24 Hours from now, we will witness the future of Exploration

[MrFailfactory]

I'm thinking of exactly what you said above mate. That's the problem. The strange, unique, beautiful and otherwise unusual is exactly what I'm looking for when exploring. It would be fair to say I'm somewhat disillusioned.

If I might make a suggestion, even though you likely already intend to do this anyway:

Pick a system with a reasonable number of bodies, and time how long it takes you to make your decision(s). Then do it on the Beta (same system, naturally), using the rapid-scan method that was demonstrated on the stream. It's possible that the time difference may not end up being that large on a per-system basis.

It adds up, of course, but it might not be as crippling as it currently appears for that playstyle. I'll be honest, I'm hoping that the Engineers will offer a DSS upgrade that widens the beam, so that we can get clusters at a time. I don't think that would be a terrible addition, all things considered, and it would be a boon to some of the playstyles currently impacted by the changes.

Riôt

 

[TheSisko]

Well....I like what I've seen so far. By the sounds of it there's a lot more we haven't seen.

My exploration Krait is ready to discover the unseen.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

That's the funny thing here - I agree with you completely. Unfortunately it doesn't make it any more palatable when it's your turn in the barrel though.

C'est la vie.
I can only hope that despite your misgivings, the new mechanic doesn't put you off (after you've tried it, of course).

Dude. The current honk reveals the whole basic system map in what, five seconds? That is gone. Completely and utterly gone. That new 'approach and scan' mechanic replaces it completely, detail scanning and discovery scanning are now a single unified process. The only thing the initial honk does now is reveal the star, there is no way to get a quick overview of a system's bodies and their orbital relationships without using this new scanning mechanic.

The bonus though, is that by doing this, you get to reveal things you would otherwise have missed; wouldn't that make exploration more rewarding? (Genuinely curious)

 

[Red Anders]

If I might make a suggestion, even though you likely already intend to do this anyway:

Pick a system with a reasonable number of bodies, and time how long it takes you to make your decision(s). Then do it on the Beta (same system, naturally), using the rapid-scan method that was demonstrated on the stream. It's possible that the time difference may not end up being that large on a per-system basis.

It adds up, of course, but it might not be as crippling as it currently appears for that playstyle. I'll be honest, I'm hoping that the Engineers will offer a DSS upgrade that widens the beam, so that we can get clusters at a time. I don't think that would be a terrible addition, all things considered, and it would be a boon to some of the playstyles currently impacted by the changes.

Riôt

Yeah that's exactly what I intend to do in the beta - as you say there's no other way to get a handle on it. The problem of course is that since we're realistically talking about maybe one in what 20 systems? 50 systems? that may ultimately pique one's interest depending on exactly what it is that floats your boat it's likely going to be the cumulative effect on a long trip that really makes the difference. We'll see.

 

[cmdr underhill]

Dude. The current honk reveals the whole basic system map in what, five seconds? That is gone. Completely and utterly gone. That new 'approach and scan' mechanic replaces it completely, detail scanning and discovery scanning are now a single unified process. The only thing the initial honk does now is reveal the star, there is no way to get a quick overview of a system's bodies and their orbital relationships without using this new scanning mechanic. That's been clear since the first reveal over a month ago.

First of all, the new mechanics are not "approach-and-scan." That's the old way, you know, where you actually have to fly towards a world (ie "approach") and point at it for the scanner to work. The new mechanic removes the flying time, but I am unconvinced that the discovery honk (which reveals a whole bunch of stuff on the new interface for a player to dig into) does nothing in the old system map. They made it pretty clear in the livestream that if you want to do the "traveller" thing (ie jump-honk-jump-honk), you would get the same amount of credits as before. How would that work if you don't get the basic credits for every planet in the system?

 

[Red Anders]

The bonus though, is that by doing this, you get to reveal things you would otherwise have missed; wouldn't that make exploration more rewarding? (Genuinely curious)

Such as?

Not being facetious - I make no pretence of being an amateur scientist so the things I'm mainly looking at when exploring are (for example) close orbiting bodies, unusual alignments (think four moons lined up and visible from their landable parent body and so on) unusual colouration combinations and other visually interesting oddities and I can currently get a good sense of those from a combination of the system map, orbital data and visually checking the system layout with orbital lines enabled, all after a honk.

The galaxy in the game is a very realistic model. Of course what that means is that a hell of a lot of systems are very similar and in no way distinctive. The core issue is ultimately just how many dustballs and snowballs that I previously wouldn't have felt motivated to scan will I now have to scan in order to maybe stumble across something that I find interesting. There's obviously a tipping point there at which 'some' becomes 'too many'. Based on a loose idea of my hit rate from previous exploration trips, my suspicion is that I'll be into 'too many' territory but obviously the beta will give me a better idea. I'm not writing the whole thing off, I'm just being realistic based on my previous experience.

There is loads of stuff in the update that is good. The time saving on the old detail scanning mechanic is obviously a bonus providing that detail scanning whole systems is something that a player habitually does now and the probes will be a significant improvement on the current mechanics relating to discovering surface content considering that there are no current mechanics at all. That's the real kicker for me - the new steps two to whatever all look good, it's just that the gateway to them all is step one and that seems likely to have been turned into a big sad trombone sound from my perspective.

As you say, c'est la vie.

 

[Red Anders]

First of all, the new mechanics are not "approach-and-scan." That's the old way, you know, where you actually have to fly towards a world (ie "approach") and point at it for the scanner to work. The new mechanic removes the flying time, but I am unconvinced that the discovery honk (which reveals a whole bunch of stuff on the new interface for a player to dig into) does nothing in the old system map. They made it pretty clear in the livestream that if you want to do the "traveller" thing (ie jump-honk-jump-honk), you would get the same amount of credits as before. How would that work if you don't get the basic credits for every planet in the system?

I don't care how convinced you are mate. It is a factual statement. Right here.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ation-Reveal?p=7010032&viewfull=1#post7010032

As for still getting the same credits they also said in the thread that post is from that the honk and reveal of the main star will deliver the same credits as the current honk does. So basically, they just bumped the credits up. Seriously, this is old news, did you miss the reveal thread?

(Edit - by the way I only used the term 'approach and scan' for consistency, I know there is no 'approach' as such in the new scanning process and it can all be done from a static position at the entry point)

 

[Archvillain]

Welp, this update brings more than I was expecting, and the different parts all seem to tie in on each other and build on each other, making Elite a whole lot more of what I want it to be.

I think for the first time ever, I'm going to check out the beta. (I don't have much gaming time so normally I avoid helping to finish unfinished games and just wait for the best version, but this looks interesting enough to noodle around with and file any bug reports)

Very happy!

 

[cmdr underhill]

I don't care how convinced you are mate. It is a factual statement. Right here.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ation-Reveal?p=7010032&viewfull=1#post7010032

As for still getting the same credits they also said in the thread that post is from that the honk and reveal of the main star will deliver the same credits as the current honk does. So basically, they just bumped the credits up. Seriously, this is old news, did you miss the reveal thread?

I did miss the thread, as I've been absent from the game and forums for a while. This may be whatever made me think multi-star systems would act differently was referencing, so my thanks for directing me to it. I don't really like the idea that the payout for a single star is that much more, but it appears to be the case. Apparently I missed that part from the livestream too

Hopefully the info that's instantly revealed in the new screens are enough.

 

[Mengy]

Whew, well I just got done watching it. I even watched a few parts multiple times.

My gut feeling is....I like it. I like it ALL.

I do understand the issues "travelers" are concerned about, the honk being nerfed hits them all the way into the ground, BUT, after seeing the new mechanics in action I'm not so sure we won't still be able to ascertain interesting systems very quickly. Yes you won't be able to quickly scan the system map while charging the FSD anymore, that's gone, but I think a quick honk followed by a glance at the FSS while charging the FSD will accomplish much the same thing just in a different way. The signal map will give a good indication of what planets are there, and the info panel in the top right will let you know how many bodies are there to be found.

Hands on game time will of course present a better idea of how this all plays, but I must admit some of my concerns from the traveler's point of view has been lowered. If this plays like I think it's going to.

My quick notes and takeaways:

LIKES:
- UI changes look great.
- Night vision WOOHOO!
- Better fog in rings looks great.
- Making sys maps available to pre-discovered systems is a nice touch. In a way it adds a nice "fog of war effect" to galaxy.
- FSS scanner looks pretty nice, handy, and interactive, I think I'll like this alot. Love the info panel, how it gives you the number of bodies which presents a nice goal.
- Probe mechanic: I think it looks great and fun. At last we can find things on the surface without needing to use our eyes alone!
- ORRERY!!!!: Thank you so much, looks wonderful
- Codex: Very nice UI. Seems very robust with regards to exploration, love how it allows other commanders exploits to trickle down to everyone. Knowledge base, very nice. Raxxla? LOL.
- Galaxy regions: Awesome, love how this is implemented.


CONCERNS:
- Night vision: Why not in SRV too?
- Traveler style of explorer is kind of dead now, at least the way they play today. A quick honk and glance at the FSS while charging the FSD might accomplish the same thing though, can't tell yet.
- Analysis mode & new scanner: Can you enter it while FSD is charging? If so then that is GOLD!
- Infinite probes : Eh, I'd rather have a high number which need replenishing, but its a minor complaint and I know most would not agree with me.
- Probe accuracy: I still wish the probes revealed search areas instead of precisely locating POI's, or at least did this part of the time.
- Orrery: My only nitpick is that I wish the full body surface graphics were shown here. Maybe they can't for performance reasons?


Overall though, this was super lovely, and I'm looking very forward to this being in the game.

 

[Alec Turner]

Whew, well I just got done watching it. I even watched a few parts multiple times.

My gut feeling is....I like it. I like it ALL.

I do understand the issues "travelers" are concerned about, the honk being nerfed hits them all the way into the ground, BUT, after seeing the new mechanics in action I'm not so sure we won't still be able to ascertain interesting systems very quickly. Yes you won't be able to quickly scan the system map while charging the FSD anymore, that's gone, but I think a quick honk followed by a glance at the FSS while charging the FSD will accomplish much the same thing just in a different way. The signal map will give a good indication of what planets are there, and the info panel in the top right will let you know how many bodies are there to be found.

Hands on game time will of course present a better idea of how this all plays, but I must admit some of my concerns from the traveler's point of view has been lowered. If this plays like I think it's going to.

My quick notes and takeaways:

LIKES:
- UI changes look great.
- Night vision WOOHOO!
- Better fog in rings looks great.
- Making sys maps available to pre-discovered systems is a nice touch. In a way it adds a nice "fog of war effect" to galaxy.
- FSS scanner looks pretty nice, handy, and interactive, I think I'll like this alot. Love the info panel, how it gives you the number of bodies which presents a nice goal.
- Probe mechanic: I think it looks great and fun. At last we can find things on the surface without needing to use our eyes alone!
- ORRERY!!!!: Thank you so much, looks wonderful
- Codex: Very nice UI. Seems very robust with regards to exploration, love how it allows other commanders exploits to trickle down to everyone. Knowledge base, very nice. Raxxla? LOL.
- Galaxy regions: Awesome, love how this is implemented.


CONCERNS:
- Night vision: Why not in SRV too?
- Traveler style of explorer is kind of dead now, at least the way they play today. A quick honk and glance at the FSS while charging the FSD might accomplish the same thing though, can't tell yet.
- Analysis mode & new scanner: Can you enter it while FSD is charging? If so then that is GOLD!
- Infinite probes : Eh, I'd rather have a high number which need replenishing, but its a minor complaint and I know most would not agree with me.
- Probe accuracy: I still wish the probes revealed search areas instead of precisely locating POI's, or at least did this part of the time.
- Orrery: My only nitpick is that I wish the full body surface graphics were shown here. Maybe they can't for performance reasons?


Overall though, this was super lovely, and I'm looking very forward to this being in the game.

Ahhh, here you are. People in other threads were concerned you'd died and gone to heaven! [haha]

Some fair concerns although I'd say most wouldn't be hard to fix? On the whole, Glad you liked what you saw tho!

 

[Ziljan]

Far left Adam said in the stream that he did a system with 120 planets in 25ish minutes. What would that take currently, 1.5 hours or more? I mean, just scanning that many bodies would take like 40 minutes in and of itself, not to even mention the flight time.

Yeah, as some of us have been trying to say, the new system will be faster overall for most players.

Note that I didn't say Explorers.

Or "Explorers."

Riôt

I did my own calculation: about 10 seconds per object would be about 20 minutes for a 120 object system, which yes right now would be measured in hours in 3.2. So that's a huge time savings + added depth, win-win.

I have no idea what I meant, it just seemed like the right thing to say

I didn't get to see the stream. Did it seem like a worthy enough addition to get old sour es such as myself out in the black again, or is it pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

When it comes to exploration improvements, I'm hoping for better, not faster.

It's a HUGE improvement, and enough that I could become a dedicated explorer and be happy. Honestly I have nothing but good things to say about the new system from what I've seen so far.

Watch it. Ziggy happy.

Awesome

 

[jasonbarron]

I did my own calculation: about 10 seconds per object would be about 20 minutes for a 120 object system, which yes right now would be measured in hours in 3.2. So that's a huge time savings + added depth, win-win.



It's a HUGE improvement, and enough that I could become a dedicated explorer and be happy. Honestly I have nothing but good things to say about the new system from what I've seen so far.



Awesome

Outstanding! Is there a link to the stream somewhere? Just got home and am now prepared for it's awesomeness.

 

[Ziljan]

Outstanding! Is there a link to the stream somewhere? Just got home and am now prepared for it's awesomeness.

Here ya go, the scanning mechanic portion starts at 49:00, but there are other important parts to it than come before and after, namely the parts about communal discoveries, surface scanning, and the codex. They spend a lot of time joking and explaining before they demonstrate. A lot of the signal and gravity mapping seems obvious and intuitive to me, but confused others so I guess the explanations were necessary for people who haven't been following their posting on the topic. Pay attention to the arrow system when they're resolving the bodies. I think a fast player could get it down to 6 seconds per object:
[video=youtube_share;rtmmmP_waf4]https://youtu.be/rtmmmP_waf4?t=2937[/video]

 

[krylite]

Witnessed (stream) a great future for exploration indeed!

 

[MrFailfactory]

Whew, well I just got done watching it. I even watched a few parts multiple times.

My gut feeling is....I like it. I like it ALL.

I do understand the issues "travelers" are concerned about, the honk being nerfed hits them all the way into the ground, BUT, after seeing the new mechanics in action I'm not so sure we won't still be able to ascertain interesting systems very quickly. Yes you won't be able to quickly scan the system map while charging the FSD anymore, that's gone, but I think a quick honk followed by a glance at the FSS while charging the FSD will accomplish much the same thing just in a different way. The signal map will give a good indication of what planets are there, and the info panel in the top right will let you know how many bodies are there to be found.

Hands on game time will of course present a better idea of how this all plays, but I must admit some of my concerns from the traveler's point of view has been lowered. If this plays like I think it's going to.

My quick notes and takeaways:

LIKES:
- UI changes look great.
- Night vision WOOHOO!
- Better fog in rings looks great.
- Making sys maps available to pre-discovered systems is a nice touch. In a way it adds a nice "fog of war effect" to galaxy.
- FSS scanner looks pretty nice, handy, and interactive, I think I'll like this alot. Love the info panel, how it gives you the number of bodies which presents a nice goal.
- Probe mechanic: I think it looks great and fun. At last we can find things on the surface without needing to use our eyes alone!
- ORRERY!!!!: Thank you so much, looks wonderful
- Codex: Very nice UI. Seems very robust with regards to exploration, love how it allows other commanders exploits to trickle down to everyone. Knowledge base, very nice. Raxxla? LOL.
- Galaxy regions: Awesome, love how this is implemented.


CONCERNS:
- Night vision: Why not in SRV too?
- Traveler style of explorer is kind of dead now, at least the way they play today. A quick honk and glance at the FSS while charging the FSD might accomplish the same thing though, can't tell yet.
- Analysis mode & new scanner: Can you enter it while FSD is charging? If so then that is GOLD!
- Infinite probes : Eh, I'd rather have a high number which need replenishing, but its a minor complaint and I know most would not agree with me.
- Probe accuracy: I still wish the probes revealed search areas instead of precisely locating POI's, or at least did this part of the time.
- Orrery: My only nitpick is that I wish the full body surface graphics were shown here. Maybe they can't for performance reasons?


Overall though, this was super lovely, and I'm looking very forward to this being in the game.

Did they answer the question about the Night Vision in the SRV? I know it was asked multiple times in the chat, but I didn't hear an answer. If it doesn't work, I would imagine that might be to preserve the atmosphere of driving around in the dark. Don't forget, the SRV lights have more than one brightness setting. I'm ok with that, and after thinking about it, prefer it stay that way.

Even though it's gamey, I do think they made the right choice with the infinite probes. They probably felt that a high enough ammo count + the 3-tier synthesis would just be cumbersome, and kind of ridiculous, and I tend to agree. Weapons need that kind of count and restock, but it would just feel weird on something like the probes.

Did you guys notice that the area that the probes reveal looks noticeably larger than the screens that were shown? Good change, likely based on feedback, and I think there are at least a few things in this part of the update that have been changed due to feedback in recent weeks. I also like the efficiency component.

Glad to see that your outlook is quite positive, Commander Mengy. Glad, indeed.

Riôt

 

[Mengy]

Did you guys notice that the area that the probes reveal looks noticeably larger than the screens that were shown? Good change, likely based on feedback, and I think there are at least a few things in this part of the update that have been changed due to feedback in recent weeks.

Nah, notice how Adam was probing a small moon, thus the probe area looked large. When probing a larger world the area will look much smaller and you'll need a lot more probes to 100%. Which, IMHO, is just fine.

 

[Micha]

So I just watched it after waking up this morning, have come to work, and haven't had time to go through all the threads yet or review the write-ups or community reactions.

I do expect to find quite a few mountains of salt in the threads though! But I did just read @Mengy's post earlier on this page (or at least it was on this page when I started typing) and was a bit surprised that he hadn't picked things apart more. But there you go

TL;DR: Overall pretty good, but I have some reservations.

Thanks to Will & the Adamses for the livestream, fairly informative, and thanks to the Dev teams for all their hard work, it really is looking great overall.

------

First impressions:

"Visuals"
* Will have to wait and see what it looks like in-game, but from the screen-shots, a lot of it looked like gamma increases (ie, it didn't just make the planets "pop", but also the skybox; the latter should not "pop" even more close to a star.)

* Night-vision; wow, overall looks great! Could have been done differently (eg, leverage the "landing radar" display and instead of night vision make it a computer-generated terrain map, so looking more abstract) but no real quibbles. Not sure why people are concerned about the SRV here; why wouldn't the SRV have it too? It wasn't mentioned either way...

"Honk"
* Wish we could "Honk" in the ship interface after changing modes but before bringing up the interface. Dislike the fact you always have to bring up a full-screen overlay (very jarring and especially bad for VR).
- this still leaves the old questions about what happens in populated systems unanswered. You're completely vulnerable to interdiction and completely lose environmental awareness.

* Love the fact pre-discovered systems populate the Nav Panel and System Map; at least as far as has been discovered already. Love the fact discoveries are shared when they are handed in now. Purely from an immersion perspective I'd still very much like a mini-NavBeacon to be deployed in these systems which _should_ have almost zero impact on performance. It'd also be nice if there was a galaxy filter for "discovered systems" but that likely -would- have a major performance impact so unlikely.

* FDev -really- missed the point of "Travellers". Travellers do NOT honk for credits (mostly), they honk to get a quick overview of the system to see whether or not it'll be interesting enough to spend more time in. But we knew this and we knew that FDev had completely missed the point here. It was more just stray hope that they had addressed this. Giving "honkers" more credits is almost completely pointless.

"Discovery Scanner"
* Overall really love what they presented, except that it's a full-screen interface. Really dislike these full-screen interfaces.

* FDev, again, totally missed the point of what people consider "interesting". Finding -specific- types of planets is only one type of interesting (and often just coupled to making money quickly), and this is the only use-case which has gotten a speed buff. Yes, we'll be able to quickly scan systems for ELW's etc, but we will NOT be able to quickly scan a system for interesting alignments or orbits or <insert interesting thing of your choice here>.

* Very concerned about how it'll handle in VR. All that panning and zooming. The System Map and Galaxy Map are already quite nausea-inducing in VR. Will have to try it.

* A lot of the UI elements still look very small. Of primary concern to VR users, but also people with smaller screens or lower resolutions. Please consider increasing the scale (perhaps as an option?)

* 100-body system takes 20-ish minutes to scan at full speed. Hmm. So before I can see whether or not there's anything interesting in the system (other than specific types of bodies), I have to spend 20 minutes now. Bummer

"Probing"
* Overall mechanics looked great

* Disappointed about "unlimited" ammo; large ammo for sure (10's of thousands perhaps?), but would be nice to have to stop and restock occasionally (say every hundred systems?).

* Disappointed about "precise locations" - PLEASE consider limited search areas instead...

"System Map"
* Didn't see anything new except the Orrery?

* The Orrery is great! Thanks so much for adding it, completely unexpected addition!!
- Suggestion: Add a "Toggle logarithmic scale" button.

"Galaxy Map"
* Really like the concept of the "regions" (although they don't match the community-created ones so I guess there'll be a fair bit of rework there!) and how each one will contain "stuff" to find.

* Would be nice if the discovery tiers of "stuff" was more gradually. "Rumoured" -> "Sighted" (various stages) -> "Confirmed" -> "Discovered"


"Ship UI Changes"
* Overall looked pretty good.

* Will have to see how nicely it all plays with Voice Attack; tiny bit concerned about "context sensitive" menu items. Hope some of the new features will get dedicated hot-keys.

"Codex"
* From what we were shown: Great Stuff

------

So my take-away is that overall it's looking pretty good; yes, there are concerns, but we'll see how it all shakes out in the beta.

But I did get the strong impression that the lead guys don't really play the game, or at least, these aspects of it, in any great deal of depth. Andy saying "he'll relax on the couch and try exploring" is a case in point.

 

[Archvillain]

Did they answer the question about the Night Vision in the SRV? I know it was asked multiple times in the chat, but I didn't hear an answer. If it doesn't work, I would imagine that might be to preserve the atmosphere of driving around in the dark. Don't forget, the SRV lights have more than one brightness setting. I'm ok with that, and after thinking about it, prefer it stay that way.

Agreed. I was on a mission to find a shipwreck, and when I got there the area was on the night side of the moon. Searching in the dark with lamps was quite a challenge (and I also had the option of waiting a few hours for the sunrise) and the new lighting would only make this starker. It was frustrating but also pretty cool to have to use lamps to search with (ie it was the planetary conditions that were frustrating, not the game). I'd like SRVs to rely on lamps at night; it makes them even more different from flying ships, and allows you to select different tools for different jobs.

 

[CaptainKremmen]

Watched it just now, and liked what I saw, a great deal.


One thing I remembered when the lads were discussing "discovery" stuff feeding into the general playerbase information pool...

The first day the full ED galaxy went live, a mate and I joined up, and flew around doing stuff. One of the first things I did was to try out

- Flying off to a nearby system
- Scanning everything
- Flying back and selling it
- Asking my friend to "buy" the data for that system, and see what I'd found.

And... it didn't work. Exploration data sold by a player had zero bearing on exploration data subsequently bought by another player.

I remember being quite disappointed at that, because in my mind Universal Cartographics was a central storehouse of knowledge, being added to by us... but it was entirely a one-way affair, and therefore reduced down to nothing more than "here are some credits, thanks for playing".


So... new stuff seems to tick off something I thought should have been working like that in late 2014, lol.

Better late than never!