Little to actually find?

[NeilF]

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.

True, but that's why the engine needs lots and lots and lots of smaller things to apply. ie: We don't need to find lots of alien ruins, we need lots and lots of ways for the engine to simply give us variety and "feedback loops" to give uniqueness and differences.

Let's imagine Dec-2019 gives us atmospheric landinds, along with a good half a dozen+ new things for the engine to render and apply...

Let's consider seeing a fairly average looking planet with an atmosphere, but it tweaks your interest because you can see a couple of interesting things, so down you go to land. You land next to a huge lake on the dark side. In the far distance a cloud front is periodically lit up by a huge electrical storm. To the north colours come and go with an aurora. And nearby a huge waterfall throws moisture into the air, and through it you can make out the reflection in the lake of the huge comet tail that sits magnificently overhead...

And now add in really clever procedural plant life generation to the engine, and that ramps up variety again...

We don't need to find lots of black pearls. We don't need to find lots of pearls. Maybe we just need lots of highly varied oceans to simply enjoy swimming around in...

ps: Maybe space storms is a sign that FD are working on atmospheric weather etc. Roll on Dec-2019

 

[Guest193293]

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.

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 agree, this is the charm and magic of it, the galaxy is not a theme park.

 

[CMDR Carbo]

This is my experience too. After the first leg of DW2, with stops at Lagoon Nebula, Cinnabar Moth Nebula and Trifid Cloud, all the biological POIs I found were in nebulas. And those nebulas were packed full of it, like 20 planets a system with 1-5 biological POI each. Way too many to visit.

Same was true for the Lagrange Clouds, although they are much rarer, I only found 3 of them, all inside a nebula.
Of course one big exception of this are brain trees, which are found around the region with guardian sites.

For geological POIs, there doesn't seem to be a higher concentration inside nebulas. They can be found everywhere depending on planet type. Often they are bodies circling a gas giant.

 

[rhiz]

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.

Biological POIs are fairly common in my experience, especially in and around nebula, but unfortunately they all appear to be the same (one of a handful of species seemingly spanning the entire galaxy ). I realise that they can only do so much, but the variety is pretty woeful at the moment - there should be hundreds at the very least... and even then that wouldn't be sufficient given the size of the galaxy. It makes the galaxy feel very small and pedestrian.

 

[Kaocraft]

Biological POIs are fairly common in my experience, especially in and around nebula, but unfortunately they all appear to be the same (one of a handful of species seemingly spanning the entire galaxy ). I realise that they can only do so much, but the variety is pretty woeful at the moment - there should be hundreds at the very least... and even then that wouldn't be sufficient given the size of the galaxy. It makes the galaxy feel very small and pedestrian.

One of the big ongoing disappointments with Elite is that Frontier don't seem to be able to use procedural generation for anything besides system layouts and planetary terrain. Everything else is rubber-stamp copy-pasted, which is not ideal but still OK-ish with manmade stations and outposts, but gets lame really really fast with organic and geological formations. I'd be fine with "just another bark mound" if it weren't literally the exact same model every time everywhere.

 

[NeilF]

One of the big ongoing disappointments with Elite is that Frontier don't seem to be able to use procedural generation for anything besides system layouts and planetary terrain. Everything else is rubber-stamp copy-pasted, which is not ideal but still OK-ish with manmade stations and outposts, but gets lame really really fast with organic and geological formations. I'd be fine with "just another bark mound" if it weren't literally the exact same model every time everywhere.

Well, if we consider the technical promise shown prior to release, at release, and then with Horizons (3yrs ago), little else has shown much raising of that technical bar TBH.

Mining seemed to suggest it, but then we find out the breaking apart of a motherlode is simply the same hard coded asteroid over and over.

So very very very much of the past 2-3yrs seems to have been art heavy, gameplay/depth light

 

[annihilator_bg]

If it is not found yet, then most probably it doesn't exist at all. I can't imagine that FDev would spend hours of coding and graphical design for something just to put in on a random planet in the galaxy 30000ly from the bubble. The content is poor, I agree. Planetary findings are just several types and people easily get bored to go and find the same barnacles or geysers just on a different planet.
I have huge expectation from FDev for Y2019 ... it is the "make it or break it" decision point for me.

 

[Winterwalker]

I agree, this is the charm and magic of it, the galaxy is not a theme park.

I'd also add that Gnosis has just wandered back into range of inhabited space (Pleiades) and there is lots of stuff to find from following clues on Listening Stations and so on. In the bubble it's fleshing out pretty well imo.

Yes to more finds in deep space, of course but you would - by chemical complexity - expect most of that to be found on worlds with atmospheres, and they're obviously not in the game as of right now.

 

[NeilF]

I have huge expectation from FDev for Y2019 ... it is the "make it or break it" decision point for me.

Same here...

I see too much of the past 2-3yrs as mediocre shallow bolt on developments. Indeed I'd have to say the last addition of significance for me was planetary landings three years ago.

I truly hope the efforts put into exploration and mining (although it's seemingly rather flawed worryingly) is a change in ethos at FD where they'll now try to raise the bar and actuallly finally add some gameplay and content with real depth to it. I truly hope we see solid and impressive atmospheric landings this year.

If all we get is yet more mediocre bolt on even with supposedly 100 people beaving away... then I give up...

 

[IndigoWyrd]

True, but that's why the engine needs lots and lots and lots of smaller things to apply. ie: We don't need to find lots of alien ruins, we need lots and lots of ways for the engine to simply give us variety and "feedback loops" to give uniqueness and differences.

Let's imagine Dec-2019 gives us atmospheric landinds, along with a good half a dozen+ new things for the engine to render and apply...

Let's consider seeing a fairly average looking planet with an atmosphere, but it tweaks your interest because you can see a couple of interesting things, so down you go to land. You land next to a huge lake on the dark side. In the far distance a cloud front is periodically lit up by a huge electrical storm. To the north colours come and go with an aurora. And nearby a huge waterfall throws moisture into the air, and through it you can make out the reflection in the lake of the huge comet tail that sits magnificently overhead...

And now add in really clever procedural plant life generation to the engine, and that ramps up variety again...

We don't need to find lots of black pearls. We don't need to find lots of pearls. Maybe we just need lots of highly varied oceans to simply enjoy swimming around in...

ps: Maybe space storms is a sign that FD are working on atmospheric weather etc. Roll on Dec-2019

I’d be happy just to see a comet hurtling through space at this point, but I get where you’re going, even said a lot of the same in fewer words.

More common but ordinary finds would be nice, variety of the mundane is good thing.

 

[NeilF]

I’d be happy just to see a comet hurtling through space at this point, but I get where you’re going, even said a lot of the same in fewer words.

More common but ordinary finds would be nice, variety of the mundane is good thing.

Yeh, just the game engine being able to offer layers of stuff, to offer combinations and therefore variety and apparent depth.

Comets, weather, rain, snow, hail, fog, lakes, water falls, seas, ice, freezing, lakes, rivers, electrical storms, cliffs, tunnels, aurora, common/shared envelopes, simple procedurally generated "scientifically accurate" plant life, shooting stars especially near ring systems, massive geysers (as per europa), etc...

So there's layers and variety the engine can offer...

 

[rhiz]

One of the big ongoing disappointments with Elite is that Frontier don't seem to be able to use procedural generation for anything besides system layouts and planetary terrain. Everything else is rubber-stamp copy-pasted, which is not ideal but still OK-ish with manmade stations and outposts, but gets lame really really fast with organic and geological formations. I'd be fine with "just another bark mound" if it weren't literally the exact same model every time everywhere.

Yes, indeed. To be fair, I’m not underestimating the difficulty of procedurally generating believable lifeforms/ecosystems etc, but for me it’s pretty much essential given the size of the environment. Creating a handful of assets and plonking them throughout the galaxy just doesn’t cut it. I’m sure that they could do more in terms of generating variation based on common base models - although conceptually it bothers me that the same organism could be found in multiple systems.

I’m glad that ED exists as a kind of “proof of concept” and I admire what they've achieved with Stellar Forge, but it’s always facing the same conundrum: how to populate an environment of this scale whilst avoiding mind-numbing repetition?

 

[Ralph Vargr]

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.

Agreed. I'm in Tir, and only two eco-jumps away are *three* anomalies in one system. All explored.

Stellar Forge, manual insert.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

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

Some of our posters have done it in nanoseconds...

 

[Ralph Vargr]

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.

Ian: They *are* scanning everything, in *every* system.

Burnout in ten, nine....

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I agree, this is the charm and magic of it, the galaxy is not a theme park.

No, the theme park is becoming a galaxy...

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Biological POIs are fairly common in my experience, especially in and around nebula, but unfortunately they all appear to be the same (one of a handful of species seemingly spanning the entire galaxy ). I realise that they can only do so much, but the variety is pretty woeful at the moment - there should be hundreds at the very least... and even then that wouldn't be sufficient given the size of the galaxy. It makes the galaxy feel very small and pedestrian.

[video=youtube;EYYdQB0mkEU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYdQB0mkEU[/video]

 

[NMS]

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.

Yeah. New tools and mechanics and the same lack of content...

 

[Krash]

I'm still excited when I find a new ELW. Sometimes I map the whole system and find a planet with geological POIs. That's about it after several hundred mappings.

 

[Hullreaver]

I discovered 4 Lagrange clouds in newly discovered systems, but strangely none of those show up in the Codex. [where is it]