News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

Justinian Octavius

Justinian Octavius
My first impression of reading the Exploration update is an entirely positive one. The new mechanics seem to flesh out the existing ones nicely, giving commanders always something to do but not something that would become annoying. Of course, to fully understand precisely how the new scanning mechanic operates it will have to be seen & tried but it does sound a good step in the right direction.

Regarding USSs, this also sounds like a major quality of life improvement that, if I've understood correctly, will result in commanders no longer spending possibly 30 minutes orbiting planets waiting for a mission USS to spawn (it will appear with the scan). If this is the case it is a most welcome change & will make many mission types a lot more enjoyable imho.

Thanks for the hard work, sounding good,
CMDR Justinian Octavius
 

Martin Afonso

Martin Afonso
Genar-Hofoen said:
Okay you've actually made body discovery and exploration much worse - this is exactly what I tried to tell everyone in a few previous threads...

What you've done here looks great and probably is great.

Until you have to do this 10's, 100's, 1000's of times.

The good thing about the ADS honk is that it gives you a display of system bodies immediately. From that you could decide which bodies to go and do things with - surface scan them, fly down to their surface, etc.

Body discovery is currently quick. This new system is going to make it very slow.

This might make a few explorer-types happy. It does not make me happy, and for the reason I stated above - once the novelty value of that 'cool stuff' above has been done a few times, the time it takes to merely discover all bodies in a system is going to start grating. Again, please, picture doing this 10's, 100's 1000's of times - this is very quickly going to end up not being a fun activity.
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I agree with this. This new mechanics should have been a new layer behind the existent ones, not replace them.
 

ToCoSo

ToCoSo
Sounds really good, I like the mixture of skill, new visual overlay, having a sense of exploration plus the tools to find things on planets sound satisfying to use.

The USS tweak will make us feel like we are searching rather than waiting for something to spawn in a system.

I wonder if we cant find what we need in a system if we need to relog or re jump or if we can travel across a system and keep finding new emissions???
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
marx said:
I have mixed feelings about this. Most of the changes and additions sound pretty good. However, if the D-scanners' ability to give you the system map goes away - the above does imply that, no? - then it'll be much more time-consuming to find the valuable and interesting planets than it is today. Or will we still be able to see the system map at a glance as it currently is, and will just have to use the new gameplay to pinpoint, further interrogate and map the bodies?

Also, about the probes and first mapping: will we be able to map bodies which we can't (yet) land on, or will they be on landables only?

To put it another way, let's see an example. Right now, I jump into a system, fire my ADS and look at the system map while scooping fuel. I can see at a glance what kind of bodies there are in the system, and can fly close to them if I wish.
Now, in the new system, will I still be able to call up the "old" system map, or will I have to spend much more time to find out what bodies there might be in the system?

After all, let's not forget that many systems only contain lots of uniform, uninteresting bodies.


Other than this, it all sounds pretty good. The "first mapped by" is a nice touch, too. Oh, and please include the first discoverer and first mapper(?) information in the journal files!
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This is a good point ... I know a lot of people take a quick look at the system map while scooping to see if there's earth likes, water worlds, etc worth scanning. It's basically how many people travel ... jump, honk, scoop, check ... jump, honk, scoop, check. Although it's great that there's all this new gameplay around "honk" and "check" it's also gonna really shake things up if that old method is no longer gonna work (i.e. if you can't efficiently explore as you travel).

When I first read the OP the first phrase that came to my mind (with a wry smile) was ... be careful what you wish for, you might get it! [yesnod]
 

Dubber

Dubber
Will Flanagan said:
The initial 'honk' will just reveal the entry star. As you use the to explore, more stellar bodies will be revealed as you find them, which will then populate the system map.
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That's ridiculous then, talk about time sinks. Why not keep it as it is with the honk and use the tools to map what you want to look at in more detail.

As you described it its nothing more than a glorified srv.
 

MatYNWA

MatYNWA
Genar-Hofoen said:
Okay you've actually made body discovery and exploration much worse - this is exactly what I tried to tell everyone in a few previous threads...

What you've done here looks great and probably is great.

Until you have to do this 10's, 100's, 1000's of times.

The good thing about the ADS honk is that it gives you a display of system bodies immediately. From that you could decide which bodies to go and do things with - surface scan them, fly down to their surface, etc.

Body discovery is currently quick. This new system is going to make it very slow.

This might make a few explorer-types happy. It does not make me happy, and for the reason I stated above - once the novelty value of that 'cool stuff' above has been done a few times, the time it takes to merely discover all bodies in a system is going to start grating. Again, please, picture doing this 10's, 100's 1000's of times - this is very quickly going to end up not being a fun activity.
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This is what im worried about too. I would like to see at least some kind of list after initial honk, maybe first in info panel, just like in second picture and than the same list in system map.

List will provide just some very basic information about bodies that are in system, maybe like this.

Metallic - 1x
WW - 2x
ELW - 1x
Icy - 3x
Class III GG - 4x

Just list, no pictures, those will be added after you make this new frequency thingy exploration technique. This way we will know if it is worth to detail scan the whole system.
 

jurema543

jurema543
2 questions :
- What will be the engineer change for surface scanner
- Will we need discoveries scanner for USS ? If yes, what about thargoid hunter ? (one rack less could be dangerous)
 

Remus

Remus
Do I get this right ?

Do you still need to travel to a system in order to discover its planets ?

Or can you discover planets from a nearby system ?

I'll rather have the former if anything.
 

znôrt

znôrt
Will Flanagan said:
The initial 'honk' will just reveal the entry star. As you use the to explore, more stellar bodies will be revealed as you find them, which will then populate the system map.
Click to expand...

yes, then there seems to be a problem while not exploring but just travelling around the bubble. could the honk reveal the system map in the bubble? or at least starports and outposts?
edit: or, yeah, will the nav beacon still work?
 

Zieman

Zieman
Will Flanagan said:
The initial 'honk' will just reveal the entry star. As you use the to explore, more stellar bodies will be revealed as you find them, which will then populate the system map.
Click to expand...
That does sound a bit worrisome. Couldn't the initial honk at least reveal the amount of bodies in the system (as it currently does)?

To be honest, I'd rather have the 'honk' add all astronomical bodies to the system map, but only as featureless ones, placed like they currently are. Then, after 'discovering them' they'd get their distinctive representations and on further study the known characteristics.
 

who?

who?
One thing that might be VERY important: If we find something in a system and want to share it, how do we do that now?

Currently, we can just given them the body name and they already have an ADS to find it. Can the new system include some way of sharing a location; such as coordinates or scanner settings for them to find the same body?
 

Private Hix

P
Please DO NOT remove the ADS's ability to reveal system bodies, if you do it will make the process of exploring much more tedious (imagine having to individually scan each and every body in a 50-100 body system, not fun).

All of the rest of the changes sound incredible! I'm especially excited for the DSS's ability to find mineral hotspots in rings.
 

Shir

Shir
It sounds super! It'd be great if these new probe functions can be done without having a cargo module onboard, thus giving explorers a choice to use more ships.
 

Stinja

S
Interesting. I wonder how logically consistent this will tie into mining changes.

Discovery scanner: from supercruise, potentially hundreds of thousands (millions?) of light seconds away you can resolve the type of materials on a planet. Differentiating common to rare rocks despite possible low quantities.
Detailed Surface Scanner: also from supercruise, and from some distance (tens of Ls?), you can obtain exact location of objects (materials?).

How will this compare to a ship parked some hundreds of metres from asteroids, and aiming those same sensors at what are essentially bits of planets. Will limpet probes finally be redundant?


This allows wings and multi-crew to engage in exploration together
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So we can finally have 4 players mixed between both wings and multicrew?
eg: two CMDRs in a single ship, one CMDR in a different ship, and a 4th in a SRV
 

Tuwhena

Tuwhena
Adam Waite said:
You can now use the discovery scanner to find them no matter where they are in the system. It's important to note that you still discover USS, CZ etc if you fly close to them in supercruise.
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Will you have to crash your probes into a planet to get a surface scan, or will getting a probe into orbit be enough?
 
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