Your life is not enough...

No-one ever visited every star in FE2 or explored every block in Minecraft and just look how popular that is ;)

With respect that entirely misses the point, its not about exploring everything, its about exploration being viable after the first few months.
 
I wasn't disagreeing with your point, just making an observation about the OP

Have you been through the DDA? I am pretty sure all options for wormholes were discussed to death in there.
 
With respect that entirely misses the point, its not about exploring everything, its about exploration being viable after the first few months.
The only way I see for exploration to be meaningful is if it affects the background simulation. Hopefully, as NPC factions learn about new systems and resources they will move to exploit and colonize them, providing an expanding number of inhabited systems. Maybe planets and stations can be named after the players who discovered them! :cool:
EDIT: Also my understanding is that popping into a new system is the tip of the iceberg as far as exploration goes. You still know nothing about it.
 
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One of the recent newsletters mentioned the Ocellus station can have drives attached.

The main reason for their extra strength is the Ocellus stations can be moved intact from place to place as opposed to being assembled on site. Giant drives can be attached to them to move them from system to system when required, albeit very much more slowly than even the largest cargo ships. Only a few of them have been so equipped, and it is said that the arrival of an Ocellus at a gold-rush world marks the end of the early stage of the gold rush, as it marks the arrival of the eye of officialdom and the beginning of the end of the anarchic freedom of those early days.

So this could be one mechanic for helping explorers stay out for longer.
 
@DeepFried:

Shorcuts, stargates, wormholes or any form of click-to-travel have all been explicitly ruled out by DB and other FDEV folks both in public statements and in posts on these fora. At the moment, any such mechanic in E: D is in "will never happen" status.

Barring a radical design change, that DB has already stated is incompatible with the vision for the game, the only way to get from point A to point B in E: D will be to sit in a ship and make the jumps from star to star that are necessary to get there.
 
I wasn't disagreeing with your point, just making an observation about the OP

Have you been through the DDA? I am pretty sure all options for wormholes were discussed to death in there.

Yeah sorry I got a bit wrapped up in my own debate there, didn't occur to me you were replying to the OP.

I'll take a look at the DDA.

@DeepFried:

Shorcuts, stargates, wormholes or any form of click-to-travel have all been explicitly ruled out by DB and other FDEV folks both in public statements and in posts on these fora. At the moment, any such mechanic in E: D is in "will never happen" status.

Well I guess that's that then, so long as they make it work I suppose it doesn't really matter. I'm just concerned exploration might die out after a while.
 
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Exploration

The point is not to be able to explore everything - the point is that it oughtn't to be possible to explore everything. The idea of adding mechanisms to make it easy/possible to get back subverts realism.

Real explorers, eg in Africa or America many years ago, couldn't magically get back. If you can magically get back, it ain't exploration. It has to be genuine stepping out into the unknown. Completionists are not catered for here, we get what the game allows - if they allow a 14 ly jump range and 400 billion systems, that's what we get. That's what real life is like - far bigger than we could ever hope to 'complete'. That's what makes this transcendent as a game. That's what allows for emergent behaviour. Obviously the procedural engine can't provide emergent behaviour, but the procedural engine combined with 'intelligent design' can. Whack that in your philosophical pipe and smoke it. ;)

I feel so confident that my opinions mirror the developers that I don't even have to encourage them to not include wormholes or other shortcuts. But now I feel like I have slipped into overconfidence - not for real, I have faith, but I shouldn't assume that because I see it that way, they do.

Anyway, as the developers have done EXACTLY what I would want so far, I do assume that they want from this what I want: A portion of the universe, generated with as much adherence to reality as possible, that allows me to pretend I am a real space explorer for as long as I want. Not a 'game'.
 
The Milky Way is a big place so there's plenty of room for all of us to muck about in our tin cans. I hope there is a cumulative exploration progression that every player can add to, that little by little the galaxy gets more explored. Some years from now, maybe a player can be the first to reach the center of the galaxy and take a screenshot of the black hole there.
 
The essential is not to visit all the stellar systems. The essential is to know that they exist in the game

I wasn't disagreeing with your point, just making an observation about the OP

Have you been through the DDA? I am pretty sure all options for wormholes were discussed to death in there.

Even with wormholes you still don't have time to visit them all. :)

I think the fact that there are more system not only that I could possibly visit, or that a massive hardcore ocd explorer could possibly visit or even the whole player base (with ocd exploration tendancies) could ever visit is a beautiful thang! :cool:

It's a beautiful game so far. Been dreaming about ED for many many years and it is already better than I imagined.
 
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I suppose the key thing to remember is, that the journey is what is enjoyable not the destination, or in this case the means with which to make said journey ;)
 
Let's say a dedicated explorer tries to break record of system visits in Elite. How far he can go?

Rough calculation:

200 systems a day (fairly good number, considering some station visits for fuel and no pirate interdictions)

200 * 365 = 73.000 systems per year (he plays Elite every single day, no life.)

73.000 * 55 = 4.015.000 systems per lifetime (he starts to play Elite at age 15, ends at 70)

400.000.000.000 systems / 4.000.000 systems

Here you go, your life is not enough to visit even 0,001% of galaxy.


so, random generation is random and endless.
what's the point?
Who would want to visit a billion randomly created areas anyway?
I bet there will be like 1-2 dozen of systems where something substantial is going on gameplaywise,
the rest is just filler material and number bragging.
 
As regards getting your data back to the place that can make use of it, I would imagine something like a data probe can be launched that will carry all your data in an electronic form back to so called civilization. Perhaps star powered, with fuel scoops. Or a long range data method beamed back from one station to another.

Then there would be an electronic transfer of funds to your galactic bank account, enabling you to continue onwards and outwards as an intrepid explorer opening up new worlds and new systems.

Something I wonder about though as an explorer what if while surveying a planet or asteroid field etc., out in the wild black yonder, what happens if you get jumped by a bunch of strong NPC's and you lose your ship? Where do you spawn and where would you be able to get a new ship from even if you have funds?

After all if you cannot magically transfer back to civilisation and you are way out in uninhabited space you will be stuck there for months or years until civilisation catches up with you.

If you are magically transferred many hundreds or thousands of light years back to a civilised society so you can play the game again and carry on exploring, doesn't that make a bit of a mockery of having no wormholes or jump-gates or long-distance travel scheme? I could see an exploit where committing suicide to travel a long distance back magically, and if it were plugged then you would be stranded some nowhere uninhabited place waiting months to play the game again.

These are just musings of mine and may have already been answered somewhere but I haven't come across any definitive answers to them yet.
 
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I bet there will be like 1-2 dozen of systems where something substantial is going on gameplaywise,
the rest is just filler material and number bragging.

I hope that this will not be true, although I have to admit that I see the same problem.

On the other hand there are ways to make randomly generated systems more interesting. For example: If you add an algorithm that adds more valuable stuff to a system depending on how far away from the 'most player populated' systems you have travelled, this would make exploring profitable or this could heavily affect the market (prices and/or demand), if the player bringt new goods to systems where they never had these products before.
 
so, random generation is random and endless.
what's the point?
Who would want to visit a billion randomly created areas anyway?
I bet there will be like 1-2 dozen of systems where something substantial is going on gameplaywise,
the rest is just filler material and number bragging.


I hope that this will not be true, although I have to admit that I see the same problem.

On the other hand there are ways to make randomly generated systems more interesting. For example: If you add an algorithm that adds more valuable stuff to a system depending on how far away from the 'most player populated' systems you have travelled, this would make exploring profitable or this could heavily affect the market (prices and/or demand), if the player bringt new goods to systems where they never had these products before.

There are already 55 starsystems in the current beta with over 40 of them part of a working economy. (Which actually already is a few dozen.) This is only a part of inhabited space. Actually only a part of one of the three factions. So inhabited space in the full game will _at least_ be 3 times as big and if I take a good look at the starmap it might even be multiples of that.

Reading replies like this makes me wonder if and how people inform themselves when becoming part of this game.
 
There are already 55 starsystems in the current beta with over 40 of them part of a working economy. (Which actually already is a few dozen.) This is only a part of inhabited space. Actually only a part of one of the three factions. So inhabited space in the full game will _at least_ be 3 times as big and if I take a good look at the starmap it might even be multiples of that.

Reading replies like this makes me wonder if and how people inform themselves when becoming part of this game.

You don't have to 'wonder' at all... I know there are already about 50 system available, that economy does exist and that there will be a lot more available when Elite Dangerous is being released. That was not the point.

The point was that it will be a though undertaking to make the randomly generated systems an interesting experience to visit. You need a purpose to go there, and yes, in my opinion it has to be more than just a few new graphics or more of the same economy. Even if we take for example 55k systems around the starting area when ED is being released -- a relatively small number compared to what the galaxy has to offer, but already a huge area to fill with stuff --, what reward will there be for visiting the systems that are even further away?

Since we are talking about randomly generated systems, there will always be an issue with random stuff: It (mostly) feels the same. Technically it won't be possible to make every area of the galaxy a unique experience and frankly I don't expect that to be the case. But what I'd love to see is some 'mechanics' in the code of the game that fills in some good/interesting (= valuable) stuff to systems that are further away, so getting there (and returning!) makes some sort of sense. If you travel 100+ LY only to find there exists more of the already known, that could be boring after a while. But if you can find new stuff there (and the 'drop rate' of interesting goods depends on how many people are around this place = less people the further you travel away), then exploring and bringing back those things to wherever you want in the galaxy makes sense.

Well, ED isn't ready yet and it won't be after the first release. Maybe ideas like this already exist, maybe the developers already have other plans. Who knows... I certainly don't as I am only playing this game and not developing it. But with so many areas to travel to, these has to be something that makes it worth it, or leaving the initial area -- no matter of its size, 50, 500, 50k systems, whatever -- could be boring. That was the point.
 
Well, ED isn't ready yet and it won't be after the first release. Maybe ideas like this already exist, maybe the developers already have other plans. Who knows... I certainly don't as I am only playing this game and not developing it. But with so many areas to travel to, these has to be something that makes it worth it, or leaving the initial area -- no matter of its size, 50, 500, 50k systems, whatever -- could be boring. That was the point.

The developers are already thinking about this. If you have access to the Design Discussion Archive you will see they are building 'reasons' why you may want to leave the initial area:

Exploring - seeing what is out there (http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6561)

Making use of events to make money - civil war, disease and food shortages could be taken advantage of by traders etc... (http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6305)

Traders may have to move further out to trade if there are too many traders in the initial area. They will need to seek markets that are less used.
 
You don't have to 'wonder' at all... I know there are already about 50 system available, that economy does exist and that there will be a lot more available when Elite Dangerous is being released. That was not the point.

The point was that it will be a though undertaking to make the randomly generated systems an interesting experience to visit. You need a purpose to go there, and yes, in my opinion it has to be more than just a few new graphics or more of the same economy. Even if we take for example 55k systems around the starting area when ED is being released -- a relatively small number compared to what the galaxy has to offer, but already a huge area to fill with stuff --, what reward will there be for visiting the systems that are even further away?

Since we are talking about randomly generated systems, there will always be an issue with random stuff: It (mostly) feels the same. Technically it won't be possible to make every area of the galaxy a unique experience and frankly I don't expect that to be the case. But what I'd love to see is some 'mechanics' in the code of the game that fills in some good/interesting (= valuable) stuff to systems that are further away, so getting there (and returning!) makes some sort of sense. If you travel 100+ LY only to find there exists more of the already known, that could be boring after a while. But if you can find new stuff there (and the 'drop rate' of interesting goods depends on how many people are around this place = less people the further you travel away), then exploring and bringing back those things to wherever you want in the galaxy makes sense.

Well, ED isn't ready yet and it won't be after the first release. Maybe ideas like this already exist, maybe the developers already have other plans. Who knows... I certainly don't as I am only playing this game and not developing it. But with so many areas to travel to, these has to be something that makes it worth it, or leaving the initial area -- no matter of its size, 50, 500, 50k systems, whatever -- could be boring. That was the point.

Clear explanation, Thanks.

In that case I think it is good to know that FD have extensive plans to:
- insert events to enhance gameplay. It is expected that the first of such events will unfold in the 10 days after the 20th of this month (30year anniversary of orignal Elite). I think the upcoming event will be local to a few star systems so not much of interest for explorers. But other inserted events might be interesting for explorers.
- Not al habited star systems might be explored 100% so you don't have to go to unexplored space to find interesting things as an explorer.
- Outposts _WILL_ be located in the beyond. E.g. Some star systems that were colonized by a generation ship a while ago.
- Derelict spaceships and ancient ruins have been promised to become available (obviously that last one only after planetary landing + First Person gameplay comes available).
- the economy will not be static. Some systems may thrive now, others will thrive later. It is part of explaration to find new good business.
- And finally 1st contact and beyond. What happens when we meet an intelligent alien race? Will it be the Thargoids? Will there be other races. Habited space has condemned sentient AI a while ago... has someone made a booboo a back then and created them agains better justice? Did some of them get away maybe and are they now coming back for revenge? Imagine being the first to find a citadel of AI's? What would you do?
 
There is plenty of thinking that ED have done in this regard. [...]

Yepp, those are good plans and I am sure the developers will do their best to make the experiences in ED as best and as interesting as possible. If that will actually work is a different question though...

All we can do right now is speculating. Maybe the devs are geniuses and everything will be great -- even if the galaxy becomes really big. Maybe it will not work when a certain radius has been reaced. I have some doubts about this for any area bigger than let's say 250k systems, since human time and resources are endless and I don't know what is really possible in 2014/2015, but like I said: Maybe there are some super-awesome plans that actually do work and the 'whole' galaxy will have interesting places. We will see...

But to be honest: Even if there were 'only' 250k interesting systems, that already would be a huge playground most people won't explore fully. :)


In that case I think it is good to know that FD have extensive plans [...]
Oh yeah, and I really hope that this works out. We will know soon... Or later, given the fact that the galaxy has quite a lot to offer, when ED is being released... :p
 
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