Newcomer / Intro Planetary Scan Missions 03-Feb-2018 [Explanations Required]

[T4ct1csOG]

Can anyone explain to me how planetary scan missions work now?

Here is my situation and I am assuming I don't know something that I need to know though I have no clue what it actually is

Picked up two planetary scan missions for the same system (not realizing they were the same planet), ran the first one (of course my luck it's the 119k vs the 790k one...) also blew my ship up because the first time the planet loaded black and told me it was a few thousand k away when I ran in to it.. yeah... about that... all the money I would have made for the more expensive mission (if I could actually complete it) just went up in smoke

So now I have finished the first one, returned to the starbase, turned it in, and returned to the planet where my mission indicator says I need to go. There is only one landing area here and I land at it and it says it is already scanned... so now what? I have six days left on this mission to get back my money that the glitchy planet already stole from me? (sorry if I sound like I am whining... because I am)

This is what makes me want to do nothing but grind boom data delivery and transport missions until I die, spending two hours trying to figure out how to do a glitchy non-explained quest that ends up with ship destruction and no credits. #LAME[mad][mad][mad][mad][mad]

[I am leaving out a bunch of good parts like how long I spent cussing at my controls trying to figure out how to get my handbrake turned off all the while the AI who is totally the most helpful thing ever is like YOUR HANDBRAKE IS ON, HEY HUMAN, YOUR HANDBRAKE IS ON... Thanks AI!!! ]

Hope someone gets a good laugh out of this, but seriously... how is this supposed to work?

 

[Chris Simon]

You can try re-scanning the Nav Beacon near the star to update your system and mission data.
Other than that, the rule of thumb is - don't stack scan missions if they lead to the same place. The beacon will reset, eventually, and you'll be able to scan it again, but I'm afraid it takes several hours, maybe a whole day, so it depends on your mission's timer. If it will let you, you can do this mission tomorrow.

 

[T4ct1csOG]

You can try re-scanning the Nav Beacon near the star to update your system and mission data.
Other than that, the rule of thumb is - don't stack scan missions if they lead to the same place. The beacon will reset, eventually, and you'll be able to scan it again, but I'm afraid it takes several hours, maybe a whole day, so it depends on your mission's timer. If it will let you, you can do this mission tomorrow.

Yeah I just took a break from ED after this yesterday and played some Monster Hunter hoping exactly this ^ plus what should have been super simple just turned in to a frustrating waste of time. The SRV controls were a huge pain to figure out, the fact that turning the assist on seemed to make the SRV undrivable, the AI screaming at me that my handbrake was on when I accidentally activated that and spent 20 minutes searching the web, and pressing all the buttons on my controller (i'm playing with my old 360 wired controller since I am coming off playing on xbox 1 to PC) trying to get my SRV to do anything but fly up in the air (why the heck are all the controls not just like the ship? why did they flop acceleration brake etc?), losing my ship to the tune of 700k or so negative credits, wasting 2 hours trying to figure out how to get this quest to just work. This kind of thing really makes me want to stay in my safe little shell where I KNOW i can make reliable money even if it is boring as watching paint dry. (data delivery, boom delivery, strait passenger delivery that don't involve weird sightseeing miscreants...)

 

[Chris Simon]

Yeah I just took a break from ED after this yesterday and played some Monster Hunter hoping exactly this ^ plus what should have been super simple just turned in to a frustrating waste of time. The SRV controls were a huge pain to figure out, the fact that turning the assist on seemed to make the SRV undrivable, the AI screaming at me that my handbrake was on when I accidentally activated that and spent 20 minutes searching the web, and pressing all the buttons on my controller (i'm playing with my old 360 wired controller since I am coming off playing on xbox 1 to PC) trying to get my SRV to do anything but fly up in the air (why the heck are all the controls not just like the ship? why did they flop acceleration brake etc?), losing my ship to the tune of 700k or so negative credits, wasting 2 hours trying to figure out how to get this quest to just work. This kind of thing really makes me want to stay in my safe little shell where I KNOW i can make reliable money even if it is boring as watching paint dry. (data delivery, boom delivery, strait passenger delivery that don't involve weird sightseeing miscreants...)

This is actually interesting. The things you describe as annoying and waste of time are what makes Elite interesting for me. The fun begins when things start to go wrong. Maybe I'm weird.
But yes, you're right that the game doesn't really communicate with you.

There is a good reason why SRV functions differently and has separate controls. It handles completely differently depending on what type of control you use. If you use keyboard, for example, the assist on is a necessity, but if you use anything analog, you have to have it off. The SRV also needs a lot more control axes than the ship. Aside from steering and acceleration there is vertical boost, pitch, roll and two axes on the turret.
I think you made a mistake that you took a surface mission before getting familiar with the buggy. It requires a couple hundred kilometers of driving to truly get it, so I can see how all this, combined with the stress of the mission going wrong could cause frustration. When Horizons came out, I spent several weeks just driving around planets and having fun. It really helps in the long run to step aside from making money and just fool around.

I'm envious about your Monster Hunter, btw. I don't have a console (aside from the old PS3) so I have to wait almost another year.

 

[d8veh]

To make the SRV much more controllable, take all the pips off engines. Also, you have much more stability and you can climb steeper if you go backwards, so if ever you need to run away from something, always go backwards.

In case you don't know, landing in your ship is also much easier if you take all pips off your engines.

 

[T4ct1csOG]

This is actually interesting. The things you describe as annoying and waste of time are what makes Elite interesting for me. The fun begins when things start to go wrong. Maybe I'm weird.
But yes, you're right that the game doesn't really communicate with you.

There is a good reason why SRV functions differently and has separate controls. It handles completely differently depending on what type of control you use. If you use keyboard, for example, the assist on is a necessity, but if you use anything analog, you have to have it off. The SRV also needs a lot more control axes than the ship. Aside from steering and acceleration there is vertical boost, pitch, roll and two axes on the turret.
I think you made a mistake that you took a surface mission before getting familiar with the buggy. It requires a couple hundred kilometers of driving to truly get it, so I can see how all this, combined with the stress of the mission going wrong could cause frustration. When Horizons came out, I spent several weeks just driving around planets and having fun. It really helps in the long run to step aside from making money and just fool around.

I'm envious about your Monster Hunter, btw. I don't have a console (aside from the old PS3) so I have to wait almost another year.

I finally got it all figured out (mostly) although these missions (ESPECIALLY the associated mail messages up top) seem pretty glitchy. They frequently don't update to send me back to the station, I even had one today where I logged out and back in then needed to rescan the same data point even though I only had the one mission to that planet so I got credit for scanning it twice which is in my bounty area now so I can turn it in to feds and imperial and the totals went up the second time scanning it, still didn't update my mission so not sure if it is ready to turn in or not. I have made a few of these work in systems around the area now though so I'm getting it (slowly) wish I could figure out how to target things in the SRV without going to left data panel and then target that is really slow when I'm worried about being fired on

Did a few today made my money back from my lost ship plus about 1m credits, it isn't a very fast way for me to make money but the SRV is kind of fun to drive around once you get the controls down (I swear I had them when they first came out on xbox 1 but I took a few months or more not playing and forgot everything i knew, also think this was before the missions we just tooled around some planets looking for stuff no missions)