Is Exploration Completely Aimless?

[marx]

There have often been hints and clues to varying degrees.

It's hard for FD; they have to come up with clues which can withstand the brute force and brainpower of an awful lot of people (mostly) working together on t'interwebs.

I think by now, they have realised that it's futile to come up with puzzles that are not too difficult for the average player, yet can't be collectively solved in a matter of hours by groups of people. Which is why they decided to introduce personal story missions now, so that people can still feel like they can follow the story in-game, and not just on Youtube. (As mentioned above, heh.) In my opinion, it's a good idea - I hope that the difficult mysteries aren't going away though. (Not difficult in the sense of having too vague hints and a too large search area, mind.)

I can read and have read OPs post at length. Please don't patronise. My point is still moot.

Well, you appeared to react to the thread title only, and called the thread aimless. To me, that looked like a quick reaction without much substance. The point is about how you can find new examples of special content (ruins, barnacles, etc), whether you can select your destinations, or if it's just wandering off aimlessly. (The thing is, the thread title doesn't reflect this, hence why I called the title bad.) The topic wasn't what exploration is about.
As you can see, the question did generate discussion, so I guess, like you said now, your point is moot? Not sure if that's really what you meant to say though.

A lot of people are mentioning the random data points, and I did actually collect one.

There's a difference: people are referring to persistent data points (listening posts, and so on - anything that can be scanned and gives you a message), which aren't random, and don't disappear when you relog. If you find one, then that surely hints towards something to be found.

Out of curiosity.....do these appear glowing in the system map or only when you fly right up to them?

I've yet to find one myself, but from the system map screenshots I've seen, the glowing green gas giants do appear as such. In most cases, the system map does tend to reflect how things actually look.

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

Marx if you want to begin correcting my grammar, go ahead I welcome it. Go check out what "moot point" means and apply to this context. You'll find I'm absolutely in context.

Oh and a top tip from somebody who communicates in high level written English all day every day: Quoting large bodies of text doesn't prove you right. Succinct is always better.

 

[Gamatech]

There's a difference: people are referring to persistent data points (listening posts, and so on - anything that can be scanned and gives you a message), which aren't random, and don't disappear when you relog. If you find one, then that surely hints towards something .

I thought the data points were random, obviously I was wrong. Regardless, I got this message from a data point.

 

[marx]

I thought the data points were random, obviously I was wrong. Regardless, I got this message from a data point.

Oh, sorry if that was ambiguous: there are random, procedurally generated data points, both in signal sources and planetside, and there are some hand-placed, persistent ones. If in doubt, log out and back in: if it vanishes, it was generated, if it's still there, it's persistent. The latter definitely have hints pointing towards something.

@ Cdr Voorheez: Huh, I didn't know that "moot point" had different meanings in American and British English. Live and learn. My bad, I misunderstood that phrase then. (I did say I'm not sure.) My point was that this topic and thread isn't aimless.

 

[jasonbarron]

The only method of exploration that I can detect is to go to places other people have already been and talked about on the Internet and visit the location yourself. As far as finding "new stuff" goes, it's all randomly generated when the player jumps into a system, isn't it? Not exactly scientific at any rate.

 

[duckofdeath]

It's not all random. My prime goal has been to find extreme planets to land on. I've got my name on the highest gravity and the smallest planet we can land on. That's some extreme luck I must have had, with thousands others out there exploring...

 

[Zeeman]

Exploration needs tools, right now there are ways, apparently, to make educated guesses for some things (the magic space mushroom and geyser locations), but not really for ruins or stuff like that.

FD have said they are working on exploration for Beyond, hopefully, dismissing the mothership whilst in the SLF will be one of those things. If I have to eyeball scan a planet, at least let me do it flying something fun.

Z...

 

[duckofdeath]

I think it's more that the core game needs an overhaul. Get more info in the game, why not have NPC's work more like RP games, where they all work as some sort of connection to something, be it relevant or not to what you're doing. I've seen enough top 1% cruise ship captains by now...

 

[varonica]

The only method of exploration that I can detect is to go to places other people have already been and talked about on the Internet and visit the location yourself. As far as finding "new stuff" goes, it's all randomly generated when the player jumps into a system, isn't it? Not exactly scientific at any rate.

No, it's "procedurally generated" using the same seed, so while it's generated when you jump into the system, what you see will be the same as what everybody else sees. If it was random then it would be different for everybody. The same planets, moons, stars, the same geography, the same craters, the same temperatures. Life only appears in certain places, brain trees only appear in splash craters, and only on bodies within a certain temperature range, cone fungus seems to only appear in canyons thus far, and also only in systems in or very near nebula. Vulcanism on small bodies only appears in areas where gravitational stress should cause it, small bodies with an orbital period of less than one day will have major vulcanism with up to 15 more more volcanic sites, between one and two days orbital period usually just vulcanism with only a few sites, between two and three days orbital period, sometimes slightly longer, minor vulcanism with only one or two sites per body. Life so far has only been found on volcanic bodies in the procedural universe. (note I say procedural because some I think is hand placed and so obviously doesn't follow the rules, such as the cone fungus near Mic Turner base)

Don't confuse the "procedurally generated" universe with the "random generated" instance content which will be random for everybody. Crashed ships with abandoned life pods, small bases with skimmers, scattered mining installations where you can collect mats by shooting the mining rigs, these are all randomly generated when you exit SC to the planet surface, like USS and other things in space. Life isn't random, it's procedural, guardian ruins aren't random, volcanism isn't random, they are (or should be, admitted sometimes there are problems but that's a bug) the same for everybody.

You can use these rules to cut down on where to look for life or ruins, for instance no point in checking every single body for life when in 99% of cases there's no volcanism, just check small bodies with an orbital period of less than a couple of days, Guardian Ruins and Brain Trees usually appear in a smaller galactic area around 50ly across, so if you find one look for the other. There are probably other rules we haven't stumbled across yet, but we will never find them unless we look for them.

Just saying "no point" means that all the places you go to look that other people found wouldn't be there for you to go and look at, someone had to find them first. Look I'm the first to say, not everyone gets exploration, or can stand it even, exploration is there for a certain type of people, like PvP is there for a certain type of people, and some people can do both, I don't do PvP, it's not a problem. FDEV is supposed to be sexing up exploration in 2.4 beyond, I hope it makes it more accessible to more people without making it a walk in the park, exploration needs to be improved but not to he point where it becomes a boring point and honk mechanic. We can only wait and see.

In the meantime just enjoy the game, do stuff you like doing.

 

[Whiterose]

I am still looking for a moon made of cheese.

 

[jasonbarron]

No, it's "procedurally generated" using the same seed, so while it's generated when you jump into the system, what you see will be the same as what everybody else sees. If it was random then it would be different for everybody. The same planets, moons, stars, the same geography, the same craters, the same temperatures. Life only appears in certain places, brain trees only appear in splash craters, and only on bodies within a certain temperature range, cone fungus seems to only appear in canyons thus far, and also only in systems in or very near nebula. Vulcanism on small bodies only appears in areas where gravitational stress should cause it, small bodies with an orbital period of less than one day will have major vulcanism with up to 15 more more volcanic sites, between one and two days orbital period usually just vulcanism with only a few sites, between two and three days orbital period, sometimes slightly longer, minor vulcanism with only one or two sites per body. Life so far has only been found on volcanic bodies in the procedural universe. (note I say procedural because some I think is hand placed and so obviously doesn't follow the rules, such as the cone fungus near Mic Turner base)

Don't confuse the "procedurally generated" universe with the "random generated" instance content which will be random for everybody. Crashed ships with abandoned life pods, small bases with skimmers, scattered mining installations where you can collect mats by shooting the mining rigs, these are all randomly generated when you exit SC to the planet surface, like USS and other things in space. Life isn't random, it's procedural, guardian ruins aren't random, volcanism isn't random, they are (or should be, admitted sometimes there are problems but that's a bug) the same for everybody.

You can use these rules to cut down on where to look for life or ruins, for instance no point in checking every single body for life when in 99% of cases there's no volcanism, just check small bodies with an orbital period of less than a couple of days, Guardian Ruins and Brain Trees usually appear in a smaller galactic area around 50ly across, so if you find one look for the other. There are probably other rules we haven't stumbled across yet, but we will never find them unless we look for them.

Just saying "no point" means that all the places you go to look that other people found wouldn't be there for you to go and look at, someone had to find them first. Look I'm the first to say, not everyone gets exploration, or can stand it even, exploration is there for a certain type of people, like PvP is there for a certain type of people, and some people can do both, I don't do PvP, it's not a problem. FDEV is supposed to be sexing up exploration in 2.4 beyond, I hope it makes it more accessible to more people without making it a walk in the park, exploration needs to be improved but not to he point where it becomes a boring point and honk mechanic. We can only wait and see.

In the meantime just enjoy the game, do stuff you like doing.

Sure, but it didn't exist until the first player "discovered" it. There was no way to know what was there beforehand using any kind of scientific method. All a player can do in regards to finding new stuff is head randomly into the black with their trusty selfy stick and hope for the best, which is why I said "the only method of exploration that I can detect is to go to places other people have already been and talked about on the Internet and visit the location yourself."

You just repeated what I said, albeit with a bit more elegance.

 

[Aura Lorell]

Sure, but it didn't exist until the first player "discovered" it. There was no way to know what was there beforehand using any kind of scientific method. Which is why I said "the only method of exploration that I can detect is to go to places other people have already been and talked about on the Internet and visit the location yourself."

You just repeated what I said, albeit with a bit more elegance.

Actually, that's not entirely correct. The system exists as a seed. If it's easier, consider it as compressed into a seed. The client unpacks the seed and converts it into data, visuals, orbits, information, etc. The client communicates with the server and gets tags if any. The system itself is generated following strict scientific rules, based on what we know from our own solar system and from the decades of astronomical observation. The server doesn't need to store any more system information, other than the seed. Hence the system existed even before it was visited by a player.

 

[Koen]

Actually, that's not entirely correct. The system exists as a seed. If it's easier, consider it as compressed into a seed. The client unpacks the seed and converts it into data, visuals, orbits, information, etc. The client communicates with the server and gets tags if any. The system itself is generated following strict scientific rules, based on what we know from our own solar system and from the decades of astronomical observation. The server doesn't need to store any more system information, other than the seed. Hence the system existed even before it was visited by a player.

Cool, Platonism is still alive and well in the 34th century - it just appears in a slightly different form.

 

[varonica]

Sure, but it didn't exist until the first player "discovered" it. There was no way to know what was there beforehand using any kind of scientific method. All a player can do in regards to finding new stuff is head randomly into the black with their trusty selfy stick and hope for the best, which is why I said "the only method of exploration that I can detect is to go to places other people have already been and talked about on the Internet and visit the location yourself."

You just repeated what I said, albeit with a bit more elegance.

You do realise that holds for all exploration right? Until someone goes there no-one knows for sure what is actually there. When explorers set off on sailing ships across the ocean they never knew what they were going to find. We can look at star systems with telescopes and other instruments figure out what type of star it is, whether it has planets, get some basic info, a lot of this stuff is available in game. What you are asking for is an exploration mechanic that tells you what's there without actually going there, but once you already know what's there is there any point in going there?

What you are talking about is touristing, not exploring. if someone has already discovered it you aren't exploring, you are just visiting. Look it's fine if you don't actually want to go exploring, but installing an instant win button that tells you what's there without actually having to visit won't actually improve exploration. A good part of the exploration bug is the journey, and that's the bit you want to kill. We want improved tools, not instant win!

 

[duckofdeath]

Sure, but it didn't exist until the first player "discovered" it. There was no way to know what was there beforehand using any kind of scientific method. All a player can do in regards to finding new stuff is head randomly into the black with their trusty selfy stick and hope for the best, which is why I said "the only method of exploration that I can detect is to go to places other people have already been and talked about on the Internet and visit the location yourself."

You just repeated what I said, albeit with a bit more elegance.

Again, if it was all random. How is it possible for me to hold the two extreme records for landable sized planets, the things I've been aiming for? I'm no where near the most travelled explorer in the game, and I'm only one in thousands. Yes, you don't know what a destination system contains before entering it, you can however massively increase the likelihood of something you want to be there to actually be there, if you try harder.

 

[jasonbarron]

Again, if it was all random. How is it possible for me to hold the two extreme records for landable sized planets, the things I've been aiming for? I'm no where near the most travelled explorer in the game, and I'm only one in thousands. Yes, you don't know what a destination system contains before entering it, you can however massively increase the likelihood of something you want to be there to actually be there, if you try harder.

Even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while

Honestly, I don't see what your point is. How do you know that you weren't the only one, or at best one of a very few who even cared to look for such things? Perhaps if you would share your scientific method for searching for and finding a particular planetary body I'll concede that it wasn't the law of averages intersecting with blind luck that led you to those planets. Until then I'm going with "random wandering will eventually produce the desired results."

And even if you do have some method of divination that few (if any) others possess, it's still going to be so obscure that the fact will remain that "exploration" in ED really isn't anything besides random wandering with a selfy stick spamming the J key for the vast majority of people who are doing it.

 

[Strangepork]

Hi all o7

I wanted to ask the explorers out there how exactly they find anything of interest out in the black. I'm not talking about Earth-likes and black holes, I'm talking about things like the oddly dubbed "brain trees", barnacles, Thargoid ruins, Guardian bases, and whatever else might be out there.

You don't just choose a star via eeny-meeny-miny-mo and head out there aimlessly, right? There are 400 billion star systems, there has to be SOME way to at least narrow the field? How do you know what areas of space to explore, and how do you know what worlds to cruise to and set down on? I can't comprehend the sheer inefficiency of closing your eyes, spinning around, and heading wherever your finger points.

I'm not expecting the 31st century equivalent of Siri to give me exact coordinates of Mr Trump's homeworld, but surely there's SOMETHING to give you a rough direction towards the more captivating finds??

*EDIT*

To clarify, I'm also not talking about previously discovered points. I'm talking about fresh, new, never before seen sites.

Yes, but I'm a year... there will be a few new visual effects and a list of stuff to tick off.

 

[duckofdeath]

Because a very large part of the exploration community uses EDSM or EDDB, sharing info automagically through the API's. I mean, for someone who tries to make an impression that he knows a lot about this game, you really give an impression that you refuse to learn anything about it....
It's not obscure or black magic. I don't have a deal with the devil. I just maximise my chances of finding what I'm looking for by cutting out the things I'm not interested in. That would not have been possible had it all been random. Could the design have been better in the game? More tools, guides and interaction for explorers? Absolutely. Everyone in the exploration community has been saying that since 1.0. Though, that's not the point here.

 

[Jackie Silver]

Oh, this is interesting. I see a lot of gaps in the post numbers which implies that there's a number of DD trolls (who I routinely put onto ignore) on the thread.

 

[Ziljan]

Oh, this is interesting. I see a lot of gaps in the post numbers which implies that there's a number of DD trolls (who I routinely put onto ignore) on the thread.

Ha just noticed the same thing!

Even a blind hog finds an acorn every once in a while

Honestly, I don't see what your point is. How do you know that you weren't the only one, or at best one of a very few who even cared to look for such things? Perhaps if you would share your scientific method for searching for and finding a particular planetary body I'll concede that it wasn't the law of averages intersecting with blind luck that led you to those planets. Until then I'm going with "random wandering will eventually produce the desired results."

And even if you do have some method of divination that few (if any) others possess, it's still going to be so obscure that the fact will remain that "exploration" in ED really isn't anything besides random wandering with a selfy stick spamming the J key for the vast majority of people who are doing it.

Always enjoy your posts and glad to see you on the Exploration forums!

I am going to try to "divine" what he meant and guess that he is using a combo of the Galmap info, which tells what kind of star and how many stars there are, and galactic radius. The class and subclass of a star tells you the color temp and and a guesstimate on the size, which can give an idea of how massive or young the star is in question. When taken in combo with the location in the galaxy, these can give you a read on the statistically available material for planet formation and also a likelihood of what types of planets you are likely to find. For instance, the huge planets this guy is talking about are typically found around young high mass stars (OBAFs). The position in the galaxy might also impact how much material (eg solid material vs gas) is available for planet forming. Galactic radius definitely seems to impact the likelihood of finding ELWs (so why not planet size/density?), but the way the game works anything is possible anywhere.

All of this info is pre-generated on the galmap and visible from Earth even for permit locked systems. No idea whether the seeds are pre-generated or created when you enter a system, but in either case the seeds would have to pass through the filter of star type and location.