Revolutionise Exploration - Utility Scanners

[JeffRyan]

With the Engineers upgrade, true 'all-rounders' become more and more possible. But there's an obvious flaw for building larger all-rounder vessels.

The space taken up by your discovery and detailed scanners.

Looking at how scanners in general work, shouldn't these be utility mounts rather than taking up internals? For larger ships this compromise for building explorers has always been huge, but with the Engineers upgrade it becomes even more apparent as we try to build explorer-combat vessels capable of confronting ever more dangerous deep space.

 

[Fenduril]

I'm CMDR Fenduril, and I support this message.

 

[marx]

Maybe not the detailed surface scanner, because that's entirely passive, but that's a good point about the D-scanner(s). However, many of the smaller ships have fewer utility slots than internal compartments, so moving the discovery scanners to utilities would actually hurt them. Personally, I don't think it would be worth it to make it harder for beginner vessels to be built for exploration just so that the larger and more expensive ships would have it better for hybrid builds.

 

[JeffRyan]

Maybe not the detailed surface scanner, because that's entirely passive, but that's a good point about the D-scanner(s). However, many of the smaller ships have fewer utility slots than internal compartments, so moving the discovery scanners to utilities would actually hurt them. Personally, I don't think it would be worth it to make it harder for beginner vessels to be built for exploration just so that the larger and more expensive ships would have it better for hybrid builds.

This really only impacts the absolute smallest vessels like the sidewinder. And even then those have two utility mounts, of which the only thing useful for exploration is the heatsink. It would free up internal compartments making even the sidewinder a more useful explorer.

Imagine this without having to worry about scanners on the internal (you opt for the advanced scanner and either a detailed or a heatsink on the utility mounts).

[Sidewinder]
U: 0A Advanced Discovery Scanner
U: 0I Heat Sink Launcher

BH: 1I Lightweight Alloy
RB: 2D Power Plant
TM: 2D Thrusters
FH: 2A Frame Shift Drive
EC: 1D Life Support
PC: 1D Power Distributor
SS: 1D Sensors
FS: 1C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 2)

2: 2A Fuel Scoop
2: 2D Shield Generator
1: 1A Auto Field-Maintenance Unit
1: 1C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 2)
---
Shield: 56,00 MJ
Power : 7,10 MW retracted (99%)
10,30 MW deployed (143%)
7,20 MW available
Cargo : 0 T
Fuel : 4 T
Mass : 34,6 T empty
38,6 T full
Range : 20,19 LY unladen
20,19 LY laden
Price : 2.383.390 CR
Re-Buy: 119.170 CR @ 95% insurance


With Engineer upgrades this could be fitted with weapons and FSD upgrades making the sidewinder a much more feasible explorer. In short, after a brief look, your argument doesn't seem to work for me. It was a good consideration though, glad we looked at it. +1 for making me consider this!

 

[dognosh]

With the Engineers upgrade, true 'all-rounders' become more and more possible. But there's an obvious flaw for building larger all-rounder vessels.

The space taken up by your discovery and detailed scanners.

Looking at how scanners in general work, shouldn't these be utility mounts rather than taking up internals? For larger ships this compromise for building explorers has always been huge, but with the Engineers upgrade it becomes even more apparent as we try to build explorer-combat vessels capable of confronting ever more dangerous deep space.

I too support this message

 

[marx]

Perhaps, but that example is not a hybrid combat-explorer build. For those, you trade the ability to mount shield boosters, chaff, PD - all useful in combat - for the scanner(s). Of course, if you don't plan on using any of those, then it's better for a purely explorer build. But I'm still not convinced that this would be good for combat-explorer builds, where you'll want to have defenses and increased shields via shield boosters (especially modded ones) as opposed to using heavier internal shields. Adding weapons doesn't increase your chances of survival, just your offensive capabilities, adding defensive utilities does.

Here's a Sidewinder example that could handle combat considerably better while still having a comparable jump range. The advantage of having a shield booster fitted is that you can mod that as well. If you were to swap out either the chaff or the booster for a scanner, what would you put into those internal compartments that would make it better for either combat or exploration? In my opinion, a Sidewinder doesn't really need an AFM (if you're taking module damage in combat, you're pretty much done for already), and a fuel tank's usefulness is questionable.

Like I said though, it makes sense that the D-scanners would be utility mounts from a game mechanic perspective. All the other active (manually triggered) scanners are there, after all. Only the DSS is automatic, but then, it's not like there aren't any automatic utilities in those tiny mounts.

 

[Mengy]

Yes I agree 1000%. It actually makes sense too, seeing how every other "profession scanner" in the game are already utility slots. See my official post on it in the suggestion forum over a year ago:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=206696

Lots of players seem to really support this idea too, as it really does make sense in game.

 

[JeffRyan]

Perhaps, but that example is not a hybrid combat-explorer build. For those, you trade the ability to mount shield boosters, chaff, PD - all useful in combat - for the scanner(s). Of course, if you don't plan on using any of those, then it's better for a purely explorer build. But I'm still not convinced that this would be good for combat-explorer builds, where you'll want to have defenses and increased shields via shield boosters (especially modded ones) as opposed to using heavier internal shields. Adding weapons doesn't increase your chances of survival, just your offensive capabilities, adding defensive utilities does.

Here's a Sidewinder example that could handle combat considerably better while still having a comparable jump range. The advantage of having a shield booster fitted is that you can mod that as well. If you were to swap out either the chaff or the booster for a scanner, what would you put into those internal compartments that would make it better for either combat or exploration? In my opinion, a Sidewinder doesn't really need an AFM (if you're taking module damage in combat, you're pretty much done for already), and a fuel tank's usefulness is questionable.

Like I said though, it makes sense that the D-scanners would be utility mounts from a game mechanic perspective. All the other active (manually triggered) scanners are there, after all. Only the DSS is automatic, but then, it's not like there aren't any automatic utilities in those tiny mounts.

All I mean is explorer-small ships won't necessarily suffer and smaller ships aren't great for hybrid builds anyway. So there's no real negative impact on explorer-sidewinders. However for the larger ships the tradeoff between utilities and internals is much greater. So whilst for the smaller vessels there's little tradeoff in the utility/internal switch, for the larger vessels it allows them to become much more flexible in their builds. For the record your point about the detailed scanner could be considered a compromise, keep it internal.

 

[marx]

Let's not forget though that changing how equipment is mounted might be problematic and cause issues. Suppose FD did go ahead and changed the scanners to utilities. That would cause plenty of issues to existing ships, especially if they didn't have enough utility slots free and were far from the bubble. How exactly would you solve it so that nobody is wronged by the change? (Not to mention combat builds geared for missions, where having a D-scanner is actually useful now.)

Personally, I'd rather there were mods for the D-scanners, and one of which would be getting the scanner getting DSS functionality in exchange for increased mass (same as D-S+DSS), increased power consumption (same again) and maybe increased scanning time. (So that it's not just a straight-up upgrade without any downsides.) That could be implemented over existing stuff easily, and would actually free up slots as opposed to changing them around.
Since we do need variety in mods, another mod could be decreased charging time for the D-scanner's honk. In exchange for more power consumption, maybe more mass. On a larger ship, I'd still pick this over a D-S+DSS combo mod.

Update: oh, just saw your post after I replied. I'm not sure I understand why the trade-off for larger ships is greater, especially since they also tend to have more internal compartments than utilities. Take the Imperial Clipper, for example. 8 internal compartments, 4 utility slots. Or an Asp Explorer even has it worse: 6 internals, 4 utilities. But the rule of the thumb is that all ships have more internal compartments than utility mounts.
From what I see, utility slots are often better for defense in an exploration scenario than internal compartments are, but it seems we disagree here. Why do you say that the trade-off is much greater? From what I can see, the only defensive utilities that are internal and would be useful for a combat-explorer build are SCB-s.

 

[Mengy]

Let's not forget though that changing how equipment is mounted might be problematic and cause issues. Suppose FD did go ahead and changed the scanners to utilities. That would cause plenty of issues to existing ships, especially if they didn't have enough utility slots free and were far from the bubble. How exactly would you solve it so that nobody is wronged by the change?

Well, the truth is that at this point in the game they couldn't simply change the DSS to a utility slot, too many commanders have them fitted on their ships now, and suddenly changing it would mess up a lot of players. No, at this point FDev would have to put a new utility DSS in the game alongside the old internal DSS. It's the only way the transition could feasibly work without causing huge problems.

The most likely scenario though is that nothing will ever be done. [ugh]

 

[JeffRyan]

Update: oh, just saw your post after I replied. I'm not sure I understand why the trade-off for larger ships is greater, especially since they also tend to have more internal compartments than utilities. Take the Imperial Clipper, for example. 8 internal compartments, 4 utility slots. Or an Asp Explorer even has it worse: 6 internals, 4 utilities. But the rule of the thumb is that all ships have more internal compartments than utility mounts.
From what I see, utility slots are often better for defense in an exploration scenario than internal compartments are, but it seems we disagree here. Why do you say that the trade-off is much greater? From what I can see, the only defensive utilities that are internal and would be useful for a combat-explorer build are SCB-s.

The tradeoff is large because of the size of the internal components. Larger ships are forced to trade off size 2 and 4 for Anacondas(or size 2 and 3 for Asps) internal compartments that could be put to use as cargo, compartments, fuel, hangars or any other number of things for the sake of two size 1 components. T

 

[MONTItheRed]

I think looking at ways of making scanners easier, cheaper, better, etc is valuable not only for explorers but all CMDRs.

Allowing scanners of all types available for utility AND regular internals would open up tremendous freedom for CMDRs to customize their ships and builds.

With the rise of engineers, I think there is a vast space for engineer mods that hasn't been used.. These exploration mods could be

- Combined function scanners: wake and kill warrant scanner, advanced discovery and detailed surface scanner
- Improved scanners: able to scan faster, farther, at wider angles
- Multi scanners: scans all objects of the scanner type within the scanner angle
- Scanner probes: launch a recoverable supercruise probe at an object for autonomous scanning
- Data recovery probes: launch a price that will return to a system of your choice to sell exploration data
- Emergency data dump: prior to ship destruction, manually jettison a probe that will preserve your exploration data

 

[marx]

I think looking at ways of making scanners easier, cheaper, better, etc is valuable not only for explorers but all CMDRs.

Allowing scanners of all types available for utility AND regular internals would open up tremendous freedom for CMDRs to customize their ships and builds.

With the rise of engineers, I think there is a vast space for engineer mods that hasn't been used.. These exploration mods could be

- Combined function scanners: wake and kill warrant scanner, advanced discovery and detailed surface scanner
- Improved scanners: able to scan faster, farther, at wider angles
- Multi scanners: scans all objects of the scanner type within the scanner angle
- Scanner probes: launch a recoverable supercruise probe at an object for autonomous scanning
- Data recovery probes: launch a price that will return to a system of your choice to sell exploration data
- Emergency data dump: prior to ship destruction, manually jettison a probe that will preserve your exploration data

Hey, there are some pretty good ideas there. I especially like the multi scanner one. To be fair, I don't really see probes as mods, but rather as new equipment (after all, if we'll be able to launch fighters in 2.2, why not autonomous satellites as well?), but that's fine too. The only thing that would be problematic would be to change how equipment is mounted, as per the OP's suggestion, as that would introduce different problems that would all need to be dealt with. Plus it'd be forcing change on people who might not want it. However, utilising the same changes by introducing new mods and new equipment would be much easier, and also would sit better with everyone.

In my opinion, it would be pretty good if smaller versions of the explorer scanners could be mounted in utility slots. Less mass, less performance - personally, I'd still take those on several of my ships.

 

[Kuroshio]

Well, the truth is that at this point in the game they couldn't simply change the DSS to a utility slot, too many commanders have them fitted on their ships now, and suddenly changing it would mess up a lot of players. No, at this point FDev would have to put a new utility DSS in the game alongside the old internal DSS. It's the only way the transition could feasibly work without causing huge problems.

The most likely scenario though is that nothing will ever be done. [ugh]

I believe that could be solved be letting everyone keep their old scanners until they dock, and then forcibly remove them. (Nearly the same solution could be applied to modules without mass.)

I'm pretty sure that this was discussed by some Dev shortly after release, with the original intention of having all scanners utility mounted one day. The statement should be buried somewhere in the depths of the forum.

 

[Kazisaki]

yeah, i support this. kinda makes no sense to me that the other scanners are utility but the exploration scanners aint.

 

[Cliff Dobbs]

I believe that could be solved be letting everyone keep their old scanners until they dock, and then forcibly remove them. (Nearly the same solution could be applied to modules without mass.)

I'm pretty sure that this was discussed by some Dev shortly after release, with the original intention of having all scanners utility mounted one day. The statement should be buried somewhere in the depths of the forum.

Why not make scanners available as both utility mounted or internally mounted? Give folks the choice.

C