Exploration Borked From the Start...

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Just a thought I had.

Exploration could have been done so much better. Unfortunately it's too late to change it.

What I find odd, is that we can see every star in the galaxy. And they all have names.
And we can fly to any that are in range. No issues. To me, that's too easy!

I always thought that exploration should be challenging and an achievement. Not just jump and honk until you reach your destination. Which is more an achievement in patience.

If, and a big if, I was designing an exploration mechanic in ED, I would have made it so you can't simply jump to an uncharted star.
Your FSD/Computer would simply not have the data to do it. (Bubble travel unaffected)
I would have made it so you need special modules and some sort of fun mini game (kinda like interdictions, but more fun, and not something that will get old too quickly), and maybe some manual coordinates plotting for you FSD.
Very rough idea. And probably doesn't fit with any lore. But hey ho. That's my silly idea.

Not suggesting FD change it now. But it kinda feels like a missed opportunity.
Kinda like the Easy Honk for finding planets. That could have been made much more interesting too.

What would you change about exploration?
Doesn't matter how silly or game changing..

FD have committed exploration, quite literally to the void. I see no change any time soon.
 
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Conch

Conch
They do quite allot with exploration, having planets made it allot better. Sure there is allot to be done..

Just think what will happen with exploration when we can land on ELW or other planets with atmosphere.
 

Muetdhiver

Muetdhiver
It could be changed : Thargoid malware erase all known cartographic data.

=> opportunity to reboot/redesign the whole thing from the ground up. That would      off everyone who tagged something
(me included, but if done properly I would not mind it too much).
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Ian Phillips said:
Moved to Exploration forum
Click to expand...

Annnnd there goes my thread. Lol

I have no issues with knowing what star class a star is, from 65000ly away. We can already tell so much right now from hubble.

I just find it odd that exploration is simply too easy.

Most peeps would hate it, but i like the idea of "hyperspace routes". 99% of all systems in the bubble would be part of it, travel would be pretty much as it is now.
But as soon as you leave the bubble to uncharted systems, you need to plot manually. Would be interesting. Or tedious. Lol

It could have pros and cons.
Plotting manually could gain you XX% jump range increase, at the cost of higher fuel burn. But be harder to follow(wake scan takes longer).
So smugglers could plot obscure routes to their destinations.

On the other hand, established hyperspace routes would be really efficient. But you are easily followed.

I dunno though... not a game designer. Lol
 

Howard o Pato

Howard o Pato
still have a lot ahead then speculate might be good.

Maybe sectors such as nebulae, for example, could affect the jump calculations due to external forces such as radiation, magnetism, extreme gravity etc. which could result in several problems, hud flashes, superheated fsd, decompression to restart the life support. Maybe for the future, forcing the commander to leave the ship to make repairs to the ship's hull.


Not to mention the aliens factors such as withdrawn vessels be removed from the force of a junp hyperspace falling into the endless void.


Fendering systems perimeter = blocked entire systems, preventing a jump to these areas, which would be cause for much discução until find a equipment supplied to electronic war to be able to circumvent signal blocking etc.
 

Zenith

Zenith
If you're going to go down this route, one way would be to make it so that you have to drop a nav beacon to "anchor" the system. You could have a module that makes them, but you need to prospect for the materials to make the beacons.
 

AnnuverScotinExile

AnnuverScotinExile
CMDR_Cosmicspacehead said:
Just a thought I had.

Exploration could have been done so much better. Unfortunately it's too late to change it.

What I find odd, is that we can see every star in the galaxy. And they all have names.
And we can fly to any that are in range. No issues. To me, that's too easy!

I always thought that exploration should be challenging and an achievement. Not just jump and honk until you reach your destination. Which is more an achievement in patience.

If, and a big if, I was designing an exploration mechanic in ED, I would have made it so you can't simply jump to an uncharted star.
Your FSD/Computer would simply not have the data to do it. (Bubble travel unaffected)
I would have made it so you need special modules and some sort of fun mini game (kinda like interdictions, but more fun, and not something that will get old too quickly), and maybe some manual coordinates plotting for you FSD.
Very rough idea. And probably doesn't fit with any lore. But hey ho. That's my silly idea.

Not suggesting FD change it now. But it kinda feels like a missed opportunity.
Kinda like the Easy Honk for finding planets. That could have been made much more interesting too.

What would you change about exploration?
Doesn't matter how silly or game changing..

FD have committed exploration, quite literally to the void. I see no change any time soon.
Click to expand...

You are several years too late. FD had what seemed to me to be a very good exploration mechanic designed. You can read all about it in the archives of the DDF. I don't go in there any more, because I hate to see grown men crying. Especially when it is me. They abandoned all the grand plans in a move to get something out the door, and did it in such a way that they could not introduce those plans later. Well, not without wiping out all the exploration data. That will never happen. Even though many of the explorers who have done all that exploring would be quite happy for such a wipe, they jnow they would get a torrent of complaints from casual explorers who happen to have got their names on a single ELW.
 

Mr_sukebe

Mr_sukebe
A few thoughts:
- I like the idea of flight being to a specific "nav point", where one exists. If you're in a new system, would seem appropriate that firstly you jump into a "high probability safe entry point", that's a reasonable distance from the star, e.g. 500-1000LY from the star. Secondly, wouldn't it be more interesting if you could buy or build (using gathered materials) and lay new Nav points.
- Linked to the above, make the existing Nav points destroyable, but instantly resulting in a bounty. By default, creates a whole new class of missions, i.e. Nav point seeding

One of the reasons for the above is that I like the idea of this being used in the likely next Thargoid war. Imagine if your fleet needs a Nav point to jump to in a system. That means that some poor sucker's go to go do it. Also means that the enemy have somewhere to intercept arriving ships. The final option being that the attacking fleet just gets dropped randomly across the system as they decided to NOT go to a dropped Nav point. The implications being that the enemy can interdict and tackle solo ships that are unsupported.
 

marx

marx
Oh, welcome to the exploration subforum then! It's true that there's much less traffic here, but on the bright side, discussions tend to be more on point and more civil.

Yeah, it's a pity that only the minimum viable version of galactic exploration made it into the game. Completely changing how existing areas and travel through them works is not really feasible now, but a good solution would be to add new uncharted areas where travel and exploration work differently. Either the galaxy's edge could be expanded, and/or the closed permit areas redone, or a new galaxy could be added. From what I can tell by looking at the game's file and directory structure, it's actually already designed with support for multiple galaxies in mind.
It would probably come much later down the line, of course. Personally, I'm not even sure which I would prefer first - landable versions of all kinds of planets, or a new kind of exploration. But at least it's encouraging to know that plans are there. (DDF documentation, possible engine support)
 

jasonbirder

J
I'd have rather liked something along the lines of You can't Jump Straight to system without a Nav Beacon...
You have to take scanner measurements to a system without a beacon from 3 or 4 different systems spread out across different axis to get jump co-ordinates...then you can create an FSD jump...and place in a beacon in the new system...
It would have made the process of "pushing out" from the bubble slower...and created popular flyways linked by beacons that see traffic...and area's off the beaten track that explorers could revel in...
Also perhaps restricting the classes of stars that could be scooped from the entire main sequence down to a smaller sub-set would have made it more difficult to just push off on long missions...made route planning more complex..perhaps necessitated setting up intermediate fuel caches in orbit etc etc...
 

Otherwhere

Otherwhere
I agree. Exploration could have been required before expansion could occur. You send out your scouts/explorers to survey systems, bring back the data, and then send out your miners, traders, and system security vessels. It would have made exploration integral to the game rather than the low man on the totem pole that it currently is.

That's why I support SEPP and their efforts to make exploration relevant and viable!
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
While I thought the idea of being able to only explore slowly with each jump taking careful - and perhaps cooperative, for efficiency - work to even jump to an unexplored system sounded good at the time ... having seen how exploration has worked out I'm not so sure it was a good idea anyway.

Pretty much every system within 500 LY of Sol has been detail-scanned down to the last iceball. Most systems out to 1000 LY have been at least partly scanned. This is with exploration mechanics which encourage heading out much further, not scanning iceballs, and so on. If a new explorer wants to find something new, then it's not difficult to do so.

If every jump had been a challenge in its own right - and assuming this didn't materially affect the amount of time put into exploration - then by the end of the first six months everything practically reachable would have been. The first discovery bonus might be something new explorers would never stand a chance of seeing, reaching any nebula other than Pleiades would require a massive coordinated expedition, and the forums would be full of complaints about "why is this whole galaxy out there when we can't ever reach it?"

With the benefit of hindsight, what we have now - which allows for incremental addition of detail for what's in the systems but does not bar access to most of them - is I think probably the better option.
 

Howard o Pato

Howard o Pato
I think it would be quite interesting require data synchronization test in order to achieve synthem who do not have any operating information. one calculator warp.
Something like a coordinate calculation replenishing, which can be done manually simply in a scheme to rotate and drag with the mouse.


RP, would be something like predicting calculations correctly to make a jump to an unknown location. (Not sure put it into words lol)

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