I'm seeing a lot of praise / complaining (compraising?) about the proposed changes to Exploration in chapter 4. While my initial reaction has been that this is going to make everything take so long and be so involved that I won't be able to do what I enjoy anymore, I'm trying very hard to give FDev the benefit of the doubt. I do think that exploration could use a lot of work. I doubt anybody would argue with the idea that it's not perfect. There are definitely things that could be changed / improved.
So with this said, it would really help if they would clear up a few things. To elaborate, I'll make a quick summary of my typical exploration style:
1. Planning - First I'll decide on an end destination and a rough route I plan to travel along. So say I'm leaving from Colonia and travelling to a nebula near the Aiphaitt sector, I take a brief look at the sectors between those two spots, decide if I'm travelling above or below the galactic plane, bookmark a few interesting looking systems on the path, etc. I'll then outfit whichever ship I feel is appropriate for my goals and plot to my first bookmark along the path (generally using neutrons)
2. Travelling - So here's where the new mechanics presumably come in, so I'll break this down a bit:
i. Jump into a system.
ii. Honk and align for fuel scooping, or honk and scan neutron / align for neutron scooping
iii. Quickly glance at the system map. In about five seconds I can usually ascertain if there are things that I am interested in. If there's a gas giant within scanning range, I'll always scan it (getting system helium percentage for larger project). I also look for large rings, ringed neutrons/white dwarfs, chaotic orbits, fast orbits, close orbits, super spread out systems (single star, planets exceeding 100,000 ls), tiny moons (particularly with volcanism), etc.
iv. Scan anything I care about
v. Jump to the next system.
Generally speaking, this accounts for 90%+ of the systems I pass through, and I am usually engaging the FSD as soon as I am not in danger of overheating.
So what I want to know now is, what will my new process look like with the new mechanics? Will it take longer? Will it be faster? How much of it will I be able to accomplish while fuel scooping? How long would it take me to scan an entire system? What (if anything) will the journal show before vs after the exploration mini-game?
Everything I have seen so far has suggested that most of what I do will take significantly longer than it currently does. I would love to find out that this will not be the case.
So with this said, it would really help if they would clear up a few things. To elaborate, I'll make a quick summary of my typical exploration style:
1. Planning - First I'll decide on an end destination and a rough route I plan to travel along. So say I'm leaving from Colonia and travelling to a nebula near the Aiphaitt sector, I take a brief look at the sectors between those two spots, decide if I'm travelling above or below the galactic plane, bookmark a few interesting looking systems on the path, etc. I'll then outfit whichever ship I feel is appropriate for my goals and plot to my first bookmark along the path (generally using neutrons)
2. Travelling - So here's where the new mechanics presumably come in, so I'll break this down a bit:
i. Jump into a system.
ii. Honk and align for fuel scooping, or honk and scan neutron / align for neutron scooping
iii. Quickly glance at the system map. In about five seconds I can usually ascertain if there are things that I am interested in. If there's a gas giant within scanning range, I'll always scan it (getting system helium percentage for larger project). I also look for large rings, ringed neutrons/white dwarfs, chaotic orbits, fast orbits, close orbits, super spread out systems (single star, planets exceeding 100,000 ls), tiny moons (particularly with volcanism), etc.
iv. Scan anything I care about
v. Jump to the next system.
Generally speaking, this accounts for 90%+ of the systems I pass through, and I am usually engaging the FSD as soon as I am not in danger of overheating.
So what I want to know now is, what will my new process look like with the new mechanics? Will it take longer? Will it be faster? How much of it will I be able to accomplish while fuel scooping? How long would it take me to scan an entire system? What (if anything) will the journal show before vs after the exploration mini-game?
Everything I have seen so far has suggested that most of what I do will take significantly longer than it currently does. I would love to find out that this will not be the case.