Now that the time has come (or has been announced, let's say) for the reworking of core mechanics, and getting them closer to the original concepts...
Let's talk exploration.
Would you be ready to give up on your infinite scanner range and exhaustive galaxy map for more rewarding probing / navigation gameplay? Rewarding in terms of money/rank/whatever else of course, but also in terms of feeling. Of course you can't be left in the dark and just downgrade to the intermediate discovery scanner now - it would feel like artifical handicap. But there could be modules that detect unfound gravitationnal perturbations... probes to launch that would detect planetary bodies and their surfaces, even system-scaled scanners ala SRV... To an extent, there could be secret systems in galmap, for you to find, with one-knows-what-tool.
I reckon some things can't be changed. You can't remove something the player base is used to - for nothing at least. I'm just trying to know if that particular godly honk and the ease of discovery is that important to you. Not saying exploring is easy though - but it's more a matter of endurance, most of the time, than navigational flair (ok, tbh there is true navigationnal flair in certain expeditions reaching really isolated stars).
Your thoughts?
Edit : reading through the thread, I need to clarify that I do not advocate for its removal. I'd just like to know your advice on it and other methods.
Yes. As an explorer who came to E
primarily because of exploration (A part of the game that my younger self playing Elite and Frontier: Elite so badly wanted to go and do but was limited by the game engine), yes, I'd happily have the infinite discovery scanner changed for something else that encourages more gameplay options. Here's my concept (probably already stated by someone else, but count this as a vote for that!).
1) ALL SHIPS have a new feature "
Spectral Analysis" or something, which is basically like the wave scanner for the SRV (but without the GUI bit) in that it's built into all ships, you drop into a new system, and instead of honking your Dscanner, your ship will auto-scan any new system as so as you enter it (actually your ship is doing this all the time but you'd only notice it in new systems) - only it doesn't reveal exact results, it shows you more vague ideas of what's there (maybe also based on your location, so you wouldn't see anything that's behind the sun, for example). It's like space radar. It works by your onboard ship systems analysing visual, radio, specral, radiation, space juju data. It then guesses at what's there. Your system map after this might show some blobs, (the ones closer to your may even appear as planets if you're already close, the stars will almost certainly show up instantly), or icons representing various types or sizes of objects, or gravity gradients in certain areas - for example, this SA scanner may have trouble telling the difference between a large asteroid cluster and a planetoid, so the icon might represent that ambiguity. It might only be able to tell you "this planet here is pretty huge, probably a gas giant", but it's not until you go look for yourself you can get more data on it. The results are partially RNG based, partially distance based from the object, so two pilots scanning the same system together would get
slightly different results, they could combine these results (manually or maybe via an in-game tool) and get a better idea if something is really there.
Ideally I'd like this data to build up over time naturally - so if you spend a while in the same system, or re-visit it often, your ship is able to build up more and more data and the system map gets more and more accurate. If you sat there for a couple of hours you might get a pretty clear map of the system without using anything else! Remember this isn't a module, it's already part of what your ship does by default.
At any time you can (if you have one fitted, use the new Discovery Microprobe module to speed up this process dramatically and collect a lot more data.
2) Discovery Scanner (all versions) module replacement -
Discovery Microprobes. Smart people are already talking about possibly using small probes sent to explore other stars in our lifetime. In 3303 maybe they have insect-sized probes that are dropped from a ship in a swarm and flit through the system at supercruise speeds. The discovery scanner would require "charges", which can be purchased or synthesised fairly easily. Different model scanners hold different charges, maybe there's a speed bonus for the more expensive ones too, maybe it's called "processing speed" and it relates to how fast the gathered date can be analysed by the module systems. If the module gets damaged, this speed drops - a good reason to keep it in good condition.
Functionally, this is the same discovery scanner "honk" as before, only instead of instantly getting whatever was in range, it takes time for the microprobes to fly out to the edges of the system, things show up in your system map/scanner as they did before, but it's a slower process with the closer objects appearing sooner, etc. Maybe it takes up to 20 minutes for the very, very largest systems to be fully mapped - or maybe calculate it based on FSD speeds, etc.
3) instead of the Surface Scanner -
Surface Analysis Satellites. They work in basically the same way as the surface scanner, but you have to drop them (honk them, if you will), they'd need charges just like the microprobes. You'd drop them from near-orbit, they'd take a while to orbit the planet fully and start the analysis. I imagine you'd basically fly to a planet, drop satellite, fly to the next, drop satellite, etc. and maybe on your third planet the first results are coming back. This data could then be expanded upon in some sort of mini-game like thing and successfully completing "data analysis scanning" or whatever could yield you likely spots to find particular resources - or maybe show the location of a possible POI, at which time you can descend and the same type of "follow the moving target" game that you get with Salvage missions appears.
WHY?!?! Why Do I hate other players so much that I want to ruin the game!
1) Because these three changes won't change much for casual players, or non explorers just zooming through the bubble. But for explorers it will be more in depth, making decisions about whether to drop your Microprobes or not, learning the (complex and deep) symbols and analysys results it's possible to extract from the Spectral Analysis so when you decide to investigate some odd readings in what you think is the Goldilocks Zone for this particular star type and you find a lovely blue-green world, it's because you FOUND IT, not because you held down a button for a few seconds then looked on the system map. Playing the scanning minigame to see if there's anything more to find (maybe something amazing!). Managing your resources more carefully on those long trips outside the bubble. Also as I said they could easily build into this system to make it so that more Commanders scanning the system at the same time will get more accurate results, encouraging more teamwork.
2) It will add a greater possibility for Fdev to hide things that are actually discoverable with in-game tools - one of the things I love has been all the stuff with analysing the sounds of the UP's and tracking signals and decoding things. Bring a little of that magic to exploration. However, I've got almost no chance of cracking that sort of stuff myself, but using in-game tools which can be nice and complex if you want gives everyone playing the game a chance of discovering something amazing by actually playing the game, not just from playing the metagame (and that might only be a new planet with braintrees on it, but it might also be Raxxla).
3) Sure, you're not going to be able to flit through space any more honking your way through dozens of systems an hour, but there's no reason the experience can't be adjusted so scanning a single system could be just as rewarding (or even more so) than scanning dozens. Both in terms of spending your time on it as a game and financially since UC could be adjusted to pay out appropriately more under this new system.
4) Maybe the Galactic map doesn't show you much info any more on every star in the game... it's now kinda vague. Maybe it only fills bits in when people sell data to UC. Maybe there's a lot more stuff there that only shows up when enough people have been through a system and thier various ship scans are compared back at UC HQ and they say "hey, there's a <thing> in this area we didn't know before, let's add it to the map" - this could add a LOT of opportunity for Fdevs to add anything they want (I'm hoping for a ringworld please Fdevs!). I'd like this because I'd like to talk about how you need to "skirt the Dark Nebula on the Hestion Rise and jump through the Scorces Star Pentagram and there's a rogue planet in just the right place to act as a Hyperspace stop to get you through there into a new bit of space... but it doesn't show up on any map yet kid..."
So something like this would make me even more happy.
