News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[Wyaston Hypatia]

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to give you an update on where we are on the topic of Exploration.

We’ve been reading through your feedback and taking it on board. Currently, we’re discussing and exploring a few options based on your feedback, but we don’t have anything to announce just yet.

Thank you for all of the comments so far.

Hi Adam,
thanks for the update.
I will say that I have stayed out of all the to-ing-and-fro-ing that's been going on in this thread as I don't see the point. I will say that what you have announced looks very interesting to me, and is the sort of mechanics that I personally am looking for in the game, and as such would be somewhat disappointed by any knee-jerk reaction to comments on a system that's not even been fully shown yet alone tried by players. Please let us examine it in beta and give proper feedback on the system, before making any changes.
Wyaston.

 

[Red Anders]

A crutch is still a crutch, no matter which part of the game you're looking at. I just presented two additional examples of where you could make a case for letting the so-called "time deprived" 'skip to the best stuff'.

I know you deleted this Marc but for the love of God try to understand. It's not about being 'time deprived' (I did try to make this clear to you last time you started ballooning about it) it's about the fact that regardless of how much time I may have to play the game, I don't wish to spend time on activities which are not going to add to my overall enjoyment during that playing session. I could be sat here for a ten hour session and I still wouldn't want to spend any of it detail scanning planets that hold little interest for me.

It's abundantly clear that many of the opinions you've expressed here are rooted firmly in your scathing contempt for other people's playstyles, which is hardly a position from which objective analysis is going to arise.

You're also still misrepresenting this as being about 'finding the best stuff' despite the fact that I and other players have explained to you until we are blue in the face that it's not what this is about. You might want to to take a glance at the thread in the exploration section of the forum about this. Oddly enough nobody there is complaining about the fact they won't be able to earn credits quickly.

It is good to know that by your own admission you don't actually explore now though. However this ends up, I do hope that its with a system that will let you get some enjoyment out of an aspect of the game that I've spent (conservative estimate) over a thousand hours on.

Yep, such a weird comment. If you know ahead of time that a system is "worth" exploring (an odd claim to begin with) then you're not really, truly exploring anyway. Heck, it's the insta-reveal system that has made me loathe to be an explorer up until now. These new mechanics may well change that.

https://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/no-true-scotsman/

Again and again and again. Oh to be a real true explorer as certified by Marc_Hicks, the one true arbiter of gameplay!

 

[Leper Messiah]

Not quite.. in the example given river=system. "You know there is a system there, you arrive and .." is equivalent to "You know there is a rive there, you arrive and .."

Just like we know there is a star system there. The proposed ADS does not take that away from us. Look at the river as the star system. We know there is one there, just like he knows there is a river there. What he does not know is what is up/down the river like we don't know what is in the system apart from the star. But the new ADS will also give us a rough idea of what is in the system and we may be able to tell the differences between the new wave forms to know what is in the system. Using the new scanner you could also set it up to view what is in the habital zone (from what I can see). It looks very flexible.

I think the people that are going to suffer the most will be Ziggy that likes to find moons that are close together and planets that orbit each other. Hence the reason why I proposed a way to speed up the scan for these items by bundling the planet (gas giant) and all it's moons as one wave form and gravity distortion so that scanning these items would be much much faster instead of scanning them one at a time.

I like the new system, but do see that it could be tweeked for people like Ziggy so he can get the info he wants much faster. To me that is a good compromise. We keep the new mechanics but Ziggy will get what he wants much quicker, but not as quick as it originally was. Some investigation work still needs to be done, it just won't be as extreme as the current proposal.

Also we could add a "discovered by" and "mapped" by percentage on the screen to see if anyone has scanned/mapped the system already. You will still need to investigate to find out which planets though if it's part scanned.

To me that is a better compromise and more inclusive of other player styles but doesn't make a mockery of the new system.

ah therein lies the crux of the issue...I do not see the "river" as the "system"!! Looking at it that way I understand where you are coming from, but I see the "river" as part of the "landscape" and the landscape is the "system" IMO.

I think we all more or less like most of the ideas of the new system, just the tweaking will be crucial.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to give you an update on where we are on the topic of Exploration.

We’ve been reading through your feedback and taking it on board. Currently, we’re discussing and exploring a few options based on your feedback, but we don’t have anything to announce just yet.

Thank you for all of the comments so far.

Hi Adam,

Please no half asset solutions to placate fears that haven't seen beta yet. Either do it or don't, there's no half solution to provide here. Game is too full of compromises already.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Sounds niche.. I'm not even sure what you mean by this??

It's like that show, Planes Of The Ecliptic, that Adam wasn't too sure about...

(Multiple level pun, in case you missed it)

 

[Marc_Hicks]

You're also still misrepresenting this as being about 'finding the best stuff' despite the fact that I and other players have explained to you until we are blue in the face that it's not what this is about. You might want to to take a glance at the thread in the exploration section of the forum about this. Oddly enough nobody there is complaining about the fact they won't be able to earn credits quickly.

.....and yet that is precisely the argument you & your fellow lovers of the current mechanic keep using to justify the need to retain the insta-reveal honk. If the value of the planets/stars means nothing to you, then merely knowing there are stellar bodies in the system should be sufficient for you. Why do you need to instantly know what kind of planets they are & precisely what they look like?

I just find it hilarious how much people can hate a mechanic that they have neither seen in action or tried out themselves......unless you are Commander Thrust of Bradford.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Hi Adam,

Please no half asset solutions to placate fears that haven't seen beta yet. Either do it or don't, there's no half solution to provide here. Game is too full of compromises already.

Now hang on a moment there - you can't think that post is reasonable, surely...

Frontier decided to reveal stuff they had been working on for Q4. This resulted in the OP and a livestream. Which resulted in asking for comment and opinion, and that's what's happened.

Apart from the ones which are perfectly happy with everything shown so far, a number of posters - myself included - have brought up numerous issues for which it has become obvious were not thought of whilst FDEV were developing what they've shown.

Adam has acknowledged the input from numerous people in this thread. If one is a sensible developer, one takes all input into consideration - positive and negative and input which raises points not previously thought about - and then mulls over it all. All input is valuable input, whether you personally like what you're reading or not.

This may or may not result in FDEV modifiying what they've been doing in certain ways. So, we'll see what this results in, come October.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

ah therein lies the crux of the issue...I do not see the "river" as the "system"!! Looking at it that way I understand where you are coming from, but I see the "river" as part of the "landscape" and the landscape is the "system" IMO.

I think we all more or less like most of the ideas of the new system, just the tweaking will be crucial.

Yup, tweaking may be needed, but one thing I do know is that the current ADS would not work with the new system. It wouldn't make any logical sense even with less information it still wouldn't make sense.

What I could live with though is if the honk gave us a system map (based on the gravity distortions) but without any information and a bunch of grey/black balls instead of the actual planet types. So people can see what the layout is like, but not what they are. They will have to explore the system with the new scanner to do that.

 

[Cobra1984]

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to give you an update on where we are on the topic of Exploration.

We’ve been reading through your feedback and taking it on board. Currently, we’re discussing and exploring a few options based on your feedback, but we don’t have anything to announce just yet.

Thank you for all of the comments so far.

The mechanic will always be seen as a time gate because the reward has no gameplay value - regardless of how the mechanic is tweaked.

Persistent, (depletable?) discoveries, mat farms, discoveries popping up on the map, real scouts & explorers, persistence, meaningful gameplay, agency, a *pulse*.

You're only looking at one half of the problem which is the scanning mechanic itself.

You're sitting on the solution to perceived grind and lack of depth right now, throw everything at it.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Could a raft of new modules help? Say, just as shield boosters augment shields, could an exploration vessel enhance its sensor acuity in certain ways via signal boosters? You trigger a scan, and depending on your array you might get quicker results, more detail etc.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Without expanding on where you possibly got your stultifying "10 hours" from, how would you possibly know whilst the current system acts like a self-fulfilling prophecy in the first place?

Like that case of food poisoning I got from the Steak and Shake on Manchester Road (MO 100/Old US 50)? The one the St. Louis County Health Department shut down?

 

[EUS]

Spoiler

Were it up to me (& obviously it isn't), the exploration would go something like this:

1. Jump into the system & "honk" (same as now).

2. Honking will do several things-(a) give the player the emission/gravity data mentioned in the OP, (b) reveal detailed scans of all objects within x light-seconds of your ship, & low resolution scans of all stellar bodies within (x*y) light-seconds of your ship (which will appear in your System Map as blacked out spheres, with the probabilities for each stellar body class beneath it) & (c) bring up a number of hollow circles-of varying size-that represent the approximate positions of all the major gravity wells within the system.

3. After this point, a player has several options-(a) resolve the emission/gravity data by hand (which will hopefully be do-able from within your cockpit view), from either a sitting still or in-transit position, (b) feed emission/gravity data into your science module-if you have one-to produce a low-resolution map of the entire system, after a certain lag time or (c) begin flying towards one of the many circles on your HUD, in order to try doing a active secondary scan on the stellar body.

4. If you choose (c), then once you believe you are within range, you can attempt a secondary active scan, which will provide a detailed scan of all stellar bodies within range of your scanner. The range at which this active scan will work would be further away than the range at which the current passive scan kicks in. This secondary scan will also grant additional low-resolution scans of any planets that are no more (x*y) light-seconds away from your ship.

5. However the player chose to obtain their detailed surface scans, they can now choose if they want to (a) launch a probe at the stellar object or (b) use their own ship to do a high-altitude slingshot scan of the planet (difficult, dangerous......but I suspect potentially quite fun ).

6. In all likelihood, any option other than 3(a) will probably result in slightly fewer credits/experience.

Just a shame that I can't remember if I posted this before now, in this level of detail, so don't know if Adam will see it! Oh well, still worth posting.

In your example, which scan is it that will give out the ring detail (purity&composition), presently we require a DSS scan.

 

[disorganise]

.....and yet that is precisely the argument you & your fellow lovers of the current mechanic keep using to justify the need to retain the insta-reveal honk. If the value of the planets/stars means nothing to you, then merely knowing there are stellar bodies in the system should be sufficient for you. Why do you need to instantly know what kind of planets they are & precisely what they look like?

I just find it hilarious how much people can hate a mechanic that they have neither seen in action or tried out themselves......unless you are Commander Thrust of Bradford.

Orbits dude, it's all about the orbits. Also, if looking for the rare glowing green or pink gas giants, seeing what they look like is kinda crucial, no?

 

[Mengy]

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to give you an update on where we are on the topic of Exploration.

We’ve been reading through your feedback and taking it on board. Currently, we’re discussing and exploring a few options based on your feedback, but we don’t have anything to announce just yet.

Thank you for all of the comments so far.

Thanks Adam, it’s good to know you guys are still reading the plethora of feedback on this.

As to my own feedback, personally I like everything Frontier proposed for the exploration improvements with the following exceptions:

• The ADS honk revealing only the main star is not useful enough. It would be nice if it provided more information than that, but still less than the honk has for the past four years. Ideally I’d like to see it reveal the system structure only with the grey globes representing the planets. At least this would allow the explorer to quickly see how interesting a system layout is, while also showing if anything is tagged by other commanders too.
• The probes mechanic sounds great with one exception: I don’t like how they pinpoint the exact location of POI’s. I’d much rather have the probes reveal small manageable search zones for POI’s. This would require a pilot to descend to the planet surface and use the scanner (or their eyes) to find it’s exact location, or land and use the SRV wavescanner instead, but at least it would add one more layer of exploration activity to the game loop, plus a choice of how to finish the POI hunt.
• With regards to probe synthesis recipes, please keep the required materials basic. Meaning they can be gathered by either SRV scavenging OR mining in rings. This gives pilots a choice to pick the method they find more enjoyable.

These are my opinions on the matter, and other than those I like whats been proposed. It is good to hear that devs are mulling things over, it means we might see some positive change yet!

Thanks.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Thanks Adam, it’s good to know you guys are still reading the plethora of feedback on this.

As to my own feedback, personally I like everything Frontier proposed for the exploration improvements with the following exceptions:

The ADS honk revealing only the main star is not useful enough. It would be nice if it provided more information than that, but still less than the honk has for the past four years. Ideally I’d like to see it reveal the system structure only with the grey globes representing the planets. At least this would allow the explorer to quickly see how interesting a system layout is, while also showing if anything is tagged by other commanders too.

This is about the only compromise I can live with, but I wouldn't have the discovered by on the planets. I would just have an overall percentage instead and the deeper scan is what highlights that.

The probes mechanic sounds great with one exception: I don’t like how they pinpoint the exact location of POI’s. I’d much rather have the probes reveal small manageable search zones for POI’s. This would require a pilot to descend to the planet surface and use the scanner (or their eyes) to find it’s exact location, or land and use the SRV wavescanner instead, but at least it would add one more layer of exploration activity to the game loop, plus a choice of how to finish the POI hunt.

Completely agree, and is something that I would want to see added too. Search locations are much better then pinpoint info. Maybe once you have visited then you can pinpoint it (maybe a scan is needed of some kind).

With regards to probe synthesis recipes, please keep the required materials basic. Meaning they can be gathered by either SRV scavenging OR mining in rings. This gives pilots a choice to pick the method they find more enjoyable.

Agree for the basic synthesis. If the more advanced synthesis have a higher search area (not sure how they will do this to be honest) maybe have these needing something a more rare though.

These are my opinions on the matter, and other than those I like whats been proposed. It is good to hear that devs are mulling things over, it means we might see some positive change yet!

Thanks.

Agreed

 

[Rollo]

Thanks Adam, it’s good to know you guys are still reading the plethora of feedback on this.

As to my own feedback, personally I like everything Frontier proposed for the exploration improvements with the following exceptions:

• The ADS honk revealing only the main star is not useful enough. It would be nice if it provided more information than that, but still less than the honk has for the past four years. Ideally I’d like to see it reveal the system structure only with the grey globes representing the planets. At least this would allow the explorer to quickly see how interesting a system layout is, while also showing if anything is tagged by other commanders too.
• The probes mechanic sounds great with one exception: I don’t like how they pinpoint the exact location of POI’s. I’d much rather have the probes reveal small manageable search zones for POI’s. This would require a pilot to descend to the planet surface and use the scanner (or their eyes) to find it’s exact location, or land and use the SRV wavescanner instead, but at least it would add one more layer of exploration activity to the game loop, plus a choice of how to finish the POI hunt.
• With regards to probe synthesis recipes, please keep the required materials basic. Meaning they can be gathered by either SRV scavenging OR mining in rings. This gives pilots a choice to pick the method they find more enjoyable.

These are my opinions on the matter, and other than those I like whats been proposed. It is good to hear that devs are mulling things over, it means we might see some positive change yet!

Thanks.

Sweet stuff Mengy, I prescribe to this very much! [up]

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

Thanks Adam, it’s good to know you guys are still reading the plethora of feedback on this.

As to my own feedback, personally I like everything Frontier proposed for the exploration improvements with the following exceptions:

• The ADS honk revealing only the main star is not useful enough. It would be nice if it provided more information than that, but still less than the honk has for the past four years. Ideally I’d like to see it reveal the system structure only with the grey globes representing the planets. At least this would allow the explorer to quickly see how interesting a system layout is, while also showing if anything is tagged by other commanders too.
• The probes mechanic sounds great with one exception: I don’t like how they pinpoint the exact location of POI’s. I’d much rather have the probes reveal small manageable search zones for POI’s. This would require a pilot to descend to the planet surface and use the scanner (or their eyes) to find it’s exact location, or land and use the SRV wavescanner instead, but at least it would add one more layer of exploration activity to the game loop, plus a choice of how to finish the POI hunt.
• With regards to probe synthesis recipes, please keep the required materials basic. Meaning they can be gathered by either SRV scavenging OR mining in rings. This gives pilots a choice to pick the method they find more enjoyable.

These are my opinions on the matter, and other than those I like whats been proposed. It is good to hear that devs are mulling things over, it means we might see some positive change yet!

Thanks.

My sentiments too Mengy.

I'd make a couple of other suggestions but they're more cosmetic really.

For the primary star, change 'Discovered by' to 'First visited by', since we really didn't discover these systems, they've all be discovered previously by deep field telescopes or probes sent out centuries before the present (that's why we can pinpoint all 200 billion of them on the map and already know their spectral classes).

And if possible, add the 'Discovered by' tags to any permanent POI that a player locates and visits in person, as this aspect of the exploration experience does take some detective work if Mengy's idea is implemented.

So you essentially have 3 layers....

1. Primary Star(s): First visited by (awarded if you're the first to Honk that system).
2. Worlds: First discovered by (awarded when revealed via the new discovery mechanics) and First mapped by (awarded when a world/moon is fully mapped).
3. Persistent Surface POIs: First discovered by (awarded when pinpointed and visited).

Also maybe there should be a distinction between surface POIs so players aren't spending time looking for canisters of tea or wrecked SRVs?... blue circles for instance-only POIs (like now), red circles for persistent POIs? Green Circles for Geological POIs (Geysers, Organics etc), Grey Circles for Anomalies? Additionally it would be cool if there were a variety of probe types, designed to locate different kinds of surface POIs?... but maybe that's stretching it!

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

My sentiments too Mengy.

I'd make a couple of other suggestions but they're more cosmetic really.

For the primary star, change 'Discovered by' to 'First visited by', since we really didn't discover these systems, they've all be discovered previously by deep field telescopes or probes sent out centuries before the present (that's why we can pinpoint all 200 billion of them on the map and already know their spectral classes).

And if possible, add the 'Discovered by' tags to any permanent POI that a player locates and visits in person, as this aspect of the exploration experience does take some detective work if Mengy's idea is implemented.

So you essentially have 3 layers....

Primary Star: First visited by (awarded if you're the first to Honk that system).
Worlds: First discovered by (awarded when revealed via the new discovery mechanics) and First mapped by (awarded when a world/moon is fully mapped).
Persistent Surface POIs: First discovered by (awarded when pinpointed and visited).

Nice ideas. Don't forget the first mapped as well.

Also maybe there should be a distinction between surface POIs so players aren't spending time looking for canisters of tea or wrecked SRVs?... blue circles for instance-only POIs (like now), red circles for persistent POIs? Green Circles for Geological POIs (Geysers, Organics etc), Grey Circles for Anomalies? Additionally it would be cool if there were a variety of probe types, designed to locate different kinds of surface POIs?... but maybe that's stretching it!

From my understanding, only permanent POI are discoverable with the probes, so things like Thargoid bases and fumeroles. Things like skimmers and cannister and smaller non permanant POI I think use the blue circles still, but we don't know for sure though.

 

[Mengy]

From my understanding, only permanent POI are discoverable with the probes, so things like Thargoid bases and fumeroles. Things like skimmers and cannister and smaller non permanant POI I think use the blue circles still, but we don't know for sure though.

Yep, this is how it sounded from Adam’s (or was it Will’s?) description.

Makes sense from a game engine point of view too. The randomized POI’s change with every instance, so you wouldn’t be able to detect them from supercruise because the surface instance would not have been created yet. The permanent POI’s like geysers, fumeroles, fungals, bases, etc, they are all procedurally placed (or hand placed) and persistant, so the probes can detect them as they never move nor expire and are the same for every commander.

I do hope that Frontier adds many more persistent POI’s to the mix for 3.3 to give us more things to find with the new probes.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

Nice ideas. Don't forget the first mapped as well.


From my understanding, only permanent POI are discoverable with the probes, so things like Thargoid bases and fumeroles. Things like skimmers and cannister and smaller non permanant POI I think use the blue circles still, but we don't know for sure though.

Fair enough

Maybe probe types could be something for FD to ponder for a future update.

I'm not a fan of one-probe-does-the lot gameplay... reminds me of the ADS

Probing could be fleshed out so different equipment discovers different content... organics, structures, geological, anomalies, human, non-human... etc... lots of variety there and lots of potential for specialization and teamwork. A wing of explorers for example could all specialize in one aspect of surface discovery, and work together to fully reveal what a particular world has. But I think that's a long way off (if at all viable).