News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[Geiger Wolfgang]

Now this is an interesting change, genuenly looking forward to this!

 

[Eisen]

If you want the location data without using the discovery scanner you can still scan the Nav Beacon to obtain this information.

*deleted*

 

[Skizomeuh]

Holy space cow! this is huge. I'm genuinely aroused!

 

[Pest]

Nerfing the advanced discovery scanner is IMHO not a good message. Especially as already today (2018) we are able to discover planets in other solar systems (under certain conditions). Adding the details of the planet(s) is great. Unless you have to discover the whole planet. And it should mark/reveal regions with high concentrations of the various materials (e.g. using different filters for each material). On the planet the material should spawn more often their as in non-marked areas.

 

[DimKal]

Well, I think that's will be my turning point....

 

[Ian Phillips]

I would day this is going to shake ED to its foundation in a good way and will set many of explorers hearts racing.

I have the defibrillators on standby....

 

[RolloTreadway]

To be honest, I'd be happy with just the USS improvements. But the other stuff looks very nice too.

Does this mapping business mean we'll be able to find geological features too, as well as ruins?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Q.

Have the devs noticed how much longer it takes if an explorer wants to scan a entire system with the new system against what we have now?

Without seeing it in use, it sounds like it'll dramatically slow down exploration.

But if there is more interesting stuff to discover whilst exploring does that matter. Imo ed has never had exploration it has had space tourism. So long as it is fun and I can find new stuff so what if I only exploring 5 systems in a session instead of 30?

 

[Olivia Vespera]

For the moment all I can say is that I'm really happy for the exploration community for this. A new area of exploration has opened up where both new and old explorers will be treated alike.

I do hope that there will be journal support.

I forsee Anthor upgrading EDSM to include first mapped distinctions.

 

[Skizomeuh]

But... there are no nav beacons outside the "Bubble".

Of course. And that's the point of exploration: outside the bubble you'll ave to rely on the new gameplay loops and your skills using them.

 

[Cmdd_Legendie]

QUESTIONS:
1)Does "first mapped by" apply to all planet/star types and or spacial anomolies, or merely planets we can currently land on eg Atmosphereless worlds?
2) If we can "first map" an Earth like world, will this show up new types of data, eg population, life form types etc?
3) RE the new USS mechanic will we be able to identify the nature of the contents of the USS using skill, such as specific materials/ data or ship types,or will it merely allow you to search for the current types eg NHSS threat 4 or high grade emmissions?

I never never thought about that, would be pretty cool to get detailed information on possible lifeforms of an Earth-like.

 

[racer1]

Will the new micro probes identify areas on a planet surface where you are more likely to find certain elements?

Over all the changes sound good, thanks for your efforts.

 

[Dizzy B High]

Sounds really really good.
Im as Excited™ as you now.

A couple of things i's like to ask

USS's and timer for expiration:
What happens when all the timers have expired? will new USS's spawn or will they all just disappear and then no more USS's in the system.

Scanning for Bodies:
Honking reveals the main star only.
What about already discovered systems? Are all bodies going to visible on the system map?
Can we Buy exploration data from the galaxy map, so that when we jump to a system we already have the System map populated?

Synthesis of modules:
Please Please Please do not use high grade, or very hard to find materials for this, i would rather a larger amount of common materials than 1 or 2 high grade materials.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Will we be able to filter USS'? For example, show only high grade, encoded etc?

 

[Becky]

Unidentified Signal Sources

Along with the Exploration update, we are improving the way that USSs work. USSs will now spawn throughout the entire system when you first enter it. This enables you to use the new exploration tools to find USSs throughout the system, not just in the area around you. You can still interrogate nav beacons to find the locations.

A dream come true! Can we please have the same thing for raw materials on the planet? pretty please!

then the only last ultimate annoying game play will be getting high wake scans

 

[Olivia Vespera]

Hi Whitmann, we don't have our synthesis recipe nailed down at the moment. We are currently working with a ship's holding around a couple of hundred probes. It's important to note that scanning a planet varies based on size of the body and aiming skills of the pilot.

Will this be stored in the cargo hold or in the DSS's internal storage?

Will players in the same instance/system see the same locations for USSs?

 

[imski]

Presumably payouts for these new maps as well as discovering new planets using this now (likely) much slower system will be increased?

Will we be able to tag locations on bodies so we can return to them if we find a particular feature so returning to them is easier?

 

[ALEX CAOS]

...You will use these probes to “map” a planet’s surface and locate resource hotspots in its rings.

So every miner needs a new module slot for detailed surface sanner now, if im seeing this right?

So Anaconda is the last ship used for effectiv mining than

 

[askavir]

200 probes for the DSS is, IMO, way too short. Imagine people need average 2/3 probes to scan a planet or moon. There are many, many systems with a serious lot of planets and moons, and most of them usually have over a dozen. We will need to scavenge to make new probes every handful of systems tops, which means an SRV is not only mandatory now for exploration, but we will end up spending far more time on the SRV scavenging than on the ship exploring.

I hope you guys reconsider the amount of probes.

Also, I suspect that losing the ability to reveal the system map is not going to go down well with many people...

Love the fact the USSs are now created on system entry (and their positions revealed using the new ADS scanner) and the use of probes to map/find stuff on planets and rings.

 

[Delta_Vee]

Hey there everyone, the changes seem pretty interesting so far, though I have several questions:

1. How will these changes affect both the Basic and Intermediate scanners?

2. Will currently engineered DSS modules impact the performance of probes or will these modules need to be grandfathered like with 3.0?

3. Will these probes be impacted by engineering in any way? Larger scan zone? Faster travel times?

4. Can the probes be used to map non-landable bodies like Earth-Likes, Lava Worlds, Ammonia Worlds or are they limited to only scanning landable bodies in the game right now? Or will a normal DSS scan like how we do it now be needed for those?