Biological is easy. Blue area, land in it, youl see biological things, scanny scanny
Geological. Blue area, land in it, you'l see-... Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Used filters, but still.
Follow the sensor on your SRV, I think. I do that. Sensor suddenly goes blank and stops detecting stuff.
I dont suppose anyone with experience knows if there is some hidden trick to this, or something I am missing?
So far I've had no trouble finding the Geological features - it's biological I've found more elusive.
I'm not sure there's a hidden trick - I hoon around at low altitude in the areas under the blue scan filter, looking for the smoke/steam plumes that come from certain geological features, then land nearby and so far I've found all types of geological feature on a planet within 2km of the landing point - and visible from one another.
Granted, my highest is only 3/3 Geological features on any given planet.
For Biologicals, my best is 4/4 - but I've left many planets having found only 1/3, 3/6 and most recently 4/7.
I may just have been lucky, so far though!
Keep at it, they will show up, eventually!
Not always true, but sometimes. Blue areas indicate where geological features may be found - but it isn't a guarantee that they definitely will.
My personal tactic is that when coming in from orbit with the blue overlay active, there are always several shades of blue which indicate different types of surface; biomes if you will. I like to land on the border of two shades, because it's likely that geological features only spawn in one of them, and I might get an idea of which side to veer towards as I descend.
But if you can't see an obvious steam vent, geyser, or lava spout, it's not time to get in the SRV; keep flying. If you skim over the surface at 50-100m altitude, you're likely to start seeing features at some point. Make sure you have vertical thrust bound to something sensible (mine is W) so you can comfortably manoeuvre around without bumping the ground or constantly adjusting heading.
Yeah, I look to the borders between shades of blue, to.
Although so far I've found all my geologicals in my favourite landing spots - within the perimeter of ginormous craters! I don't know if this is a thing, but I like to treat craters like my own personal landing pads, and so far it's worked out for me.
Yeah, I also have thrusters (up, down, left, right and forward/reverse) bound on my HOTAS+FCS so that I can make small course/position corrections, and also kill all thrust just by using thrusters whilst having throttle set to zero - I can just release the thrust controls and it decelerates to whatever the throttle is set to. Very handy when skimming the surface looking for smoke/bacteria puddles.
You know that blue colour that appears? How intuitive would it be if those would only colour in the areas where the geological signal sources are found? You know, so that you dont have to cover the entire planet and narrow your search down a bit with high tech sensor equipment.
Yeah, the geological features will be in the blue. Somewhere. Low level rubber-necking from the cockpit of your ship is the quickest way to narrow down the search area. Also the quickest way to clip a rock and flip your ship, knocking out the shields and scrapping 26% of your hull onto the planetary surface (ask me how I know
).
You don't really need to be at rock-clipping low level, but sometimes I'm so busy looking out the window...
...be sure to cycle through the types of geology and biology as that can refine the locations down.
Wait. What? That's a thing? How does one do that? Asling, uh, for a friend.
In other news - hurrah, todays covid swab came back negative! Another one like that tomorrow and I can... go outside...
