News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal
It kinda sounds to me like it'll be similar to the srv scanning mechanics, where you can see the signal type and determine if it's junk or something worth a second look.
The changes are just a part of what's to come. It's not the whole Q4 content of course!
As opposed to the what the proposed change sounds like? Will the average player doing the surface scan game 3 times in succession not find it overly tedious and unnecessarily complicated? What about 5 times? 10 times? 20 times? And there are systems with 100 or more bodies out there.
FDev needs to keep it simple, period.
Well remember they did tease us with an "in-game" view of lightening in a gas cloud. I suspect that is just one of many new things we can look forward to.
A great deal *less* tedious than Jump-Honk, Jump-Honk, Jump-Honk.
Another point in addition to my Wall Of Text earlier:
Supercruise vs Normal Space
I hope we can play the discovery mini-game in normal space.
Otherwise doing any exploration with 1-kLY of inhabited space might be rather dangerous if we have to hang around in Supercruise the whole time and risk getting interdicted while our attention is elsewhere.
Supercruise vs Normal Space
I hope we can play the discovery mini-game in normal space.
Otherwise doing any exploration with 1-kLY of inhabited space might be rather dangerous if we have to hang around in Supercruise the whole time and risk getting interdicted while our attention is elsewhere.
This is a multitude of good ideas, I hope the nude way the discovery scanner works in supercruise will somewhat function as a new system map.
Now you have to go to each planet to scan them In new system you will only send a probe. And you can send them in multiple directions. This seems to be a lot faster and more engaging than in current system. You will know planet type after fist honk by its signature type. Simple and fun!
The new Discovery scanner will require us to get NUDE?!?! Not sure I like it so much now
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Now Iv had a bit more time to digest what is being introduced, I must say the overall impression is well done.
It appears (until we test it properly) that it's going to have divided opinions, depending on how/what each player currently does while out doing exploration.
I currently explore by entering a system, honking while scooping then bringing up the system map & seeing what's there. It allows me then to cherry what I'm going to then go to & scan.
As I rarely scan things like Ice Worlds, should I enter a system with say 2 Stars each with 10 Ice Planets orbiting, I can see straight away that this system APPEARS to be of little interest TO ME.
As Iv no interest in this system I move on, maybe 1minute most spent here.
Now as I read the OP, it gives me the impression that when I enter this same system & honk while scooping then all Im going to see is 1 Star (maybe them both?). I then have to start moving my ship around to point at EACH of these planets in turn, only to then be shown that the system is of little interest.
So I would have spent what? 15-20 minutes to get the same information I previously got in 1 minute.
Is that really what's happening with the new system? or will you be able to tell from the source signals that there isn't anything other than Ice Planets.
If this is the case, then imagine the upcoming DWE trip! It would become quite tiresome & tedious pretty quickly if I have to scan each planet in each system just to see if there's anything of note in a system.
The probes to scan planets seems great btw, I just hope that it's not overshadowed by the initial sourcing of what type of planets are inside a system.
Added.
Now IMO, if after honking & entering this HUD, I was informed via a list
e.g. 2 Stars, 20 Ice Planets, 2 HMC's, 1 WW.
Now that's different, I am now interested in them, I then have to locate them via the scanner, as it appears in the OP
It appears (until we test it properly) that it's going to have divided opinions, depending on how/what each player currently does while out doing exploration.
I currently explore by entering a system, honking while scooping then bringing up the system map & seeing what's there. It allows me then to cherry what I'm going to then go to & scan.
As I rarely scan things like Ice Worlds, should I enter a system with say 2 Stars each with 10 Ice Planets orbiting, I can see straight away that this system APPEARS to be of little interest TO ME.
As Iv no interest in this system I move on, maybe 1minute most spent here.
Now as I read the OP, it gives me the impression that when I enter this same system & honk while scooping then all Im going to see is 1 Star (maybe them both?). I then have to start moving my ship around to point at EACH of these planets in turn, only to then be shown that the system is of little interest.
So I would have spent what? 15-20 minutes to get the same information I previously got in 1 minute.
Is that really what's happening with the new system? or will you be able to tell from the source signals that there isn't anything other than Ice Planets.
If this is the case, then imagine the upcoming DWE trip! It would become quite tiresome & tedious pretty quickly if I have to scan each planet in each system just to see if there's anything of note in a system.
The probes to scan planets seems great btw, I just hope that it's not overshadowed by the initial sourcing of what type of planets are inside a system.
Added.
Now IMO, if after honking & entering this HUD, I was informed via a list
e.g. 2 Stars, 20 Ice Planets, 2 HMC's, 1 WW.
Now that's different, I am now interested in them, I then have to locate them via the scanner, as it appears in the OP
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This is also my concern.. Frontier keep banging on about stuff that's in stellerforge (such as comets for example) , so if it's there Frontier put it in the game!
For me personally Elite has always channelled my OCD for finding new things, regardless of the tediousness of it. I have never minded the grind, its what Elite is fundamentally about. In that respect the changes detailed seem fine, it just seems to be trying to fix a problem that doesn't really exist.
If probing planets finds more interesting thing that are currently not in the game, then I'm all for it. Also the 'first surface scanned by' means that effectively there is a reason to go back to previously tagged systems.
Let's wait and see.. But I am mildly disappointed that yet again Frontier have come up with a 'is that it' situation, we need meat and bones changes not piecemeal.
Soz fdev but while it sounds great on paper in practice it's gonna make exploration or long distance travel far too tedious to bother with
The surface scanning sounds interesting apart from the restock nature of the probes :/ a 200 limit could be used after a handful of large systems so unfortunately again more time wasting will be created gathering mats to synthesise more.
The surface scanning sounds interesting apart from the restock nature of the probes :/ a 200 limit could be used after a handful of large systems so unfortunately again more time wasting will be created gathering mats to synthesise more.
Same applies though.
No matter what new things they add to discover, it will become monotonous after the 100th time you find said thing.
Lel, camping outside a station in the bubble just to get the tag on the planet^^
Interesting so will USS still spawn in a cone in front of the ship or do they just twinkle in system over time and a ship might "happen" across them the way they do now? Is it both? Please leave it as both. I like more USS "gameplay" options but won't be happy if an ADS is necessary to get just any signal sources quickly.
There is something about this I do not like. The lead is either buried or it wasn't explained very well: ADS "honk" doesn't appear map the system any more, not by itself anyway. This is concerning.
Say I want to go to a particular moon of a particular planet that I haven't been to before. Today, I just jump to system, ADS, check the system map (now that it is populated with every body in the system), count over to the one I want, and fly to it. The gameplay in the OP appears to merge the basic navigational discovery "honk" with the current "discovered" tick that a proximity or DSS does by way of the new signals game play.
I do NOT like this. It suggests that if I want to find a tiny moon in a system with 100 bodies, can't just honk in order to plot a course to it, but must sort out signals with the new scanner for who knows how long before I find it. This is not why I am in that system. I am in that system, going to that moon in particular, because I'm doing planetary farming or maybe poi hunting. Putting this extra step in the way is not desirable.
How does an ADS "honk" award the same credits if it does not reveal the system? If it does map the system, are we only doing the current DSS with the new signals interface? Please clarify!
Need more information and step by step examples of things we, the people who have to do the things to get what we want 1000 times, would do. Basic navigational discovery is currently quick, and should remain quick. Everything else in the post is fine and I'm sure the people who just like "exploring" in their ships will be happy with it but refrain from adding GAMEPLAY to ESTABLISHED activity loops.
One finial thing, both the new ADS and DSS probe interfaces seem to take the pilots out of their cockpits while the player is engaged with them. This is a drastically different gameplay activity then pointing at different worlds and managing throttle and targeting while mapping systems and flying their ship. My concern is this vision of exploration, while more effective at the stated goals in the OP, involves a lot less actual flying. We don't even have a SS of the current DSS probe gameplay as described in the OP. Maybe that's where the flying comes in but the old screenshots from quarters ago concern me that explorers could get the entire system discovered and mostly mapped by basically spending time in a mini game at zero throttle in supercruise for a long time. Not only is that sad, its going to get old, fast. VIDEO OF DSS PROBE GAME PLAY REQUESTED.
stormyuk
Volunteer Moderator
I guess this depends, if the system has 100 bodies as others have pointed out, will there be a way to know fairly quickly is any of those 100 bodies are worth investigating? I could waste a great deal of time finding 100 dead rocks when with the old system you would have known in a few seconds the system is not worth bothering with. Its a good point which needs addressing rather than just dismissing.
I wanted improvements to surface POI discoverability (which they're delivering, yay) not for them to tear up the ADS mechanic and replace it with something worse.
Current DSS blueprints need to be modified
The currently most efficient DSS blueprint is Long Range DSS, which means it takes shorter time to finish a surface scan than Fast Scan DSS does in average. However, after the the new exploration mechanics being implemented, Long Range DSS will not work, since the precise use of planet's gravitational well to deflect the projectile of DSS probe requires us to shoot it in a relatively close range. In other words, I assume it hard to ply a probe hundreds of light seconds away from a planet while expecting it to scan another side of the planet without missing or hitting the planet.
The currently most efficient DSS blueprint is Long Range DSS, which means it takes shorter time to finish a surface scan than Fast Scan DSS does in average. However, after the the new exploration mechanics being implemented, Long Range DSS will not work, since the precise use of planet's gravitational well to deflect the projectile of DSS probe requires us to shoot it in a relatively close range. In other words, I assume it hard to ply a probe hundreds of light seconds away from a planet while expecting it to scan another side of the planet without missing or hitting the planet.