The process still starts with the “honk” (system scan), though its usage is now the start of a more engaging process (if all you did before was scan for some credits, don't worry, the scan still awards credits.)
The system scan now returns an aggregated display of how energetic the electromagnetic emissions are in the system. Signals are sorted on a low to high scale by their apparent energy. For example, emissions from rocky clusters will appear at the lower end of the scale, hot gas giants at the upper range. This information requires some interpretation as signals can overlap.
I think the removal of "honk to system scan" is detrimental because there are 400 billion star systems and a fraction of them are interesting (and you have the stats of how little of it has been scanned). Traveling long distances in the current system I can maintain maximum jumping frequency (efficiency) while still being able to stop to scan interesting systems along the way (I don't care if passive scan credits went away). New system would have me not scan a single thing because of the potential time wasted.
If all we have from system scan are emission blobs the whole minigame turns into Mass Effect 2 planet scanning "rotate one way while slowly raising elevation" until you've found everything. This I see as not interesting gameplay after the initial excitement of change. It gets old quite fast when you take into account how many star systems and planets there are in Elite.
In VR I believe forcing an external "turret" view is also detrimental, not only are you taken out of pilots seat but also unable to control your ship. Unless it's a different set of controls which complicates keybindings by having yet another set of overlapping binds.
However, I do like the idea of having actual mechanics to detailed scans, and be able to do this from much longer distances, rather than flying to and pointing the ship at a celestial object for 17 seconds.
Detailed surface scanner gains the ability to launch micro sensor probes in supercruise. You will use these probes to “map” a planet’s surface and locate resource hotspots in its rings.
I hope the probes will also allow locating planetary resource hotspots to reduce pointless wandering in the SRV.
You will be able to synthesise micro-probes for the detailed surface scanner, but the better aim you are, the less probes you will need to get complete coverage.
This has the potential to be a good tradeoff for gimbaled eyeballing or an annoying time sink to mine materials for refills on your journeys. Please balance it thoroughly.
Along with the Exploration update, we are improving the way that USSs work. USSs will now spawn throughout the entire system when you first enter it. This enables you to use the new exploration tools to find USSs throughout the system, not just in the area around you. You can still interrogate nav beacons to find the locations.
Because ADS takes one optional internal slot this change reduces the efficiency of AX fighting ships. I think discovery scanner should be made a slot like the planetary approach suite.
Whilst USSs do still have a decay time, the timers have been increased to allow you time to find and fly to the ones you are interested in. The decay time is also now displayed when targeted. Signal sources still obey rules determining where they can appear within a system, and mission critical signal sources will still be highlighted to differentiate themselves once located.
This promotes menulogging or jumping to closest system and back if USS/NHSS only spawn on entry to system, thus not really reducing tedium of HGE. I approve of the removal of "fly and wait" though.
As part of the exploration update, we are making sure that multi-crew members can use the discovery scanner and detailed surface scanner at the same time and all discoveries are shared among crew or wing.
This allows wings or commanders in multi-crew to engage in exploration together, each earning credits and exploration rank and making the process more efficient.
As much as I dislike the SRV related gameplay, I think that it's also necessary to be able to SRV while multicrewed.
Looking forward to testing the changes in the coming beta.
