Change Wake-Scanning for Quality of Life improvement

[DemiserofD]

OK, this discussion has got a bit entrenched more than once, but in the end I really don't think any problem has been identified.

Don't get me wrong, there's a particular feature of the wake scanner which I found frustrating and infuriating the first time I tried to use it. I'm interested that no-one else has mentioned this design feature. It's in a utility slot, but you have to deploy hardpoints to activate it! Why? Especially when doing so annoys the station. I'd like to see that changed, just for the sake of logic.

Beyond that, though, I had no trouble figuring out that it I wanted to scan wakes I would need a wake scanner. I see no problem with that necessity; using a utility slot for a special activity isn't a big deal. As I said before, I even have a Cobra carrying one.

Wake scanning needs no skill? I don't think that's really true; the skill or rather knowledge is used in finding the wakes. A bit like exobiology; sure, scanning a cactus is just point and click... once you've found it. Ultimately everything is point-and-click as has been noted, but that doesn't mean no skill is needed to play the whole game.

Scanning wakes is boring? OK, don't do it then. Do something more interesting instead. There are only two situations where you have to scan a wake: (1) you want to follow the jump of another ship, or (2) you're desperate for Datamined Wake Exceptions. All other scanned data can be obtained without a wake scanner, and the trader will even give you DWEs. I actually got a DWE from a normal ship scan once, but I suspect that might have been a temporary bug. There's no reason to ever be so desperate.

We all have parts of the game we like less than others. Personally I see no point in the FPS parts of the game, but I'm not campaigning for the weaponry for those to be removed or made unnecessary. Choice is good.

I don't believe anyone has complained that it's difficult or unintuitive to find a wake scanner. The issue is more to do with why it should be necessary in the first place. For example, you don't need a specialized scanner in order to scan the shields of enemies and get that data; why wakes in particular? What benefit does it give to the game to have this requirement? Certainly, needing to sacrifice a utility slot to scan wakes to do piracy makes a certain degree of sense, as it gives a disadvantage to the pirate and an advantage to their target. But it doesn't follow that the same disadvantage should be present for people simply looking for materials. Of course, if there were more content related to scanning wakes, then it would be less of an issue by default, but there isn't, and adding new content takes an awful lot longer than just reducing the restrictions on material collection.

As far as skill is concerned, even the knowledge aspect is not in a good state right now. There is no real good in-game way of obtaining that knowledge, other than wandering around randomly and getting lucky. This tends to result in players looking things up online, which, in my opinion, is almost always a bad thing. Even without that, however, it's not like finding wakes is a difficult endeavor, requiring very much knowledge. You can easily acquire them in significant bulk around almost any station.

And lastly, while I certainly wish that scanning weeks were something you could ignore entirely, unfortunately, the game doesn't really make that a valid choice. Cross trading penalties makes it prohibitively expensive to engineer your FSD using data acquired via material Trader, and basically 100% of players are going to want FSD engineering, which is the primary thing that wake data is used for. You can't just tell players to skip perhaps the most useful engineering choice in the game.

 

[DemiserofD]

Who says that the better positioned player will not have any additional data? Please give a source or agree that this is your opinion based on your experience, which is just as valid as my opinion based on my experience.

So, is allowing automatically gathering without the appropriate equipment is skill-less and should not be allowed? I seem to recall such arguements.

Steve 07.

As I said on the first page, I don't think fully automated collection is a good idea, but I do think that they complaint that led to the idea is sound, and that some form of modification is warranted.

As far as sources are concerned, the math is very straightforward. It takes 10 seconds to scan a wake, and wakes last for approximately 2 minutes. Even in the slowest ship in the game, even with an unengineered wake scanner, even with multiple wakes happening at the same time, there is more than enough time to get to every single available wake and scan it before it disappears. And if you are scanning every single wake, you will end up with the same amount of data at the end of the hour.

 

[Mphoenix92]

As I said on the first page, I don't think fully automated collection is a good idea, but I do think that they complaint that led to the idea is sound, and that some form of modification is warranted.

As far as sources are concerned, the math is very straightforward. It takes 10 seconds to scan a wake, and wakes last for approximately 2 minutes. Even in the slowest ship in the game, even with an unengineered wake scanner, even with multiple wakes happening at the same time, there is more than enough time to get to every single available wake and scan it before it disappears. And if you are scanning every single wake, you will end up with the same amount of data at the end of the hour.

Okay, maybe we can try to come up with something better?

Maybe a harder minigame that's more difficult to automate but provides a much better droprate and is easier and more satisfying to incorporate into the game people actually play?

For example, perhaps:

When you see a high-wake, you may scan it with your wake scanner. Upon scanning it with your wake scanner, you are provided 1-3 units of encoded data of whatever kind, and presented with two options. 1. Follow the target in supercruise (the thing you can do now) by immediately entering supercruise with the scanned wake targetted, or 2. Deep-read the wake and get 7-12 units of encoded data (This only ever drops G4 or G5 materials). Deep-reading the wake destroys it and prevents you from following the target since quantum information is destroyed once read-out. It also requires you to scan the wake a second time, and forces your ship into a supercruise-random-walk which places you in supercruise and then random-walks you to a nearby location in space out of your control (imagine, like an interdiction). There may or may not be threats or hazards when you drop out. Maybe an asteroid field with fast moving asteroids. Maybe a minefield from an old battle. Maybe nothing.