Could Frontier please demonstrate how to use the FSS enjoyably?

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I’ve done more exploring since FSS. This is mainly due to the fact of POI’s. Previously I had no idea how people were finding these things (I’m a bit slow), since the FSS, this is much easier. I use no third party stuff to log any of it.

I appreciate this is one man’s take and someone out there has stopped exploring since FSS, thus cancelling my experience out in ‘the great count up’.

Don't worry, I'm exploring without using the FSS, so I'm completely messing up @marx's stats. Fortunately there are thousands of other people playing ED, so we're not statistically significant - though obviously we're both special snowflakes in our own ways

 

[biot]

Us who? And also keep DW2 in mind, as many of the participants make up a large portion of the Exploration community, and if they’re recently back from a long trek, it’s also very possible they actually want to do something else for a change. Then factor in those of us still “out there”, those of us who don’t use EDSM, and those of us just hoarding our data, and you’ll probably find some very different figures.

This is certainly true for me. Exploration is a subset of the time I spend in ED. Prior to DW2 I never used EDSM and I have not used it since getting back. I don't anticipate using it again except for logging something on the scale of another DW expedition.

If I may take the liberty of quoting myself from another FSS thread (yes! such things do exist):

Same here. I needed a break from both exploring and ED. DW2 is probably the longest unbroken ED playing streak that I have had. I have played ED only sporadically since getting back to the bubble at the end of May.

I don't play any one game, ED included, for stretches longer than a couple of months at a time. And as I mentioned above, within my ED time exploration is only a fraction of it. DW2 was unusual for me in the unbroken amount of time I spent on a single game and unusual for the amount of time I spent in it on one activity. I don't see myself heading out into the black for a good long time yet, and that has nothing to do with the exploration mechanics.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I had records on EDSM and EGO that were steadily wiped out, post-FSS. That was not done by cherry picking. That was done by strip-mining systems with the FSS. This killed a lot of my motivation for deep exploration.

Third party software is widely adopted by players for many playstyles.

 

[marx]

It'd be interesting to see if the decrease was comparable to pre 3.3 levels, a decay in activity is somewhat expected between long periods of updates*.

Not really. The largest drop between two months was 2019 May to June, -602,656 systems. The second largest was 2017 Oct to Nov, -361,181 systems. However, the difference there is that from 2017 Sept to Oct, there was a big spike of +453,880 systems, while 2019 Feb to May was mostly the same. Otherwise, for the full year before the FSS, months would see gains or losses in a 50-150k range.
That +453,880 spike was the third largest. The second largest was at the launch of Chapter Four, doing +549,918 in 2018 Dec, and the largest was +861,746 in 2019 Jan, at the launch of DW2. Both were however in the middle of their respective months.

It is an interesting argument to say that decreases in exploration activity might come from players having already explored some routes, but there are some problems with that.

One: those decreases and also increases are too large for that.
Two: DW2 flew along quite well-established routes anyway, and still produced a whole lot of unexplored systems. If Qohen Leth's figure of 50,844,000 new planets and stars by DW2 is correct (I can't verify this without a lot of work, unfortunately, but I trust it is), then that was a whopping 76% of the 66,508,000 new planets and stars uploaded to EDSM during the expedition's time.
Three: does this say anything about why people are scanning now half as many new bodies per system as they did before, and less ELWs per system even?

Lastly, there is something interesting and relevant noted elsewhere. Check out the EDSM traffic reports, decaying heatmaps, the Commanders map (you need to zoom in a bit): there are actually not a lot of explorers who don't travel between known destinations, but set out into the deep galaxy instead. You could even count them manually on the videos. Most of exploration is people flying to and from Sol - Colonia - Sagittarius A* - Beagle Point, to a lesser extent.
Personally, I'm not really happy about this, but it is what it is.


Oh yeah, one final note:

Don't worry, I'm exploring without using the FSS, so I'm completely messing up @marx's stats.

Hehe, good thought. Unfortunately for you, the automatic scanning logs things the exact same way as the FSS does.

 

[Zeb Lazarus]

Greetings,

I really like the FSS. The whole "one ping and one ping only" method was lame to me and just plain monotonous in my opinion. I'm on my 4th and longest exploration trip currently and I don't think I would have come as far as I have if I had to use the old ADS. Of course I am also weird because I enjoy the traveling aspect of the game, I don't see it as hitting "J" continuously a thousand times, but more like the feeling of being on a roadtrip, stopping off the interstate periodically to investigate the local sights. I even like the Anaconda and its supposedly horrid SC handling, because it feeling like I'm on a science ship exploring in the vastness of space. I can understand how some may not care for the FSS but for me it gives me a sense of actually using the scientific instruments on my ship to scout the system I'm in, and I do it all in VR. I actually cherry pick a lot less than I used to, and tend to scan a lot more bodies than with the ADS, however I am still particular with what I bother to map. I have a few thousand systems that are not logged into EDSM (have never uploaded any systems to it) and I'm not sure if I will bother to do so or not when I'm done, so I am also an outlier. I just mention all this because there are a lot of us out there that normally don't post on the forums often/register systems to external databases/don't use the steam launcher (although about half my time has been via Steam)/ etc, so the statistics can be important, but can be a bit misleading sometime depending on the circumstances.

i don't think anyone will be interested to spend a year exploring a random and anonymous patch of stars in a 100ly cube near the center of the galaxy...

there are actually not a lot of explorers who don't travel between known destinations, but set out into the deep galaxy instead.

Strangely enough this is exactly what I am doing and I where I have found most of my more interesting discoveries. As a matter of fact I recently found a 100Ly stretch that is particularly rich in WW, ELW, AW worlds. So far in this particular 100Ly area I have scanned about 200 systems and within those 200 found ~40 WWs, 5 ELWs, 8 AWs, numerous GGs with life and a water giant as well as a couple other interesting things. I plan on spending more time here, but its a pretty dense area. (and this isn't the first area that I have found like this) So there is a lot of stuff out there even in those boring/uninteresting areas of space!

Anyway I wish you all the best, take care everyone

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

@ Max Factor: Let's see. You wrote that "EDSM active players are just a very small amount of the active population." I asked "Is that so? Please prove this. What data can you offer us that would prove your claim that they are a very small amount of the active population, how much?" I shared with you the data on how much of the total EDSM uploaders have contributed, as well as the DW2 statistics, so there's my proof. You said that you don't have any, yet you claim that only in spite of the data that we do have, only a very small amount of the active population are "EDSM active".
I think we're done here then - well past done, probably. Anyone can check for themselves which one of us is right.

Sigh. There is no right. Your stats are flawed and don't give enough information and are only a snapshot of the games population.
My assumption was an assumption based on educated guess work.

I never said the figures were spouted were wrong, but the meaning you gave about them was pure guess work. You still don't know if people are exploring less or there are less explorers.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Excellent, finally a better reasoned point has been made. However, you're forgetting one relevant part here, and I believe I mentioned this to you the last time too: the number of scans that people do in systems is also decreasing. Half of what it was at the beginning of Chapter Four, and less than half of the DW2 peaks. So it's not just that players are visiting less systems, but also that they are scanning less bodies in those systems.

In fact, a curious ratio might mean that they are even looking at the FSS bar less. You see, the monthly new ELW / new systems ratio used to move around the 0.5-0.56% range before the FSS, and 0.65-0.7% after it... until DW2 ended, at which point it crashed to 0.31% in two months. In June, it recovered to 0.43%, then in July, back down to 0.38%.
Why would players not be scanning ELWs? Likely because they are in too much of a rush to look at the FSS bar. That would in turn be because they are chain-boosting neutron stars. At least, that's the most likely explanation I can come up with why people would scan less ELWs than before.

Back to your point: Why would players spend more time on planetary exploration now though? The DSS pinpoints all locations, you no longer have to fly around eyeballing stuff. If anything, it would be significantly less time spent planetside.

Speaking personally here, once I managed to reach Beagle Point before the deadline passed, the most immediate effect it had was that I could spend more time paying attention to what was going around me, landing on planets I would’ve bypassed on the way there, and doing a lot less cherry picking and not stopping to smell the roses.

One side effect of this is that I discovered it’s possible to identify “super”-bodies using the FSS, primarily because I stopped ignoring the “uninteresting” icy bodies beyond the gas giants. Most of them are uninterssting tiny balls of ice, but if I detect signs of a super-Pluto out there, I’ll go visit it. They may not be much to look at, but watching the gravity meter rise over 1G as I approach the surface is fun, especially since I won’t use the FSS to spoil the suspense until I get there. Even finding out I misread the signs, and it’s not a super-Pluto, has its charms.

Pre-DSS changes, I never bothered with planetary exploration at all, because it was quite frankly a complete waste of time trying to find POIs visually.

Do I think everyone is like me? Not at all. But if I hadn’t decided to go on DW2, I’d be splitting my time between planetary exploration in thargoid and guardian space, and deep space exploration in general.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Not everyone is asked their opinion by Gallup, but they have a large enough sample size that they can predict voting patterns within reasonable tolerances. EDSM is a large sample size.

So what is the sample size of EDSM. How many active users are there?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

So what is the sample size of EDSM. How many active users are there?

42.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Sigh. There is no right. Your stats are flawed and don't give enough information and are only a snapshot of the games population.
My assumption was an assumption based on educated guess work.

I never said the figures were spouted were wrong, but the meaning you gave about them was pure guess work. You still don't know if people are exploring less or there are less explorers.

Both aren't good.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Out on the rim, where I’ve been for 35 weeks, I can say definitively that stellar density, even at Y+0 stinks. It’s just short of non-existent. Yes, there is an occasional cluster at Y+/- >0 but these are exceptions, not rules.

Even travel along Y+0 can be difficult when systems are 100 LY or further apart, and I routinely have to move back from the edge to be able to jump at all.

42.

2.8%

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

42.

Funny that. I thought it was the same number.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Funny that. I thought it was the same number.

@marx has previously quoted the number of commanders who used EDSM for the DW2 expedition. I'm sure he'll point you in the right direction if you ask him nicely.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

@marx has previously quoted the number of commanders who used EDSM for the DW2 expedition. I'm sure he'll point you in the right direction if you ask him nicely.

And how is that representative of the games population. As it is I think I remember it. Another meaningless stat in regards to the FSS.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

And how is that representative of the games population. As it is I think I remember it. Another meaningless stat in regards to the FSS.

Yeah you failed stats class for sure,

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

And how is that representative of the games population. As it is I think I remember it. Another meaningless stat in regards to the FSS.

I don't think you understand how statistical sample sizes work.

UK polling companies make predictions based on sample sizes of a few thousand, again a voting pool of 40 million. Thousands of commanders on EDSM from a even a million active players brings your error bars way down.

It's significantly more accurate than an educated guess.

 

[Sysmon]

No, i pretty much like it exactly as it is now.
Maybe adjust its sniping requirement when you have the target in the circle but still get the message that you cannot zoom in

Yes, and the time that the targeting failed message hangs around (to shorter!). And maybe the slowness of the scanned body announcements. We don't have much reason yet to care for dozens of announcements of asteroid clusters found...

S

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I don't think you understand how statistical sample sizes work.

UK polling companies make predictions based on sample sizes of a few thousand, again a voting pool of 40 million. Thousands of commanders on EDSM from a even a million active players brings your error bars way down.

It's significantly more accurate than an educated guess.

Yup. And they have been known to be wrong on a number of times.

I know how they work and I know they are not always accurate with thier predictions.

 

[lenna]

You either have an obligation or you do not. In this case they do not, no matter your opinion. Beyond that, I myself feel the world should consider my wishes to be a priority, and its shameful I don't always get what I want.

Being fair, FD can do whatever they want with their game.

False (in both cases) - FD have an obligation to maintain the product in the spirit of the form they initially sold - they can build on it how they see fit, but they can not legitimately change fundamental aspects of it. To do so would be unacceptably changing the form-fit-function of an existing already sold product and thereby breach the spirit if not the letter of Trading Standards and similar regulations (covered by Fair Trading conditions).

 

[Hanerib]

Yup. And they have been known to be wrong on a number of times.

I know how they work and I know they are not always accurate with thier predictions.

That's called the margin of error. It correlates with the sample size.