Geo/bio POI scanning changes in the next update

[Mengy]

Wether or not they'll implement this new mechanic will be decisive for me wether I keep playing ED or not.
Exploration is the one thing I like most in ED,

Yep, me too. Although I might still play Elite a few times a year to do some mining or something, but making exploration even more time consuming would pretty much make me stop playing Elite for the most part. I certainly wouldn't buy any more store DLC. I doubt I'd even buy the New Era when it comes out, because Elite without exploration just isn't a game worth playing to me. I could simply ignore all surface POI's if the change goes through but that doesn't sound like fun exploration to me.

I really hope FD reconsiders.

 

[Sysmon]

I've asked in the Announcement Thread but so far no answers (or simply no Data) :

I'd really like to know what metrics to expect from the Probability indicators.

If Unlikely means pretty much 0% based on our statistics then seeing that could be safely (somewhat) interpreted as "None".
But if it spans from 0% to 20%, that'd mean upto 1 out of 5 could have something. For some already enough to warrant investigation - or get the distinct feeling of "missing out" and violating "Explorer OCD" so to speak.

And what about Likely vs. Very Likely?

What's the percentages all three are based on?

I'd say it'd be extremely beneficial to know those metrics behind the three words assigned to them in order to make any qualified Exploration decisions, should this new system go live.

We should get a feel for the probabilities in a few days!

S

 

[varonica]

You don't get the POIs after FSS, but you do get both Geo and Bio in system map after DSS at the bottom of the planet stats.

I think you only get the geo there, the bio doesn't show properly, only a spinning circle until you actually probe the body, unless they changed it in the last update.

 

[Anticon]

OK, it's a game, offering a universe in which we accept technology so advanced that it's like magic. I accept an FSS that can identify mineral compositions at >500Mls (!) cos that's part of the magic. Do I NEED that kind of detail from the FSS? No, especially if it slows down the game, for whatever reason.
So I vote for an FSS that says in short order : YES or NO to geo or bio or other sites. I don't need to know how many, or what kind, that's too much magic upfront. With that simple yes/no, I can make my own time-wasting decisions on how to play the game from there.

 

[varonica]

OK, it's a game, offering a universe in which we accept technology so advanced that it's like magic. I accept an FSS that can identify mineral compositions at >500Mls (!) cos that's part of the magic. Do I NEED that kind of detail from the FSS? No, especially if it slows down the game, for whatever reason.
So I vote for an FSS that says in short order : YES or NO to geo or bio or other sites. I don't need to know how many, or what kind, that's too much magic upfront. With that simple yes/no, I can make my own time-wasting decisions on how to play the game from there.

There is a beta, as I have reservations I will of course test it out to see how it works, I can't in all conscience just keep objecting and not try it out when there is an opportunity to test it, I suggest all of us here who have reservations one way or the other do the same. We can then come back and discuss it more or give our considered feedback to FDEV.

 

[Anticon]

There is a beta, as I have reservations I will of course test it out to see how it works, I can't in all conscience just keep objecting and not try it out when there is an opportunity to test it, I suggest all of us here who have reservations one way or the other do the same. We can then come back and discuss it more or give our considered feedback to FDEV.

But that's far too rational! Oh, allright then

 

[Han Zulu]

I think you only get the geo there, the bio doesn't show properly, only a spinning circle until you actually probe the body, unless they changed it in the last update.

I'm sure you get the bio in the sysmap. Checked it today. I found another system with bio sites today and saw it in the stat panel. Two planets in fact. Next time I find one I'll get a photo.

To add to the mix, you actually have to land to check what kind of bio structures are on the planet. If the FSS can give you the locations, perhaps the DSS could give you hint to what kind of bio forms are on the planet so you don't have to land to check them? I constantly get the tubers, but haven't found may other so far.

 

[Han Zulu]

OK, it's a game, offering a universe in which we accept technology so advanced that it's like magic. I accept an FSS that can identify mineral compositions at >500Mls (!) cos that's part of the magic. Do I NEED that kind of detail from the FSS? No, especially if it slows down the game, for whatever reason.
So I vote for an FSS that says in short order : YES or NO to geo or bio or other sites. I don't need to know how many, or what kind, that's too much magic upfront. With that simple yes/no, I can make my own time-wasting decisions on how to play the game from there.

Exactly. That's my point too. Not sure I care for the probability, we'll see how that works, but if the FSS can count the sites, it can do the DSS job and map them for me too. It's either or. Give a bit less in the FSS and make the DSS more useful, or give it all in the FSS and drop the DSS completely.

Here's what I think might happen, the probability will say something that it's likely to find something and the planet is a silicate geyser or magma... I'd say bio site is very likely. If it's iron, water, or other geyser or magma, more likely to be just geo sites. So it just might require a bit more attention and still render same results.

 

[Han Zulu]

There is a beta, as I have reservations I will of course test it out to see how it works, I can't in all conscience just keep objecting and not try it out when there is an opportunity to test it, I suggest all of us here who have reservations one way or the other do the same. We can then come back and discuss it more or give our considered feedback to FDEV.

Amen to that. And they did say they wanted input on what we thought about it from the beta, so I'm most definitely will test it extensively.

 

[Dutchman141]

Yep, me too. Although I might still play Elite a few times a year to do some mining or something, but making exploration even more time consuming would pretty much make me stop playing Elite for the most part. I certainly wouldn't buy any more store DLC. I doubt I'd even buy the New Era when it comes out, because Elite without exploration just isn't a game worth playing to me. I could simply ignore all surface POI's if the change goes through but that doesn't sound like fun exploration to me.

I really hope FD reconsiders.

You took the words right out of my mouth.
When this is going to be the new exploration then I don't care for the new era at all anymore.

Exploration was ruined by what I thought was a bug, long scan times, this new mechanic is even worse.
I was sincerely waiting for a fix, if this is gonna be the solution then my waiting is over and it's time to move on.

 

[Thatchinho]

OK, it's a game, offering a universe in which we accept technology so advanced that it's like magic. I accept an FSS that can identify mineral compositions at >500Mls (!) cos that's part of the magic. Do I NEED that kind of detail from the FSS? No, especially if it slows down the game, for whatever reason.
So I vote for an FSS that says in short order : YES or NO to geo or bio or other sites. I don't need to know how many, or what kind, that's too much magic upfront. With that simple yes/no, I can make my own time-wasting decisions on how to play the game from there.

You can only have a simple quick yes/no on the condition that you accept that it will sometimes give the wrong answer.

You can’t have a simple quick yes/no that is always correct.

Because getting a definitive yes/no requires the planet gen system to be run in full for the planet in question. Which is the same as what's necessary to get the numbers, which is the same thing which causes the long scan times.

 

[Thatchinho]

You don't get the POIs after FSS, but you do get both Geo and Bio in system map after DSS at the bottom of the planet stats.

I think you only get the geo there, the bio doesn't show properly, only a spinning circle until you actually probe the body, unless they changed it in the last update.

Hmm, just wondering if we're all mixing up terminology a bit.

For me, when I say DSS these days, I mean probing/mapping. Guessing the same for you too @Han Zulu ?

The old DSS I now consider incorporated completely within the FSS (though I know the old DSS scanning indicator still semi-works).

So in the terminology I'm personally using:

- FSS returns full body info which used to come from the DSS, and returns POI/signal numbers

- DSS/probing/mapping returns POI/signal locations and adds POI/signal numbers to the sysmap*.

*barring the occasional bug where it just shows 'scanning' on the sysmap.

I take it you're saying the same @Han Zulu ?

 

[Han Zulu]

Hmm, just wondering if we're all mixing up terminology a bit.

For me, when I say DSS these days, I mean probing/mapping. Guessing the same for you too @Han Zulu ?

The old DSS I now consider incorporated completely within the FSS (though I know the old DSS scanning indicator still semi-works).

So in the terminology I'm personally using:

- FSS returns full body info which used to come from the DSS, and returns POI/signal numbers

- DSS/probing/mapping returns POI/signal locations and adds POI/signal numbers to the sysmap*.

*barring the occasional bug where it just shows 'scanning' on the sysmap.

I take it you're saying the same @Han Zulu ?

Yes.

The FSS gives full body info and returns the number of POI locations, but it does it only while scanning in the FSS mode, and it's not saved to the sysmap in that instance.

While the DSS(probe) is required to actually get the number of locations into the sysmap.

I just realized that's awkward. Since the FSS stores all the other information it got in the scan, why can't it store the POI numbers as well? Why would it be required to go the extra step to do the DSS(probe) to get those number (again) and put into the sysmap?

 

[Deleted member 38366]

@all

I just got the question answered about what numerical probabilities are represented by Unlikely, Likely and Very Likely :

ANNOUNCEMENT - January Update - Beta Announcement

Frontier Issue Tracker You'll need to sign in with your Frontier account & prove you're not a robot. That's robotism! Robots have feelings and rights too! What do they have against us robots? 🤪

forums.frontier.co.uk

The "Unlikely" percentage surprised me alot, I expected something very low.

Hello,

The numerical probability for each term is an approximation based on these percentages.

Very Likely = > 90%
Likely = 60-90%
Unlikely = < 60%

Hopefully this will help with testing!

 

[Maolagin]

@all

I just got the question answered about what numerical probabilities are represented by Unlikely, Likely and Very Likely :

ANNOUNCEMENT - January Update - Beta Announcement

Frontier Issue Tracker You'll need to sign in with your Frontier account & prove you're not a robot. That's robotism! Robots have feelings and rights too! What do they have against us robots? 🤪

forums.frontier.co.uk

The "Unlikely" percentage surprised me alot, I expected something very low.

It is fascinating! My hunch though is that the distribution is very bimodal (as we know, volcanism+landable = very high probability of geo sites, otherwise very low). So 60% may just be an arbitrary point in between the extremes, even though there are almost no bodies that would have a ~60% chance of having sites. I'm guessing then that "Likely" will mainly encompass those small bodies that often have 2-4 sites, because those feel like the body types where the procedural model just barely managed to place sites.

 

[Thatchinho]

Given some of the comments on the thread, I thought it'd be worth clarifying various things in a single post.

Apologies in advance for the long post and restating some things that have already said, but it'd be good if at least we all on this thread had a shared understanding of the situation.


The nature of the problem.

The problem is with landable bodies with volcanism.

Scan times vary, but for me a landable with volcanism will take somewhere between 25 and 50 seconds to scan.

This causes a bottleneck in processing which means that every other landable with volcanism, then gets stuck in the same pipeline, as do most landables without volcanism. This means that for a system with multiple landables with volcanism, there ends up being a long backlog of bodies, all of which have to be waited for and then rescanned. It can add up to a long time, and most of it is inactive time. A typical scenario for me is that I'll scan all the bodies around a GG, leave the computer, do something for a while, come back, rescan them all to check for POIs and then do the next GG and repeat...

The important thing to note are:

- the time delay/bottlence occurs for landables with volcanism regardless of whether there are POIs on the body​

​

- although the bottleneck is with landables with volcanism, the bottleneck from them will often effect the landables without volcanism too​

​

- as all POI results come at the same time, it effectively blocks discovery of all POI types, not just Bio and Geo​

Personally I'm out in the black doing a system by system, body by body search of an area, and have been for a long time now. The impact of the problem on this is massive.


What's causing it

Spoiler

The time delay is due to the Planet Generation system simming up the planets.

Based on both what FD have said, and how the simming of a planet should in principle happen, the POIs aren't arbitrarily placed. They go at points on the planet where the area is suitable for the POIs. The Planet Gen system has to fully generate the planet, and then POIs will go at suitable places.

Key thing here is that whether a planet will have POIs is dependent on two things:

1. Which POIs the planet meets the criteria for
   
   
2. Whether there are points on the planet where the POIs it's eligible for will actually occur

That will mean that until the planet generation system has produced the info for point 2, it can't be confirmed whether a body will definitely have particular POIs.

Why the issue with bodies with Volcanism? What's going on with the different body types?

Spoiler

Firstly, all bodies instantly return the detailed body info (Composition, resources, volcanism, etc.). This is the same info which used to be provided by the DSS. This info appears to all be stuff that would be coming out of the system formation, so given that plus the instant return of the info is presumably generated in hyperspace.

Secondly, rendering the planet images in the FSS also takes a similar time for all bodies. (I've timed it multiple times.)

Then, with regard to the body types:


A. Non-landables - Planet Generation system Sims them up, but no surface POIs, so no delay other than in image rendering.

Image of a Non-landable transitioning between 2 levels of render detail below. Note all old DSS info, plus Locations has already been returned.:

Spoiler

B. Landables without volcanism - Planet Generation system Sims them up, POIs return just before the point that the visuals render to the level of the final FSS view. Images below showing that point. Note the first image isn't the first level of rendering, and also the 3 second time gap between the images.

Spoiler

C. Landables with Volcanism - Planet Generation system Sims them up, visuals render in a similar time to other types, POI results take a long time to return.

It would seem that for a body with volcanism the full run through of the planet generation takes longer than for other bodies. This would make sense as simming up a planet with active geology should be more involved than simming up a geologically inactive planet.

A note on Geo POIs and Volcanism

Spoiler

The Geo POIs are all expressions/results of volcanism. We should be able to take it that they will not occur on bodies without volcanism. In other terms, if a planet's not geologically active then it's not going to have geologically active sites. In terms of where they will appear, this should be related to specific areas coming out of the planet simulation, such as over subduction zones, and other areas with cracked/thin crusts - i.e. similar places to where they occur on Earth.

What won't work in terms of fixes

Spoiler

- Giving definitive yes/no results at the start. - not possible. the whole delay is a result of getting the definitive results, and whether there will be any is not determined until that point.

Options

Spoiler

1. Leave as is. (Not really an option as far as I'm concerned.)
2. Give a Yes/No result at the start, but with the acceptance that it will return some false results*
3. Give likelihoods at the start**
4. A combo of 2 and 3
5. A combo of 2, 3, or 4 and also allowing the full scan to run for definite results (as suggested by Marx).***

*For Geo sites, 'No Volcanism = No Geo sites' should be right 100% of the time, and 'Volcanism = Geo sites' appears to be true >99.9% of the time. That tiny amount of false positives is absolutely fine in my view. For Bio sites it's much harder to estimate, as the criteria are more complex, and for bodies which seem like they should have Bio sites but don't it's difficult to tell whether they don't actually meet all the necessary criteria or whether they do meet the criteria but the planet generation system hasn't endedn up generating any suitable sites.

**IMHO, this depends on whether there will be a 'definitely not' in addition to 'unlikely', 'likely' and 'very likely'. If all the bodies where there's definitely not going to be any are being correctly identified and the ones where the likelihoods are applied to are ones where there might be (e.g. just bodies with volcanism for Geo sites), then that could actually work well.

***Sounds good in principle. Not sure it will work for FD, but can always keep suggesting it.

Additional thoughts

Spoiler

I think it's worth bearing in mind that the we can all apply the rule for Geo sites personally. So that doesn't really change, unless the likelihoods will only be for landables with Volcanism, in which case that should actually be better than what can be inferred from the Volcanism info.

What the proposed solution effectively becomes about then is Bio POIs vs all other non Geo/Bio POIs. The time for Bio POIs might go up, but that's dependent on various factors, not least whether there will be a 'definitely not' result for ones which definitely will not have Bio POIs. The time taken for finding instances of all the other POI types will be substantially reduced.

What I'd point out with the Bio POIs is that what Bio POIs will be on a body is reasonably predictable already. And no one can know for absolute 100% certain whether they've discovered all the Bio types on a body without checking every single site, so unless people are visiting every single Bio POI on a body, then everybody is already dealing in probabilities and their own personal guesswork.

 

[Han Zulu]

Based on both what FD have said, and how the simming of a planet should in principle happen, the POIs aren't arbitrarily placed. They go at points on the planet where the area is suitable for the POIs. The Planet Gen system has to fully generate the planet, and then POIs will go at suitable places.

Strange. I've had a couple of Bio POIs on extremely steep hill sides. Couldn't land next to. Tall mountains around. Basically, I would have had to land miles away and had a very hard time driving the SRV there in near impossible terrain. Not sure what criteria is used for it to being "suitable"?

 

[Thatchinho]

Strange. I've had a couple of Bio POIs on extremely steep hill sides. Couldn't land next to. Tall mountains around. Basically, I would have had to land miles away and had a very hard time driving the SRV there in near impossible terrain. Not sure what criteria is used for it to being "suitable"?

Well, they're simming the planets, so it's where the simulation determines they should occur. I don't think accessibility (edit - in terms of ease of accessibility) is a prime factor in that. Why would it be? (Yes it's a game, but that particular stuff is very much within the simulation side of things.)

Edit - having said that, that's just a statement of general principle. At least one Bio does have specific location conditions - Roseum Braintrees are associated with Ejecta Craters.

 

[Anticon]

OK, so the problem derives from the 2-step apparent necessity for (1) generating a planet, then (2) deciding whether or not and where it has POIs of some type, and that can be a lengthy process when step 2 is likely or going to be positive. (Seems a clunky approach to me, but hey, too late to change?....).

So why not insert a preliminary step : upon entry to a system, immediately roll to decide whether or not there will be POIs somewhere, and of which type : yes/no. The yes/no (and type if yes) could be displayed after honking. If yes, then at FSS time generate at least some planets of the kinds likely to host those POIs, and ensure at least one planet has at least one such POI, to satisfy minimum yes condition. If no, then generate any kinds of planets but (generally ) ensure no POIs are placed.

This way, those hungry to find POIs can see a "yes" and then choose whether or not to scan/fly around and wait for details. Everyone else can also make their own choices based on their own exploration priorities.

I'm assuming here that actual planet generation occurs at FSS time, could be wrong. Personally I'd also prefer if the FSS only showed a yes or no about each POI type, and further detail required DSS probing.

 

[varonica]

So why not insert a preliminary step : upon entry to a system, immediately roll to decide whether or not there will be POIs somewhere, and of which type : yes/no. The yes/no (and type if yes) could be displayed after honking. If yes, then at FSS time generate at least some planets of the kinds likely to host those POIs, and ensure at least one planet has at least one such POI, to satisfy minimum yes condition. If no, then generate any kinds of planets but (generally ) ensure no POIs are placed.

Because no-one knows if there will be POI's in the system until the bodies are proceduraly generated. What happens if we throw a yes/no, decide yes there will be POI's, and the entire system consists of gas giants? The existence of GEO POI's is dependent on a number of factors, the age of the system, the type of bodies, the orbital period around the primary body which determines if there is gravitational stress heating and a few more things. This is a proceduraly generated galaxy, this is how procedural generation works, you can't decide before and remove them afterwards because the presence of geo POI's is dependant on the seed used to generate the system and bodies, nothing else.

You can't generate "some planets of a kind" at FSS time because the body types are predetermined by the seed used to proceduraly generate the system and its bodies, and this has already happened when you enter the system. Yes FDEV can put in hand crafted planets, but they are special cases, they aren't going to hand craft planets and insert them in 400 billion systems, that's not the way the ED galaxy works.

Rolling to decide also throws in a random factor, at the moment every system I enter is going to be the same for every other CMDR who enters that system, including the presence of POI's and their location on the particular bodies, this is the beauty of procedural generation, because it's done from a common seed the systems will be the same. But what if on entering the system I rolled for POI's and the bodies were inserted to support those POI's but the next CMDR came through and rolled for no POI's so those same bodies weren't inserted, we would be seeing two different systems, and that's not how you want the galaxy to work, with random planets popping up and vanishing depending on a dice roll.