News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[jernavy]

"We are also adding a new opportunity to get your Commander's name immortalised in the game with the new 'First Mapped By' tag. The first person to successfully map a planet to 100% and sell the resulting data at a port, will be awarded this tag. This also applies for planets that have already got a 'First Discovered' tag as well. "


Does this mean we will get the first mapped tag for planets we have scanned? What about the credits that would have been gained from that? Just curious, more want the tag than anything

 

[Old Duck]

I was afraid of this. If we can't tell from the initial glance whether there might be interesting planets - water worlds, Earth-like worlds, ammonia worlds - in a system, that'll slow exploration gameplay and progression to a crawl.

I welcome slower, MEANINGFUL exploration. If you want fast "exploration" (not sure the word even applies), fire up Space Engine.

Make Solar Systems Great Again!

The image below was taken from a "boring" ice world that someone left untagged not far outside the bubble.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

From my point of View about the whole stuff:

The new scanner is fine, altough i think that there could be more for expo.

The new DSS system is excellent, MOSTLY because it's limited, You are not obligated to have an SRV (if they don't do the move of making the "rearm" surface only mats), you can still have a mining laser to get some mat from asteroid.
And how fast you can actually go depends on your judgment/skill call over how to use said tool, you can make it a single shot, or you might need 5.. all depends on your skill. I like the idea, even more if they actually make bigger DSSs so you can carry more ammo.


BUT once again I have to say,it's a move to still hold SRVs for multicrew, this is something that you had more than a year to "fix" and CANT BE a design choice.


So +10 points for the Scanner.
+20 for the DSS.
+5 for making MC actually usable for something other than combat.
-10 for the 4 years of negligence over explorers.
-10 for making MC not be able to use SRVs.
-10 for the simplistic update... (4 years of waiting, for 2 new mechanics)



??? new surface POIs?
??? new space POIs?
??? new explorer equipments?


Minor sugestion , there's still a HUGE disconnection between galmap and actual playscreen, we need some button to quickly select the star in front of our ship, this can be used for exploring and for combat.

 

[Wasiu]

It looks like that default honk will replace planet images with energy signatures so you will know how many of them there are in system and what types they are (or some probability of it). Also anomalies like interesting USS should be visible to investigate. Then you can map planet with probe to see its image and materials and interesting locations.

Sounds like a lot of fun which wont break hardcore explorers default hond playstyle

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Why wouldn't it work in VR?

BTW: There are currently 7315 users browsing this thread.

Forum users care about exploration! Who would have guessed???

1) by work i mean work well.... the systemmap isabit of a dog in vr.
2) David B playing downVR got me worried.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

I was afraid of this. If we can't tell from the initial glance whether there might be interesting planets - water worlds, Earth-like worlds, ammonia worlds - in a system, that'll slow exploration gameplay and progression to a crawl. (Well, you could at least fix the latter by drastically improving the payouts.)

The first screenshot shows uniform white "blips" on the scanner, and some energy distribution stuff. Based on these and/or perhaps other things, will we still have the means to quickly tell if a system might be worth looking at more, or is that getting nerfed? Because from experience, we know that many systems simply aren't. If we'll have to spend much more time on the initial survey, to get a grip on the contents of the system, then that won't be enjoyable after the 20th system, let alone the hundreds and thousands we explorers go through.

You cant make something meaningful in a window of 5 seconds between the honks, If all you think is you name on a distant star that probably only you will EVER gonna visit(in a game!)... Then i might think you should redo your lifestile... Now if you are thinking about making money($$$) then you might be right... it wont be as fast... but then again... If it is money.. there are another pletora of activities that already makes more money than exploring... (and you would still do the same thing , jump ,jump, jump)

 

[BradHann]

This thread is tl;dr, I hope I'm not treading on anyone's toes.

I'll start by saying how I go exploring. I do the jump-honk-scoop thing. After the honk is done, and while scooping, I look at the system map. That shows me right away if there's anything interesting I want to take a closer look at, or simply move on straight away.

I'm not sure I'm fully understanding this new system. What it seems is, you need to do the honk, then go into a manually scanning mini-game that could potentially take ages, if there are lots of objects in every direction. Then and only then will I know if there's something interesting in this system. If that's how it goes, it sounds absolutely horrible. A massive waste of time, when the vast majority of systems are nothing but a star or two and maybe a few boring, aireless rocks.

I really hope I'm just not fully understanding the scope of the changes. If the honk still gives you the sysmap but this minigame replaces the current supercruise-to-object-then-DSS (actually I presume that's what the probes are for, but this could be an intermediate phase), then that's a good change. But if this minigame is how you populate the system map, then... bleagh.

Also a question - how would this minigame work on a secondary star some 600k+ls away from the drop-in point? Will you be able to see all bodies orbiting that star, or are they all too close together and from that distance can't be distinguished?

 

[Flimley]

Will the new scanner UI etc be displayed immersively in VR - i.e. like station services in an in game display window which you view from your chair, or are we going to get yanked into an unimmersive 'camera mode' like with the SRV turret/multicrew turrets?

A worthwhile question. Some have wondered including myself.

Flimley

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

This all sounds very promising - a couple of questions from me to add to others in the thread:

@FDev - Can you clarify from the Screenshot in the OP that you still have the cockpit upper left and right forward holo drop downs and this new interface will be overlaid onto the first person view? Or is it another dreaded yank out of the spaceship (and immersion) to a floating 3rd person camera view?

If the former I'm thinking this will be fine in VR, but if the latter can you get someone to test it for a couple of hours and see how many bags of vomit they produce (for science of course)?

 

[Spider95]

THIS!

Us HARDCORE explorers travel immensely vast distances to get to exciting stars and systems.
DURING this travel we DO investigate EVERY system to see if any water world, Earth-like, ammonia world, galactic records etc. are hiding in the system.
Investigating this in every system on a 130.000 Ly leg - even if you have an Anaconda capable of jumping 70+ Ly - is hard work and A LOT OF TIME is used on it as the game is already with the one ADS honk.

By implementing what you are suggesting - that you have to discover each celestial object in a system individually and not let them be revealed by the initial ADS honk - will TEAR US hardcore explorers APART.
It would take AGES to finish our enormous trips through the entire galaxy when we want to see what is in every system we jump through.

PLEASE - find a solution that will ALSO see to it that us hardcore explorers can do it just as fast as it is now in the game.

100% my thoughts. completely agree, with this and OP to which this one replied. I really worry this is going to make exploration LESS of an interest for me! I state again as i did earlier. I really REALLY don't like removing the ADS honk. You will kill this game for me if you implement it. I feel they are placating the small time explorer here. not doing anything for the hardcore.

 

[CodexNecro81]

Thanks for the update Will

Seems really interesting and I've been waiting all this time for something in these lines for exploration, just have a few questions:

Importantly, when you uncover a planet using the discovery scanner, as well as being informed of the resources available on it...

So the discovery scanner will show information about resources taking on the current function of the detailed surface scanner? 'First discovered by' will be awarded using discovery scanner?

You will be able to synthesise micro-probes for the detailed surface scanner, but the better aim you are, the less probes you will need to get complete coverage.

How will this affect gameplay of users that have no SRV (not fitted, lost or non-horizons) and no mining lasers to collect mats once the ammo is used up? Will the surface scanner be dead weight in that scenario?

On other note, how about current engineering mods - will detailed surface scanner fast scanner or long range mods have some benefit on this new gameplay and can I be sure it won't brick my ship on the other side of the galaxy after the update? (e.g. mass changes on jump optimized thrusters or power requirement increases in heavily stripped down power plants)

Keep up the good work!

 

[SubitusNex]

OK, I will bite. I apologize already if I missed something, this thread is growing really fast with lots of interesting questions.

So far this seems exciting and a great possible direction for the game to go in terms of exploration. I have a few questions, and hopes to throw around as feedback.

1st thing: I am really happy about the direction you're going with USSs. I got giddy going "YES!" and everything. Question, will you be spawning USSs that we cannot reach in time. It's not the obvious ones that could be frustrating but those 2 minutes to despawn but 2minutes and 3 seconds to reach could be a pain. Will there be any mitigation for this?

2nd thing: You addressed that probes will be "like ammo" for planet scanners and that you can synthesize them. I assume this means they aren't recoverable and since you have to synthesize them, I do hope they are a simple recipe from common materials. Would be horrible to fly around without probes because you can't find that one material for a while. (I know you haven't defined this yet, but just giving you my feedback).

3rd thing: You mention that crews or wings will be able to participate in exploration. This feels like a really interesting direction to go forward with, I particularly like the notion of the pilot shooting probes to do surface scans while someone in crew is finding new bodies with the discovery scanner. One problem/question I have for this is related to SRVs however. We can't go into SRV while in multicrew (either the pilot or crew). I would hope this would change, as it feels a bit broken that if the pilot found something interesting on the surface, he'd have to kick out the crew member who was helping him around to go explore. I particularly like the idea of being able to do that and drop an SRV and a SLF and be able to survey and protect the SRV with the crew on SLF. That would be really an interesting idea. Likewise, having the crew on SLF for protection and being able to do Discovery is nice. Hope this gets looked into further.

4th: One thing we didn't see was how probes are aimed. Will the UI provide any assistance with the aiming of probes to cover the map, or will this be mostly down to guesswork based on gravitational pull? Will there be a predictive trajectory or landing spot on the UI? Would be cool to know

5th: Another thing that would be good to know is how those signals are going to work. From what I can tell this seems to be a system analogous to finding surface sites and resources while on an SRV, and you can tell what things are from the particularities of the signals the same way (and there's overlap the same way). Is this an accurate statement to make? If not, what's the biggest difference when compared to that mechanic?

And that's it for now, I'm sure I will be back with more questions, but I applaud your initiative to reopen Focused Feedback and wish you success in this, I hope it turns out for the best and that players enjoy it. I think you're on the right track here, just make sure you listen to the community on a lot of this feedback. Thanks.

EDIT: Just to say, that I think your compromise with using Nav Beacons as an alternative to scanning planets makes particular sense with this new mechanic and gives nav beacons more meaningful. I like it.

 

[austinbath]

Can we compromise here?
I’m in favor of interactive exploration, but can we at least get a “XXX Astronomical Bodies Discovered” as things currently work, so that we at least know whether a system is worth checking out? This way, people who “just honk” can keep their gameplay intact, and hardcore explorers can take their time investigating a system.

 

[Iron Body]

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.

I'm really only interested in ELWs. I have a complete photo map of around 250 of them. None on the official list, and all more than 10kly from sol.
I estimate that ELWs only occur in about 1 in 50 systems of types G,K,F and A stars.
This proposal sounds like its going to take me 50 times longer to find an elw.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

100% my thoughts. completely agree, with this and OP to which this one replied. I really worry this is going to make exploration LESS of an interest for me! I state again as i did earlier. I really REALLY don't like removing the ADS honk. You will kill this game for me if you implement it. I feel they are placating the small time explorer here. not doing anything for the hardcore.

from their words you will be able to see amonia and so forth planets by looking for their spectrum. like they do in our times. so you will be able to notice an amonnia planet but you will have to find it.

 

[Red Anders]

Then perhaps the next goal should be to make Icy Planets worth scanning. If everything is worth scanning in some way, the additional time taken to scan everything isn't a loss. Though, again, once the signals are learned, people can begin to skip signals they recognize as not worth their time, much like people do with the SRV wave scanner.

Well I was using icy planets as shorthand for 'stuff I'm not particularly bothered about getting detailed information on' so don't get hung up on them specifically.

Have to stress, it's not about credits - I don't really give a toss about credits when I'm exploring. Amusingly enough, when FDev boosted exploration payouts they basically gave me a free gift because the thing I've always looked for above all else was terraformables. You can imagine my delight when they started paying close to half a million for first discoveries, it was like someone decided to start paying me for breathing

Other than that, I'm motivated by the rare, unique and beautiful. A tiny planet baking in the corona of twin stars (currently identifiable from an ADS honk), binaries so close they could kiss (currently identifiable from an ADS honk), my enduring quest to find landable planets over 10G (candidates currently identifiable from an ADS honk), four moons lined up in their orbits (currently identifiable from an ADS scan and the mark one eyeball with orbit lines on) etc. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Or well, they might be. Like I said, we need to try it in beta and have a proper look at it, no sense in worrying about it until then.

I'm hearing a lot of people with similar sentiments.
I'm curious, what makes water/earth-like/ammonia worlds interesting?
You can't land on them or interact with them in any way. So other than looking cool (which, let's be honest, once you've seen one...), why are they interesting?
Unless by "interesting" you mean "yields more credits", then ok.

But if we're actually exploring, and looking for interesting things that we can interact with, and have some gameplay attached to, then the proposed system is significantly better.

'Interesting' is subjective. Let's not all start judging each other and what we do and don't like, it adds nothing to a discussion of the mechanics and it's just going to degenerate into the usual backbiting.

 

[Sylveria]

Another thing is... is this it? I thought there was going to be new stuff, new things to do, not just different ways to do the same thing.

This actually nails my skepticism about Exploration improvements for Q4 in general. While I'm relieved they're making scanning a bit more engaging, and optimistic that they finally "get it", I've yet to see much "new" in the way of actual content. We've still a few months left in the year, however.

I'm not expecting some "big expansion pack for explorers" or anything. I'm sure that will be announced as a paid DLC of some sort. Rather just a bit more than changing things we already do in the game. Logistics improvements for modules would be nice. A ship that is geared/designed for exploration and not just "moar combat" would be more than welcome (the more the merrier) but I'm really not expecting that to happen.

 

[KineticImpulser]

My proposal for addressing the big "honking" change would be to leave the current honk as it is, but withhold the "discovery tag" until the new minigame is played. The new minigame would give what a current DSS scanner gives now. And the new DSS probes would give the planetary map and POIs/locations and the "mapped tag."

Basically its a free upgrade to the ADS, and a redesign of the DSS. In-fiction it would make sense. The existing ADS is a receiver - converting EM and gravitational anomalies into a "best guess" of planetary location and mass. Now, the boffins have upgraded them by adding in the abilities of the current DSS into the ADS system - only it's a bit fiddly and needs input to be effective (i.e. it's no longer point-and-shoot at interplanetary distances). Now the DSS module is upgraded to launch mapping probes with high resolution scans but only from ranges previously associated with a DSS scan. Everything is an improvement, no nerfing, and nobody loses anything.

 

[SubitusNex]

Back so quick: Forgot to say something.

I hope this means there are a lot of new things to look for when exploring out there now and new interactions while exploring. I like it when you say payment needs to be more proportional to effort and time, but I hope this is proportional to other revenue streams as well (missions/trade) particularly because of the risks explorers take out there and the necessity of being so far away from everyone else. Those should be taken into account when talking about rewards (they would in real life, for instance).

 

[Old Duck]

THIS!

Us HARDCORE explorers travel immensely vast distances to get to exciting stars and systems.
DURING this travel we DO investigate EVERY system to see if any water world, Earth-like, ammonia world, galactic records etc. are hiding in the system.
Investigating this in every system on a 130.000 Ly leg - even if you have an Anaconda capable of jumping 70+ Ly - is hard work and A LOT OF TIME is used on it as the game is already with the one ADS honk.

By implementing what you are suggesting - that you have to discover each celestial object in a system individually and not let them be revealed by the initial ADS honk - will TEAR US hardcore explorers APART.
It would take AGES to finish our enormous trips through the entire galaxy when we want to see what is in every system we jump through.

PLEASE - find a solution that will ALSO see to it that us hardcore explorers can do it just as fast as it is now in the game.

100% my thoughts. completely agree, with this and OP to which this one replied. I really worry this is going to make exploration LESS of an interest for me! I state again as i did earlier. I really REALLY don't like removing the ADS honk. You will kill this game for me if you implement it. I feel they are placating the small time explorer here. not doing anything for the hardcore.

I don't like being called a small-time explorer because I don't feel the need to go to Beagle Point to find new, unexplored solar systems, planets, and other phenomena. Just because someone decides to circumnavigate the earth in a sailboat, that does not make them a "hardcore" explorer. Lewis and Clark were hardcore explorers, despite not traveling that far.

With all due respect, these "hardcore" explorers are sounding rather like spoiled explorers.

Dear Lord, I've turned into a white knight. Somebody lock me in quarantine!