2yrs and counting...

Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy Stardust
By the way, anyone know a good Hotel California thread? Or a ganker thread for that matter.

Tradition requires me posting in one of those as well.
 

Stigbob

Stigbob
Rat Catcher said:
Odd, the introduction of the FSS enhanced my game massively, and has continued to do so... Yes, I got my elite exploration prior to 3.3 so am able to make that comment based on actual experience.

But then, every new system I find is of interest to me as I've never been there before - I'm not picky (and have found ELW's in M Class systems with no secondary/tertiary stars - apparently they are not plentiful...) 🍻
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Enjoying yourself in a video game ?, how very dare you.
 

Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy Stardust
Rat Catcher said:
It's my age, Stig... Old enough to remember text games on mainframes... Tape loading, 5.25" Floppies (or 10" on IBM)... Those days ingrained moral fibre and the strength to survive change... I don't melt when it gets above freezing ;)
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After 15 minutes of loading: "load error", turn the screw raising and lowering the tape just a little to the right, try again. 15 minutes later, "load error". Turn the screw slightly more and try again. And again. And again. After a while you could judge by the screetches and blips the tape made whether it was outlined properly.

Good times! NOT! :)
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Ziggy Stardust said:
After 15 minutes of loading: "load error", turn the screw raising and lowering the tape just a little to the right, try again. 15 minutes later, "load error". Turn the screw slightly more and try again. And again. And again. After a while you could judge by the screetches and blips the tape made whether it was outlined properly.
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I modded my (very cheep) tape player with a tiny screwdriver, a blob of Araldite and a Lego tyre glued to the screwdriver... play tape and listen while adjusting for best 'noise' :cool:
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Ziggy Stardust said:
If you replace something, you have to remove the other thing. If they had simply added the feature, I would still be playing Elite now. And it would have made sense to add the feature without removing the ADS.

1. The ADS would tell you information about the system. Based on that information, you could decide whether to investigate the system further.
2. If you decide to investigate further, you fire up the FSS and get more information on the planets in that system. Based upon that information you could decide whether to investigate planets further.
3. If you do decide to investigate further, you can go to the planets you're interested in and probe them or land on them,

The thing that kills exploration for me right now is that I am forced to play the mini game about every single system I go through. If I could have used the FSS only when I needed to (I find a system that could be interesting) it's frequency would go down a lot, and the grind aspect of it would go down a lot. When I first learned about the FSS I was positive about it. The mini game itself isn't the issue. The frequency is.

It's not better or worse than the old system. It's on par. The old system was lacking in depth. The new system is lacking in depth. You master the FSS in an hour or so and after that it just is busy work.

The duality I have about Frontier in this is, that I do believe there are developers who do care about the exploration mechanics. That's why I am very careful to direct my ire at Frontier, not the developers. I do believe the marketing aspect is the reason exploration gets as little priority as it does. A well thought out exploration system doesn't sell and doesn't make jazzy marketing. Pew pew pew and explosions do.
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Ok, if you want to call an update a replacement, that is your perogative. In that case, was Engineers v2 cause the removal on Engineers v1? I quite enjoyed the random rolls. Perhaps FD should have left it in as an option!

Sometimes updates fundamentally change how things work, and of course, not always for the better.

What you describe, i understand somewhat. It was nice seeing the whole system upon honking. However, the new systems doesn't slow you down much if you know what to look for. Sure, you can no longer just go full throttle and honk as you go. You have to honk, throttle to zero, open the FSS and have a quick gander at the signals. Its usually enough to tell you whether the system is worth investigating further (depending on what you are looking for).

So its not too different from what you describe in your points. Just that you don't get the system layout, just information about the types of planets that exist.

that I do believe there are developers who do care about the exploration mechanics.
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Those developers who care might be the ones that came up with the FSS idea you know ;)

I think one compromise solution that was suggested was when you ping with the discovery scanner you get the layout of the system with blank planet spheres but not their type, that's when you have to go into the FSS to check the spectrum analysis and decide if you want to look further.

That would be a nice compromise solution for me. Fairly quick then to get info about the system's structure and contents without revealing everything.

Still, very much doubt that will happen either.
 

Stellar Shepherd

Stellar Shepherd
Ziggy Stardust said:
1. The ADS would tell you information about the system. Based on that information, you could decide whether to investigate the system further.
2. If you decide to investigate further, you fire up the FSS and get more information on the planets in that system. Based upon that information you could decide whether to investigate planets further.
3. If you do decide to investigate further, you can go to the planets you're interested in and probe them or land on them,
Click to expand...
I think the issue there was that ads would give you all information you needed, no further investigation was needed unless you wanted to scan/map a valuable planet.
As mentioned by jefranklin, waveform gives similar information, a bit less, but it still gives a good indication if there's something interesting going on, as oppose to giving the full picture.

Don't get me wrong, I mostly did exploring just to get elite, so it doesn't make too much of a difference to me personally. But I'd be lying if I'd say that the current system doesn't feel more like exploration than the old one.

jefranklin18 said:
I guess if they put the waveform on the main screen after you honked, would that help?
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My guess is that would be a big qol change.
 

Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy Stardust
Agony_Aunt said:
What you describe, i understand somewhat. It was nice seeing the whole system upon honking. However, the new systems doesn't slow you down much if you know what to look for. Sure, you can no longer just go full throttle and honk as you go. You have to honk, throttle to zero, open the FSS and have a quick gander at the signals. Its usually enough to tell you whether the system is worth investigating further (depending on what you are looking for).
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It doesn't for me. It's very useful when you're looking for ELWs, OR AWs, it's useless to determine system configuration.

Stellar Shepherd said:
I think the issue there was that ads would give you all information you needed, no further investigation was needed unless you wanted to scan/map a valuable planet.
As mentioned by jefranklin, waveform gives similar information, a bit less, but it still gives a good indication if there's something interesting going on, as oppose to giving the full picture.
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That was part of the compromise that was discussed. The ADS only reveals relative positions, perhaps basics like mass (mass causes it to be displayed, so that would make sense) and that's it. No further info. Nothing on type, materials present, or any kind of detailed info. Perhaps a shoddy graphical presentation of the planet. But quadruple binaries would show up for instance.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Agony_Aunt said:
Dude, FD changed it 2 years ago. Time to move on.
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How many years did it take for Frontier to balance the game?

iu
 

Arioch

Arioch
Ziggy Stardust said:
That was part of the compromise that was discussed. The ADS only reveals relative positions, perhaps basics like mass (mass causes it to be displayed, so that would make sense) and that's it. No further info. Nothing on type, materials present, or any kind of detailed info. Perhaps a shoddy graphical presentation of the planet. But quadruple binaries would show up for instance.
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This sounds like something that would be ideal for the orrery view.
 

[VR] optimal_909

[VR] optimal_909
Agony_Aunt said:
Ok, if you want to call an update a replacement, that is your perogative. In that case, was Engineers v2 cause the removal on Engineers v1? I quite enjoyed the random rolls. Perhaps FD should have left it in as an option!

Sometimes updates fundamentally change how things work, and of course, not always for the better.

What you describe, i understand somewhat. It was nice seeing the whole system upon honking. However, the new systems doesn't slow you down much if you know what to look for. Sure, you can no longer just go full throttle and honk as you go. You have to honk, throttle to zero, open the FSS and have a quick gander at the signals. Its usually enough to tell you whether the system is worth investigating further (depending on what you are looking for).

So its not too different from what you describe in your points. Just that you don't get the system layout, just information about the types of planets that exist.



Those developers who care might be the ones that came up with the FSS idea you know ;)

I think one compromise solution that was suggested was when you ping with the discovery scanner you get the layout of the system with blank planet spheres but not their type, that's when you have to go into the FSS to check the spectrum analysis and decide if you want to look further.

That would be a nice compromise solution for me. Fairly quick then to get info about the system's structure and contents without revealing everything.

Still, very much doubt that will happen either.
Click to expand...

That is the usual clash of views. If you are after $$$ and tags, than the minigame is comparable or even superior to ADS. What it removed is our ability to see system oddities, extremes, etc. at a glance.

For most seasoned veteran explorers finding another ELW is not the point of the game, but very eccentric orbits, giant rings, high g planets, tiny potatoes, gas giants orbiting other gas giants, etc. are. For this blobs are not a solution, unfortunately.
 
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Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy Stardust
Rat Catcher said:
Cheers! 🍻

What is a 'seasoned' explorer? One with lots of added 🧂?
(I ask this question seriously, despite the flippancy...)
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I think it was a quite sensible remark. If you have discovered hundreds of ELWs already, you're less likely to have finding ELWs as motivator. Some do go into the finding ELWs in odd places territory, I have done so myself looking for those blighters in Black Hole systems. Didn't find any, but did find loads of very odd systems. And some (Sir von Rightenhoven (apologies for screwing up the spelling on that one, been a long time since I saw him) springs to mind) explorers go bananapeanutbuttersandwich crazy and vow to find every single ELW in the game.

As always, fun in games is subjective. If finding ELWs through the FSS floats anyone's boat and means they're having fun playing ELW, all the best to them and happy hunting. there is no best or only method for exploring. As a seasoned explorer yourself you know that other explorers are loonies. I hear some of them don't even talk to their ships. heck, some of their ships don't even answer back.

Nutjobs.
 
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