News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[jonesskill]

Question:

Will system population or state be considered when generating USS on initial scan, such that we might see very few Combat Aftermath or High Grade Emissions way out in the burbs compared to Christmas at Harrods in a high population war zone, boom or CG?

They will not be generated when you scan but when you enter on the system.

They probably will use the same calculations they use now, based on status and population;

USS's are individual, each player on the system will see diferent USS's, they are not persistent but they can be shared via WING.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I would like to suggest a sort of compromise. So you jump into a system you have no info on. Your passive scan will reveal the presence-only-of all objects within x light-seconds of your current position. An active scan (Honk) will reveal low level details about the objects within x-light seconds, & will also reveal the presence-only-of all objects within, say, x*5 light seconds. This way, commanders can continue to learn more about what is in the system as they travel through it.....but only if they are prepared to continue scanning at regular intervals.

Either way, though, I do want to see a mechanic that replaces the currently 90% passive approach with a roughly 90% active approach-from first arrival to final DSS's.

 

[Delphis]

This whole minigame idea is just going to make exploration even more painfully slow.

Another kick in the teeth to explorers. I'm sure the payouts will be the same despite the extra work involved too.

As someone else said, I'm sure it might be 'interesting' the first couple of times but once you have to do a bunch of systems it'll get old real fast.

 

[OldSchoolPlayer]

All the items sound great and all, but I can see on a trip to Colonia or Sag A getting a little tiresome.

Also will we have the ability to finally manually input Lat/Long Coordinates on planets?

Its the 34th century. My cracker jack Garmin I bought at Walmart has the ability to have these input

+1

I would like this additional feature to manually input coordinates.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Question:

Will system population or state be considered when generating USS on initial scan, such that we might see very few Combat Aftermath or High Grade Emissions way out in the burbs compared to Christmas at Harrods in a high population war zone, boom or CG?

It already is like that, & they indicated this won't be changing.

 

[WR3ND]

Obviously.
Why do folks imagine super mega changes in game that FDev have not described at all.
I don't see anything in the OP that says we can't fly down to planets just like we do today?

It'd be pretty silly to land on a world and still have to "discover" its location, obviously.

So, maybe there is a chance I won't have to bother with these two mini-games to still enjoy exploration in the game. That'd be great.

Will kind of suck that my ADS and DSS no longer function properly though.

 

[Elethiomel Zakalwe]

Never been an explorer, but I may have to give it a try now. Looks like a big step in the right direction.

 

[Hacker#451563]

If these changes come with the ability to synthesis everything that explorers need for a long time in deep space then I'm looking forward to them.

I always hated the "honk and jump" discoveries.

 

[DNA-Decay]

I don't know how much attention you are paying to this thread as it scrolls past.

There is a CMDR ToCoSo who developed a lot of design around possible pathways for exploration enhancements.
At this point, it's worth reviewing some of the ideas that the community has put forward previously.
Thread here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/307770-A-year-worth-of-Elite-photoshop-concepts!

But here's his pitch:

 

[Delphis]

This sounds more tedious than plucking toe hair.

Maybe it will show you the planet? Maybe? It's ok you can do it three or 4 times? That sounds awful. So you have 200 jumps say to go somewhere; no more popping the system up to see if anything interesting is there for bodies, maybe go see if one is a good spot to mine? Sure, if you mess around with the doubtlessly twitchy maybe it picks it up maybe it doesn't scanner. I would suggest this be strongly reconsidered, but I already know if fdev has mentioned anything they have already all but set it in stone and are just trying to make us feel like we have a say in anything.

Know what would be cool? Fix the old bug list, that would be awesome. Power plants, engaging my fsd versus sometimes at cross hair, sometime telling me to align with target when there isn't one, really really off for FA off btw, etc etc etc.

This 'new' content is clearly another timesink; Tedious, painful, time consuming hoops to get the same information we get now but maybe planet coordinates which... gee, we can already do with more agile and less flake prone third party tools. That isn't really content guys.
Why doesn't fdev subcontract out anything to do with a narrative or -fun- and stick to making pretty views and fixing the spaghetti code of missions. That would make a lovely q4 update. Npc's for cqc? Remember cqc? It gets a big mention in stats, odd now that goids only get 2 lines (extra bizarre since you rammed bug non-narrative down our gullets). Oh and hey, you apparently already broke surface scanner since I can do it without one installed and when I do have one installed it works at the same rate. Lovely. Is the beta for show like with CnP? I mean, everything pointed out as dumb and player punishing in that beta was ignored so... is there a point there? Another lie like gnosis to make us feel engaged? We should trust you now? Why exactly. Oh, and all you fdev apologists who will flame me for this, if you arent fdev I wont be reading it so go babble your 'instant gratification' mantra elsewhere.

I do enjoy the game immensely; the players, the art and music are truly phenomenal. I wonder how they manage to do it day after day knowing their efforts are largely wasted due to ? Poor management? Delusional attachments to decades old game methodology? Who knows.

o7 cmdrs, don't let the eagerness for exploration to finally get some attention blind you to additional grind for no reward.

Couldn't agree more. This is all added grind for no real benefit

 

[Marc_Hicks]

It'd be pretty silly to land on a world and still have to "discover" its location, obviously.

So, maybe there is a chance I won't have to bother with these two mini-games to still enjoy exploration in the game. That'd be great.

Will kind of suck that my ADS and DSS no longer function properly though.

That is why I'd have the honk reveal very basic info about stellar objects within a limited range.

 

[Rick Bravo]

Wow..someone finally listened. Bravo to the team. I am often a vocal critic of the things that are poorly planned, poorly implemented, or result is bad game play so when you do the opposite, you deserve to be applauded. Getting rid of boring time sinks and replacing them with actual game play is fantastic. The voices in the community that have been calling for this in multiple areas (including but not limited to guardian unlocks, engineer unlocks, mat gathering, and exploration), have regularly been accused of asking for an "easy" button, when what we wanted was a "don't make me contemplate suicide because this is so boring and repetitive" button. These improvements in exploration are certainly not going to make the process faster but they will make it more interesting and that's why we play games, to be engaged by the content. After the bitter disappointment regarding the content removed from Q4, this news actually gives me hope that Q4 will bring something great to the game rather than the unmitigated disaster I had prepared for. I am pleasantly surprised, and that is certainly, at least, one of the reactions you want from the community when announcing new content.

I do have some questions regarding the USS spawns and how this will effect the Thargoid story-line. Specifically, is the discovery scanner going to be required to detect the NHSS? As you may or may not be aware of, Players who are engaged in combating the thargoids do not equip a discovery scanner (or a surface scanner) in their ships as part of their combat build. Those modules slots are typically used for hull or module reinforcement. When implementing these changes in game, I would suggest that things like NHSS, Rez zones and CZs be discoverable without the discovery scanner so as to not negatively impact the combat build we are entering battle with.

 

[enonymous]

When you activate the discovery scanner you will now be taken to an all-new scanning interface and view.

So this comes up after honking?

I imagine honking to find a mission target and getting thrown in some new view where I can't watch the radar for threats - especially those of the hollow variety.

 

[rodvik]

Good changes. Mild concern about the potential amount of time added. Grateful for the no new modules required. Cheers.

 

[WR3ND]

I don't know... After 3~4 years all of a sudden not being able to see roughly what's in a system or at least the location of stellar bodies after the honk of your ADS while you're rounding a star fuel scooping to know if you want to spend some more time there or not seems pretty darn punishing. At this point it's a pretty fundamental part of the game and a fairly well known aspect of the game when I bought into it back in early 2015.

And for what? This extra system map mini-game? Yeah, not for me. I'd much rather just fly my ship around in supercruise. Go figure that I actually kind of like doing that in a sci-fi spaceship pilot game.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Will need to see it.

Mapping sounds brilliant if there will actually be interesting things yielded by the efforts.

Not convinced on the drop in and scan the whole system without moving mode. My mind tells me i still like flying because elite is about flying. Now that you make me think about it, a system were gameplay on the way could dramatically reduce or eliminate scan time would have been what i would armchair.

Sitting and fidgeting for 10 mins sounds worse than flying if you need to pick from evils. For those systems where there are 100+ bodies you realise the kids who wanted gameplay are going to complain right?

Anyway, looking forward to seeing it.

QUESTION: If planets have been mapped by players, will buying system data also include the mapped goodies?

 

[baqar79]

I've read a lot of comments (not all, but I have clicked through every single page).

ADS Concerns:
Exploration for me isn't just about "shinies" eg ELW's, Water Worlds. I'm also on the look out for boring celestial bodies that have interesting characteristics, of which that information is made readily available after the "Honk":
-High Gravity planets (You can see how many Earth masses a planet has and it's radius).
-Planets with close orbiting moons, orbiting close to their parent star, or in other complex arrangements.
-Moons that are orbiting within the rings of gas giants.
-Rogue planets (of which I have only found one so far).

None of these really care about the composition of the body itself, and to get an idea of whether a "bland" system might be worth investigating, the current implementation will allow me to quickly pick out a boring system with some interesting arrangements vs a boring system with nothing worth looking at.

I think a decent compromise here would be to have the ADS "Honk" reveal all bodies as before, but without the visual cues...just make them plain spheres (Perhaps though explorers could still deduce a planet type by the sound as done previously however).

ADS/DSS Purpose Clarification:
Just want to clarify this, but it seems material composition (and additional information) of planetary bodies is now part of the ADS system.

This may actually be fairly good news, since if you aren't interested in looking for specific planetary POI's, or getting the new "First Mapped By", all that data is all now obtainable with the ADS alone, rather than the ADS+DSS.

Of course I could of misread the OP, so hence wanting some clarification in a simple question:
"Is all of the currently implemented DSS functionality (planetary information, such as material composition, atmosphere, etc) now built in to the ADS?"

I am mostly pretty positive about the changes, but I can fully understand and empathize with how this could make exploration quite a bit more longer and tedious in certain circumstances. On the other hand, I could also see it possibly working out by being both faster and more satisfying to discover systems in other circumstances, since you could potentially save more time on travel by trading a little bit of time in the discovery scanner screen.

 

[FatFreddysCoat]

Will the universe be seeded with more discoverable things? If so, what would they be?

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I don't know... After 3~4 years all of a sudden not being able to see roughly what's in a system or at least the location of stellar bodies after the honk of your ADS while you're rounding a star fuel scooping to know if you want to spend some more time there or not seems pretty darn punishing. At this point it's a pretty fundamental part of the game and a fairly well known aspect of the game when I bought into it back in early 2015.

And for what? This extra system map mini-game? Yeah, not for me. I'd much rather just fly my ship around in supercruise. Go figure that I actually kind of like doing that in a sci-fi spaceship pilot game.

Lol, we think alike! (See my opinion above)

 

[tafkabb]

Question !

Can we probe Uranus ?

No. Uranus is a gas giant.