News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal
Lets see, 400 billion systems times number of planets per system, hmm, that is trillions. So, write something about every planet ...hmm, that would take...1 million years!
Would you like to wait here? Can I get you something, coffee?
Seriously it would take til the end of the Universe to do that.
My own thoughts.
The initial honk followed by searching the scanner results sounds interesting, but sounds like it could take up far more time than it currently does. I'd need to see it in action on a big system (lots of planets & moons as well as bodies at long distances from the primary star) to decide.
However, I'm personally not happy with the concept of the fire-and-forget DSS probes. I'd prefer that the probes travel to the target body, scan it, and then come back to your ship for refueling and reuse. Basically, you'd only need to synthesise more probes if you jumped out of the system before all your probes came back, or if they had to travel too far to the target body and ran out of fuel before they could come back to you. That would greatly reduce the number of probes that you'd need to be carrying and reduce the amount of synthesis you'd need to do.
What about the probe's range? If a body is out at the 250,000+ ls range, should a probe even be able to reach it before running out of fuel?
Also - this business about "skillfully" aiming the probes to scan specific areas of the target planet? This idea doesn't really appeal to me at all, as it has all the hallmarks of being a crapshoot instead with my skill level. It's supposed to be the 34th Century - we should be told that this planet requires 5 probes to scan completely, so we just launch 5 probes at it. Although considering how stupid collector limpets are, I'm somehow not surprised that a group of probes needs to be told how to cover a planet for scanning...
Would it work better if a single probe could scan an entire planet, albeit very slowly as the probe doesn't move very quickly around the planet, but skilled players could arc more probes into different areas on the planet (e.g. the other side of the planet) to greatly speed things up by starting additional scans in different areas, meaning each probe will have to move far less distance to cover areas not being scanned by other probes? It's a subtle difference to what's been proposed, but makes sense to me.
The initial honk followed by searching the scanner results sounds interesting, but sounds like it could take up far more time than it currently does. I'd need to see it in action on a big system (lots of planets & moons as well as bodies at long distances from the primary star) to decide.
However, I'm personally not happy with the concept of the fire-and-forget DSS probes. I'd prefer that the probes travel to the target body, scan it, and then come back to your ship for refueling and reuse. Basically, you'd only need to synthesise more probes if you jumped out of the system before all your probes came back, or if they had to travel too far to the target body and ran out of fuel before they could come back to you. That would greatly reduce the number of probes that you'd need to be carrying and reduce the amount of synthesis you'd need to do.
What about the probe's range? If a body is out at the 250,000+ ls range, should a probe even be able to reach it before running out of fuel?
Also - this business about "skillfully" aiming the probes to scan specific areas of the target planet? This idea doesn't really appeal to me at all, as it has all the hallmarks of being a crapshoot instead with my skill level. It's supposed to be the 34th Century - we should be told that this planet requires 5 probes to scan completely, so we just launch 5 probes at it. Although considering how stupid collector limpets are, I'm somehow not surprised that a group of probes needs to be told how to cover a planet for scanning...
Would it work better if a single probe could scan an entire planet, albeit very slowly as the probe doesn't move very quickly around the planet, but skilled players could arc more probes into different areas on the planet (e.g. the other side of the planet) to greatly speed things up by starting additional scans in different areas, meaning each probe will have to move far less distance to cover areas not being scanned by other probes? It's a subtle difference to what's been proposed, but makes sense to me.
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My initial thoughts:
I worry a new player trying to deliver data or cargo to a small population system (ie, no system data in their ship's computer) will have to spend more time scanning than delivering. And with a new UI replacing the pilot's view of their sensors, getting interdicted while trying to find the delivery location could cause a lot of frustration for new players (and probably some oldies too) as-in they won't see it coming.
Questions:
Since it takes quite a few deliveries to have enough credits to purchase an ADS early in one's career, will the stock BDS make finding that station deep in the system or surface settlement where the 'goods' need to go a frustrating endeavor for a new player?
Will the Boom Data Delivery Time Bonuses go away or will they get an increase since it appears it could take more time to find the destination station/settlement?
Adam,
More of a hope and a question about modules. My hope for exploration is that a Cobra Mk III could be outfitted to interact with anything we might find out there (even if the interaction is sub-optimal). By my count, here's what's currently needed:
(1) Discovery Scanner, (2) Detailed Surface Scanner, (3) SRV, (4) Cargo bay (Gaurdians stuff), (5) Shield (landing, running from Guardians/Thargoids), (6) Fuel Scoop, (7) Limpet controller (?).
Recently, a whole bunch of new limpets have been introduced to interact with mega-ships (at least) that we might find. I had high hopes that both scanners and limpets would allow racking so that all of that would fit in the 6 slots of the Cobra. Is there any hope left for a solution that would allow a multi-purose Cobra that wouldn't make me curse my choices 1000's of light-years from home?\
If limpets do allow racking in the future, I guess I could consider the danger of a shield-less Cobra, but I do like shields.
I would imagine they will put that in a separate post.
The USS will be finite, but we plan to have more that one or two at any one time. The USS do decay, they only last for a certain amount of time, and the remaining time is displayed to the player. More USS will spawn and appear over time.
Maybe not, I thought I read Will posting that Stations & Starports would be shown on system entry.
Did you even read the post? This is just the first part.
SRVs do not support multicrew at this time.
This looks fantastic to me. I don't imagine I'll embark on any record breaking expeditions but I'll likely do more "exploration" then I do now.
Aw nooooooo
Yep, that's how it work in the game currently.
Interesting ideas.
I guess it's going to need time to sink in,I probably need to see it in operation first.
It sounds like, things we can do quickly are going to get a lot slower (see a whole system scan) and things that were slow are going to get faster (survey an entire planet).
The great thing could be, that potentially every system is now worth a look, as opposed to just being literal dead space on the way to somewhere else.
But... For this to really sell, it's going to need a lot more in systems to look for. That includes comets, gas clouds, giant explorable ship wrecks, caves on planets, star trek style "interesting phenomenon" in space lol, just stuff, lots of stuff. If this were to go ahead without the introduction of interesting new things to see and find, then it's in danger of just being extra complexity for no benefit (in fact less benefit), but I trust that this is already in hand
I guess it's going to need time to sink in,I probably need to see it in operation first.
It sounds like, things we can do quickly are going to get a lot slower (see a whole system scan) and things that were slow are going to get faster (survey an entire planet).
The great thing could be, that potentially every system is now worth a look, as opposed to just being literal dead space on the way to somewhere else.
But... For this to really sell, it's going to need a lot more in systems to look for. That includes comets, gas clouds, giant explorable ship wrecks, caves on planets, star trek style "interesting phenomenon" in space lol, just stuff, lots of stuff. If this were to go ahead without the introduction of interesting new things to see and find, then it's in danger of just being extra complexity for no benefit (in fact less benefit), but I trust that this is already in hand