Honestly, I'd have preferred keeping the original honk with some indication that there may be something of interest (e.g, Anomaly detected on planet 5 B), then used the probes to narrow down the search area.
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Honestly, I'd have preferred keeping the original honk with some indication that there may be something of interest (e.g, Anomaly detected on planet 5 B), then used the probes to narrow down the search area.
Okay....
Erk, logic fail.
If using probes to scan planets is optional then that is the case regardless of whether the probes are craftable or not.
I mostly agree with that... People don't want to be held up with RND, obviously unpredicatable gameplay.
But IMHO, if you know you need to create more probes, it would be far better while playing over the next couple of hours if you could simply keep and eye out, and gauge the best way/place/time to do so.
I've been suggesting that fuel scooing a particular ring type (for even just 10-20seconds) should replenish you probes. Others have suggested similar mechanics but with gas giants. Indeed lots of folks have different ideas...
But, it's not really about the regeneration mechanic itself - which I agree would be painful if based heavily on RNG - but giving CMDRs something else to consider and be able to do well with. eg: When travelling in SC to a planet you're going to probe, your realise - using the orrery map - there's a location you could stop off and top up your probes at. You're rewarded for your observation by a cheap top up, time/effort wise.
Again, I fully understand some (many?) folks don't like the notion of this, but personally I like balancing problems and solving them as well as possible. And keeping probe levels up (over several hours of exploration) would mean a more interesting and accountable experience to me at least
ps: And it would also make efficient probe usage in itself meaningful, instead of a rather Nintendo'esque bonus score mechanic
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Here's a quick solution for horizons users and craftable probes;
Make all rock assets on planets destructible for low amounts of low grade (1-2) mats, which are required for probe synthesis.
Make all rock assets on planets destructible for low amounts of low grade (1-2) mats, which are required for probe synthesis.
That's an incredibly weak argument, anyone wanting to use probes has opted into probing but not a compulsory crafting session.
Would you like to try again ?.
It's your argument.
You're saying that probing planets is optional but then you're also saying that gathering mat's for craftable probes would be compulsory.... even though you say the act of scanning planets is optional.
Would you?
By trying again I meant a different argument not the same terrible one worded slightly differently.
You see 90% of the playerbase don't want craftable probes only. So the thing the vast majority of players are opting into is exploration not compulsorily crafting probes. That has only 10% support from the playerbase so the important difference is the players actively want to opt out of that.
If you want to use the probes to probe celestial bodies and they were finite and you had to craft them to get more then at some point it would become compulsory if you want to keep probing after you run out.
I love that! Better yet, have the counter go down with each probe firing but then silently increment back up to 10,000 with no explanation.I would wet myself laughing if upon Beta we all discover that the infinity sign is replaced by a number, lets say 10,000 - which never changes
Adam says (and pardon me, English is not my native language): " ... so I can fire ?ones? quite quickly, but I can only fire up to three at once ..."
Listening to that, I assumed that the "three at once" wording was meant in the context of firing single probes "quite quickly". Namely, you can spam probes (fire them quite quickly), but only as many as you have in the clip (3 in case of a full clip). And I have a few arguments as to why I still think this is true:
- we can see the clip refreshing new probes before the fired ones hit. I see no point in designing a clip refresh mechanic (even if that's just a simple piece of code) if you can't fire the new probes from the clip until the old ones hit. If you'd have to wait for the probes to hit, you can just automatically refresh the clip the moment they do hit
- we know that it's possible to miss the planet and send the probes flying into the eternity of outer space. So what happens when I just spam all probes from the clip into the black? Am I prohibited from using probes ever again because there are "3 hot ones in the air" and they will never cease to exist (okay, they probably expire at some point like limpets, but you understand the point I'm trying to make)
- waiting for probes to hit the planet's surface would be a massive slap in the face to all the people complaining that stuff takes too much time in Elite. In the video it takes roughly 20s for the probes to hit the dark side of the planet, but there, the ship is really close. I remember a screenshot from some reveal a while ago, where the planet was more than twice the distance away - that would be an easy 40-60s wait for one probe to hit. I just can't imagine FDEV making that mistake
I'd ask a developer to come in and clarify this for us, but I'm getting the feeling that my question would be flooded with "just wait for Tuesday" replies.
Going by what we saw and heard during that segment we can launch as many probes as the clip holds, which can be engineered to increase the amount.
From what i gleaned from the stream:
- 3 probes active at a time, engineering allows to upgrade to 4 simultaneously active probes.
- probes are recharged once the old ones hit
Yes it is a mechanic that adds a QOL feature we have not up to this point,
with a minigame that has you sit and shoot.
If probes timeout was not clarified if i recap correct.
The probes 'recharge' is not tied to the previous one hitting, as can be seen in the stream.
Yeah, that's what I meant too.
So what?
I pointed out that the entire probing planets thing IS "busy work".
You responded by saying that it's optional.
It's daft to dismiss probing planets as being "optional" while moaning that craftable probes would mean "compulsory" mat-gathering.
You can't moan that gathering mat's for an optional task is compulsory.
It's kind of disappointing that it seems to be taking a bunch of posts for this to sink in.
Video starting with probes:
https://youtu.be/rtmmmP_waf4?t=4070
Time index 1:12:00 "You can fire 3 at once with engineering 4 as that is your clip size",
no word about when they reset/reload.
They fired off 1 and let that hit, than another one to the back and let it hit, too.
Next start was 2 probes, and let them hit.
No proof either way.
So we could both be wrong
Saint Cuthbert said: "Thick heads are not made out of glass,
use a cudgel."
I support how you describe it, the whole mechanic being busy work.
And let me add it doesn't involve skill, a suitable reward or
does work in delivering the theme of exploration with probes at all.
Next issue is USS spotting, but that is another topic.
Ok, it seems I was the only one who understood it differently. I guess we'll find out in the beta.
If the number of active probes ends up being limited to prevent spamming, then they might as well just please everybody, by giving a generous but limited total ammo count for probes (just like for point defence). No one is going to burn through all of them if they can only fire them at the rate we saw in the stream.
If the number of active probes ends up being limited to prevent spamming, then they might as well just please everybody, by giving a generous but limited total ammo count for probes (just like for point defence). No one is going to burn through all of them if they can only fire them at the rate we saw in the stream.
It limits the spam at a given moment, not the spam overall.
Infinite tools at hand propagate unreasonable use and mindless grind.
I dislike that, tools should be thoughtfully usable but give a bigger bonus to doing so,
like a way bigger area mapped than shown in the livestream and having the option to recharge and refill.
Infinite probes in itself just is busy work, they could've sticked with the equally mindless scan.
So we could both be wrong
No, he's right. At 1:11:46 Adam fires two probes from the top of the clip (clip was full before firing). From the moment he fires, one probe is being added to the clip at a rate of 1 every 3 seconds (so after 6 seconds, the clip is back to full). The fired probes are still flying when the clip is back to full.
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