By now we're all aware of the bug around how you scan one POI, say, a Thargoid Barnacle, which subsequently reveals all POI in that system when you get within 1,000Ls until you log out.
Some pre-amble... if you already know the score or don't care, skip this bit. tl;dr Exploration is pretty pants, and this bug makes it great.
So how to fix this? It's pretty easy, and it can be done pretty much already, with existing game mechanics around:
- Making everything appear as "Unexplored" within 100Ls (rather than 1,000Ls)
- Unexplored systems with planetary colonies, and
- The mechanic that "records" the POI to your player (i.e you scan a barnacle, and it appears on your Navigation tab as "Thargoid Barnacle" forever)
Step 1. Make them work like unexplored systems with planetary colonies.
If you don't know, planetary bases don't appear as "explored" on the scanner, if you haven't scanned the planet.
Take this station orbiting a planet with surface colonies. We're just using the station as an identifier here.
On the nav panel this looks like this:
Once we've scanned the planet, it looks like this:
... with Paez Holdings and Sturgeon's Inheritance now revealed.
Now, the fix could be as simple as that. You scan a planet, and those "unexplored" POI become Thargoid Barnacle, Ancient Ruin, whatever it is. Maybe they only become anything but "Unexplored" only if you have a Detailed Surface Scanner (Whoa! A use for that besides increasing credit income!). However, I'd push it one step further with...
Step 2. Make all POI appears within 100Ls only
It'd be pretty easy to look at the bodies in a system, notice things with unexplored "moons" where the map show no moons or a different number of them, and single out those for scanning. So lets turn it up a notch by making them appear only within 100Ls, in the same way that current discovered POI only appear within 1,000Ls
Firstly, reason for 100 and not 1,000 is that most landable planetary bodies scan between 5-100Ls, depending on their size. We could make it only appear when the body is within scanning range, but KISS. This straight away gives people a reason to get close enough to scan those worthless icy bodies that isn't tied to credit value. Again, if you're there, you might as well scan them.
But this also "obfuscates" the POI better. We don't want everything to be visible when you get to a system, there needs to be *some* effort.
Step 3 (optional) only reveal the actual name of the "unexplored" POI once you've landed and scanned something.
If the DSS reveals the unexplored POIs for what they are (which makes an amount of sense), then it's job done, move on to the next planet. By making them remain unexplored til you make landfall and scan something, it's adding yet another layer to the activity... a reason to go landing on random planets out in the black.
So now we have a staged exploration activity, with feedback throughout the process.
Phase 1: Survey the system for bodies, and go within 100Ls scanning range of bodies to get feedback on whether there's something to be found or not
Phase 2: Get a DSS scan of the planet to identify the POIs, or leave them as unexplored and then;
Phase 3: Make planetfall to investigate POIs further.
This could be expanded to also include the various flora, fumeroles and geysers we now get on planets.
Having done this last night in a large system, it took a few hours to investigate and mark all POI using the existing bug. This is very, very far from a "reveal everything because i'm impatient" change and comes with many benefits:
- Gives reason to fly out to all bodies in a system, if you're inclined to hunt for surface POI
- Gives real feedback on whether there's something to be found or not
- Makes exploration that little bit more interactive.
- Gets us away from the weird ways we've been finding POI before, such as "Timing Lag" for extra assets being loaded, pinpointing sites via CTD from bugs or other weird issues.
The best bit of this though, it uses mechanics and triggers that already exist in the game.
Some pre-amble... if you already know the score or don't care, skip this bit. tl;dr Exploration is pretty pants, and this bug makes it great.
Frankly, POI hunting for things like Barnacles, Ancient Ruins, Shipwrecks and the like is implemented fairly terribly. Some of the issues are:
- The search area is literally massive. You could spend years combing the surface of all the planets in a single system for static POIs and find nothing.
- There no feedback to indicate there's even something to be found. The only way to guarantee there's something to be found is to literally comb the entire planet.
A related issue is people tend not to scan low-value bodies in the game. Things like small icy worlds and the like, or all the landable moons of a nearby gas giant.
With this bug, while it doesn't help find POIs in new systems, it really invigorated this aspect of the game. I wanted to go out and find things, started scanning all the bodies because I needed to get within 1,000Ls to see if there were POIs, even when a body might be 400,000Ls away. And then, if there was nothing, well, I came all that way, so i might as well scan the bodies here too! All things given, even though it's a great bug, and the way it works is a bit daft, it's actually made some pretty great improvements to exploration.
- The search area is literally massive. You could spend years combing the surface of all the planets in a single system for static POIs and find nothing.
- There no feedback to indicate there's even something to be found. The only way to guarantee there's something to be found is to literally comb the entire planet.
A related issue is people tend not to scan low-value bodies in the game. Things like small icy worlds and the like, or all the landable moons of a nearby gas giant.
With this bug, while it doesn't help find POIs in new systems, it really invigorated this aspect of the game. I wanted to go out and find things, started scanning all the bodies because I needed to get within 1,000Ls to see if there were POIs, even when a body might be 400,000Ls away. And then, if there was nothing, well, I came all that way, so i might as well scan the bodies here too! All things given, even though it's a great bug, and the way it works is a bit daft, it's actually made some pretty great improvements to exploration.
So how to fix this? It's pretty easy, and it can be done pretty much already, with existing game mechanics around:
- Making everything appear as "Unexplored" within 100Ls (rather than 1,000Ls)
- Unexplored systems with planetary colonies, and
- The mechanic that "records" the POI to your player (i.e you scan a barnacle, and it appears on your Navigation tab as "Thargoid Barnacle" forever)
Step 1. Make them work like unexplored systems with planetary colonies.
If you don't know, planetary bases don't appear as "explored" on the scanner, if you haven't scanned the planet.
Take this station orbiting a planet with surface colonies. We're just using the station as an identifier here.
On the nav panel this looks like this:
Once we've scanned the planet, it looks like this:
... with Paez Holdings and Sturgeon's Inheritance now revealed.
Now, the fix could be as simple as that. You scan a planet, and those "unexplored" POI become Thargoid Barnacle, Ancient Ruin, whatever it is. Maybe they only become anything but "Unexplored" only if you have a Detailed Surface Scanner (Whoa! A use for that besides increasing credit income!). However, I'd push it one step further with...
Step 2. Make all POI appears within 100Ls only
It'd be pretty easy to look at the bodies in a system, notice things with unexplored "moons" where the map show no moons or a different number of them, and single out those for scanning. So lets turn it up a notch by making them appear only within 100Ls, in the same way that current discovered POI only appear within 1,000Ls
Firstly, reason for 100 and not 1,000 is that most landable planetary bodies scan between 5-100Ls, depending on their size. We could make it only appear when the body is within scanning range, but KISS. This straight away gives people a reason to get close enough to scan those worthless icy bodies that isn't tied to credit value. Again, if you're there, you might as well scan them.
But this also "obfuscates" the POI better. We don't want everything to be visible when you get to a system, there needs to be *some* effort.
Step 3 (optional) only reveal the actual name of the "unexplored" POI once you've landed and scanned something.
If the DSS reveals the unexplored POIs for what they are (which makes an amount of sense), then it's job done, move on to the next planet. By making them remain unexplored til you make landfall and scan something, it's adding yet another layer to the activity... a reason to go landing on random planets out in the black.
So now we have a staged exploration activity, with feedback throughout the process.
Phase 1: Survey the system for bodies, and go within 100Ls scanning range of bodies to get feedback on whether there's something to be found or not
Phase 2: Get a DSS scan of the planet to identify the POIs, or leave them as unexplored and then;
Phase 3: Make planetfall to investigate POIs further.
This could be expanded to also include the various flora, fumeroles and geysers we now get on planets.
Having done this last night in a large system, it took a few hours to investigate and mark all POI using the existing bug. This is very, very far from a "reveal everything because i'm impatient" change and comes with many benefits:
- Gives reason to fly out to all bodies in a system, if you're inclined to hunt for surface POI
- Gives real feedback on whether there's something to be found or not
- Makes exploration that little bit more interactive.
- Gets us away from the weird ways we've been finding POI before, such as "Timing Lag" for extra assets being loaded, pinpointing sites via CTD from bugs or other weird issues.
The best bit of this though, it uses mechanics and triggers that already exist in the game.
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