In case you missed the latest interview with MB on Exploration

[[VR] optimal_909]

I realize it's the Internet, but please read the underlined parts. .

I like Allitnil's solution too, but it might involve far more complex programming than a simple 0.2-1% chance to spawn Thargoids with an ADS ping (depending on the power of the ping). Trying to keep it simple, balanced, and interesting, with a measure of player choice involved. Allitnil's solution to the ADS is great, but it's still a passive solution imo. Otherwise it's very good.

Exploration is far too passive atm. We need more player agency within the mechanics themselves, and without rewriting the book on ED if possible. But I'm not opposed to a necessary rewrite.

In context of the whole comment that 'uncommon' looks a bit shy, but whatever.

I think there could be plenty of dangers from the environment as well, and there should be lots of other extras that could spice-up exploration.
I for one desire heavily irregular-shaped asteroids and dwarf planets such as Ida and Haumea with tiny asteroid moons.

Spoiler

 

[afreeflyingsoul]

Yes, I was glad Michael at least acknowledged the addition of the ADS was a mistake, but it's unfortunate that they are to scared to fix this issue retroactively!

Come on, FDEV, you know the ADS is garbage, get rid of the thing and withstand the few complaints you might face, you should have a hard skin by now!

With all due respect, I think that would break the game (for me). We are already having issues with having the galaxy "populated" with wrecks on all planets. Having Thargoids in every corner of the galaxy would be simply stupid and would kill off the feeling of desolate vastness.

On the other hand, I think Allitnil's suggestion is superb!

I agree. Exploration is low yield, time wise, if what you're going for is credits. Furthermore, the idea of spending 3 weeks of real world time exploring only to have it destroyed because I get interdicted by a phalanx of Thargoid battle cruisers looking for target practice is not appealing. Mirrored Armor, A grade class 6 shields, A grade power plant, and a full weapons load out really kills your jump range and, even with the boosts, cuts out fringe exploration!

I don't mind them adding hazards to exploration, but I do mind when my real world time is disrespected. Some of us have precious little spare time and already use too much of it on this game. To all those that think exploration is too easy, please, stop exploring. Go do something worthy of your time and leave exploration to the people that enjoy it.

 

[Ziljan]

To all those that think exploration is too easy, please, stop exploring. Go do something worthy of your time and leave exploration to the people that enjoy it.

No need to be rude . MB has spoken, exploration is more easy then was intended, and the solution is a bit more risk. But not to worry...

I highly doubt Thargoids (or natural dangers) will be a death sentence, and I also doubt they will be as common as pirates. Frontier has made it pretty clear that there will never be a "Kobayashi Maru" situation in Elite. :| In other words, perfect solutions with no downsides will exist for every problem we encounter.

Yes, we might have shorter jump ranges at first, but remember Engineers are also incoming. So we'll probably get extra jump range, speed, and shield boosters to more than compensate for any deep space boogeymen.

 

[marx]

To be fair, I would be surprised if all deep space regions everywhere would have hostile aliens.
If I were FD, when I'd add aliens to the game, I'd do so "silently" (without mentioning them in the changelog), and I'd also open up some of the previously permit-locked regions. Then I would add the alien encounters to other regions, while dropping a few in-game hints.
Be it any way, a uniformly dangerous galaxy is just one step better than a uniformly mostly harmless one.


Also, let's nerf the ADS by making it more realistic! If you send a ping and there's something 300000 ls away, then you'd have to wait 600000 seconds to get its echo back. Good times, eh? (Just kidding, of course.)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

One solution would be to change the discovery scanners from active but non-interactive to passive but interactive. It's not the infinite range of the ADS which is bad as such, it's the infinite range with no effort. I much prefer - not that there's a great amount to find with it yet - the interactivity of the SRV scanner. Bouncing around a planet looking for rocks is far more fun for me than pointing the ship nose at yet another white speck, or holding the fire key for ten seconds.

So:
1) BDS, IDS and ADS have detection ranges based on brightness, not strictly distance - so they'll all pick up a star at any range, and even the BDS would probably notice a gas giant at 2000Ls, but maybe not pick up its moons until 200Ls (numbers out of air: essentially the BDS should see anything you personally can see, and the IDS should be better). Around a brown dwarf, distances are reduced; around a class B they're significantly increased.
2) Incoming light from a source must accumulate on the DS sensors until it reaches a threshold. After an initial threshold is reached, the object appears on the scanner in the "fuzzy" way that distant ships appear in normal space. Sometimes ghost readings will appear in the same way, most often in the direction of nearby bright star systems / nebulae. Obscured objects do not accumulate.
The finite range of the BDS and IDS is managed by having a minimum rate/second to accumulate at all.
3) After a second threshold is reached, the object is discovered (or, if a ghost reading, vanishes). Detection increases towards the threshold much faster if the object is within the forward cone of the ship (where the DSS would scan it)
4) Nearby sources (stars, most obviously) reduce accumulation rates, potentially significantly. Within 100 Ls of a normal star, accumulation is slower and ghost readings are more common.
5) Black holes and neutron stars are detected despite their lack of visual-wavelength appearance as if they were the former supergiant star.
6) Optionally: ship sensor A-E class boosts detection quality by reducing the thresholds and reduces ghosting. Now a trade-off between taking D-class sensors for faster travel between systems, and A-class sensors for faster scanning of systems once there. Explorers should be the most likely to use the Sensor component of the ship - and the majority of "exploration" ships do seem to have large sensor sizes compared with their other modules.

Effects:
1) The ADS will still discover everything in the system, just not quite as quickly as now. Generally if you detail-scan the planets you can see to start with, it'll find the rest of them without effort while you're doing that.
2) The equivalent of honk-scoop-jump will get you the stars and maybe a couple of really close planets even with the ADS. There's more distinction between exploring a sector and fast-travelling through a sector to get somewhere else
3) High-separation binaries, even with an ADS, will probably require you to close on the secondary at least a bit to tell if it has planets or not
4) Exploration earnings probably need to be doubled again, and rank contributions just doubled, as it's going to take a bit longer. The massive gap in income/hour between honking and surface scanning will be reduced quite a bit, though.
5) Shouldn't sabotage explorers who are on a long-range exploration voyage when this happens

 

[Ziljan]

One solution would be to change the discovery scanners from active but non-interactive to passive but interactive. It's not the infinite range of the ADS which is bad as such, it's the infinite range with no effort. I much prefer - not that there's a great amount to find with it yet - the interactivity of the SRV scanner. Bouncing around a planet looking for rocks is far more fun for me than pointing the ship nose at yet another white speck, or holding the fire key for ten seconds.

So:
1) BDS, IDS and ADS have detection ranges based on brightness, not strictly distance - so they'll all pick up a star at any range, and even the BDS would probably notice a gas giant at 2000Ls, but maybe not pick up its moons until 200Ls (numbers out of air: essentially the BDS should see anything you personally can see, and the IDS should be better). Around a brown dwarf, distances are reduced; around a class B they're significantly increased.
2) Incoming light from a source must accumulate on the DS sensors until it reaches a threshold. After an initial threshold is reached, the object appears on the scanner in the "fuzzy" way that distant ships appear in normal space. Sometimes ghost readings will appear in the same way, most often in the direction of nearby bright star systems / nebulae. Obscured objects do not accumulate.
The finite range of the BDS and IDS is managed by having a minimum rate/second to accumulate at all.
3) After a second threshold is reached, the object is discovered (or, if a ghost reading, vanishes). Detection increases towards the threshold much faster if the object is within the forward cone of the ship (where the DSS would scan it)
4) Nearby sources (stars, most obviously) reduce accumulation rates, potentially significantly. Within 100 Ls of a normal star, accumulation is slower and ghost readings are more common.
5) Black holes and neutron stars are detected despite their lack of visual-wavelength appearance as if they were the former supergiant star.
6) Optionally: ship sensor A-E class boosts detection quality by reducing the thresholds and reduces ghosting. Now a trade-off between taking D-class sensors for faster travel between systems, and A-class sensors for faster scanning of systems once there. Explorers should be the most likely to use the Sensor component of the ship - and the majority of "exploration" ships do seem to have large sensor sizes compared with their other modules.

Effects:
1) The ADS will still discover everything in the system, just not quite as quickly as now. Generally if you detail-scan the planets you can see to start with, it'll find the rest of them without effort while you're doing that.
2) The equivalent of honk-scoop-jump will get you the stars and maybe a couple of really close planets even with the ADS. There's more distinction between exploring a sector and fast-travelling through a sector to get somewhere else
3) High-separation binaries, even with an ADS, will probably require you to close on the secondary at least a bit to tell if it has planets or not
4) Exploration earnings probably need to be doubled again, and rank contributions just doubled, as it's going to take a bit longer. The massive gap in income/hour between honking and surface scanning will be reduced quite a bit, though.
5) Shouldn't sabotage explorers who are on a long-range exploration voyage when this happens

This solution is absolutely ideal imo, and could be combined with Allitnil's solution seemlessly.

 

[who?]

Some great ideas on this thread!

The worst solution, IMO, would be simply to reduce the range of the ADS and nothing else. That would just take a really simplistic, shallow discovery mechanic, and make it a really tedious, time-consuming, simplistic, shallow discovery mechanic.

I also like the idea (don't know if it's mentioned on this thread) of the honk returning a chorus of echoes, for the bodies in the system. Each planetary type would have a distinctive sound; and the delay for each sound would be relative to the body's distance from the ship. After a while, you'd get better at isolating the sounds of the interesting planets, and could use the mechanics mentioned in the above posts to narrow them down, or just move on if there's nothing interesting in the echo. No need to open up the System Map each time, unless you want to.

 

[Iskariot]

I do not think they need to be stuck with the infinite range of the ADS at all.
They should just make a brave decision and implement it in a way they want it to be implemented.
That is probably more interesting for gameplay as well.

Just do it FD. Don't be afraid to step on toes.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I don't see Frontier as stuck either.

Between Allitnil and Ian Doncaster's nice ideas, I think the case is made that there is ample room to create some extra interest and value in exploration play.

In particular, from Ian Doncaster:

I much prefer - not that there's a great amount to find with it yet - the interactivity of the SRV scanner. Bouncing around a planet looking for rocks is far more fun for me than pointing the ship nose at yet another white speck, or holding the fire key for ten seconds.

True for me as well. I will tend to track down a Wave Scanner ping, in spite of some pretty long distance and rough terrain, just for the interest of seeing what's there.