst there's nothing wrong with flying around seeing the sights and scanning stuff, there's no sense of adventure or danger or even real accomplishment.

A simple example of what's missing: How many times have you had to actually find a route to somewhere? When you did, did you do anything to let other people know about that route? Have you used routes made known by others who have been to a region before you?

Isn't this sort of thing a key aspect of exploring? Going somewhere new and publishing your findings so others can build on it and push back the frontiers. So where are the threads detailing how to get to hard to reach places? Are there even any really hard to reach places that require something other than non-skill aspects such as a ship with large enough jump range and the time to do the required number of jumps?

Once I complete my current trip I intend to publish a guide to exploring the furthest reaches of the galaxy. I hope it will be of interest and even use to some. But the reality is that nothing it contains couldn't be determined by someone sitting in their Sidewinder having just bought the game and playing with the galaxy map...

 

[Kuroshio]

[Stuff I agree with anyway, so I won't quote it.]

My Solution:

1) Make exploration meaningful and integral to the ED economy by:

-adding missions that involve real exploration, such as surveying for a mining company, locating sources of specific gas reserves in Gas Giants or terrestrial atmospheres, or simply helping a minor faction locate a nearby unclaimed ELW. Etc etc
-have exploration data add Merits for systems that are within the power borders of any of the major factions, eg this finally would give a practical reason to expand your sphere of influence!
-there are many ways to incorporate exploration, yet FD only has fetch missions for explorers above a certain rank which is a travesty!!!

While I think the fetch missions are kind of funny ("What are explorer's good at?" "Finding stuff, scooping, returning unseen." "Let them fetch ancient artifacts!"), yeah. Desperately needed for the future. Tied in with real community goals, that would also be a way for "pacifist" players to expand powers without stepping on someones toes.

2) Make scanning fun!!

-add new kind of scanners and limpets that give more military and commercial intel that can be sold to different types of groups for different types of rewards (CR, Merit, Influence, etc)
-change the scanning mechanic so that your skill at scanning determines the amount of reward you get. This can be done in a number of ways such as a mini-game, doing a orbit around a planet, requiring better aim, or closer range, requiring better passive lighting such as scanning the brighter side of the planet, subtracting spurious signal sources to get a cleaner signal, etc


Until the core mechanic of exploration is repaired, then simply adding more types of distant meaningless spheres to the galaxy zoo won't make exploring better.

I'm all for limpets, I think the general concept of the little do-it-alls is quite good, and they are probably an easy way to make exploration more ... interactive? A simple start would be to make Prospector Limpet Data sellable, giving us a reason to enter rings and belts. It wouldn't even need new modules. The future could bring limpets for atmospheric analysis, requiring us to drop out dangerously close to planets. ( And if we include scout and recon tasks in exploration, "hacking" limpets that attach themselves to stations of hostile powers/factions, for example.)

And, of course, replace the tell-it-all ADS with a "there's a planet of that size and vague color" ADS.

Basically, I think you're right. The content is vast and beautiful as it is; but ancient ruins and strange signal sources won't increase the challenge for us. (Not that I mind listening to audio books.)