Or perhaps a mini-game for truly long jumps; imagine an improvement to the FSD that lets you jump 100 times your maximum range, but requires you to keep the ship on course throuh the jump. Success lands you at your target system, failure lands you in a system short of your destination along your line of travel. It might allow for rapid travel to and from deep space areas and decrease the boredom factor.
My detailed feedback after a week out
- Thread starter marx
- Start date
Or perhaps a mini-game for truly long jumps; imagine an improvement to the FSD that lets you jump 100 times your maximum range, but requires you to keep the ship on course throuh the jump. Success lands you at your target system, failure lands you in a system short of your destination along your line of travel. It might allow for rapid travel to and from deep space areas and decrease the boredom factor.
It really wouldn't make the FSS redundant considering you can find out what type of bodies there are in a system from the FSS without doing anything other than the honk. Why wouldn't this data be used to create a system map when the honk is revealed? Also, one key reason to bring back the system map after the honk is to quickly find out if it's worth travelling to that body or not. You couldn't do that for a lot of bodies if the map was filled with only the positions, other than ones worth travelling to because of their orbits.
Well I don't want the old ADS back ;as there is no middle ground I hope FD's answer remains 'No'
First livestream, they showed of the mechanism, and assured everyone the honk would still pay.
After the first livestream the most heard criticism they got was: long range/traveling explorers would be missing a way to quickly get an idea of what kind of system they are going through. That's important, not the pay.
Second livestream: "We listened to your feedback, and we increased the pay of the honk.
Bless 'em
They really pay no attention whatsoever.
And previously the vast majority of time you were staring at witch space and the system map..
lol, no you didn't. Unless you were parallax exploring like me.
Well, I like it [cool][up] It's a huge improvement over watching a spinning icon for 30 seconds. Over and and over.
Problem with that is fuel. You'd need more than you could carry.
My take on the new mechanics, after a little live time.
Preamble: I'm dancing the Mamba Mambo right now, which means I'm in a short-legged ship traveling a medium-haul route at roughly 40 jumps per Kylie. I am, of course, constitutionally incapable of traveling in a straight line, so this will be a roughly 20 Kylie round trip.
I say "the new mechanics", because taken as a whole there are a lot of good features to this update, and I want to be clear that I am reserving the bulk of my criticism for the FSS itself, not the 3.3 update.
Those good points:
1) The switch to collaborative exploration is a highlight for me; it's something that's been on my personal wish-list since the beginning. It makes sense that if I sell my discoveries to the galactic mapping service then that data will become public domain and visible to others. It's great.
2) The ability to discover planetary POI is very useful and a welcome addition.
3) The new lighting system makes star systems prettier.
4) The "telescope zoom" to view planets without needing to super cruise to them is handy; under the previous system the optimal approach was to get just close enough to scan, which didn't lend itself to sightseeing.
The mediocre:
1) The planetary probing is thoroughly pointless. There's no special skill involved, it's a just a time-sink, and the requirement to approach the body very closely increases travel time on approach and departure.
2) The stellar anomalies and planetary POI are underwhelming. Interesting, but not varied or especially interactive.
3) The Codex, which appears to function primarily as a short lived race for tags instead of a general search and information tool.
4) The move away from a science-based approach to the design of exploration - the Forge is a thing of (flawed) science - towards sci-fi woo-woo. Blue cockpit! Wiggly lines! Probe me, baby! Obviously, this is a sci-fi game, but it's a shame to see the existing scientific core further brushed aside. Tbh I'm puzzled that DB agreed to the direction that the game has taken post-release, given that the shift away from arcade shooter to Milky Way sim in FE2 through E: D was his approach.
The bad:
1) Lack of consultation by FD, and the clear contempt evident in the way that the new mechanics were pushed out by fiat without space for feedback or accommodation. The subsequent split and bad blood in the community.
2) The FSS is a time sink. It is a simplistic mini game - if there's any difficulty and challenge involved in the FSS I have yet to encounter it - dropped in as an excuse for removing the ADS, which - as noted upthread - was Sandro's stated aim all along. If the rest of the new mechanics had arrived sans FSS, all would be well. Finding truly interesting systems is much harder with the FSS, as to discover the sort of chance oddities that make exploration truly rewarding now requires a great investment in vacuous busywork - if anyone can stomach it long enough.
In summary, I'm not against 3.3 as a whole, but the stinking turd of the FSS is enough to dampen the draw of the good stuff, and more than that, the way this has been done has badly soured my feelings for FD, and alas! for some people in our formerly happy corner of the game.
Preamble: I'm dancing the Mamba Mambo right now, which means I'm in a short-legged ship traveling a medium-haul route at roughly 40 jumps per Kylie. I am, of course, constitutionally incapable of traveling in a straight line, so this will be a roughly 20 Kylie round trip.
I say "the new mechanics", because taken as a whole there are a lot of good features to this update, and I want to be clear that I am reserving the bulk of my criticism for the FSS itself, not the 3.3 update.
Those good points:
1) The switch to collaborative exploration is a highlight for me; it's something that's been on my personal wish-list since the beginning. It makes sense that if I sell my discoveries to the galactic mapping service then that data will become public domain and visible to others. It's great.
2) The ability to discover planetary POI is very useful and a welcome addition.
3) The new lighting system makes star systems prettier.
4) The "telescope zoom" to view planets without needing to super cruise to them is handy; under the previous system the optimal approach was to get just close enough to scan, which didn't lend itself to sightseeing.
The mediocre:
1) The planetary probing is thoroughly pointless. There's no special skill involved, it's a just a time-sink, and the requirement to approach the body very closely increases travel time on approach and departure.
2) The stellar anomalies and planetary POI are underwhelming. Interesting, but not varied or especially interactive.
3) The Codex, which appears to function primarily as a short lived race for tags instead of a general search and information tool.
4) The move away from a science-based approach to the design of exploration - the Forge is a thing of (flawed) science - towards sci-fi woo-woo. Blue cockpit! Wiggly lines! Probe me, baby! Obviously, this is a sci-fi game, but it's a shame to see the existing scientific core further brushed aside. Tbh I'm puzzled that DB agreed to the direction that the game has taken post-release, given that the shift away from arcade shooter to Milky Way sim in FE2 through E: D was his approach.
The bad:
1) Lack of consultation by FD, and the clear contempt evident in the way that the new mechanics were pushed out by fiat without space for feedback or accommodation. The subsequent split and bad blood in the community.
2) The FSS is a time sink. It is a simplistic mini game - if there's any difficulty and challenge involved in the FSS I have yet to encounter it - dropped in as an excuse for removing the ADS, which - as noted upthread - was Sandro's stated aim all along. If the rest of the new mechanics had arrived sans FSS, all would be well. Finding truly interesting systems is much harder with the FSS, as to discover the sort of chance oddities that make exploration truly rewarding now requires a great investment in vacuous busywork - if anyone can stomach it long enough.
In summary, I'm not against 3.3 as a whole, but the stinking turd of the FSS is enough to dampen the draw of the good stuff, and more than that, the way this has been done has badly soured my feelings for FD, and alas! for some people in our formerly happy corner of the game.
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Yes, I've already suggested something similar. The FSS should start with the orrery, with some bodies already analysed (closest, most energetic, etc.) and the remaining, especially systems with multiple stars, will still have the blue blobs. The blue blobs will have limited/approximate data only, and probabilities of body types. Then the explorer can choose to use the FSS to point and click the blue blobs of interest. The FSS mechanics, with multiple zoom levels and tuning works the same way, but it starts from the highest level bodies in the zoom hierarchy, rather than the whole system. Much of the inane pan-as-slow-as-possible busywork will be removed, but the general concept of the FSS remains.
Edit: I point out that the above is a compromise. My true feelings are that the FSS mechanic should be completely replaced by something better and more appropriate. There are plenty of great things that come out of the FSS - the USS, the POIs, etc. - but the busywork hunt-the-blue-blob is an insult, tbh.
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There is middle ground though. Just keep the FSS and show the system map when you honk? It's basically the same as the current system except your ship uses the signals detected from the FSS to find out the classification planets and converts this into the image on the system map instead of in text as it currently does on the FSS screen. You still use the FSS to scan the system, but people can easily work out how interesting of a system it is and whether it is worth stopping to scan, and subsequently allows for both types of exploration.
Currently the FSS gives there type of signals but not their location; populating the map once each signal is resolved to give its location. What you are asking for is the type and location to be instantly known, which is just the ADS honk.
The FSS already shows the type of signals so that should give enough information to decide if its worth extra time investigating.
I really love the new mechanics behind exploration in 3.3 ! It's much more fun and satisfying (for me) to travel thousands of ly in 3.3 than before. Mapping with the probes is awesome and finally allow us to find POIs on planets, just love it !
BUT I think that the main problem (was the same before) is that even with better mechanics there is still not much to do / find out there.
I'm on the same boat. Left Colonia the day after 3.3 dropped, fully scanned every systems I went in and still haven't found any biological POIs or anomalies...I was expecting more diversity, more new stuff and challenge while exploring...but no...geysers or fumeroles variants and that's all =/
FDev said that exploration would be more dangerous...we probably haven't seen everything yet but I was expecting some gameplay related challenge but it's just getting hit by anomalies and lightning while taking videos or screenshots.
I mean the lagrange clouds are amazing and I love the biological life they added in them but they are way too much rare and except for some scan there is not much to do. Why can't we have some drone or tools with similar gameplay than the new mining to extract samples from those biological discoveries ?
And the poor planetary surfaces =( So much potential for exploration but still the same barren planets with some rock / crystals to shoot...since Horizon came out...no new gameplay or stuff to do on them...without having atmospheric planets or space legs we could do so much more with what we actually have in game.
Scavenging old crashed megaships with drones or SRVs to collect artefact, audio log, etc., exploring deep caves on icy / snowy planets to find extremely rare stuff, extracting old fossiles from ice with heating lasers, etc.
My 2 cents.
o7
BUT I think that the main problem (was the same before) is that even with better mechanics there is still not much to do / find out there.
I'm on the same boat. Left Colonia the day after 3.3 dropped, fully scanned every systems I went in and still haven't found any biological POIs or anomalies...I was expecting more diversity, more new stuff and challenge while exploring...but no...geysers or fumeroles variants and that's all =/
FDev said that exploration would be more dangerous...we probably haven't seen everything yet but I was expecting some gameplay related challenge but it's just getting hit by anomalies and lightning while taking videos or screenshots.
I mean the lagrange clouds are amazing and I love the biological life they added in them but they are way too much rare and except for some scan there is not much to do. Why can't we have some drone or tools with similar gameplay than the new mining to extract samples from those biological discoveries ?
And the poor planetary surfaces =( So much potential for exploration but still the same barren planets with some rock / crystals to shoot...since Horizon came out...no new gameplay or stuff to do on them...without having atmospheric planets or space legs we could do so much more with what we actually have in game.
Scavenging old crashed megaships with drones or SRVs to collect artefact, audio log, etc., exploring deep caves on icy / snowy planets to find extremely rare stuff, extracting old fossiles from ice with heating lasers, etc.
My 2 cents.
o7
"How would you sum up the new exploration content of Chapter 4?"
Lol [haha]
My experience is quite opposite
Actually the system map only gives one distance value... Distance from arrival, "z".
Locations require x, y *and* z. So having system map does not invalidate the FSS.
Also, the FSS shows the distance to the body when you do the find the blob action. It serves no purpose (beyond being info) as far as I can't tell, because I didn't even notice it until yesterday..so it plays no active part in the body find and resolve.
In better words, what I meant to say earlier. The influence of NMS is spreading like a pandemic
====
Yesterday it hit me how much of Chapter 4 is basically menus.
• PG Management > menus
• Codex > menus
• FSS > menu (flat 2D screen that has no VR support and no intradiegetic justification)
• Squadrons > menus
• Revamped ship UI > menus
• Probing > menu (see FSS)
Certainly a lot of backend work went into all this, but once in the game, hands-on, well... Bit flat innit. Was I supposed to rekindle the spark of "blaizing my own trail"? [where is it]
The point is showing the absence of new content; I too find the usual planets and cluster belts.
Lagrange clouds and molluscs. Isn't that enough?
If it weren't for the Mamba I'm currently flying, I'd think I'm playing Elite in 2017
The information is already there? Then interpret it. I don't want the old system back, this feels much better to me, I could not explore under the old system at all, so personally I hope they don't crumble because then I'm back to square one and cant enjoy the new system.
That's the thing, though. That distance indicator is information, it has a purpose, and you can use it actively as part of deciding whether a system is interesting enough to spend any more time on. If I spot a gas giant in the habitable zone of a star on the FSS, it's worth resolving, because it might be part of a Yavin IV type of system.
How actually? I haven’t spotted that yet I’m sorry to say.
EDIT: Oh, you mean the scale in the left side of the screen?
But about the topic of this thread I actually feel more like an explorer now and I like the new system - but no obviously you can’t take a quick glance at the entire system anymore. That just makes it more exiting for me personally though, but I do undestand why some don’t like it.
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