Seeing as ADS threads keep resurfacing with no conclusion being reached i would like to try something different.
Since FD have commited to FSS being the only exploration mechanic for now I would like to ask You what You think could be done to improve it.
Allow me to start.
While in FSS and tuned into a body often times it happens so that the player has to click multiple times on the body to discover it properly. Even though the body in question is not surrounded by any other planet.
This can drag on for up to 4 clicks(at least that's the record for me). Which while not game breaking becomes infuriating in longer expeditions.
See here:
I should be able to zero-in on the gas giant but instead:
I am greeted with another click. I have to align with the body again and click again and this can drag on for a while. Not to mention the time spent on this pointless endeavour stacking.
I would really love the FSS to allow me to instantly jump to the body after i have tuned into it.
What do You think, Commanders? Would You support this idea?
The only thing I would say is it would be nice if the OP could add a list to the First Post so that if a Dev reads it, it will be easy for them to see the hot topics.
Bring the FSS visualization into Analysis Mode in SC as the view out of the cockpit.
Implement zoom there as a Sniper Sight type pop-up.
Retain throttle and direction control.
Populate the Nav Panel with selectable Unknown targets. Even if their distance does remain unknown until viewed, the FSS certainly knows they exist and their direction - thus making them targettable for flight.
Retain the current camera implementation as the Multi-Crew mode, but also as an option for pilots who prefer it.
fix for the long scan times for geological sites on planets.
It's taking so long that scanning a full system is becoming a drag.
Just an indication if geologicals or biologicals are there is enough for me, we could use the probes to find out how many are present on a planet.
Sure, let's see the low-hanging fruit, which could be done without reworking the FSS entirely.
Shorten the wait times for geographical POI scanning through whatever method (it would be best if the game just told you up front what kinds there are, not their exact numbers)
Include POI information on the system map after you've scanned a body, without having to map them (so you can quickly check which bodies had POIs)
Add crew rewards to exploration multicrew (some credit vouchers would do, similar to other activities)
Add an option to toggle the cascading effects, so that could be turned off, and preferrably the blue grid overlay too
Add an option to toggle showing bodies discovered by others (but unscanned by you), so that could be turned off
In analysis mode, show the FSS barcode in the cockpit view, without having to switch to the FSS screen
Modify the FSS barcode to at least include green gas giants there
More work involved: extend the FSS barcode to be two-dimensional instead of one, to add extra information there (such as how bodies might be clustered at certain distances)
Allow NPC crew to use the FSS for you too, same as how they can use fighters (maybe add an optional module required for this)
Add an optional module that would populate the system map with grey untargettable bodies (and their distances) after the honk, so we can see orbital hierarchies
Allow us to use the FSS at speed, without having to throttle to zero
I would like a wrap around screen to come in front of the cmdr from behind the chair when the FSS/system/galaxy map is accessed. A little animation will make it feel like less of a menu and more like I’m still the CMDR
My number one wish for the FSS would be a small passive signal line (copy of the FSS signals) in the HUD and after the honk. But then I guess I'm pretty mainstream here, for once.
- display the FSA bar temporarily in the HUD in Analysis Mode following the honk.
- add an toggle option to be able to use the FSS at speed (defaulting to off, and with warnings/disclaimers about the risks of its use at speed).
- add the number of POIs detected by the FSS scans to the System Map (have suggested this very early, and it was done but only for after the DSS probing for some reason)
- don’t reveal numbers of POIs detected, just types - this is specifically to avoid the long scan times for planets with geological sites*
Also:
- stop the FSS detecting the whole planet’s surface, and only detect the parts viewable through the FSS. - i.e. tie the reveal of the surface to what can actually be seen (so orbiting a planet, FSSing from various angles (or times), or DSS probing reveal the full surface.). - might be asking a bit much technically for little benefit with this one admittedly though.
1. After a honk, add the wave forms into analysis mode.
2. The honk will also add the main planets (not moons as their distortions are obscured) as blank orbs in the system map. This will give people some idea if there are strange orbits and odd planetary configurations. These are not targetable if you are in a virgin system. Already explored systems remain the same.
3. When using the FSS, if you hover over the gravity distortion and you find the planet signal (the little circle that appear when you hit the planet with your curser), this will allow that gravity distortion to be targetable as you now know it's exact location. You can still zoom into the planet to gain all its information, but it give you options so you don't have to. It allows for space planet type exploration while minimising the use of the FSS for those that don't like it. When you hover over the gravity distortions, these will be added on to the system map and be targetable.
4. Under the planetary descriptions, they type of geological activity should be removed, instead it should be a yes or no. They type of geological should be left to the DSS.
5. The amount of POI should also be moved to the DSS. The FSS should only give us the type. It leads to e better gameplay loop.
6. The FSS should give you the type of materials on the planets but not the percentages, again this should be left to the DSS. This will give us reasons to probe landable planets that don't have any POI as currently the only reason to probe those planets are tags and credits. Having other reasons would be good and again provides a better gameplay loop.
7. It would be nice to use it at speed, but I'm not sure how practical that would be, but having the options would be nice.
8. This is for the DSS, but once you do the probes, it should give you search regions, not pinpoint locations. Once you have used the comp scanner on the POI, them you get the pinpoint coordinates. Again this would give another use for the comp scanner and again makes a better and interesting gameplay loop.
1) Display information gained from the initial DS scan in the cockpit HUD. The spectrogram, for example.
2) Let the FSA be usable at speed, although it will obviously be less accurate and harder to target the faster the ship is going. Allow ship control as well, although that may only benefit HOTAS and mouse/keyboard pilots. In fact, do this for all screens except the exit screen. And velocity change could lower the scan precision for a few seconds while the system recalculates.
3) Add colour variations to the blue blobs based on target composition, maybe even more detailed at each step of zoom-in.
4) Make notifications about body types optional or into toggles.
5) Improve PoI scan speed.
6) For the DSS, resolve PoIs into search regions rather than exact locations.
7) Make an alternative option (upgrade? Sidegrade? Engineered version?) where the spherical FSA screen is projected onto a flat plane instead. People can then click on each of the points there to get scan data from that point. The position of the points (as representing blobs in the FSA) does not have to be a direct reference to the FSA location. The points can alternatively be listed, but still with the same need to target each and resolve the scan.
Remove the "forced mini-game" feel of it, integrating it properly with the cockpit (with the current pan-and-zoom blob-hunt mini-game being an option still) would be a start.
Add visualisation of the audio element - currently the FSS implementation penalises explorers with hearing impairment (something that was not a concern pre-3.3).
I would improve the FSS by removing the ability for people to see what is in the system at a glance after the bang. Stars would maybe be revealed by the bang as they are now, maybe not. If anything was revealed it would be very ambiguous. All you could maybe tell at a glance is whether the system is very dense or not.
After that, you would tune to a part of the spectrum and this would amplify any signals in that region. You would then sweep around and have to locate the signals by ear or by eye on some kind of frequency response graph. Once you got very close, the little clock face signal indicator would show up on your reticle so as not to be too particular.
Perhaps the signals would overlap, and you'd have to set blockers on parts of the sky or spectrum to be able to filter the signals. So think a bit like Minesweeper. You would find things partly by process of elimination. These filters would help you isolate a single signal better but sometimes you'd guess wrong and have to adjust them. Basically, finding stuff would be more involved and it would be impossible to quickly scan for an ELW/WW/AW.
My main issue with the FSS has nothing to do with gameplay. It's that it has created a kind of scorched earth climate in exploration. It's made day-trips in the bubble more difficult or impossible. Wherever you go, if someone has been there, everything has been found. Whereas before it was possible to enter a system and find many names on it, and some things left undiscovered, post-FSSyou enter a system and it's blank or all discovered by one guy. This makes exploring previously-explored areas much less appealing.
Also, 40-60+ seconds to see that an icy body has 34 geological site is too much.
1:An option to turn off the animations for anything but panning the cursor and zoom transitions. I'm sure I'd enjoy it more if I could spend more than a brief amount of time in it without feeling like a knife was being jammed into one of my eyes. this is an accessibility thing on a par with colourblind modes, it's just something which would require a little bit of developer work, for a noticeable instant benefit to several players.
2:The ability for the initial FSS system scan to somehow get a visualisation of orbital relationships prior to knowing what any of the bodies in the system are, so I can know if it's worth bothering to find out what they are. I'd happily sacrifice a module slot for this info. It's what I use to determine if I want to even bother scanning anything, but now is only available after scanning everything. Wouldn't impact anything else, since the full FSS scan would still be required for the rest of the info on the bodies.
3:The ability to use the FSS in multicrew. Somebody else being able to use it while I fly the ship, history is replete with great explorer duos, Elite, not so much. And multicrew flat out needs more for us to do to make it worth using the features they already built for the game!
4:The ability to use the FSS while moving. This is the big one for me. flying to stuff is where the exploration happens for me. I currently manage to make the FSS kind of work for me by only scanning gas giants upon system entry, and then flying to them if they have interesting systems. Let me do the rest of the scanning of the system in the five minutes while I'm en route to one of those.
5:The ability to use the FSS within my cockpit. Nothing breaks immersion and makes you feel like you're playing a videogame instead of flying a spaceship, than regularly having to drop out of your beautifully rendered cockpit where you keep all your lovingly placed personal touches, and instead stare at a flat plane, clicking on blobs like I'm playing a mobile whac-a-mole clone on my phone. It feels very much like this was originally conceived as something that'd be part of some kind of companion app, which you could run on a tablet mounted on your desk beside your HOTAS, but that idea was abandoned due to synching issues or somesuch at some point during development.
SRV wave scanner type of option would be nice. In cockpit, no out of ship screen clicking on blobs. Then you'd have to use a fancy scanner to resolve astronomical bodies.
I link this one here as it is a great idea worth mentioning, however the length of the post makes it difficult to quote here in a legibile manner.
Please note that i have left repeating submissions. That is in order to allow FD(should They ever read this thread) to evaluate what improvements are requested the most. I have left mine out as it sits at the very top of the page. Thank You for Your constructive feedback!
I want to be able to scroll around the screen without moving the mouse. It takes forever. I only use mouse + keyboard to play. Why can't I use WASD to move around?
Bring the FSS visualization into Analysis Mode in SC as the view out of the cockpit.
Implement zoom there as a Sniper Sight type pop-up.
Retain throttle and direction control.
Populate the Nav Panel with selectable Unknown targets. Even if their distance does remain unknown until viewed, the FSS certainly knows they exist and their direction - thus making them targettable for flight.
Retain the current camera implementation as the Multi-Crew mode, but also as an option for pilots who prefer it.
Frontier just recently improved trading, which has been in the game since day one. They have yet to improve multicrew or PowerPlay, so the very new FSS is at the bottom of a long list of "needs improvement" items that will probably never get improved. I hate being the depressing realist, but it's just the way Frontier rolls.
The only real optimization I'd like to see is a fix for the long scan times for geological sites on planets.
It's taking so long that scanning a full system is becoming a drag.
Just an indication if geologicals or biologicals are there is enough for me, we could use the probes to find out how many are present on a planet.
Sure, let's see the low-hanging fruit, which could be done without reworking the FSS entirely.
Shorten the wait times for geographical POI scanning through whatever method (it would be best if the game just told you up front what kinds there are, not their exact numbers)
Include POI information on the system map after you've scanned a body, without having to map them (so you can quickly check which bodies had POIs)
Add crew rewards to exploration multicrew (some credit vouchers would do, similar to other activities)
Add an option to toggle the cascading effects, so that could be turned off, and preferrably the blue grid overlay too
Add an option to toggle showing bodies discovered by others (but unscanned by you), so that could be turned off
In analysis mode, show the FSS barcode in the cockpit view, without having to switch to the FSS screen
Modify the FSS barcode to at least include green gas giants there
More work involved: extend the FSS barcode to be two-dimensional instead of one, to add extra information there (such as how bodies might be clustered at certain distances)
Allow NPC crew to use the FSS for you too, same as how they can use fighters (maybe add an optional module required for this)
Add an optional module that would populate the system map with grey untargettable bodies (and their distances) after the honk, so we can see orbital hierarchies
Allow us to use the FSS at speed, without having to throttle to zero
Frontier isn't even really fixing bugs with the FSS (nor the Codex) though, so I don't expect them to make even the most minor changes from the above just yet. Maybe they'll touch it at the next expansion, but more likely some time after.
Update from much later: oh hey, although it took them a long time, they at least did the first one!
Good suggestions: More permissive scan tuning, nothing irritates me more in current FSS than the situation where your tuning is a little bit off for objective of interest, and you need to retune.
FSS Spectrum to HUD, so that one can see at glance if system is interesting or not...
Bring the FSS visualization into Analysis Mode in SC as the view out of the cockpit.
Implement zoom there as a Sniper Sight type pop-up.
Retain throttle and direction control.
Populate the Nav Panel with selectable Unknown targets. Even if their distance does remain unknown until viewed, the FSS certainly knows they exist and their direction - thus making them targettable for flight.
Retain the current camera implementation as the Multi-Crew mode, but also as an option for pilots who prefer it.
Hmm those suggestions are certainly nice ones, kind of working compromise with old ADS and FSS likers. Especially that Nav panel stuff with distances and other details unknown....
Hmm those suggestions are certainly nice ones, kind of working compromise with old ADS and FSS likers. Especially that Nav panel stuff with distances and other details unknown....
Make the blobs show up in the cockpit view post honk and make them targetable in space (just another kind of uss). That's it really.
The fss is the normal game with the canopy removed and the tinting tech applied to blue (easy to prove kicking of the fss while decelerating towards a star).. so why not just make it properly.
If theres adaptive zoom involved just make it able to select the largest one no need for additional zooming tools.
No removals subtractions contractions changes needed for anyone who likes it already.
If we're scrambling for the very least amount of work just make blobs show up in a flash like the mining pulse and fade if targetable is too hard. That's absolutely fine too.
Bring the FSS visualization into Analysis Mode in SC as the view out of the cockpit.
Implement zoom there as a Sniper Sight type pop-up.
Retain throttle and direction control.
Populate the Nav Panel with selectable Unknown targets. Even if their distance does remain unknown until viewed, the FSS certainly knows they exist and their direction - thus making them targettable for flight.
Retain the current camera implementation as the Multi-Crew mode, but also as an option for pilots who prefer it.
I know Just thinking that these suggestions would make such improvements, that even some ADS fans would perhaps grudgingly approve it. Those would certainly make FSS way better than it is now.
Good suggestions: More permissive scan tuning, nothing irritates me more in current FSS than the situation where your tuning is a little bit off for objective of interest, and you need to retune.
FSS Spectrum to HUD, so that one can see at glance if system is interesting or not...
this is good. I would also want a slider to make the panning more or less sensitive. Currently I feel it takes too long, so I would like to make it faster
Also general suggestion, I would like a wrap around screen to come in front of the cmdr from behind the chair when the FSS/system/galaxy map is accessed. A little animation will make it feel like less of a menu and more like I’m still the CMDR
I should be able to zero-in on the gas giant but instead:
I am greeted with another click. I have to align with the body again and click again and this can drag on for a while. Not to mention the time spent on this pointless endeavour stacking.
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