News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

Sounds great as long as nav beacon scanning and exploration info purchasing remain quicker alternatives for colonised systems.
 
So, with current system you can ADS the system and say in two seconds that this system is boring and continue, how about the new system? I take it it takes minutes to scan the whole system just to get to the same result?
Any clue how long will it take to scan the entire system? One minute, 5 minutes? More, less? What?
 
as a tangent, Is there any chance we could ask for a velocity vector for non-combat situations? or maintain ship or vanity camera orientation to current orbiting planet?

For exploration, if we do find a planet we could orbit in local space, I would love to have a velocity vector to understand which direction my ship is travelling even if it's only in non-combat situations.

for the vanity camera, while orbiting in local space, i'd love to be able to leave the camera always orientated without having to change anything. or at least have the ship pull an ISS and keep it orientated along the velocity vector while orbiting.

A velocity vector (and a heading indicator and pitch/roll ladder) would also be handy off planet too. Velocity vector would be priceless for FA off.
 
Since mapping systems will be a bit more complex, I'd love if system data would be a bit more substantial rather than just something to sell and done.
I mean the data itself. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could share it with wing members? Like, perhaps pick it from our Codex (or whereever that data is stored) and hit the "Share with wing" button. That way commanders exploring together, perhaps searching a region for something together can share data later even if not currently in a wing.

Also nice for an incentive for more social interaction. People could ask for data of certain systems and the like.
 
Gotta be positive, the additions are good, but i gotta be critical, it's not nearly enough for part of the game that has been neglected for over 4 years. hope there will be more things to find on planets,more interesting things... I'd love to come back to the game as a Expo-Miner, but you still need to prove that this system is enough to be a gameplay mechanic...


Also what is the fun on exploring with a friend and find nice places do explore on the planet if we cant land and go with the SRV?
 
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Question on the naming.

The computer provides automatic names to the planets right? How does the computer know that this is the THIRD planet in the system if it's the only one discovered? How the computer knows that there are other 2 if these are undiscovered? This is potentially immersion breaking

I'm picking up this picture as an example because I guess this will happen everywhere.
 
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I think this would be a lot work to implement because of the way procedural generation works (during hyperjumping irrc). But I may be wrong, it would be a super cool feature.

The info needed for the energy distribution of local stars is already displayed on the background sky itself, which is part of the reason we have a loading screen. The sky isn't proc gen. It's literally generated from info from the existing galaxy map (distance, color temp, star class, luminosity) all of these dimensions are the direct result of the energy distribution and should include info about the name of the star itself in the existing database. So the energy distribution is already included every time you jump to a new system, it's just represented as a beautiful sky.

Beyond being a cool feature, people have requested a feature to help ID stars you see in the background sky to aid in travelling there. Currently if you see an interesting looking star or star pattern, you have to try to line up your position on the galmap with the night sky relative to certain nebula, or the center of the galaxy etc. It's very wonky and works less than half the time for me because the perspective is always well off center.

Beyond the programming of linking up the existing data with the skymap, it might take an extra second or two to jump to a new system in order to load the relevant data of visible stars. I am guessing this because simply loading in double the number of stars (or the equivalent data) by changing the ini settings, only increases loading times by a blip of a second.
 
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I have my Galaxy Map/Viewport/System Map mapped to a mini hat switch on my CH throttle. This changes the view almost instantly. Not sure what your setup is like.

Same. I'm talking about the load time though. The time it takes me to load the GMap is a bit longer than what switching to the left panel and picking a bookmark would be. I think I was emphasizing the wrong suggestion here but in general it's faster to get to things on the side panels than in the maps, isn't it? However, I much prefer the feeling of NOT being pulled out of the cockpit when I'm working on the side panels, as opposed to losing all situational awareness when I'm in a map. I can glance around and make sure everything is still ok, instead of listening for warning sounds when it might already be too late. ;-)
 
The intention is that the energy distribution should provide explorers with information they can interpret to help identify if specific body types exist in a system.

Will that information be interpretable upon first glance, or only after much scanning and locating has been done?
 
This is hopefully just one part of exploration and more to be revealed, one feature I would like to see is mass dumping to lighten a ship out in the black, IE I could dump fuel/ the hanger and cargo racks etc to increase my range to make that hop to an elusive system that even jumponium can't quite reach rather than having to leg it back to a station, has this ever been looked at?
 
How many keybinds is this expected to add, or is stuff like frequency focus going to replace other things when you change modes? EG the radar scale turns into the freq adjustment?

Added to that, will it have analog slider controls like the radar distance has as well so it can be quickly adjusted if the HOTAS supports it?


During one of the previous dev streams it was hinted that stuff like the discovery scanner and detailed surface scanner (and limpet controllers) might be getting something like fighter and and SRV bays where it is a single module that has sub-slots in them for the exploration stuff. Is this something that is not happening now, or still something that is still being looked at?
 
Not a game changer but many good improvements on the way.

I'm a bit disappointed because of no custom waypoint thru coordinates on the planet surface... Ok, now with the new scan system they will be not that much important, but our ships in year 3304 MUST have this ability.
 
Question on the naming.

The computer provides automatic names to the planets right? How does the computer know that this is the THIRD planet in the system if it's the only one discovered? How the computer knows that there are other 2 if these are undiscovered?

I'm picking up this picture as an example because I guess this will happen everywhere.

I would argue the initial scan can tell via mass/gravity how many planets are in the area, just not narrow it down to location and composition without further analysis. By way of analogy, early large exoplanet discoveries were never seen, but their existences implied by the "wobble" of a star.
 
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