Something else for The Discovery Book is *all* of our *past* discoveries from December 2014 onwards.
Content Recap - Beyond - Chapter Four Livestream - Exploration and the Codex
Something else for The Discovery Book is *all* of our *past* discoveries from December 2014 onwards.
I haven't seen anybody wanting to revert to the Mk1 eyeball. Rather what some of us were hoping for is that the planetary probes reveal a search area, which can then be searched using either a new scanner interface (part of the new exploration HUD) in the ship/slf, or the good old wave-scanner on the SRV.
Just don't give us the POIs directly. It destroys the immersion of finding something, especially when you consider that when you're given a mission to raid something on a planet, you DO get a search area (as silly as that particular mechanic is; again, use some sort of scanner, not just point your ship in three different places to avoid showing the pop-in). As if the mission givers have no idea where the target is. What is more believable?
Just a bit more consistency would be nice.
Small to no problem; first of all, most updates have required explorers to return to the Bubble in order to refit/restock/take advantage of the new mechanics. I wasn't magically given an engineered FSD only because I was still near Beagle Point when Engineers dropped... And probing *IS* a new, and optional, mechanic. FDev have been *incredibly* generous in thinking about explorers who are currently far out with the automagic scanner upgrades and the consideration of infinite probes to support them.
But that is destroying a mechanic to support a handful.
And even better, there are ways around it if you absolutely *must* include those people: free-floating basic mats. Add deep-space USS's which contain them. Add them to rings/clusters. Expose comets in the game; bingo - brand new exploration content *WITH* gameplay.
Outer space isn't a true vacuum though - it's more of a very sparse plasma than true vacuum - just look at those particles whizz onto your shields when in supercruise and wear away at your paintjob, for example - why can't the DSS be passively collecting that stuff
So it does that and manufactures highly complex probes from that stuff.
Why doesn't it do it for ammo? Heatsinks? AFMU refills? Limpets? Pretty much -anything- which is an expendable resource?
*Consistency* is nice, even if realism must be trumped for gameplay.
Yep; but the Campaign to Dim the Cabin Lights has, so far, fallen on deaf ears, unfortunately. We can dim our HUDs (and even turn them off), but we can't do anything about the lights.
One other thing I'd like to keep is some reason to fly towards planets and "scan" them manually, as the old-fashioned DSS is used now. One proposal might be to decouple the discovery of surface POIs from the FSS. Instead of seeing that a planet has 17 geological sites all in one go, we could get that information by flying towards a candidate body, perhaps as a prelude to surface mapping with the DSS. There is a certain logic that the stellar forge seems to use in the placement of volcanic and geologic POIs. Learning this pattern is a nice skill to acquire in the course of gameplay. For instance, moons with silicate vapour geysers are often found in orbits close to their parent gas giant. The tidal forces seem to be involved in creating many types of cryo- and geo- volcanic activity. Life is usually found in the habitable parts of star systems, at around 300 K (give or take) on bodies with volcanic activity. Learning such patterns would be fun. I feel the FSS gives us this information too quickly. Once we discovery POIs with the DSS by flying towards a planet and "scanning" it, we can deploy probes to map the surface and find the POIs, or their general location as in some of the proposals above.
Just an idea. Overall I love the new mechanics.
Just an idea. Overall I love the new mechanics.
Easy to solve the Horizon / non-Horizon problem regarding probes:
Give the standard DSS infinite probes, but it can only fire 3 at a time.
Then, implement engineer recipes for the DSS which can allow you to fire 4 or 5 at a time and also increase their flight speeds, BUT now the DSS can only hold a limited number of them. Say a couple thousand or so, after which you'd need to synthesize more using commonly found materials in both rings or planet surfaces. The bigger & better probes are much larger than the stock ones, thus only so many can be stored at a time!
WALLA!!! Now we have a system which supports both non-Horizon players and Horizon players alike. Choices via engineering. If you want faster more numerous probes then you give up the unlimited ammo for them!
Another thing that would allow for a retention of infinite probes, but still encourage players to be more efficient in their use of probes, might be to have a "limited ammo pool" that recharges automatically over a certain period of time. Beta testing would be needed to figure out what the ideal pool size would be but, as with your suggestion, Engineering could increase the pool size and/or the recharge rate-& synthesis could allow players to partly to fully recharge the pool early.
Thus we have two layers of "limitations" that would still meets the twin criteria of "no forced reloads" & "rewarding efficiency, skill & material harvesting".
On a related note, what FSS Engineering Effects would there be, given the change to how the Scanning system works?
Yes, sadly some people want to engage in a false dichotomy. There is a decent halfway point between "manually scan every inch of a planet to find a PoI" & "X Marks the spot". A clearly defined search zone, of variable size, whose center can be targeted via the nav panel is a perfectly reasonable compromise. The size of the search zone could also be impacted by:
1) The size of the PoI. Larger PoI's would have smaller maximum search zones
2) The efficiency of the planetary probe-so the efficiency bonus wouldn't just apply to the size of the payout, but to the final size of the search zone
3) Engineering. Probe launchers could launch probes capable of giving search zones x% less than normal.
I do feel, though, that we need proper "Near-Surface" scanning tools for our ships (an active "ping" system comes to mind) & better surface based scanning tools for our SRV's, to help narrow down the locations of PoI's within search zones.
I initially liked this ideas as I read... but then I realised that it would penalise people who are very time-efficient in performing the new surface mapping, whilst offering them absolutely no option to recharge things more quickly. If no-one ever hits the limit (perhaps except in extreme circumstances) then all you've added is some coding and UI complexity for now actual gain.
So what now? Propose this limited ammo pool, with automatic recharging, but also a synthesis recipe to speed it up if you need to ? I'm sure that's going to confuse some players "I ran out of probes, saw the synthesis recipe, so spent an hour gathering mats, only to find probes were full again anyway?! What gives?".
Wow, sounds like you are overcomplicating things far too much. My system would reward efficiency by letting the more skilled player to probe more planets within the restock period, whilst allowing those who are less skilled to extend the number of planets they can scan in that period *if* they take the time to gather the extra materials.
Because there's only so much stuff in space which can be passively collected at one time, and planet probes are easier to make and take less resources than bullets/heatsinks/limpets - easy peasy.
Yeah, that's not a bad idea either.
That's amazing! That's the kind of things i wanted to see to get back to Elite!
PS: Orrery Yeah!!!
Well, crap, there goes those ideas.
I wanted to be able to use the FSS to hunt for USSs while traveling in a system I'm familiar with, as well functioning as a telescope so I can get a better look at my destination so I can more easily plan my braking maneuver. [mad]
Love what I've seen so far FD, can we not have unlimited probes though as it's game breaking.