Wave Scanner Bug: how to live with it until it's fixed
- Thread starter The Tick
- Start date
I don't even know where to begin here.
The SRV "fish-finder" has to be the single worst best feature. Let me explain:
I find the concept to be both believable and, after a little getting use to it, usable.
However...
I find playing "chase the noise" to be rather unsatisfying and often frustrating, especially when I'm searching for a specific material (hello Niobium) and find countless piles of (Iron, Nickle and Carbon) materials I don't need. Some refinement here would go a very long way - like a "Filter for..." setting so we can tune out materials we don't need, in favor of those we do. I wouldn't mind finding "junk" materials in a particular deposit - as long as I find at least one lump of what I need.
Or conversely, I'd welcome "Filter For..." to tune out materials entirely, and just let me search for things I actually want to find - like lost cargo, skimmers, facilities, ship wrecks and Unusual signals, be they what they might.
Something, anything, really, to improve the "fish finder" as long as it actually works. Which brings us back to the main topic here - the stupid thing doesn't work/work quite right.
I'm even starting to not mind having to sit under my ship after deploying for.. a while before it starts picking up anything. I'm lumping this into the "This Feature Just Takes Longer to Work Now" bin, along with Jumping to Supercruise, Exiting Supercruise, Entering/Leaving Glide, and opening station menus and mission boards, not to mention the Gal Map and System Map - literally everything takes quite a bit longer than it use to.
The SRV "fish-finder" has to be the single worst best feature. Let me explain:
I find the concept to be both believable and, after a little getting use to it, usable.
However...
I find playing "chase the noise" to be rather unsatisfying and often frustrating, especially when I'm searching for a specific material (hello Niobium) and find countless piles of (Iron, Nickle and Carbon) materials I don't need. Some refinement here would go a very long way - like a "Filter for..." setting so we can tune out materials we don't need, in favor of those we do. I wouldn't mind finding "junk" materials in a particular deposit - as long as I find at least one lump of what I need.
Or conversely, I'd welcome "Filter For..." to tune out materials entirely, and just let me search for things I actually want to find - like lost cargo, skimmers, facilities, ship wrecks and Unusual signals, be they what they might.
Something, anything, really, to improve the "fish finder" as long as it actually works. Which brings us back to the main topic here - the stupid thing doesn't work/work quite right.
I'm even starting to not mind having to sit under my ship after deploying for.. a while before it starts picking up anything. I'm lumping this into the "This Feature Just Takes Longer to Work Now" bin, along with Jumping to Supercruise, Exiting Supercruise, Entering/Leaving Glide, and opening station menus and mission boards, not to mention the Gal Map and System Map - literally everything takes quite a bit longer than it use to.
Well if that doesn't look like the most exciting gameplay ever in the history of gaming, I don't know what does.
/sarcasm
Is the scanner broken for everyone? I only ask because I've been doing a fair bit of engineer upgrades recently, and I've had very little trouble find even very rare elements on planets. Actually, I'm pretty happy when I see an upgrade needs surface materials - more fun (and less time) than trawling USSs.
But what people have described doesn't really sound like a bug that would be user dependent (we all have exactly the same SVR, for example).
But what people have described doesn't really sound like a bug that would be user dependent (we all have exactly the same SVR, for example).
Yes, the scanner is broken for everyone. FDev has increased the spawn rate of rare mats, so if you find a rock, your chances are way better now.
I've seen the disappearing signals first hand. My hypothesis is that the material has spawned below the surface. As a programmer, I know that something like that is possible. It could even be an old bug, which wasn't noticeable until the SRV scanner signal was cleaned up. In fact, once, I left the game with my SRV parked on the surface; when I restarted the game, my SRV was underneath the surface.
Here's a screen shot; notice that I'm -1 m below the surface (according to the gauge).
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aj2gdTGJyh_3qweT_C19LfhRhGjx
This doesn't mean that the scanner is currently so buggy as to be worthless. I was still able to find the materials I needed, but the ghost signals are certainly frustrating.
Here's a screen shot; notice that I'm -1 m below the surface (according to the gauge).
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aj2gdTGJyh_3qweT_C19LfhRhGjx
This doesn't mean that the scanner is currently so buggy as to be worthless. I was still able to find the materials I needed, but the ghost signals are certainly frustrating.
Last edited:
I've also been doing a lot of prospecting recently and the wave scanner is seriously broken.
Same symptoms as others.
My tips:
The sound mostly works, this is fine for metallic rocks as their sound is very distinct, less good for other signals.
Light colour surface planets have good contrast if you boost up off the ground you can often see the rocks in the distance.
Line up the signal dead ahead while you can see it in case it disappears later on.
The way instancing works means you get better spawn/drop rate with other CMDRs around so wing up or what I've been doing is prospect around engineers bases with other CMDRs about.
Spreadsheet with engineer's bases and mats present https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o-jwvUw8o9fWltSwoszjVKCJGX6p50gEZt5U6J5nbRs
While the bug is annoying I have managed to collect everything I need without too much trouble - plenty of every VR.
Same symptoms as others.
My tips:
The sound mostly works, this is fine for metallic rocks as their sound is very distinct, less good for other signals.
Light colour surface planets have good contrast if you boost up off the ground you can often see the rocks in the distance.
Line up the signal dead ahead while you can see it in case it disappears later on.
The way instancing works means you get better spawn/drop rate with other CMDRs around so wing up or what I've been doing is prospect around engineers bases with other CMDRs about.
Spreadsheet with engineer's bases and mats present https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o-jwvUw8o9fWltSwoszjVKCJGX6p50gEZt5U6J5nbRs
While the bug is annoying I have managed to collect everything I need without too much trouble - plenty of every VR.
Last edited:
I have had the below surface bug before and had to suprecruise away and re-land to fix it. As well have parked ship landed at Maia, logged out then come back to collect more meta-alloys. On respawn Z height of ship was different, not allowing SRV to roll out. I think that was intentional to prevent farming. Wild guess tho.
Peace out.
It might also be planet relatet. I was on Tethys in Sol the other night, SRV scanner showed nothing. I relogged, took the second SRV still nothing. Flew to the next planet, wave scanner worked as intended.
Funnily enough I've been relying on the audio signal when the wave scanner gives up, but it is bugged. I've driven past visual signals that should be under my nose to pick up the actual object another couple of hundred metres on as per the audio signal.
I hope they fix it... by replacing the glorified geiger counter with an actual scanner.
Driving around lumps of rocks following random beeps and farts is probably my least favorite part of the whole game.
Every time I run out of some stuff that can only be obtained by driving the dune buggy while following blips and assassinating rocks I feel like cutting my wrists. I would rather scan wakes at Hutton Orbital.
Driving around lumps of rocks following random beeps and farts is probably my least favorite part of the whole game.
Every time I run out of some stuff that can only be obtained by driving the dune buggy while following blips and assassinating rocks I feel like cutting my wrists. I would rather scan wakes at Hutton Orbital.
Last edited:
Yep....its 4 or 5 months now that its been cactus. You would hope a fix will be part of the next update??? Won't hold my breath though as it doesn't seem to very high on FD's priority list...which is kind of strange considering it is such an important piece of kit. I've given up complaining about it TBH.
Still broken and absolutely infuriating. This is the kind of completely broken crap that can completely ruin a game or at least part of it. The worst part? Sandro and DB have both acted like they don't understand what the problem is. YGTBSM.
It's been fixed in 2.3.
The issue with the ghost signals is that it's only the visual that isn't working. If you get one, and don't see the visual, you can still use the sound to locate the direction and the distance to the signal. Typically when you do this, the visual will eventually come back, but in very rare instances it won't, but you can still find the "ghost signals".
So in other words, the ghosts aren't actually ghosts and non-items, they are in fact there and you can in fact locate them by sound still. Best to use the http://www.wavescanner.net/ to hear the sounds to you recognize what you want to collect and then if the visual gets ghosted, just use this to know what signal is what and aim for that by sound.
Like everyone else, this annoyed the hell out of me until I just one day followed the sound instead and ta-da...
So in other words, the ghosts aren't actually ghosts and non-items, they are in fact there and you can in fact locate them by sound still. Best to use the http://www.wavescanner.net/ to hear the sounds to you recognize what you want to collect and then if the visual gets ghosted, just use this to know what signal is what and aim for that by sound.
Like everyone else, this annoyed the hell out of me until I just one day followed the sound instead and ta-da...
Last edited:
First - I'm glad it's been fixed.
Though, this mishap has made me seriously doubt the amount of manpower and resources FDev has allocated for development of ED. Apparently as it seems they do not have enough resources to fix this very simple problem so they had to just leave it there for literally months. If they don't have adequate resources to fix a darned scanner, then how are they going to bring space legs and ELW landings into existence?
Watching that PAX Q&A stream has shaken my belief in FDev even further - I understand that he's by no means FDev's official spokesperson in terms of development plans, but seriously, ~80% of what he said could be pretty much wrapped up as 'we'll see' or 'not planned yet'.
Nearly every single feature that were promised in season 2 were either put back or have been implemented in an extremely toned down manner. I think it's quite obvious that situation's changed a lot in their studio somewhere along their development road map, and they somehow went from 'yes, that feature is on the list and we are 100% eager to make that happen' mentality to 'Maybe we'll see that feature few years later - I dunno - if we manage to implement that'. That drastic change in level of confidence and determination has really left me worried, probably more than I should be.
... Maybe the '10 year plan' never actually existed and the patch 2.0 would be the last major expansion we'll ever going to see.
Last edited:
Well, we don't actually know how complex the issue was, what caused it, or what the required level of effort to fix it was. Unless you work in software, I think it's a bit glib to say "It should have been an easy fix.". I think it's more likely that they just didn't consider it high priority because it wasn't that detrimental to overall gameplay. I mean, it had a workaround, and wasn't exactly game breaking.
Let's not doom and gloom just yet. The game may not evolve in the direction you want, but it will evolve. Whether or not it evolves to everyone's taste is another matter (and off-topic for this thread).