Let's be completely honest here, in a future society like in ED such trivial things as exploration would be done by automated drones, not highly paid elite pilots.
If I wanted a 'radio-tuning' game I would have rather bought an old radio.
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No they haven't. They have replaced the discovery of what there is to explore from a five second press of a button to something that involves gameplay.
I think you will probably find that these changes now mean that there is more exploration of planets happening, not less.
Anytime!Thanks
And thanks in return!
Yeah, I could go with that, but would make another adjustment to it - I'd expect there to be some life signs that are picked up via the em scanner, for example from the absorption and emission lines resulting from organic compounds and byproducts. Where that stops and the bio scanner kicks in is something that would probably take a bit of working out, but in general principle it sounds good to me.
Cheers again!
Yeah, it'd be great! Realistically though I think we're in for a very long wait if it's ever going to happen.Proper fog-of-war
If we're being honest, combat and trade would be handled by drones too. Us meatsacks/elite pilots would be relaxing on one of Raxxala's beach resorts sipping cold beers...
Unless I'm mistaken, FoW was planned for the game in the DDA/DDF's; unless their idea of FoW was simply having no system information - which makes sense.Proper fog-of-war
You're not wrong.
That happened (and still is happening) as well. We're independent pilots, we're not humanity/a super power/a power/a corporation/a faction/etc's exploration fleet. That equally doesn't mean that the data we collect isn't of value. Non-independent exploration efforts wouldn't have infinite resources, so they would always have been likely to have focused on systems of particular interest, as opposed to trying to just explore every system. They can supplement their own targeted exploration efforts with data bought from UC and originally collected and sold to UC by us.
According to serious BGS players, trade IS handled by drones (bots)! Maybe that's why certain people want the ADS back, as their exploration bots depended on it
I must confess, if I were on PC I would have been tempted to write my own "autopilot" for exploration when the ADS still existed. Scripting the FSS however, that would be a bit more work... Oooops, did I just sabotage any hope of bringing back the ADS? Sorry, my bad!
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According to serious BGS players, trade IS handled by drones (bots)! Maybe that's why certain people want the ADS back, as their exploration bots depended on it
I must confess, if I were on PC I would have been tempted to write my own "autopilot" for exploration when the ADS still existed. Scripting the FSS however, that would be a bit more work... Oooops, did I just sabotage any hope of bringing back the ADS? Sorry, my bad!
Hey Duck, did you catch my all-singing all-dancing exploration proposal a few pages back?
If you give me your thoughts, I promise I'll add 'No elephant butt leather' to the description
They replaced a basic mechanic with an over-powered magic telescope minigame. They could have replaced it with something much more complex, engaging and skillful - but instead they dumbed exploration down to a cellphone game.
So of course more planets are being explored - it's easy, pays well and doesn't require any effort.
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I'm not sure it'll have the same longevity.
When you think about it, current astronomy methods to discover and "scan" distant planets requires pain staking analysis of light or radio waves we receive through various means. It's then a case of analysing those light waves to determine what kind of planet it might and even then all we see when we observe it might be a couple pixels on a screen. This whole process requires precise skills and technology as well as a lot of time.
Obviously the ED level technology is meant to be beyond that but no game developer is going to make it too convoluted a process as people will complain its too hard/time consuming as well as they don't want it to be too easy otherwise what's the point. I think the current iteration is a good attempt though I do agree it could be a little more challenging or varied.
What I find interesting is that from all the science fiction books I enjoy reading, planetary surface scans are actually done almost exactly like they are done in ED from a human ship with probes. Love it
Obviously the ED level technology is meant to be beyond that but no game developer is going to make it too convoluted a process as people will complain its too hard/time consuming as well as they don't want it to be too easy otherwise what's the point. I think the current iteration is a good attempt though I do agree it could be a little more challenging or varied.
What I find interesting is that from all the science fiction books I enjoy reading, planetary surface scans are actually done almost exactly like they are done in ED from a human ship with probes. Love it
While we're on proposals, I did a fairly detailed and substantial set for planetary discovery in the 3.3 Beta. Don't know if you saw it at the time but here it is:Hey Duck, did you catch my all-singing all-dancing exploration proposal a few pages back?
If you give me your thoughts, I promise I'll add 'No elephant butt leather' to the description
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...o-the-other-Detailed-Feedback-and-Suggestions
(It's from the Beta forums so obviously the thread itself is locked. I should say also in advance that there's quite a lot of text in the thread as a whole, as I responded in depth point by point to a lot of comments. Also, for everything that there was a consensus on, and there was a clear concise suggestion which could be separated from the rest, I pulled them all out into their own individual suggestion threads prior to the closure of the forums.)
Anyway, even though the Beta's done, and so in a way those proposals have already gone to FD, it'd still be interesting to get your general views on it. Also, there was quite a lot of valuable input in the thread from other cmdrs, which is always worth a read. PanPiper's views were particularly interesting to get given he's probably done more eyeball searching of planets than anyone else playing the game. o7
According to serious BGS players, trade IS handled by drones (bots)! Maybe that's why certain people want the ADS back, as their exploration bots depended on it
I must confess, if I were on PC I would have been tempted to write my own "autopilot" for exploration when the ADS still existed. Scripting the FSS however, that would be a bit more work... Oooops, did I just sabotage any hope of bringing back the ADS? Sorry, my bad!
I would have thought scripting the 2D minigame to scan, tune and focus would be much easier than the 3D piloting, approaching planets etc.
So easy, in fact, that any competent space empire that wasn't either bone idle or terminally thick would have programmed the actual space machine to do exactly that.
You'd think it would work when you're flying towards a planet.
Maybe twiddling dials is something to pass the time while supercruising long distances, so you can map a planet. But it doesn't even work if you are moving.
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