FDEV should reconsider the odds to find something interesting with the FSS in the galaxy: my opinion after DW2

[marx]

Lagrange clouds and NSPs in general are just containers for spaceborne life, so the question isn't where those can be found, but where life can be found. The thing is, not only is that region-specific, but also often quite arbitrary. If you're searching under the right conditions, you'll soon find what you're looking for.
If.
But that can be very specific.
Here's an example: a friend of mine headed for the Vulcan Gate region (he's a Star Trek fan) soon after launch, hoping to find some new Codex entries there. He surveyed the nebulae, he even found three new planetary nebulae, he searched various areas: all for naught.
Much later on, it turned out what he should have looked at were specific white dwarf stars only, in a rather small area of the region. If he did that, he would have been tripping all over NSPs. Of course, these were specific to that region only.

So, that's what I meant with very specific and arbitary conditions. In practice, how it works is that a Commander might be extremely lucky enough to randomly stumble into one NSP, then it (hopefully!) gets logged into the Codex - oh wait, there are times when it doesn't, because the Codex is still bugged - then either the Commander in question, or later other Commanders, look through the area and find more.

Also, the bubble's region, the Inner Orion Spur, appears to have far more NSPs than the other regions do, even when accounting for the fact that it has the most traffic.

As for the DW2, all the Commanders there, and only one new find was discovered: Aster trees and pods. We'll see if there will be anything new once the expedition is entirely over, but personally, I doubt it.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Trouble is, in ED we don't have the tools that real scientists have.

By way of analogy, we're "exploring" with the same level of tools that, perhaps, William Dampier had back in the 1600s.

For us to find anything in ED, it has to be stuck right under our noses - and then we can only interact with it by shooting at it.

Said it before but, for the exploration update, I would have liked to see FDev create a variety of "science lab" modules, that'd work a bit like SRV bays, and then you could load them up with different bits of scientific kit in order to complete various science-based missions or make scientific discoveries.

Guess the main problem, there, might have been the effort required to actually create the things for us to research.

That sound very interesting and it could be possible if ED was focused on exploration gameplay. Unfortunately it's more combat oriented so as you said there aren't so many chances to see these implemented in the game.

 

[Cmdr Esteban]

By way of analogy, we're "exploring" with the same level of tools that, perhaps, William Dampier had back in the 1600s...

Ah, yes. I recall reading in Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World, his account on arriving off the northwest coast of Australia:
"I stood upon the quarterdeck and surveyed the horizon yonder with my eyeglass, whereupon those long-awaited words revealed themselves twixt two trees afoot: "Notable Phenomena".

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Ah, yes. I recall reading in Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World, his account on arriving off the northwest coast of Australia:
"I stood upon the quarterdeck and surveyed the horizon yonder with my eyeglass, whereupon those long-awaited words revealed themselves twixt two trees afoot: "Notable Phenomena".

Unfortunately arriving to Beagle Point I didn't see any "Notable Phenomena". I've found a red and yellow galactic disk instead

 

[IamMe]

You're playing it wrong, use your imagination!

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Having not joined DW2, but rather striking out on my own to circumnavigate the galaxy, and being even 1/4 of the way around, I have discovered numerous Biological sites, dozens of previously unknown Earthlike worlds, a few Lagrange clouds with biologicals, countless water worlds, and a vast number of just plain nice views.

Sounds to me like DW2 just happened to pick a less-than-stellar route.

And no one has fired on me.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Having placed Codex 1st Discoveries in the last days/weeks in multiple Sectors, my advice : do your homework before venturing out

By now it's clear that random travel through the black carries exceedingly slim chances of stumbling across something.

This means Codex must be studied very carefully and individual Systems or Star classes selected accordingly as candidates, including ~100LY-125LY bubbles around any Nebula (preferably mini-nebulae others might have overlooked in regard to the Codex).
Additionally, picking realistic potential Targets is crucial. Alot of Codex entries are far more rare than others.

That'll drastically alter the plotted course and suitable waypoints, but that's the price for optimizing the chances if a Codex 1st Discovery for a Sector is intended.
The rest of course remains pure luck, so a high sample rate and alot of discipline/patience remains mandatory.

^^ this guy gets it, @op you need to use the evidence in front of you and search in particular places.

regarding ELWs they're two a penny again in the right systems, im sure chiggy is on his millionth undiscovered ELW or something equally nuts.

also the beagle route is one of the most traveled paths in the galaxy so expecting to find anything new there is near impossible,

Even today i still find glaringly obvious undiscovered nebulas out in the black just by scanning the gal map in unsuspecting areas, and equally Stella phenomenon near them, go where others dont EDSM shows you the dark spots - go explore.

there is some method to it even if ED dont tell you what it is, or direct you towards it with in game menus etc, i suppose part of the exploration for me is understanding where to search, if i followed a galaxy sat nav to stellar phenomenon i would be pretty disappointed, when you do find something rare it is exciting. storm lagrange clouds are my favorite and i think im currently at 9 undiscovered locations which i've found off the beaten track.

 

[CoyoteXStarrk]

We don't need to find more of the same thing. We just need more things to find. There are SEVERAL astronomical phenomenon that exist in real life that are not in the game. Magnatars, Pulsars, Hot Jupiter's, binary systems where one neutron star is feeding on his partner, hyper velocity stars, irregularly shaped dwarf planets, dying stars etc etc there are dozens of things that could be put into the game for explorers to find.



ELWs are and SHOULD BE rare as all hell. The answer is not to make rare things common. The answer is to give us more things to look for.

 

[WR3ND]

More and varied phenomena of stuff that's actually out there would be awesome. Problem is that it has to be implemented in the game. Here's one small example of many different things that'd be amazing to come across once in a blue moon.

Spoiler

 

[WR3ND]

You're playing it wrong, use your imagination!

Unfortunately I find having a willing suspension of disbelief to be rather challenging in this game at times, given the meta and so on. I do still care to play the game as though I'm a Commander in the Pilots Federation where and when able.

Either way, the galactic sim has been great, even given its limitations and shortcomings. My perspective on astronomical objects and phenomena has greatly improved since playing the game. Something as simple as looking up at the night sky and seeing the Seven Sisters and knowing roughly where that is in our galaxy in comparison to other things is very cool indeed, at least in my opinion.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

You're playing it wrong, use your imagination!

Ok! Tonight before logging off I will land on an ELW, using the SRV I will go inside a small forest and using my legs I will collect then some wood. Finally I will light a fire while camping on the shore next to my ship. I will see a double sunset with falling stars!

 

[dubsdj]

Your explanation is fine but talking about DW2 and going to beagle point is a different story. Zero is a really bad number after thousands of jumps. My new cmdr hit also the 100,000 ly traveled. So there's no excuse for the poor odds in this case. Even on a beaten path chances should be higher to have some fun in the game... 'Cause don't forget it's still a game and it's meant to entertain the player

yep there isn't enough out there to be interesting to the player. I did a couple of expeditions and found pretty much the same things which wasn't very exciting. I know they can't place them there because of the size of the galaxy but I think they should think about adding a lot more variety, ancient ruins, caves and stuff like that.

 

[Oopsie Daisy]

Totally agree OP. It's why I quickly stopped doing exploration. Which is ironic as exploration is why I bought ED originally.

 

[Retropolitan]

I don't know why everyone believe that these phenomena are rare in real world. Lagrange points are quite common... Scientist find 3 only around Earth.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that's five, not three. And the reason they're common is that any system of two or more bodies has them: they're just points in space where the gravities of the member bodies counteract one another. The Earth-Moon system has a set of LaGrange points; the Sun-Earth-Moon system has a different set of LaGrange points. And so on.

They have very little to do with ED's LaGrange Clouds.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

We don't need to find more of the same thing. We just need more things to find. There are SEVERAL astronomical phenomenon that exist in real life that are not in the game. Magnatars, Pulsars, Hot Jupiter's, binary systems where one neutron star is feeding on his partner, hyper velocity stars, irregularly shaped dwarf planets, dying stars etc etc there are dozens of things that could be put into the game for explorers to find.



ELWs are and SHOULD BE rare as all hell. The answer is not to make rare things common. The answer is to give us more things to look for.

The more rare things you have, the more likely you are of finding one of them. This doesn't detract from the rarity of each phenomena.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

In fact, I'm pretty sure that's five, not three. And the reason they're common is that any system of two or more bodies has them: they're just points in space where the gravities of the member bodies counteract one another. The Earth-Moon system has a set of LaGrange points; the Sun-Earth-Moon system has a different set of LaGrange points. And so on.

They have very little to do with ED's LaGrange Clouds.

What about this?
"Kordylewski clouds are large concentrations of dust that exist at the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Earth–Moon system. They were first reported by Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in the 1960s, and confirmed to exist in October 2018."

They don't seem so uncommon.

 

[Valorin]

Following DW2 expedition (reached yesterday Semotus Beacon, beyond Beagle Point) I could test the new exploration gameplay as I wished since the release of Beyond 3.3.
My TL;DR conclusion is that FDEV should reconsider the odds to find something interesting in the galaxy (stellar phenomena and biological signals) and increase the variety by far!
It's true that during this expedition I found myself rushing sometime so I also skipped some region but in general this is what I discovered in 3 months of exploration:

• Notable Phenomena: ZERO, NULL, NADA!!! Only the ones at the waypoints but I didn't discovered anything completely new to put my name on the codex.
• Biological POI's: 1 Brain Tree and 2-3 Bark Mounds (plus the ones at the Waypoints of interest).
• ELW: these are also extremely rare, I think I've discovered only 3-4 in total (except the ones at WP's of course).

Surface Mapping: this mini game has become boring and repetitive too quickly: mapping planets (not gas giants that are worthless - such a shame!) is so easy that even an Excel Macro would do it. All planets require 6-7 probes and the pattern is always the same!!!!! There should be some magnetic field or gravitational anomalies around planets to deviate the probes pattern in order to make this game a bit more challenging. Does anyone remeber "Worms"? Similar basíc gameplay but the wind was constantly changing the ballistic (just as an example).

So it is my opinion that exploration is still empty gameplay. FDEV is on the good way but there's still a lot to do so they should not underestimate the effort to make it good.
We have the tools now, true that, but the gameloop is too short because the probes mini game is soon repetitive and the things to find are too sparse and too rare (consider also the bug of the loading time to scan POI's on surface). Moreover the few features that are more common are not varied enough (lava spout, geyser etc. there is some variation but they're always basically the very same thing and you intearct with all of these in the very same way).

I think the mechanics are quite okay, though there is nothing that can't be improved and made more interesting of course.
Concerning the rarity of the things we can find I am completely okay with that, BUT that's because all the stuff we can find are strange and alien phenomenons which should be rare.

If there was a far more common and nontheless interesting range of NATURAL phenomenon, now that would be cool, and also more realistic and engaging. Things like fresh meteor impacts, acretion discs, White Dwarfs eating their neighboring stars, comets and so on. There is so much stuff in space that could be interesting for explorers, but since the only thing to find is either volcanic activity or really strange/alien phenomenons it's all very much stretched thin.
I say we don't need more of those POIs we have, but a great variety of natural and very common POIs.

 

[TheSynopticVision]

Welcome to “exploration”in Elite. The mini game where you spend hundreds of hours jumping through loading screens in order to “discover” (i.e. see, God forbid you might interact with them) the same things you could’ve seen in the Bubble (or very close) with a different skybox in the background.

 

[Diostar50]

Sounds to me like DW2 just happened to pick a less-than-stellar route.

Wrong. They made tonnes of discoveries and located plenty of codex content on that route.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nlVeF2ywwj5iMABWI7Tyyfkfsee1D1WF/view --- Thats just a small sample. Check out their discoveries thread, its packed full of them.

The OP must have been doing it wrong because this stuff is all over the place.

 

[Seizewell Warrior]

I wasn't on DW2 but currently making my way back from BP to Sol after an 8 week voyage up the western rim. Sad to say but apart from a handful of ELW's, a few more Water Worlds, most of the systems I stopped to FSS were just generic rock/metal/ice dust balls. On my way home, I'm now rarely stopping to do other than honk - unless I have a minute or two dropping off Spansh while taking fuel. It's a big old galaxy out there but goodness, FDev hardly made it very exciting. If this trip hopefully yields my Elite in exploration I doubt I would set off on such a long voyage again. In fact I'll probably end up taking another year off ED, to recover from the burnout.

I know comparisons with Egosoft's "X" universe are maybe a bit unfair, but I think we should have had far more hand drawn systems with POI's and outposts - even at the far reaches of the galaxy. I guess we're back to the original summation of ED to some extent - 70K LY wide and an inch deep.