News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

Mengy

Mengy
Marc_Hicks said:
When it comes to the issue of fixing exploration, yours is one of the few player opinions I take seriously. The reason being that you have so tirelessly fought for exploration improvements for the longest time, & are not some "Johnny come lately" looking to defend the current system purely for the credits.

So it pleasing to note that we seem to be in fierce agreement on the main points. Slightly more info revealed by the initial honk & probes not giving precise PoI locations.
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That was very nice of you to say Hicks. I honestly and truly appreciate that.

Thank you!


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I feel like a lot of us are on a very similar wavelength here actually, in that we like what Frontier has come up with but we feel like a bit of subtle massaging could greatly improve the mechanics for a huge amount of value added potential.

Frontier is close with this, it just needs a few dials turned and it will be a glorious update.

And I'll say with 1000% honesty right now that I don't care if Frontier has to push 3.3 back into 2019 in order to get it right. I'd rather they delay the update than settle for something less than grand. This is their shot to make exploration great, so let's get it done please!!! :)
 
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Faded Glory

Faded Glory
Marc_Hicks said:
Hmm, it may not have been gushing, but my response was broadly in agreement with yours. I just suggested that it needs to be less than instantaneous. Even if that just means making the time needed to "honk" a tiny bit longer. My respect for Mengy comes from the fact that I have followed his musings on exploration for quite a long time.
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No problem Marc, just pointing out the slight disjoint - even with this reply. You were 'broadly in agreement', and now with Mengy you are in 'fierce agreement'. And you'll accept I hope that my post (from three days ago) doesn't appear to suggest anything different from Mengy's, and in fact lists the same two reasons why the blank outline would work, in that it shows at a glance whether a system might be interesting, and whether or not it has been previously discovered.

I'm not asking for your respect Marc, but I would ask that you don't prejudge my motives, which you appear to do, if not directly, but with words like "some Johnny come lately looking to defend the system purely for the credits" (I know that wasn't aimed at me specifically), words which display a disdain for others, people you don't know at all.

Anyway, enough, I'm not trying to attack or insult you. We're all players of the game here, we may agree or disagree about all sorts of things in the game and the direction it takes. And this after all is a feedback thread, people are doing just that, presenting their feedback, they're not whining about the game, just responding to proposed changes and how they see it affecting their ED experience. In the end, FD will do what they feel is best for the game. Then we can all have a good whine about it. :D
 

Riverside

Riverside
Mengy said:
And I'll say with 1000% honesty right now that I don't care if Frontier has to push 3.3 back into 2019 in order to get it right. I'd rather they delay the update than settle for something less than grand. This is their shot to make exploration great, so let's get it done please!!! :)
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Frontier have hit their stated release targets this year, they've promptly addressed plenty of bugs in those updates, and where a deadline is going to be missed, they've taken reasonable steps to keep us informed.

In addition the quality & amount of communication has significantly improved over the past few months, so we have good reason to believe it will be released on time in a playable state. It may be feature incomplete and this may come in successive small updates over 2019, but there is no reason to believe the target is not taken seriously & that they will not deliver something good.

Whether it is everything you want is less clear of course, but it will not intentionally break your game, and given time you will adapt. As will the rest of us :)
 

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
Faded Glory said:
No problem Marc, just pointing out the slight disjoint - even with this reply. You were 'broadly in agreement', and now with Mengy you are in 'fierce agreement'. And you'll accept I hope that my post (from three days ago) doesn't appear to suggest anything different from Mengy's, and in fact lists the same two reasons why the blank outline would work, in that it shows at a glance whether a system might be interesting, and whether or not it has been previously discovered.

I'm not asking for your respect Marc, but I would ask that you don't prejudge my motives, which you appear to do, if not directly, but with words like "some Johnny come lately looking to defend the system purely for the credits" (I know that wasn't aimed at me specifically), words which display a disdain for others, people you don't know at all.

Anyway, enough, I'm not trying to attack or insult you. We're all players of the game here, we may agree or disagree about all sorts of things in the game and the direction it takes. And this after all is a feedback thread, people are doing just that, presenting their feedback, they're not whining about the game, just responding to proposed changes and how they see it affecting their ED experience. In the end, FD will do what they feel is best for the game. Then we can all have a good whine about it. :D
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OK, OK......I get that this was an unfair generalisation on my part. I recognise that there is more than one group, with different motivations, who don't want the current ADS changed.
 

Marc_Hicks

Marc_Hicks
OK, again not specifically related to the ADS mechanics, but still part of the discussion on Exploration changes......I do want to make the following suggestions (which I sure hope I am not merely repeating. To be honest, I can't be bothered going back through 200+ pages to find all of my previous posts :p).

Anyway, I still say it would be nice to make Main-sequence stars both more *potentially* dangerous, but also more *lucrative*......at least from a refuelling perspective. At the moment, those ejecta coming from stars is nothing more than visual "fluff". It would be so cool, though, if they were more meaningful. What if those ejecta related to areas where the star is "hottest" (yeah yeah, I know, the wrong way to describe it) & thus where you can refuel your ship in the quickest time-frame? The initial honk, or a probe scan, could reveal "hot spots" on the star-spots that will substantially increase refuel rates for your ships, but with an increased risk of damage due to ejections of solar mass at those same spots. Ship sensors would pick up a potential ejection before it occurs, but would still require players to be alert whilst refuelling. Another possibility might be to allow speed & angle of approach to impact on refuelling rates. Note, this would be a feature on *top* of the existing fuel-scooping mechanics, not a replacement for it. Another thought is that this star scanning thing could tie in with the "solar material harvest" mechanic that other posters here were suggesting.

Another thought I had was-recovering & repairing probes. OK, OK, I know some people aren't a fan of the whole "mini-game" thing, though I feel that having stuff to do whilst Super-cruising is always a plus. However, what if there was a way for players to salvage probes from planetary surfaces & repair them? Not just your own, but those of other explorers (players & NPC's)? How this would be done is unknown to me, in specific mechanical terms, but it would have to be at least on par with synthesising them from materials. Anyway, just a couple of thoughts, & a way to get off of the whole "new vs old ADS" argument ;).
 

Riverside

Riverside
LeoBartlet said:
Well its easy to hit a release target when you can two features of an update :D
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You make an excellent point, yes. And of course 3.0 was somewhat divisive, pleasing some & frustrating others. I have no doubt Q4 will be similarly received by those with high expectations.
 

Micha

Micha
Kenneth Mcgrew said:
you mean, "let me regurgitate the ideas which I find most appealing"?

there's some great ideas in this thread you have missed out
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Certainly; those are the points which I personally hope will be considered for the new system. It's not my job to regurgitate everybody elses wishlist and it is most certainly not my intention to downplay other peoples' ideas.

This thread was -supposed- to be us giving the devs our feedback, not endless discussions about "my ideas are better than yours". It's up to the devs to collate what feedback was given and how often it was mentioned (by unique people, not by the same people over and over) to determine relative weightings and importance.
 

Micha

Micha
Deggial said:
As posted many, many pages above:
There is a third option: A new USS with "free-floating" materials needed for probe synthesis. If those were introduced, neither a mining laser nor a SRV would be mandatory for deep-space exploration.

As suggested in the post, I really would love some associated content, such as vacuum creatures protecting their "hord" (maybe they gathered the materials in order to feed their breed). But this is just a personal preference and not neccessary for the solution to work.
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Personally not so keen on free-floating mats outside the bubble (it brings back the "human rubbish spread throughout the galaxy" thing which we fought long and hard to remove). Do like the idea of vacuum creatures, but to be a game mechanic they'd have to be ubiquitous, not rare, which would be somewhat immersion breaking and also difficult from a lore perspective.

Since probes is a NEW game mechanic, I think it's fair that explorers need to go back to refit their ships in order to engage with it. I've certainly missed out on a lot of game content because I haven't been back to civilised space since before Engineers hit; should I get a "remote Engineer" too?

Carrying a mining laser shouldn't be an issue; haven't seen a single exploration ship without a spare hardpoint yet. And we've had huge boosts to jumprange (if you engineer) so you're not going to be worse off.

But if there is a good suggestion on how to add free-floating mats without ruining immersion outside the Bubble then sure. Instead of a shipwreck perhaps comets (if and when they finally get exposed in the game engine, apparently they're already in the Stellar Forge) could be a source for them? Scooping mats from the comets tail? Could add a bit of danger that you can get hit by cometary debris while doing it too.
 

askavir

askavir
Mengy said:
And I'll say with 1000% honesty right now that I don't care if Frontier has to push 3.3 back into 2019
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If the only fundamental addition to exploration is what we've seen so far, then I say with 1000% honesty that I no longer care that much whenever it's released at all. Can't believe I've been looking forward for Q4 for a whole year and so, just for this.
 

askavir

askavir
Marc_Hicks said:
Anyway, I still say it would be nice to make Main-sequence stars both more *potentially* dangerous, but also more *lucrative*......at least from a refuelling perspective. At the moment, those ejecta coming from stars is nothing more than visual "fluff". It would be so cool, though, if they were more meaningful. What if those ejecta related to areas where the star is "hottest" (yeah yeah, I know, the wrong way to describe it) & thus where you can refuel your ship in the quickest time-frame? The initial honk, or a probe scan, could reveal "hot spots" on the star-spots that will substantially increase refuel rates for your ships, but with an increased risk of damage due to ejections of solar mass at those same spots. Ship sensors would pick up a potential ejection before it occurs, but would still require players to be alert whilst refuelling. Another possibility might be to allow speed & angle of approach to impact on refuelling rates. Note, this would be a feature on *top* of the existing fuel-scooping mechanics, not a replacement for it. Another thought is that this star scanning thing could tie in with the "solar material harvest" mechanic that other posters here were suggesting.
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This would be cool indeed. Rep+
 

quilvein

quilvein
GJ51 said:
Snip............

Not too mention that I still haven't seen how this will affect locating Stations and Outposts or Surface ports when doing missions or Passenger runs.
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EXACTLY, well said sir. At least two of us are looking at the bigger picture!
 

HAMM3R

HAMM3R
Marc_Hicks said:
Anyway, I still say it would be nice to make Main-sequence stars both more *potentially* dangerous, but also more *lucrative*......at least from a refuelling perspective.
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This would be nice, indeed. I suggested similar thing somewhere on these boards sometime ago, with the addition of active/unstable stars and system-wide solar flares.

Say, younger stars would be more active, spewing out more flares with greater force. The flares would then expand throughout the system, gradually fizzling out. But say, you'd be cruising in the system or driving on a surface when a solar flare hits, your electronics would get damage or just flat out fry and shut off, requiring a reboot depending on the intensity of the solar flare.

Naturally, the flares should move/expand with a realistic speed, so depending on how far you're in the system, the more time you'd have to get into safety either by jumping the heck out or ducking behind a planet, letting it absorb most of it. Shame if you're scooping when the flare hits :D This would of course require the ship computer to detect unusual solar activities and warn you beforehand.

I've always felt the scooping is a bit too casual thing to do considering we're flying more or less in a star's corona, advanced technology or not. More like "oh, you don't want to pay for fuel but scoop it up yourself? Knock yourself out but don't say you weren't warned..." instead of just pulling up to your local Shell and filling 'er up. If it were more dangerous, you wouldn't even think about carrying a scoop in the Bubble and when out exploring you'd have to put more thought when to scoop as there would be dangers to it. I traveled some 50K Ly with a 3D scoop and while it was s--l--o--w, I simply parked "under" a star and sat there fiddling my phone, galaxy/system map or whatever waiting it do its thing. It would also give new purpose for those really fast scoops. Instead of just being time savers, they could be potential life savers.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Marc_Hicks said:
Anyway, I still say it would be nice to make Main-sequence stars both more *potentially* dangerous, but also more *lucrative*......at least from a refuelling perspective.
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So FD have spent the last year making exploration safer because people complained about being boiled up on jumping, and now you want to make it dangerous again. The wheel just keeps on spinning...
 
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