Little to actually find?

[Threeofseven]

I love the new exploration tools but it seems it is as I feared, there is very little to actually find besides geological stuff. I’ve traveled over 30ly so far through the Formidine and Errant Marches and, outside of nebulas, I’ve not found a single thing—no lagrange clouds, biological stuff or stellar phenomena.

From my prespective it appears all the tools are mostly good for is helping you get your name on stuff faster. Hopefully I’ve just had bad luck and there is actually a decent amount to find. I know stuff should be rare, otherwise it would become too normal, but nothing after 30,000 ly is not really good. I don’t want to have to check the codex and go see things that have already been discovered to see something cool.

 

[Hepburn]

I understand your complaint, although I suspect a lot of other people will just hit you with the "only .04% of the galaxy has been explored" or "we don't have enough information on finding ____ yet" comments.

This is what I'm concerned about long-term: nebulae are very "competitive" (as much as I hate to apply the word to exploration). First reporting or first discovering something--which I think is the goal/hope for many explorers--is very challenging here. The issue is compounded by all the reports of stellar phenomena and biological life in these areas; even more people are flocking to them. Finding a system with these phenomena to call your own will get even harder. As an aside, I realize "mapping" was added in part to help newer players feel as if they could make their mark, even in more competitive areas. However, I personally can only ever see "first mapped" as second place to "first discovered." I won't bother mapping a system if I see someone else first discovered it (I'm petty, I know).

Luckily, there have been reports of lagrange clouds and other phenomena outside of nebulae and in other unremarkable areas of space, but they seem very rare. This is good news. I just hope the developers add "rumors" to the codex soon to get players out exploring new and different areas of space. Moreover, "rumors" could add a much needed dimension of skill/planning to one's exploration. It could force us to use the information in the galactic map in new or interesting ways to help us locate potential finds.

Again, I totally get your frustration--using the codex to find someone else's discovery just doesn't feel right. I just wish it communicated information more effectively for us to be able to find our own, unclaimed discoveries. Hopefully this is something we can look forward to in future updates.

 

[Stealthie]

Said it before but it seems like the new tools were really designed to allow people to survey systems rather than actually explore.

Course, the other "problem" is that there's a bit of a dilemma when it comes to placing stuff to be found.
If stuff's genuinely rare enough to get excited over, it's probably also rare enough that it might never be found at all.
Conversely, if it's common enough to ensure it's found, it's probably also pretty mundane.

Still, the improvements are tangible and it's only going to improve further from here.
I guess some people were hoping to scoot off into the black with their shiny new exploration kit and find all manner of amazing new things.
That, alas, isn't really ED's style though.
Instead there'll be one or two new things inserted with every update and some whizz-kid will find them within a couple of days of their appearance.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I love the new exploration tools but it seems it is as I feared, there is very little to actually find besides geological stuff. I’ve traveled over 30ly so far through the Formidine and Errant Marches and, outside of nebulas, I’ve not found a single thing—no lagrange clouds, biological stuff or stellar phenomena.

From my prespective it appears all the tools are mostly good for is helping you get your name on stuff faster. Hopefully I’ve just had bad luck and there is actually a decent amount to find. I know stuff should be rare, otherwise it would become too normal, but nothing after 30,000 ly is not really good. I don’t want to have to check the codex and go see things that have already been discovered to see something cool.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/473760-The-Era-Of-Cherry-Picking-Might-Be-Over

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I love the new exploration tools but it seems it is as I feared, there is very little to actually find besides geological stuff. I’ve traveled over 30ly so far through the Formidine and Errant Marches and, outside of nebulas, I’ve not found a single thing—no Lagrange clouds, biological stuff or stellar phenomena.

From my perspective it appears all the tools are mostly good for is helping you get your name on stuff faster. Hopefully I’ve just had bad luck and there is actually a decent amount to find. I know stuff should be rare, otherwise it would become too normal, but nothing after 30,000 ly is not really good. I don’t want to have to check the codex and go see things that have already been discovered to see something cool.

Every Stellar Phenomena I've found, so far, within 1,000 light-years of Colonia, has been strip-mined. Only my personal experience/observation, of course.

 

[Riverside]

I agree with the surveying comment.

I've found stuff that's not in the codex, the first time I was unable to comp scan it but that bug has since been fixed & I recently added a new category to a region of space with my discovery (only new to that region). It's not unreasonable to believe there are things to find already that are not in the codex because no one has comp scanned an example yet.

That said, if there are things to find that mapping does not reveal the new discovery process is no improvement on the pre-3.3 one, and if people are using the FSS Scanner Screen the way Will was on last week's livestream (not checking the top right POI count) most players won't find much anyway.

 

[Micha]

Said it before but it seems like the new tools were really designed to allow people to survey systems rather than actually explore.

If you're calling scanning and mapping systems surveying instead of exploration then all we've done in this game is survey since the entire Galaxy Map has been revealed from launch. There's never been any true "exploration" as we already have a complete and accurate map of the entire galaxy. Said it before that FDev seriously dropped the ball on exploration by not giving us a "fog of war" for the galaxy and somehow restricting how far unaided ships can go.

Having said that, I'm quite enjoying the revamped exploration. Weirdly enough, life seems to be pretty common around B-class stars. Haven't found a lagrange cloud on my own yet, but have found plenty of biologicals on planets and one lot in rings, all outside nebulae. And that's all within 5000LY of Sol on the first leg of DWE2.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I actually remember Warcraft...

And to be honest, I thought "Fog of War" was as stupid back then as it is now. Sure, you might not know what's 6 feet further ahead, but that didn't, doesn't, and shouldn't mean you can't SEE it. I mean, I get what they were trying to do, but it never really made sense.

So Galactic Fog of War? Sure, but only if I can turn it off, because it looks ridiculous.

But no one will ever convince anyone that they're right or wrong about this sort of thing, so it's not worth dredging it up.

Like the OP, I'm also out quite a long distance, have not run into any lagrange clouds, Q-type, or other space-born life forms. I have run into a few patches of planetary surface life. I'll also be in the vicinity where some of the new space-born life has been reported, so I'll take a bit of extra time to scout the neighborhood.

Thing about space though, it's really, really, mind-bogglingly big. The chances of happening across any one thing are pretty improbable in the first place, and even when something is known to be found in certain locations, under certain conditions, that does not mean, by any means, that it is always found in those locations, under those conditions. Not every oyster contains a pearl, and not ever pearl is black.

I'll find my tube-worms, and Q-tips, and living ornaments when I do. It's not a race or anything. Enjoying the trip is every bit as important as enjoying the destination. After all, destinations are just places the trip takes a break.

 

[Micha]

Thing about space though, it's really, really, mind-bogglingly big. The chances of happening across any one thing are pretty improbable in the first place, and even when something is known to be found in certain locations, under certain conditions, that does not mean, by any means, that it is always found in those locations, under those conditions. Not every oyster contains a pearl, and not ever pearl is black.

THIS.

I find it far more enjoyable and rewarding when I do find something if it is very rare than if it's in every second system.

People who just want to tick things off can go "roads of riches" for all I care - given the number of Cmdrs scouring space, we (collectively) seem to be finding stuff pretty quickly and via the Codex (and out-of-game tools) everybody can see where to find stuff if they want to see it for themselves.

So I really hope FDev don't increase spawn rates.

 

[Stealthie]

If you're calling scanning and mapping systems surveying instead of exploration then all we've done in this game is survey since the entire Galaxy Map has been revealed from launch. There's never been any true "exploration" as we already have a complete and accurate map of the entire galaxy. Said it before that FDev seriously dropped the ball on exploration by not giving us a "fog of war" for the galaxy and somehow restricting how far unaided ships can go.

Not sure about the "fog of war" thing.

What I mean is, the new tools seem geared toward the act of efficiently cataloguing what's in a system rather than providing players anything really new to do.
Don't get me wrong, they're definitely an improvement over what we had, for a variety of purposes, but I wish there was more stuff we could load into our ships and take with us, exploring, which allowed us to do new things.

 

[Factabulous]

I’ve traveled over 30ly so far

Freudian slips are cool

 

[Whitehair]

I'd like to know why someone who is exploring EXPECTS to find new things every five minutes?

 

[Maro-Val]

Exciting stuff has been discovered on our galaxy with the new tools. Thousands of geological POIs...

 

[Kaocraft]

Well, Colonia is absolutely PACKED with weird stuff. My own home system has two Lagrange clouds, 2 kinds of caltrops-crystals, and some space jellyfish, and hopping around the Colonia bubble I've stumbled into so many "notable stellar phenomena" icons in my Nav panel that half the time I don't even investigate them anymore.
the original human Bubble also has quite a few things to find within and nearby, and then if you head out to the Pleiades or into Guardian territory you'll quickly start finding bio signs on planet surfaces.

I'm somewhat inclined to think that a lot of these cool rare finds are not placed procedurally but are hand-inserted into the game, which would explain maybe why they don't occur so much outside of the popular areas.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

I'd like to know why someone who is exploring EXPECTS to find new things every five minutes?

Yeah, because it only takes 5 minutes to travel 30,000ly.

 

[Kzak]

Yesterday I found notable stellar phenomena x2 in an unclaimed system less than 150 LY from the Omega Nebula. There's still lots of things to find.

 

[VR Golgot]

I stumbled into a couple of minor lagrange locations, one with life, purely by chance. But I agree OP it definitely feels like there should be more info on how to narrow down your chances.

Like I spent a fair while combing around nebuluas, with no success, on the assumption that lagrange points might fill with space dust more frequently near them.

Would be great if more info were to accrue via discoveries, or be added to the Codex, that gave you like 3 factors to put together if you were trying to hunt down certain phenomena. (Currently I've seen stuff like 'More likely near T stars', but it doesn't really feel like a juicy lead on its own etc).

 

[Atreyeu]

Yesterday I found notable stellar phenomena x2 in an unclaimed system less than 150 LY from the Omega Nebula. There's still lots of things to find.

This.

Managed to discover 5 unclaimed systems around Omega Nebula as well. Not even far off course on the DW2 expedition.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It's tricky to say.

Nebula are obvious places to look for stuff - and have been long before there was any stuff to look for in them - so most of the things found so far have been in or near nebulae, including many things which don't strictly require a nearby nebula.

On the other hand, most of the galaxy is not in or near a nebula, and things have definitely been found in other systems as well.

The scale makes it very difficult to judge. If only 1 in 1,000 systems contains something more interesting than basic geologicals, then the average explorer probably won't find it on a 30,000 LY trip - and might need to be carefully scanning each system to find even that, since surface sites aren't obvious just from the initial honk spectrum. On the other hand, if 1 in 1,000 systems contained something more interesting, in an averagely dense region of space there would be an "interesting thing" every 50-100 LY, and explorers collectively would be finding them everywhere. At that point, would they actually be "interesting" or just "another bark mound"?

The rate of discovery has slowed down a bit since the first couple of weeks, but new things are still being found. The new tools mean that things have to be quite a bit rarer in 3.2 to remain hidden, but it's still going to take a while to find some of them.

Use of the "rumours" system would be interesting - it would be possible to give hints that there was something to find without just saying "go here", or even "tb urer". That sort of hint - as seen in the Formidine Rift mystery - seems to be popular.

 

[Jukelo]

There's 400 billion systems in the game.

Personally I don't feel like we needed any tools to find stuff faster and easier, and not everything put in by Frontier needs to ever be discovered.