∞ probes?

[Stealthie]

There are other inconsistencies in the game as it is, off the top of my head stuff like we have Telepresence for multicrew and instant data transfer for getting fines and bounties but can't remote either pay them off or collect them. We have magical cargo boxes that hold materials that don't get destroyed but our data does. Soon we'll have our Codex being updated with every other players exploration data too. Our equipment or modules if you prefer get instantly changed as well. Escape pods instantly appear at stations. NPCs with unlimited ammo. The list goes on. If we can accept all of these, infinite probes shouldn't really be such a big deal.

Never been a fan of the whole "Other stuff is faulty so we shouldn't care if this is faulty too" mentality TBH.

Even if something already has a dozen faults, that's no reason to ignore the 13th problem because you'll still end up with something that's better than it would have been otherwise.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I'm having a good laugh imagining a game where once you die its so hardcore and immersive you get to buy the game again, oh imagine the fidelity. Shhh don't tell CR.

There was a game which did this about 10 years ago. Can't remember the name and I never played it. Iirc there was a prize for last person standing then the game ended. Not sure it is a good fit for elite tho

 

[Stigbob]

I fought an npc cobra once that chaffed me 51 times.

That's not fighting, that's the game telling you to fit some fixed weps.

 

[bitstorm]

In regards to OAs poll. True story:

Australia is a constitutional monarchy. A few years ago we had a referendum to maybe change to a republic for which there was a lot of popular support. But it wasn't a simple yes/no question. The prime minister of the time was a staunch monarchist so the options were:

A) Remain a constitutional monarchy.
B) Become a republic with a president selected by Parliament.

The republican movement had some people who were happy with parliment selecting the president, others wanted the president directly elected by the people.

Option B successfully split the republic vote and the PMs desired outcome resulted. We're still a constitutional monarchy.

I see a lot of that in OAs poll. I would have put the options as:

A) Infinite probes with no additional gameplay
B) Finite probes with mining gameplay similar in intensity to refuelling/rearming an SRV

I wonder how that would have turned out?

Polls here on the forums pretty much always had some agenda or other.

Not saying OAs did (beyond drawing people to his community area), my feeling is it was just badly thought out.

I said when the poll was first linked it would be option B.

Well you know what the outcome will be already, option B.

You can bias an outcome just with the choice of options.

 

[nexxo]

You got some of your facts wrong. Mats are not destroyed with your ship. Neither is mat "data". Cartographic data is destroyed though.

That is my point: these details violate the internal logic of the ED universe. I was describing how they should be, not how they currently are.

 

[nexxo]

There are other inconsistencies in the game as it is, off the top of my head stuff like we have Telepresence for multicrew and instant data transfer for getting fines and bounties but can't remote either pay them off or collect them. We have magical cargo boxes that hold materials that don't get destroyed but our data does. Soon we'll have our Codex being updated with every other players exploration data too. Our equipment or modules if you prefer get instantly changed as well. Escape pods instantly appear at stations. NPCs with unlimited ammo. The list goes on. If we can accept all of these, infinite probes shouldn't really be such a big deal.

I don't find them very acceptable. I would like to see data preserved but materials destroyed on ship destruction. I'd like to see some sort of animation of modules being replaced and replacement time, so you have to organise your activities on the station (get repairs/upgrades underway while you trade and unload/load in the meantime). I'd like it to take a bit of time for the codex to be updated the further out you are in the black. Escape pods appearing instantly at the station can be explained away a bit by the player being in cryostatis in transit so from their POV no time has passed.

 

[bitstorm]

Why not have something like the "honk" which reveals basic information about a system and then allow players to use their judgement and experience to decide whether there's anything IN that system worthy of further investigation?
And then they have to use some skill to locate POIs in an efficient manner.

Well they have in a way.

Top right geological (9), this body has stuff to investigate, so information is revealed prior to having to investigate further. (on a per body basis)

(it looks like you can fit a max of around 3/4 "categories" in that panel currently)

From what they said it seems the wave display also has nuance to it and provides more data than is immediately obvious.

I would not be surprised if the waveform subtlely represents various booleans :

- geological: yes
- civilisation: no
- unknown: yes

So as you => waveform => FSS => map, the data becomes more nuanced.

But that's just imagined in my head atm.

 

[Oss133]

I wish the UK could have a referendum on the monarchy...

Indeed. Given how well Brexit has gone so far... No, hang on....

NO POLITICS!

Infinite posts about infinite probes! Yay!

 

[M00ka]

Indeed. Given how well Brexit has gone so far... No, hang on....

NO POLITICS!

Infinite posts about infinite probes! Yay!

Agreed, cos some of us just don't care, we come here to talk about a video game, not real life!

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Well they have in a way.

No they don't. Not at a glance like now. Not unless you play Radio Planet Game. Which of course we're all now forced to play if we want to see what's in a given star system.

Oh joy. Oh rapturous gameplay.

Tick-tock tick-tock, 6 days till the beta, then the larger playerbase can get their hands on this and see for themselves. Give it the umpteenth new star system one ventures into before deciding after that playing Radio Planet Game in order to build a system schemtic, is deemed bad by most.

 

[bitstorm]

No they don't. Not at a glance like now. Not unless you play Radio Planet Game. Which of course we're all now forced to play if we want to see what's in a given star system.

Well the wavescanner thing I believe represents some level of data, I just don't know how much.

Like the loop would be jump in, honk, look at wave forms, make decision.

It all hinges in what's available in the waveform data.

Pushing more data into the waveforms could be a more interesting and maybe more important change to ask for from a gameplay perspective than the infinite/non-infinite probes thing.

But yeah getting an actual visual isn't immediate, but you can't know if there's stuff on the surface from a visual anyway, so it's probably pros and cons to each system.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

Infinite posts about infinite probes! Yay!

Indeed.. I'm starting to see the wisdom of finite anything.. Just so I can believe it might stop eventually.

 

[thistle]

Indeed.. I'm starting to see the wisdom of finite anything.. Just so I can believe it might stop eventually.

Won't someone think of the pirates! Make it stop!

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Well the wavescanner thing I believe represents some level of data, I just don't know how much.

Like the loop would be jump in, honk, look at wave forms, make decision.

It all hinges in what's available in the waveform data.

Pushing more data into the waveforms could be a more interesting and maybe more important change to ask for from a gameplay perspective than the infinite/non-infinite probes thing.

But yeah getting an actual visual isn't immediate, but you can't know if there's stuff on the surface from a visual anyway, so it's probably pros and cons to each system.

Thing is, I prefer a visual representation over squiggles any day - it's vastly more informative and even intuitive than squiggles. It just seems to be a backwards step, put in to give certain player types the illusion that they're going to be using skill in determining if a star system will be worth spending time in - whereas ultimately it'll be learning by rote which given squiggle at which given range on the bottom sqiggle-bar represents a certain body type, and it also means spending time in each star system to figure out if it was worth spending time in each star system [blah]

This just doesn't seem to me to be a common sense approach. It just seems crazy to enforce "spending a lot more time than before in order to see if it's worth spending time".

 

[Factabulous]

oh noes - they crossed the streams! ADS & Infinity Wars in one thread! The explor-apocalypse!

 

[Stealthie]

Well they have in a way.



Top right geological (9), this body has stuff to investigate, so information is revealed prior to having to investigate further. (on a per body basis)

(it looks like you can fit a max of around 3/4 "categories" in that panel currently)

From what they said it seems the wave display also has nuance to it and provides more data than is immediately obvious.

I would not be surprised if the waveform subtlely represents various booleans :

- geological: yes
- civilisation: no
- unknown: yes

So as you => waveform => FSS => map, the data becomes more nuanced.

But that's just imagined in my head atm.

You might be right. I hope so.

Up until now, though, FDev's comments seem to suggest that investigating things using the new method will be faster than it's currently possible to investigate every planet in a system, erm, systematically.
That's a faulty comparison though.

If somebody gives you, say, a big bag of stones, you don't need to examine them all one-at-a-time to find any gold nuggets.
You'll probably just tip them all out onto a table, look at them all and it'll be possible to identify anything worth a closer look.
Sure, there's a chance you will miss something when you do that but you'll probably do okay.

In ED terms, you don't actually need to scrutinise every planet in a system individually to know if there's anything obviously interesting in there.
You can honk, look at the sysmap, and if every planet in a system is a small rocky world then you know it's unlikely to be interesting.
Again, you might miss something interesting once in a while but there'll probably be something else interesting to find shortly afterwards so it's no great loss.

The only reason that it would be worthwhile to scrutinise each planet systematically would be if doing so provided information that might tell you if there was something interesting on the surface worth finding.

I get the impression that some people think this is all about the credits - that explorers want to be able to honk and then go and claim all the rewarding planets with ease - but I'm not sure that's accurate.
I can only speak for myself but exploring is really just about finding cool stuff to look at.
I don't want to be forced to look at a bunch of things systematically in order to establish if something might be interesting or not.
I'd prefer to instantly gain some kind of overview which I can look at and then use my judgement to decide if something might be interesting.

 

[seko]

I wish the UK could have a referendum on the monarchy...

I think we've had enougth of referendums, to last many lifetimes

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I think we've had enougth of referendums, to last many lifetimes

in my totally biased opinion if ever there was proof that the majority is not always right it was the result of the last one.

That said, when in a discussion forum, discussion of opposing views should be encouraged and not ridiculed imo.

 

[NeilF]

You might be right. I hope so.

Up until now, though, FDev's comments seem to suggest that investigating things using the new method will be faster than it's currently possible to investigate every planet in a system, erm, systematically.
That's a faulty comparison though.

If somebody gives you, say, a big bag of stones, you don't need to examine them all one-at-a-time to find any gold nuggets.
You'll probably just tip them all out onto a table, look at them all and it'll be possible to identify anything worth a closer look.
Sure, there's a chance you will miss something when you do that but you'll probably do okay.

In ED terms, you don't actually need to scrutinise every planet in a system individually to know if there's anything obviously interesting in there.
You can honk, look at the sysmap, and if every planet in a system is a small rocky world then you know it's unlikely to be interesting.
Again, you might miss something interesting once in a while but there'll probably be something else interesting to find shortly afterwards so it's no great loss.

The only reason that it would be worthwhile to scrutinise each planet systematically would be if doing so provided information that might tell you if there was something interesting on the surface worth finding.

I get the impression that some people think this is all about the credits - that explorers want to be able to honk and then go and claim all the rewarding planets with ease - but I'm not sure that's accurate.
I can only speak for myself but exploring is really just about finding cool stuff to look at.
I don't want to be forced to look at a bunch of things systematically in order to establish if something might be interesting or not.
I'd prefer to instantly gain some kind of overview which I can look at and then use my judgement to decide if something might be interesting.

Isn't the risk that we've gone from one extreme to the other though?

Currently to find many planetary POIs you have to actually eye-ball them.

With the new mechanic, while sitting at the sun, within a minute or two you'll have a indication that a planet has X geological features and X unknown features etc?

You need then only go to that planet and fire probes, and voila...


Almost risks being too easy don't you think? Tricky balance isn't it!

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Thing is, I prefer a visual representation over squiggles any day - it's vastly more informative and even intuitive than squiggles. It just seems to be a backwards step, put in to give certain player types the illusion that they're going to be using skill in determining if a star system will be worth spending time in - whereas ultimately it'll be learning by rote which given squiggle at which given range on the bottom sqiggle-bar represents a certain body type, and it also means spending time in each star system to figure out if it was worth spending time in each star system [blah]

This just doesn't seem to me to be a common sense approach. It just seems crazy to enforce "spending a lot more time than before in order to see if it's worth spending time".

I said similar things a few weeks ago but in the form of suggestions for improvement, including the squiggles, illusion of skill, visuals, etc. it's a long one but if anyone is interested:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...r-to-complement-FDev-s-new-exploration-reveal