Am I the only one that finds the FSS rather addicting?

[Darkfyre99]

Yep, I'm enjoying exploring with the FSS and new DSS very much.

I do have one downside though: its making me travel MUCH more slowly about the galaxy. I'm enjoying it more so it's not really a downside, but the hit to my travel speed is very noticable.

I’ve never been overly concerned about speed, or even the destination, as long as the journey itself is enjoyable. Under the old system, the journey was not only unenjoyable, it was in fact anti-enjoyable, because I never felt any sense of discovery while exploring.

My chief complaints about the FSS is that I have to throttle down to use it, and that I can’t charge the FSD either. I can get a fairly good sense if a system is “interesting” gravitationally in 10-20 seconds. Being able to charge my FSD during that period would help speed up travel times.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Cr/sec I assume, although one can still honk&go with the new system and get even more than before. I guess they want to see a full system map from it ... I unno... a honk tells you how many bodies, and a one second glance tells if there are any ELW, WW or GG... I still don't really enjoy the FSS, but I don't hate it either like some seem to. Perhaps it's harder to use in VR.

I sincerely doubt that it’s about credits/second. The FSS is even better than the ADS when it comes to quickly finding the obvious highly valuable planets, and almost as good at finding terraformables.

For the most part, the complaints are primarily about the amount of time and “fiddling” it takes to populate the system map and navigational panel. The ADS allowed such high-order system information to be gathered by holding down a button for a few seconds. With the FSS, to get such high order information, you have to either deduce it from the main FSS screen, play a “mini-game” on the FSS to resolve bodies as quickly as possible, or find planets via parallax in the cockpit view.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I think everyone is in agreement that as an signal source and anomaly detector the fss is great. Zero people have ever thought this was bad.

Moving onto exploration outside of the bubble however.. just out of curiosity to anyone who finds that also 'addicting', is it the amazing rewards compared to the old system, or the gameplay itself? If you nerfed the rewards and got less tags and credits and detailed surface info would it still be just as thrilling?

Personally? Yes.

I stopped caring about credits when I got my Cobra III, and I never cared about the tags. What I primarily care about is a sense of discovery, that feeling you get from the process of revealing the unknown. With the ADS, all it took was holding down a button for a few seconds, and everything important about a system was instantly known. There was no process, no teasing of information, and no emotional payout. Exploration was a sterile experience for me, which soon had me Buckyballing it Back to the Bubble every time I tried my hand at deep space exploration.

With the FSS, unless you’re using it as a “minigame,” it’s a completely different experience. As I’ve gotten better at reading the FSS, it’s taking me less time to determine if a system is possibly “interesting.” There’s a certain sense of mystery when I detect a binary candidate on the FSS. It is a true binary, a rare planetary alignment, or did I misread a planet/moon combination? There’s only one way to find out.

Most of the things I look for have no credit value. For example, there’s no payout for watching an eclipse from the surface of a roche world. But unlike to ADS, which didn’t reveal the low order system information necessary to find such rare conjunctions, the FSS has that capacity. That’s part of what makes it a win in my book.

 

[De Richleau]

I find the FSS to be a great improvement on the old exploration system - which became uninteresting after a few jumps as far as I was concerned.

This feels a lot more like we’re out there discovering things - obviously it’s still a bit gamey and not completely realistic, but so what - it’s fun.

As others have said, the whole exploration process has become pretty addictive for me - I’m now constantly in “one more system” mode, whereas in the past it was a bit “how many more systems?”

 

[Old Duck]

Suppose I am one of a handful so fixated?

I believe the majority of my gameplay since 3.3 dropped has been using the FSS for exploration. I would like to see a few QoL additions, like the spectrometer and signal count being available on the Analysis HUD after a "honk", and perhaps the ability to run the FSS while throttled up in supercruise, but all-in-all I find the FSS a very enjoyable tool.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

For the most part, the complaints are primarily about the amount of time and “fiddling” it takes to populate the system map and navigational panel. The ADS allowed such high-order system information to be gathered by holding down a button for a few seconds. With the FSS, to get such high order information, you have to either deduce it from the main FSS screen, play a “mini-game” on the FSS to resolve bodies as quickly as possible, or find planets via parallax in the cockpit view.

You forgot the part about being able to resolve the bodies without flying around the system.

I'd say that determining the layout of the system is low-order information, with basic details of the planet type to be middle-order - which is all the ADS provided. To get high-order information it was necessary to fly around the system and use the DSS.
The FSS provides the middle-order information on entry, and the low- and high-order data after playing the minigame - which is why some of us consider it to be OP and detrimental to our exploration experience.

 

[Old Duck]

To get high-order information it was necessary to fly around the system and use the DSS.

Both the DSS and FSS are magical due to how quickly they can give us all the statistics, but we didn't have to send a probe to Jupiter to learn its mass, rotation, revolution, composition, etc. Heck, a lot of that was figured out using medieval telescopes and math! This idea that we "have to visit a planet to know a planet" is wrong.

However, I will concede that perhaps some of the things the FSS reveals should be moved to probed surface scans, like the exact percentages of materials, the numbers of geological and biological sites, and maybe some other details that would actually require us to send a probe to a planet IRL to observe. I just think the 'old school' DSS crowd takes this too far, some insisting that humans have to visit a planet in person before it can even be discovered. Remind me, what ship was Galileo flying when he discovered Jupiter's moons?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Both the DSS and FSS are magical due to how quickly they can give us all the statistics, but we didn't have to send a probe to Jupiter to learn its mass, rotation, revolution, composition, etc. Heck, a lot of that was figured out using medieval telescopes and math! This idea that we "have to visit a planet to know a planet" is wrong.

However, I will concede that perhaps some of the things the FSS reveals should be moved to probed surface scans, like the exact percentages of materials, the numbers of geological and biological sites, and maybe some other details that would actually require us to send a probe to a planet IRL to observe. I just think the 'old school' DSS crowd takes this too far, some insisting that humans have to visit a planet in person before it can even be discovered. Remind me, what ship was Galileo flying when he discovered Jupiter's moons?

I think we're mostly in agreement here.
I definitely think that discovering a planet can be done at range, but more detailed surveying should require proximity - indeed, if the FSS provided less information I could possibly get over the minigame aspect of it and use it just to populate the system map.

Galileo definitely discovered Jupiter, but he sure as heck didn't explore it

 

[Siobhan]

I think we're mostly in agreement here.
I definitely think that discovering a planet can be done at range, but more detailed surveying should require proximity - indeed, if the FSS provided less information I could possibly get over the minigame aspect of it and use it just to populate the system map.

Galileo definitely discovered Jupiter, but he sure as heck didn't explore it

Mars however, was first mapped with a terrestrial telescope... though my memory fails me with regard to the operator of said device.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Mars however, was first mapped with a terrestrial telescope... though my memory fails me with regard to the operator of said device.

Still had to send a rover down to the surface to look for lifeforms though.

It also turns out that quite a lot of stuff we've inferred about planets from telescopic observations has been proved incorrect once we've sent probes in.

 

[Siobhan]

Still had to send a rover down to the surface to look for lifeforms though.

It also turns out that quite a lot of stuff we've inferred about planets from telescopic observations has been proved incorrect once we've sent probes in.

Oh very true... but then, until the last century or so the same could be said about maps of Earth.
I do agree that the precision from a distance seems odd, when a picture of the land masses needs a physical probing.

 

[Old Duck]

Still had to send a rover down to the surface to look for lifeforms though.

I'm pretty sure if Brain Trees were growing on Mars, we could see them with a 3304 version of Hubble.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I'm pretty sure if Brain Trees were growing on Mars, we could see them with a 3304 version of Hubble.

A 3304 version of Hubble wouldn't require us to manually adjust frequencies and zooms to find the Brain Trees though. It would be all automated, kinda like the ADS.

Seriously, you can't argue for advanced tech on one hand and manual intervention on the other.
If the tech is advanced it WILL be automated.

 

[Codger]

I'm having fun with it, too. I don't fully scan every system, most of them I check and move on. But if I do decide to scan the system, I scan the whole thing. Right now I'm out past Colonia just enjoying the new stuff

 

[znôrt]

the idea is good but i don't like the senseless panning around chasing balls. at all. if we are using a magical scanner capable of revealing everything at any distance, why do i have to look at it from a ship i can't move? show me the whole system in the orrery view and when i tune in for a specific freq show me all instances of it at once, . you have the info, don't make me chase balls. if i'd like that sort of gameplay i would be playing candy crush. it's just stupid.

 

[Old Duck]

A 3304 version of Hubble wouldn't require us to manually adjust frequencies and zooms to find the Brain Trees though. It would be all automated, kinda like the ADS.

Seriously, you can't argue for advanced tech on one hand and manual intervention on the other.
If the tech is advanced it WILL be automated.

Can't? I already DID, muhahaha!!!!

I haven't seen that other thread yet, so I'll answer in this thread, LOL. Yes, actually, I can argue for advanced tech and manual intervention. Here are some RL examples:

1) If SETI discovers an interesting signal, it will set off an alarm, but humans like Jodie Foster need to manually verify if it's alien life or not.
2) NASA has a program that crowdsources the search for exoplanets, because they have found people discover things missed by the computer.
3) We have the technology to automate the launching of weapons from drones, but we purposefully do not because we want a human in that loop.

The whole "If the tech is advanced it WILL be automated" argument spells your own demise as an explorer, because it would be way cheaper for Stellar Cartography to just blanket the galaxy with probes than it is to pay pilots to manually fly spaceships and manually explore solar systems.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Can't? I already DID, muhahaha!!!!

I should have added 'convincingly' to my original statement

 

[Siobhan]

I should have added 'convincingly' to my original statement

Why do something convincingly when one can do it cantankerously?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Why do something convincingly when one can do it cantankerously?

I'm aiming for both

 

[Siobhan]

I'm aiming for both

Fair enough