Frontier have absolutely no idea what to do with exploration. So instead of making it more interesting they're making even the most basic functions into a time consuming, tedious process. I guarantee that by the third-fourth planet you have to pew-pew with drones, and circle around to map the surface instead of the current automatic DSS method, you'll be damning the whole concept.
News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal
Frontier have absolutely no idea what to do with exploration. So instead of making it more interesting they're making even the most basic functions into a time consuming, tedious process. I guarantee that by the third-fourth planet you have to pew-pew with drones, and circle around to map the surface instead of the current automatic DSS method, you'll be damning the whole concept.
Where have you been the last year - remember 'mission-adjustments'...hmmmm
Frontier: Instead of making even finding and scanning planets needlessly time consuming, why not add content to the game so it would be worth finding them? When there are 400 billion systems of which 99.8% are undiscovered, why are you making it even more difficult? What do you expect from this? In 3304 finding planets should be semi-automatic, that is NOT the problem with exploration. The problem is that there's nothing there! Making finding empty planets even more time consuming will not do any good for the game. Seriously, instead of activating a scanner we'll have to tune it around like a radio? Instead of automatically scanning the surface we'll have to shoot stupid probes into it, circling around the body to finally getting a full scan? How long do you think it will take, and more importantly, how much longer than the current method? It is simply ridiculous that you can only make everything more tedious instead of more streamlined, all because there's no meaningful content in this part of the game. Why not generate more interesting content? Why not implementing proper planetary navigation? You're not doing anything like that, only taking the base method of exploration and making it a stupid grind again.
I'm lucky I'm already Elite in exploration because I'm sure I won't use this system if it works just as bad as it seems from the overly complicated description. Shame on you for not being able to actually deepen the game just making it more complicated and grindy, trying to cover its emptiness.
I'm lucky I'm already Elite in exploration because I'm sure I won't use this system if it works just as bad as it seems from the overly complicated description. Shame on you for not being able to actually deepen the game just making it more complicated and grindy, trying to cover its emptiness.
I think after 185 pages of players speaking their mind, it's time for Frontier to weigh in. Everyone who has an opinion to offer has spilled it by now. And none of us has any authority or complete knowledge about the details of the update.
You'll be lucky.
I don't think he will
To be honest 95% of the posts will be answered when they ship the beta. Not looking forward to them livestreaming this functionality as I think it will just cause more uproar - we need to see this in action with CMDRs who play a lot. Which is us
It's not been mentioned as far as I'm aware in the reveal, but I think there still needs to be some way of quickly showing if a system has already been discovered and scanned. Perhaps with a simple percentage indicator telling you what has already been discovered and mapped in the system, alongside you own percentage discovery indicator. Which would at least give you some idea of whether a system has been visited and how thoroughly it's been explored. I know someone said in another reply here, that you can tell if a system has been explored if the main star has been scanned, but so so many of the systems I have flown through have had just the main star scanned and tagged but nothing else in it. I've even found ELW's in systems like that.
Apart from that, I'm looking forward to seeing how the new system works. In my mind the old ADS honk reveals all and point your ship at a planet to scan it job, has only ever been a simple placeholder mechanic, just so that there is something there gameplay wise. I for one, am glad we are finally getting something with a bit more depth to it to replace that. I used to spend entire evenings just scanning 2-3 systems, flying from planet to planet and sometimes across great distances. This will actually make scanning a large spread out system a heck of a lot quicker. Remember that initial scan will now reveal all the same data you are getting currently from the DSS, such as mineral and metal composition, geological activity, and now also other possible points of interest such as Guardian sites, barnacles etc. Then if I spot a planet with something interesting on it, such as geological activity, Guardian site etc, I then can choose to travel to it to make a more detailed map of the surface to reveal those sites. This will actually increase the amount of interesting stuff we can find when we go out exploring now in a big way. How many people have seen planets with geological activity listed, but just ignored it because you'd have almost no chance of finding it, even after hours and hours of orbital skimming? Now we're finally being given the means to be able to find all those sites. Frankly, that's something I've been waiting for, for ages now. So personally all these changes sound great to me, and as far as I'm concerned it's going to be a big improvement over the current bare bones exploration system and I'm looking forward to trying them out.
Apart from that, I'm looking forward to seeing how the new system works. In my mind the old ADS honk reveals all and point your ship at a planet to scan it job, has only ever been a simple placeholder mechanic, just so that there is something there gameplay wise. I for one, am glad we are finally getting something with a bit more depth to it to replace that. I used to spend entire evenings just scanning 2-3 systems, flying from planet to planet and sometimes across great distances. This will actually make scanning a large spread out system a heck of a lot quicker. Remember that initial scan will now reveal all the same data you are getting currently from the DSS, such as mineral and metal composition, geological activity, and now also other possible points of interest such as Guardian sites, barnacles etc. Then if I spot a planet with something interesting on it, such as geological activity, Guardian site etc, I then can choose to travel to it to make a more detailed map of the surface to reveal those sites. This will actually increase the amount of interesting stuff we can find when we go out exploring now in a big way. How many people have seen planets with geological activity listed, but just ignored it because you'd have almost no chance of finding it, even after hours and hours of orbital skimming? Now we're finally being given the means to be able to find all those sites. Frankly, that's something I've been waiting for, for ages now. So personally all these changes sound great to me, and as far as I'm concerned it's going to be a big improvement over the current bare bones exploration system and I'm looking forward to trying them out.
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So this! Just letting us drop a pin on the detailed surface view to create a navigation marker would make a huge difference.
Edit: Make them visible to all in a wing, too.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said, but let's try first hand how the system will work before jumping to conclusions. All we have are 2 cheap screen shots and a forum post after all.
Yes. Oct / Nov /Dec. (Q4).
And how does one land on a *system*?
System =/= body. Two paragraphs. Very separate. I said boring *system*.
Define boring.... Unremarkable and full of repetition. Like this conversation.
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We can only hope there is a lot of new content to find/witness (eg: electrical storms or aurora on planets), but they've simply not told us. I mean, they've not even told us what "Hotspots" even are. Because if these are done "properly", they could give mining and exploration some really nice mechanics/purpose/potential emergent gameplay.
So hopefully there's a whole raft of other stuff to make exploration more engaging, at least from a visual point of view...
dayrth
Volunteer Moderator
I just thought they would be patches in the ring where the yield of the asteroids would have a bonus depending on the level of the 'hotspot'. Just like the extraction sites, low, medium or high. Might be tied in to the new mining mechanic though and be something completely new.
Hahah I was hoping for something a little more specific
I'd say it'll probably first half of October for the beta and November for the actual release.
That said there's still room for delays, cut content and whatnot
Remember, 3.3 is probably bigger than several horizons updates put together, I have very, very little faith fdevs can pull it off.
If they are as shallow and basically pointless as that (which they would be!), then I will be beyond disappointed TBH!
Hotspots could make a significant new step forwards in gameplay and it would not need to be complicated to achieve this. If they were rare and stateful, and as you mine there their value is rediced down until they are gone forever, we now have some mechanics of depth and worth.
You find a Hotspot of Palladium, still at 100% (ie: No one else has mined it, or probabaly even discovered it). Do you bookmark it and come back in a few months? Do you rush back to get a mining ship ASAP? If it's a large find do you get a Wing of friends to help? Or do you just give the location to the Rock Rats who give you some commission for it?
What if it's only at 50%? There could be someone else mining it right now!
What if Fleet Carriers can be brought in to mine such locations, and even make a claim on them so no one else can mine there!
What if the mechanic can be leveraged for all manner of gains? eg: FD manually generated some Hotspots in a region simply to create a gold rush there? What if they do it as part of a CG? What if some of these are OPEN only?
etc etc...
I've been proposing rare stateful resource hotspots for many years. If all they turn out to be is shallow (nigh on pointless) mechanics and FD wee away the opportunity to actually create some gameplay and mechanics of depth with them? Well!!! It will be a telling design choice, unfortunately akin to many of the design choices of the past 2-3yrs...
IMHO Hotspots have to be rare and stateful, else they'll be nigh on pointless...
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In their latest stream (from the 12 minute mark) they show this new screenshot and they even have a difficulty to explain what's happening there. You have to look at this, turn that, tune here, watch there... it sounds quite ridiculous. And it's only 1 system! I honestly don't know what they are thinking. Ed says it has to be intuitive... how can it be intuitive if it's literally one button press now, and they're making it into a radio signal minigame?
I know what their intention is: finding planets like this will count as discovery, whereas currently you have to fly there and actually scan the planet to count as discovered. I agree that with this method it could be faster. But most people only honk and jump away, because it's enough for them to see what kind of planets there are, they don't want to discover (scan) everything. Now we'll be between the two methods. It may be a faster way for people who want to discover everything, but when you're travelling to a far away place you don't want to stop and do that. The result will be that we'll be flying through systems blindly, never use the "honk" to see what's there so our maps will remain blank which is a shame.
Planetary scanning will be more time consuming either way. Shooting probes into a planet will never be faster than an automatic detailed surface scan. And all this to find nothing there, at least to the best of our knowledge (there's nothing on planets at this time). I don't know, it is not appealing to me at the moment. No way am I going to travel with this "stop and go" method. However, travelling without honking and leaving everything blank will not worth it at all. You travel thousands of light years for 0 CR? Or only for the base stars? No deal. Honking was a good way to at least see what's there, and leave the discovery to whoever wanted it while still earning credits. Now it seems we will be forced to stop and tune the radio here and there to actually earn something.
Oct. / Nov. / Dec. (Q4) 2018.