So, how exactely are we going to synthesize these new micro-probes? With planetary materials? It's nice that you don't want to "burden" explorers with having to fit new modules (why not call it out for what it is, a cop-out to revamping exploration modules?), but what about those of us who are out there exploring without SRVs? Do we get to shoot out x probes and then we're **? Can you at least map planets the old fashoined way, by flying close and scanning it? Probably going to have to post this in the focused feedback forum and general discussion as well, just for good measure.
News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal
But people inexplicably like this thing that I hate. That must mean there's something wrong with them. It is my duty to distil this down to a pejorative label and attach it to every post.
I guess FD are learning that leaving placeholder mechanics (no matter how "solid") in a game for four years runs the risk of some players getting very comfortable with the placeholder.
The proposal as outlined in the OP does undeniably carry some potential gotchas, many of which were pointed out within the first page or so of replies. There is definitely enough wiggle room for FD to come up with a compromise of sorts, a hybrid between the old and new systems. There'll inevitably be a few people left whose play style doesn't fit wholly comfortably into whatever final form the changes take, and there are always people who hate changes to the status quo no matter how generally positive the overall change is. But with a bit of careful tweaking there's no reason FD can't minimise that number.
It does worry me a bit that FD don't have a perfect track record when it comes to listening to community feedback, and if they push these changes through without significant alternation it is going to create a twin tier of peed off players: those who don't like the new system, and those who warned of the problems with it but weren't heeded. But I also get the feeling that FD understand just how much is riding on the Q4 update, especially after they had to roll back some of the non-exploration stuff. If they drop the ball on this one, heaven help them.
If the player wants to fill in the map then they are forced to scan. If you wish the former then you must do the latter.
This is untrue. Dashboard holograms are enough to determine what a planet is without having to fly out to it and scan it.
Yeah, that has always bothered me...how does your scanner get the info in the first place? As far as that is concerned the new system is simply more consistent as to how scanning should work.
FD have to assess how the mainstream explorers actually explore.
Some honk & go, others scan the lot. Somewhere in between is the mainstream explorer.
This seems to be that FD have gone from show us everything in two key presses to show us nothing, find it all in 50? 60? 70? key presses.
Agreed. This is my most hated mechanic finally gone. It felt like a placeholder when I first saw it, and I will pop a bottle just to celebrate this occasion. I might actually do missions again. And I might start to enjoy them too!
Maybe. But maybe it's done in a way that makes it almost as fast as the honk if you know what you're doing. Don't get me wrong: Exploration is probably going to get slower. Or maybe it won't because you don't need to approach each planet to do the surface scan? I don't know. Much depends on the actual details. There's a *lot* of dials for FD to adjust.
And I think that's great.
To be honest, I never really liked the system map. We scan once and see all the fancy pictures felt gamey. I think being able to at least measure a system by the emission waves would feel much more like it actually. We'll see how it works in the beta, but though I feel somehow that something has been taken away, I can't help finding the the waves much cooler. I mean, the scanning itself is absolutely awesome in my opinion, but even if we don't get that quick overview, I don't know, it's pretty cool.
For the mission stuff I am pretty sure there is a way to quickly isolate a mission specific signal source, also because the celestial bodies in mission systems are almost always known, and there is still the nav beacon serving it's old purpose, and we still see stations on entering a system. So there should be almost no setback for mission runners, even without a Discovery Scanner on board.
Only concern I have is what information is available after the first honk.
If after some practise and experience I am able to interpret this electromagnetic emissions map in a glance to decide whether I would want to investigate this system further, it's fine. I am kind of sorry to not see the entire system displayed, I now fear I'll either bypass interesting systems, or spend a lot of time investigating less interesting systems. I would very much like to see this in action to decide upon that.
Often during a traveling stint when I'm just trying to get to a shiny 5 KLY away, I'll check the system map, and be distracted and spend some time in that system checking out close binary landable planets, or close moons around a gas giant, because I can see the lay out of the system. It would be a shame to lose this distraction. Traveling to that place 5 KLY away will then indeed become an uninterrupted traveling stint. Not to mention not seeing odd coloured gas giants, or HMCs anymore.
Could it be a possibility to only reveal visual data? Just have the system map display the objects as you would see them from your ship and their relative positions, without any other details?
If after some practise and experience I am able to interpret this electromagnetic emissions map in a glance to decide whether I would want to investigate this system further, it's fine. I am kind of sorry to not see the entire system displayed, I now fear I'll either bypass interesting systems, or spend a lot of time investigating less interesting systems. I would very much like to see this in action to decide upon that.
Often during a traveling stint when I'm just trying to get to a shiny 5 KLY away, I'll check the system map, and be distracted and spend some time in that system checking out close binary landable planets, or close moons around a gas giant, because I can see the lay out of the system. It would be a shame to lose this distraction. Traveling to that place 5 KLY away will then indeed become an uninterrupted traveling stint. Not to mention not seeing odd coloured gas giants, or HMCs anymore.
Could it be a possibility to only reveal visual data? Just have the system map display the objects as you would see them from your ship and their relative positions, without any other details?
+1
Well said!
As I posted elsewhere...
People have had it too simplistic and easy for too long and gotten used to having everything handed to them on a platter, so these changes are a difficult sell to that kind of mindset. Whereas the majority (so it seems) have welcomed the new changes. Lets hope FD listen to that majority and stick to their guns on this, I think they're taking exploration in the right direction.
Well, on paper the new stuff sounds nice. I'll remain on the fence and wait and see how it actually plays out when we can before I make up my mind if it's actually good or bad. At least for the system scanning mechanics.
The USS stuff certainly sounds good. That stuff can always be annoying to hunt down, never knowing if you're going to get the type you want, and always having to change speeds to target, scan, and decide on an action for.
I think perhaps my biggest question would be in relation to the new multi-crew/wing functionality. I do like that it's being added, that was some of the sort of stuff we wanted from the introduction of multi-crew. But I really have to wonder, with adding more functionality, is the backbone of MC/Wings going to be upgraded as well? The instancing/p2p communications/etc? Having a crew is nice and all, but if I can't *KEEP* them even connected through a few hyperspace jumps, because they desync, the game locks up, and if they're *lucky* they drop out to the main menu and don't need to kill the game process itself... Or *I* can't keep connected as crew... Well, none of that new functionality is going to be USEFUL, or used often. This is going to be an issue with group mining as well.
Like the above, it sounds great on paper, but as a whole, we've repeatedly proven that the p2p instancing is simply not up to the task of dealing with larger groups of players, especially as you continue to give us more and more of the much needed, and welcome, group activities to do.
The USS stuff certainly sounds good. That stuff can always be annoying to hunt down, never knowing if you're going to get the type you want, and always having to change speeds to target, scan, and decide on an action for.
I think perhaps my biggest question would be in relation to the new multi-crew/wing functionality. I do like that it's being added, that was some of the sort of stuff we wanted from the introduction of multi-crew. But I really have to wonder, with adding more functionality, is the backbone of MC/Wings going to be upgraded as well? The instancing/p2p communications/etc? Having a crew is nice and all, but if I can't *KEEP* them even connected through a few hyperspace jumps, because they desync, the game locks up, and if they're *lucky* they drop out to the main menu and don't need to kill the game process itself... Or *I* can't keep connected as crew... Well, none of that new functionality is going to be USEFUL, or used often. This is going to be an issue with group mining as well.
Like the above, it sounds great on paper, but as a whole, we've repeatedly proven that the p2p instancing is simply not up to the task of dealing with larger groups of players, especially as you continue to give us more and more of the much needed, and welcome, group activities to do.
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Adam said that once you learn the energy pattern you receive from the honk you will know what sort of planets are present and can decide whether to put more effort into the system or not.
FD have heard our concerns, hopefully they can find a solution. Assuming the initial honk and a couple of key presses aren't already enough to work out the basics of the system.
Alfred J Kwak
Banned
Finaly after 4 years we got some of the mechanics we wanted.
Just add some dedicated slots to the explorer ships and mining ships and that will improve the roles the ships where ment to do.
Hopefully a navigator role can be added to the explorerships.
Just add some dedicated slots to the explorer ships and mining ships and that will improve the roles the ships where ment to do.
Hopefully a navigator role can be added to the explorerships.
Uhm. "Honk & go" is not exploring. It's collecting data on the go for profits later because of course you grab it if you can. And as far as I understood that's still in the game. Will said, the honk will still give us data to sell if I understood that right. Perhaps not as much as before, but to be honest, the casual "mainstream" explorer should be good with that. If you are just honking on the go you don't really look at the system map anyway. Ergo: that's not exploring, that's easy cash grab. Nothing wrong with that though.
Honk and go will now (edit: probably) be incentiviced. If I can't decide whether I'll check out a system more in depth after a honk .... I'll go.
![[VR] Deggial](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/47/47252.jpg?1553527110){kind=avatar}
I was thinking about this, too.
1. Materials can be gathered with an SRV.
2. Materials can be mined in rings and asteroid fields. A mining laser is required, but no refinery.
If your explorer built lacks both of these, contacting support and asking for a layout change might be possible. This one time.
But there is another option, too (purely speculative of course):
3. There might be new USS types in space that contain the needed materials! What I would love to see is the "hoard" of a vacuum living creature we can "steal" (snatch the stuff while avoiding the attacks of the rightfully upset owner). Or - more scientiffically believable - just some "pockets" (also USSs) in planetary rings where those materials accumulated and can be scooped without mining them first.
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As I said above, I would retain elements of the current system for stellar bodies within a certain range of the ship at the time of honking.
Either way, I will reserve final judgement until I see the mechanic in action.
They said the DSS could store a couple hundreds probes, and as it will be looking like the ammo from weapons/afmu, a synthesis may give you a fair chunk of probes.
Also collecting materials to do fsd injections, and refill the AFMU and heat sinks is already a thing, so exploring without a SRV and without a mining laser to gather those materials is not a great idea.
From my experience regarding what support can and can't do that isn't even a remote possibility.
Sorry, but this is one of those cases where i honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic. That sounds like more of stretch regarding in-game lore and how these would be balanced (or work in the first place) than it would have been to either get pilots back to the bubble to refit their ships (which would have made more sense than the current approach) or not needing materials in the first place.
Why do probes not take up cargo space btw? And how do they contain sophisticated scanning equipment that our DSS doesn't, since we apparently can't scan planets the usual way to map them. Sorry, but this is . Let us map planets with our DSS, implement the probes as a seperate module and finally revamp outfitting so that we combine scanners.
Problem solved. That way nobody has to fly back to the bubble to take advantage of planetary mapping, but to do it faster and more convinient you have to fly back and fit a probe-module.
There. You don't even have to pay me for the idea. This one is free.