Why FSS Mode Must Go

Commander William Diffin

Commander William Diffin
Following the much-hyped Beyond C4 update, explorers like myself have been sadly leaving the game. This is because of the introduction of FSS mode. It's killed exploration for a number of people. I stopped playing as soon as I first saw it in Beta.

Why would anyone want to be forced to enter Supercruise and burn fuel flying blind going nowhere, just to enter an awkward scan mode with unspecified unbound controls, and use it to manually look around a system for hotspots that the ship doesn't need to be manually navigated towards in any way in order to find them, and which the ship's computer could easily have run a simple routine to find for itself? Every time they want to explore an unexplored system? Why would anyone want to do that? Thousands of times? It's just not fun. I couldn't even sit through Obsidian Ant's tutorial on it to the end.

Why should anyone prefer the FSS system, instead of the simple PONK and then the system configuration is available in the System Map that we used to have? Why should anyone prefer this update that no one asked for, instead of all the other stuff 'so-called' explorers expected in a big exploration update and plainly aren't going to get now, like atmospheric landings, space legs, and ship-to-ship docking. Why?

The only way to fix this is to remove FSS mode and hotspots. You PONK as usual. You don't need to be in Supercruise. You get a message on the HUD that tells you how many bodies are in the system. You enter System Map, and the old System Map has been replaced with an FSS-style navigable orrery, with all the objects present. You zoom in on objects and find the information on them. That's all.

Until this is fixed, I for one am finished with this game. I simply don't want to continuously interrupt my game to follow thousands of little arrows and zoom in on thousands of little purple clouds over and over again. I want to explore the virtual Galaxy.
 

PKingZombieSpy

P
Hope you don't mind, I strongly disagree. For me it boils down to this: in the old system, detailed scans involved pointing your ship at a body, spending often minutes travelling to it (waiting), then more waiting for the scan to finish (again, waiting, doing nothing) once you actually got close enough to scan. That a core gameplay element involved literally waiting minutes for something to happen and that was literally the highest level gameplay possible? Yeah, I would not welcome a return to that old system. Whether the new system can be improved, yes, I imagine so. But, in my view, it's a definite improvement. On that subject, I do not think the orrery idea would be an improvement, frankly.

Frankly I never would have dreamed of doing something like DW2 if it were not for the vast improvements in exploration of 3.3.

Edit: upon consideration I recognize that I may have come across as callous. I'm sorry that you've lost a gameplay element you clearly enjoyed, even if I did not feel the same.
 
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Greyza Badger

Greyza Badger
I just need the requirement to set minimum speed to view the FSS removed.
I'd like to see the scan data at any speed. If I can't lock on to a blob in the FSS because I'm going too fast, that's my problem. Needing to set minimum speed to see the results of the honk scan is nonsensical.
 

space voyager

space voyager
Greyza Badger said:
I just need the requirement to set minimum speed to view the FSS removed.
I'd like to see the scan data at any speed. If I can't lock on to a blob in the FSS because I'm going too fast, that's my problem. Needing to set minimum speed to see the results of the honk scan is nonsensical.
Click to expand...

I agree. FD probably introduced this limitation so that pilots like me wouldn't bump into things but IMO it is not neccessary. Most likely I'd stop anyway as catching close-by planets would be a chore but as limitation I can do without.

Anyway, to.the OP; a lot of us love the new system MUCH more than the previous instareveal.
 

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
I prefer to do the discovery part myself instead of having a 5 second press of a button do it all for me.

So no the FSS does not need to go. People just need to adapt.

Also why do you think that atmospheric planets are not coming? What do you think is the new expansion coming this year is?

Personally when I explore, I would like some actual gameplay to go with it. The old at was was tedious, boring and required precious little interaction from the player. I know as I have been exploring in ED for four years.

If people don't want to play because we have at last for some actual gameplay and tools to use in the game, of people don't want to play because they have to discover what is in a system themselves using the tools available instead of a 5 second press of a button, that's on them.

Personally I have no issues using the. new mechanic 1000s of times, I have already done so, and because every star system is different, it's a slightly different experience every time and for me just does not get boring.
 

SMcA

SMcA
Greyza Badger said:
I just need the requirement to set minimum speed to view the FSS removed.
I'd like to see the scan data at any speed. If I can't lock on to a blob in the FSS because I'm going too fast, that's my problem. Needing to set minimum speed to see the results of the honk scan is nonsensical.
Click to expand...

You don't need to throttle down to zero. If you have bound set speed to zero, to a key. You can incorporate it in a macro. One that zero's the speed then enters FSS to look at the frequency graph. When I release the button the system goes back into Analysis mode. The ship's speed will be a fraction of "c" not 30 m/s
 

askavir

askavir
Even though I hate the FSS and like the OP lost my will to play I don't think it has to go. There are people who like it and it would be easy to make both camps happy.

I just want the ADS back as the very same old optionally installable module, that when used simply reveals the system map, even if just the wireframes.
 
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Greyza Badger

Greyza Badger
SMcA said:
You don't need to throttle down to zero. If you have bound set speed to zero, to a key. You can incorporate it in a macro. One that zero's the speed then enters FSS to look at the frequency graph. When I release the button the system goes back into Analysis mode. The ship's speed will be a fraction of "c" not 30 m/s
Click to expand...
Nope, not on console.
 

Siobhan

Siobhan
Can't say I've had any problems with FSS mode. It's made me over 300MCr since Christmas. And for hardly any work.

But then when I explore I like to see what's in a system rather than just honk and go, hoping to have caught an ELW or whatever. The FSS, though awkward at first, ended up making this explorer's life considerably simpler.

So, basically I respectfully disagree with the OP.
 

gooddoc

gooddoc
Sorry OP, the FSS mode is fine & I'm happy using it......

.....How did I ever play this game for 4 years, traveliing 400, 500, 600+LS's just to scan that one HMC Planet orbitting that 2nd Star! - & when I got there it was only an Ice world!!!!
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Commander Diffin said:
Following the much-hyped Beyond C4 update, explorers like myself have been sadly leaving the game. This is because of the introduction of FSS mode. It's killed exploration for a number of people. I stopped playing as soon as I first saw it in Beta.

Why would anyone want to be forced to enter Supercruise and burn fuel flying blind going nowhere, just to enter an awkward scan mode with unspecified unbound controls, and use it to manually look around a system for hotspots that the ship doesn't need to be manually navigated towards in any way in order to find them, and which the ship's computer could easily have run a simple routine to find for itself? Every time they want to explore an unexplored system? Why would anyone want to do that? Thousands of times? It's just not fun. I couldn't even sit through Obsidian Ant's tutorial on it to the end.

Why should anyone prefer the FSS system, instead of the simple PONK and then the system configuration is available in the System Map that we used to have? Why should anyone prefer this update that no one asked for, instead of all the other stuff 'so-called' explorers expected in a big exploration update and plainly aren't going to get now, like atmospheric landings, space legs, and ship-to-ship docking. Why?

The only way to fix this is to remove FSS mode and hotspots. You PONK as usual. You don't need to be in Supercruise. You get a message on the HUD that tells you how many bodies are in the system. You enter System Map, and the old System Map has been replaced with an FSS-style navigable orrery, with all the objects present. You zoom in on objects and find the information on them. That's all.

Until this is fixed, I for one am finished with this game. I simply don't want to continuously interrupt my game to follow thousands of little arrows and zoom in on thousands of little purple clouds over and over again. I want to explore the virtual Galaxy.
Click to expand...

No. Just no.

I considered the old ADS to be so utterly unappealing, from a discovery gameplay perspective, that it's only now, thanks to the FSS, that I've headed out to the black, and remained there for longer than a week. I've been wanting to explore the virtual Galaxy since the Kickstarter, but every time I tried under the old system, the result was a experience that sucked out what I considered to be the very soul of exploration, a sense of discovery, which sent me Buckyballing it back to the Bubble out of sheer ennui. There was no long term joy to deep space exploration for me, no genuine sense of discovery. Deep space exploration was simply holding down a button for few seconds, and then consulting a map and/or the nav panel, to decide if I wanted to grind for credits or worthless "discovered by" tags. The fun part of exploration, the part that most interested me, had been automatically done by the ship.

While the FSS can use some improvement (my chief complaints are some lingering VR bugs, that I have to throttle down to use it, and that I can't use it while my FSD is charging), mechanically it's just about perfect for an entry level discovery scanner. It presents a wide variety of information about the bodies of a system, that, with proper interpretation, allows a Commander to rather quickly determine if Interesting Things(tm) are present in the system and focus their attention on them. From there, you can use several strategies to gather additional information, from using the FSS to orient yourself to resolve bodies by performing a flyby, to simply using the FSS to resolve the body at a distance, or some combination of the two.

I wouldn't mind additional tools to expand my options to discover and resolve bodies, including an optional module that would restore some of that old ADS functionality for those who actually enjoyed that soul crushing monstrosity, but there is no way in the world I would ever want to go back to the bad old days before 3.3. As far as I'm concerned, discovering what's in a system should be an activity, a process. Holding down a button and consulting a map and/or the nav panel was the antithesis of that.
 

Leif_Erikson

Leif_Erikson
When the FSS was introduced I was of the same opinion as OP but with this new mini game persistence, persistence and more persistence worked for me and am far more comfortable with it.

Greyza Badger said:
I just need the requirement to set minimum speed to view the FSS removed.
I'd like to see the scan data at any speed. If I can't lock on to a blob in the FSS because I'm going too fast, that's my problem. Needing to set minimum speed to see the results of the honk scan is nonsensical.
Click to expand...

You can set the open FSS and throttle to zero on the same button without an override warning.This has helped greatly for me.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Greyza Badger said:
I just need the requirement to set minimum speed to view the FSS removed.
I'd like to see the scan data at any speed. If I can't lock on to a blob in the FSS because I'm going too fast, that's my problem. Needing to set minimum speed to see the results of the honk scan is nonsensical.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

space voyager said:
I agree. FD probably introduced this limitation so that pilots like me wouldn't bump into things but IMO it is not neccessary. Most likely I'd stop anyway as catching close-by planets would be a chore but as limitation I can do without.

Anyway, to.the OP; a lot of us love the new system MUCH more than the previous instareveal.
Click to expand...

Also agree... but I'd like to note that I've never let silly things as artifical limitations stop me from trying. :D
 
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