the FSS, watching paint dry....

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Not exactly.

As far as I'm concerned, the FSS is a multi-function tool that provides me information I can use to make decisions on how I use my time in this game. This is it's core functionality. Not playing a minigame to populate the system map, though it can be used in that way. It is a visual light telescope, an infrared telescope, a spectrum analyser, a radiowave detector, a gravity field detector, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it had some Witchspace functionality as well.

My goal, as always, is to maximize the time I spend on having fun in this game, while minimizing the time I spend on those aspects of the game I don't enjoy. One of the main reasons I like the FSS is that it allows me to form a mental map of the gravity wells within an unexplored system, the process by which I find extremely satisfying, which in turn shows me where to look for the kind of things I find interesting while out exploring, whether its an eclipse in progress, PoIs on the surface of a planet or moon, or simply interesting gravity wells to maneuver through.

I also don't want to waste my time on false positives, which is why I'll resolve a body when I suspect there's something there. Once I've confirmed its presence, I'll fly there. If there are other bodies along the way, I can alter my course slightly to do a flyby, which not only looks neat visually, but getting close enough for it to resolve without killing my speed can be a bit of a challenge. If it's a moon around a gas giant, I can do the same with its unresolved moons.



To the best of my knowledge, the distance displayed in the lower left corner when hovering over a blob is its distance from you, not the star. I can't be absolutely, positively sure, though, since I rarely use the FSS when I'm not parked right by a system's primary.

*grumbles about having to throttle down to use the FSS*



It's almost like it's a tool, and we want to use it in an efficient way, as opposed to using poorly... like using a screwdriver to drive in nails.

Personally, when given a new tool in a game, I like to experiment with it. Sometimes, I'll even remember to record my experiments. Some work out. Some... don't.

Spoiler

The reason why I don't do that kind of thing anymore is if you pay attention, you can tell the moment I entered the gas giant's sphere of influence. Something about an SOI change can play merry havoc with the FSS display.

Using the tool to provide the gameplay, rather than the tool BEING the gameplay - I totally get it. I used to play the gravity well game with the old system - can I minimize the depth into the gravity well I travel without extending the scanning time such that I end up performing worse, what's the next body after this one and how do I approach this body to set me up for it? Supercruise actually facilitates gameplay if you approach it with that in mind, rather than simply 'point and Netflix'.

I think the problem I would have with your style is that I'm never looking for anything in particular - each system was it's own minigame with my decisions based on the initial honk results. Without a specific goal in mind, analysis of any system is going to require too much time spent in the FSS before I know how I want to explore it.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, nonetheless
I'll watch the video when I'm back on wifi.

 

[Red Anders]

Flying around was always meaningless. It's a space game without any inherent meaning.

Life has no inherent meaning. All of us are a complete irrelevance.

Sorry I just though I'd proceed directly to the nihilism endgame so we can get back to discussing one of the ways we choose to waste our time as we live the aforementioned utterly meaningless lives.

 

[Faded Glory]

Life has no inherent meaning. All of us are a complete irrelevance.

Sorry I just though I'd proceed directly to the nihilism endgame so we can get back to discussing one of the ways we choose to waste our time as we live the aforementioned utterly meaningless lives.

I don't know...

I destroyed a ship called Space Loach, and that kill got me combat Elite. Surely that must mean something...

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I killed Klaus Hergesheimer, an obscure character from Diamonds Are Forever the other day. Does that mean something?

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Would you mind elaborating on that?

From my point of view, the FSS, while not perfect, seems to be well designed from a discovery gameplay point of view. Once you get used to reading it, it’s fairly easy to quickly determine if a wide variety of Interesting Things(tm) are likely to be present in a system, without sacrificing a sense of discovery that I felt was missing from the old system..

So what part of the FSS disrupts usability? Does it stop you from using your controller of choice some how? And what UI/UX standards are these you talk about?

The FSS mechanic has been purposely designed to make it tedious and time consuming. Strange that you ask, and seems silly to elaborate, but, to make it abundantly clear:

1. No blue blob visual persistence. Even decades old radar has some persistence.
2. The pan 360 degrees mechanic is completely unnecessary and purposely slow. (Has 3304 lost point and click?)
3. The key-in-lock (ring within ring line-up) is unnecessarily fiddly/tedious, and was made moreso after an update. (Apparently FDev thought it was too easy. The mind boggles. Is this exploration or tetris?).
4. Doesn't tell you the direction of the ecliptic.

I could go on. If the FSS had to be arcade (FDev's choice), it still could have been designed with usability in mind, in which case the UI would have been completely different. What we got was FDev's attempt at a mini-game. Unfortunately it also treats us like 8 year olds. There's no logical consistency within the game world. At least in other games, mini-games generally make sense and are internally consistent within their setting, like Skyrim's lock picking.

Yes, I can understand some players like the arcade-ish feel of the FSS mechanic and don't care about context, verisimilitude, or wasting time. But there are plenty who think otherwise, as evidenced by this and many other threads.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

It certainly isn’t realistic, I’ll admit. Any realistic exploration sensor suite would be completely automated, eliminating any possibility for discovery gameplay.

The first part I totally agree with. The highlighted part I disagree with very strongly.

Instead of an arcade mini-game, FDev could (and should) have designed it as a strategy game. I've been saying this for months. In fact it would be more than just a strategy mini-game. It would be a long term strategy meta-game and a system by system mini strategy game, a bit like a puzzle to work out efficient ways to reveal the system content.

It's my failing for not being able to easily and quickly describe how this might work. It's very clear in my mind, but would take many hours on the forum. You could read my brief descriptions in many previous posts, all about starting the system discovery process with unknown or uncertain information, then using your discovery resources to uncover it using strategy, tailored for and by the explorer.

FDev actually have a very good strategy game in their BGS (ymmv - not everyone's cup of tea). It would have been so nice to see another strategy based game design for exploration, and with so much more verisimilitude.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Yes, I can understand some players like the arcade-ish feel of the FSS mechanic and don't care about context

Yes those are the god moders. Very rarely and only in glancing does the mechanic of the fss even be mentioned let alone upheld by the people who claim to love it so.. I have a feeling that people are high on the handful of chocolates poured in their hands for brain dead effortless free clicking is what is really going on.

And sure now that it’s been given people have a right to like it.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Yes those are the god moders. Very rarely and only in glancing does the mechanic of the fss even be mentioned let alone upheld by the people who claim to love it so.. I have a feeling that people are high on the handful of chocolates poured in their hands for brain dead effortless free clicking is what is really going on.

The FSS mechanic is what I've been stressing in most of my posts. The results of the FSS are great - full marks to FDev for the POIs, USSs, remote discovery (I know many don't like that).

But that mechanic, oh my. IMO it's FDev falling into the trap of thinking they must make an arcade-ish mini game to appease the masses. They looked at other games to see how they did it, then pulled apart the FSS to insert the mini game without properly thinking about verisimilitude or logical consistency with the rest of their universe.

For me, unfortunately, it's a figurative face-palm every time I use it. I use VR for great immersion, and get hit by an immersion breaker every system.

 

[Burke]

Just replace the FSS completely with the ADS. OMG radical idea! let people have it easy. Let the player have quick honk and then off they go discovering.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

As far as gamified mechanics go, the FSS is certainly a step up from point-and-honk.
The problem is that anyone who really cares about exploration isn't necessarily interested in shallow gamified mechanics in the first place. It'd be much more interesting if exploration involved a modicum of actual science.

Well said. Totally agree.

 

[Riverside]

Just replace the FSS completely with the ADS. OMG radical idea! let people have it easy. Let the player have quick honk and then off they go discovering.

If the new discovery process announced for 3.3 had been the addition of the probing feature along with automatic detection of nearby objects & USSs the community would have been over the moon, existing tagging achievements would have not had their kudos undermined and mapping would still have allowed players to find the stuff FDev wanted them to find.

But instead we have been given a system where to locate a thing in the skybox is to know everything about it but you have to locate every thing to know anything about it. Now that it's in the game & some people like it I have no objection to it remaining in the game and I will take advantage of it's benefits, but really I just want to be told basic info about what's in the system I just arrived in (which the ADS did) then if I decide to go & have a look fill in more detail as I approach (which both old & new processes do). The final step of probing seems a bit gamey & I'd personally be happy for it to just provide the POI list once I approached close enough to bring up the compass & co-ordinates, then the concept of 'first mapped' would have become 'first into orbit' or possibly 'first to land on' or a generic 'first to visit'.

What we have right now has plenty going for it & has opened up exploration & discovery to a new audience which is great, it just didn't need to be at the expense of the existing stuff.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Just replace the FSS completely with the ADS. OMG radical idea! let people have it easy. Let the player have quick honk and then off they go discovering.

Well for some people exploration starts with a blank slate, so I get why they want the FSS and I have no problem with it existing so long as I don't have to use it.

It would be like telling people they had to use fixed weapons and they can't have gimballed any more. There's no reason why both can't be available and players choose what they want to use

 

[[VR] Merkir]

It's almost like it's a tool, and we want to use it in an efficient way, as opposed to using poorly... like using a screwdriver to drive in nails.

Excellent analogy. If the FSS was designed in a sane universe, it would look like a hammer and it would drive in nails. Instead, we've been given a screwdriver, also to drive in nails, because... game.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Yes, but scanning the planet in the FSS removes the reason to actually fly to it, since I've already gained far too much information about it. The only reason for flying to a planet is to play the OTHER minigame.

For planets with an atmosphere, what was the point in the old way anyway if you are not interested in tags or cash. Doing a DSS scan on them does nothing for you. There is still no incentive to fly to those planets in the old version.

None atmospherics with the new version now has more incentives to fly there with the knowledge that there are POIs to find. In the old system you would have to fly there so a DSS and it would tell you it was volcanic. Great, now you have to spend hours doing the mk1 eyeball game to find the POIs, which pretty much killed off any incentive I had to travel to them and DSS them.

If atmospheric planets become a thing in the next paid for update then there will be even more incentives to go and fly to planets in a system with the new version as there will be a whole new load of POIs to discover.

As to strange planetary alignments, that hasn't changed it just takes a bit longer to find them.

A populated Navigation Panel would be perfect. That's my red line, basically. Without targetable bodies at initial reveal (honk/whatever) my exploration gameplay is crippled.

And when you add targetable populated nav panel, it destroys what the FSS is for, discovering planets yourself.

You can't have both in the same system. Sue I have no issues with two different systems as long as they are mutually exclusive.

By the way, I kinda hate the auto-resolve functionality too. It's stuff happening that I'm not actively participating in, so it feels empty.

I don't like that either. I wouldn't mind them become targetable at close proximity but you need to target them and scan them like the old way to get the information.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

There's future tech and then there's future tech. I see the FSS as a powerful optical. radio, and gravimetric telescope - things we already have today (unlike FTL travel, which is pure magic by today's standards). Since you earlier shared your ideal exploration mechanics, allow me to share mine:

1) No honk. The honk is a vestigial instrument from pre-3.3 and needs to go. Instead, we should be forced to fly a lap around the sun, during which time the FSS passively scans the sky for signals, observing parallax which will allow it to identify what the honk currently identifies.

2) I do agree that our computers should be able to see that cool things like ELWs, black holes, etc. are in the system and notify us (like SETI). Once I do the loop (during which I'll also be refueling), I should get a HUD display of the spectrometer along with a message if an ELW is in the system.

3) I like playing the 2D blob game, as this is me using my highly advanced space telescope to zoom in on these objects to get additional data and populate the system map. This is similar to RL, as NASA can scan large swaths of sky, but they need to "focus" on a very particular place in order to observe things like asteroids, and that's why so many near-earth objects go undetected until the last minute. This is the "FSS minigame" that I personally enjoy.

4) Keep FSS details about geology, biolife, and materials to a minimal, like "life detected on planet", requiring us to probe the planet to learn more.

5) Once we do probe the planet, any life documented in the Codex should be identified as that specific life instead of generic "biologic POI)". If I land to find yet another Bark Mound, I'm going to scream. This means "Unidentified Lifeform" should make us jump up and take notice.

6) Allow me to hire an NPC to do most of this work for me if I chose, with caveats that NPC will be slower than I am and will take a chunk of any earnings I make for my discoveries (an idea debated to death in a different thread).

Reminder, I'm not expecting the above things, just saying what my idea of a "perfect" exploration system would look like, and it's pretty darn close to what Frontier already gave us.

Nice post. My feedback:

1. A "new honk" (new pre-discovery process) is started by pressing (not holding) a button. To optimise time, the player may fly perpendicular to the orbital plane to maximise spatial data, and the "new honk" ends when enough spatial data has been analysed to locate the bodies - normally just a few seconds, but may be more for very large systems - or if the player is faffing around the main star.

2. Nearby/energetic signals are resolved during pre-discovery, for the main star only. Ie. some of the system bodies may be fully analysed.

3. At the end of the "new honk", a 3D orrery is presented (preferably a cockpit hologram) with the FSS then used to resolve the remaining bodies and those of other stars. The blue blobs represent uncertainty, and the FSS can be used by point-and-click on the orrery to zoom in to resolve. Probabilities are listed next to each blue blob representing parameters of interest, including probability of body type(s).

Aside: At this point, I would introduce a whole new exploration strategy game including the set-up of the ship to optimise the particular exploration interests of the individual explorer. The FSS & orrery may still be used, but the underlying discovery resources chosen by the explorer, with their optimisations, are processing system data in the background. It's too much to describe here, but it would involve choosing resources (CPU, frequency spectra of interest, ranges, algorithms to optimally analyse for biology, anomalies, geographic structures, materials, etc.). The background processing is updating the probabilities of the parameters in real time, thus the explorer sees the probabilities changing, and eventually resolving. A whole new meta-game here, including lots of new engineering gameplay. Each explorer would set up their exploration ship optimised to explorer for what they want to find. A default setup would have no priorities, and would apply resources equally to all parameters.

The FSS is used as an adjunct to the above, homing in to speed up the process for individual blue blobs.

Importantly, an explorer can elect NOT to use the FSS, in which case their processing resources will continue to resolve bodies and parameters of interest to them, until they are satisfied. It is highly advised though to use the FSS to hasten (greatly) the process.

4. No change from yours.

5. Agree with you. Good idea.

6. Not really needed due to the strategy nature of the new game play in 3 above.


Everything above is purely academic. I realise point 3 is far too much work for FDev to consider changing. But equally, I think it important someone on the forums points out alternative game designs.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The FSS mechanic has been purposely designed to make it tedious and time consuming. Strange that you ask, and seems silly to elaborate, but, to make it abundantly clear:

I find nothing tedious about it so I struggle to find how it is designed to be tedious. As to time consuming, that's what happens when you partake in gameplay. It takes time. No different to any other game out there.

1. No blue blob visual persistence. Even decades old radar has some persistence.

Hardley a deal breaker. Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

2. The pan 360 degrees mechanic is completely unnecessary and purposely slow. (Has 3304 lost point and click?)

No they haven't lost point and click. That is exactly what you do with the FSS.

3. The key-in-lock (ring within ring line-up) is unnecessarily fiddly/tedious, and was made moreso after an update. (Apparently FDev thought it was too easy. The mind boggles. Is this exploration or tetris?).

Nothing fiddly about it. Check your controls. I have not seen anything become more difficult and was in the beta.

4. Doesn't tell you the direction of the ecliptic.

Again, not a deal breaker. Doesn't bother me.

I could go on. If the FSS had to be arcade (FDev's choice), it still could have been designed with usability in mind, in which case the UI would have been completely different. What we got was FDev's attempt at a mini-game. Unfortunately it also treats us like 8 year olds. There's no logical consistency within the game world. At least in other games, mini-games generally make sense and are internally consistent within their setting, like Skyrim's lock picking.

So in one hand you say it's too difficult and here you say FDev are treating us like 8yos. Well you could at least say it's a massive step up from the old version where you didn't even need a brain to use.

Yes, I can understand some players like the arcade-ish feel of the FSS mechanic and don't care about context, verisimilitude, or wasting time. But there are plenty who think otherwise, as evidenced by this and many other threads.

Nice try on the veiled insult. No, I see nothing arcade about it. It's a gameplay mechanic which you either like or don't. I find the mechanics pretty good, but the feeling it gives me of discovery is much more then what we had before when all the planets where discovered for us with a 5 second press of a button.

As I have said before different courses for different horses. Some like a straight line with no bumps and no obstacle in the way (the old ADS). Some like a few obstacles and turns (the new FSS). People like different things, there is no reason to try to belittle them because of that.

So I am still waiting to hear about these UI/UX standards and how the FSS affects usability. You still haven't mentioned that yet.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Hey just in case, over in the ps4 forum a few of us were lamenting the gold type-9 ship skin not being available on the store.

Someone suggested interacting with frontier on twitter because they're very proactive there, and they got a response with the item added.

Just in case 106 pages hasn't triggered frontier to notice yet.. apparently twitter is the way to go.

 

[da_wae]

Hey just in case, over in the ps4 forum a few of us were lamenting the gold type-9 ship skin not being available on the store.

Someone suggested interacting with frontier on twitter because they're very proactive there, and they got a response with the item added.

Just in case 106 pages hasn't triggered frontier to notice yet.. apparently twitter is the way to go.

I'm sure badgering support staff on Twitter is definitely gonna get FDEV to see the light and revert the FSS.

 

[Enderby]

Hey just in case, over in the ps4 forum a few of us were lamenting the gold type-9 ship skin not being available on the store.

Someone suggested interacting with frontier on twitter because they're very proactive there, and they got a response with the item added.

Just in case 106 pages hasn't triggered frontier to notice yet.. apparently twitter is the way to go.

Watch out. You might receive a few "I don't use filthy social media" responses from some forumites (despite the fact that internet forums are social media....).

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I'm sure badgering support staff on Twitter is definitely gonna get FDEV to see the light and revert the FSS.

Well they fixed the store bug instantly. It was hanging there for days in the forum and in the bug reports forum until someone pinged them there. Go figure.

I don't have a twitter account