News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[Beeb84]

FDev please consider -

Explorers (and I am one) cover many star systems over great distances. The beauty of what we currently have is that we can honk a system to find any potentially interesting bodies and decide to either move on to the next or stay to investigate all within 30 secs. What you're proposing sounds like it will fundamentally break that. We need to be able to judge from the new ADS screen in the same kind of timeframe what is there or you are going to kill exploring.

It's ridiculous in populated space that you would need to go through some kind of complicated process to see the bodies of an already mapped system. If the system has a nav beacon then the ADS should at least automatically download the info from the nav beacon in lieu of being able to honk the system as we currently do. Having to always visit a nav beacon to get the system info will get old very quickly (especially if you're carrying cargo).

I do like much of what you're proposing, but once again I think you aren't considering how people play the game and will inadvertently kill exploring by making the most basic task of getting an outline of what bodies are in a system too grindy. Exploration isn't broken - we just want it made more interesting and varied.

 

[Jonny Shiloh]

The system scan mechanic looks a bit like the SRV radar thingy to me, which is OK. Use of probes sounds fine. I do wonder how the system scan mechanic will work with Voice Attack, I use VA almost exclusively now and I'm going to be interested to see how the scan mechanic works with VA commands.

Not much else to say really except I'm now waiting for a proper demo of the whole thing.

 

[Alec Turner]

Two questions about the HONK ...

1) The sacnning screen that comes up (as illustrated in the OP) - could that be more like an overlay on our current cockpit view? Currently it looks like a separate screen (like the system map atm), having that pop-up every time we honk on our way through a system (just travelling) is gonna be really jarring!

2) Is there any way we could generate the sound without the popup/overlay appearing? Currently I sometimes use the honk as horn, e.g. to notify a pilot on an outpost pad that I'm wiating or just as a way to say hi to another pilot at an engineer's base. Alternatively, excited as I am by these changes ... could you perhaps just go the extra mile and give me the horn? (see what I did there? )

o7 and have a nice day FD!

 

[krautbernd]

First, chill out.

Then, those probes are for searching POI on planets. You don't need then to scan, discover and tag bodies. The discovery scanner does the discovery and you'll have more info on the bodies if you have a DSS. Like now.

Again, why make the probes mandatory? Why can't we use the scanner to actually scan the planet on the side we are facing and use the probes to scan remote areas? Make it more time consuming for all i care, but don't make the probes mandatory.

 

[R21352]

Hi, Will,

Just want to ask, when I find an ELW could these probes determine what currant tech level these ELW, s are?

At present when we discover an ELW their is nothing to indicate it,s current technology level [smile]

Thanks

Richard

 

[Siobhan]

Hi, just want to ask, when I find an ELP could these probes determine what currant tech level these ELP, s are?

At present when we discover an ELP their is nothing to indicate it,s current technology level [smile]

Thanks

Richard

They don't have a technology level since currently there are no sentient races other than Thargoids (and I suppose humans)... And Thargoids don't live on ELWs

 

[Valorin]

Two questions about the HONK ...

1) The sacnning screen that comes up (as illustrated in the OP) - could that be more like an overlay on our current cockpit view? Currently it looks like a separate screen (like the system map atm), having that pop-up every time we honk on our way through a system (just travelling) is gonna be really jarring!

2) Is there any way we could generate the sound without the popup/overlay appearing? Currently I sometimes use the honk as horn, e.g. to notify a pilot on an outpost pad that I'm wiating or just as a way to say hi to another pilot at an engineer's base. Alternatively, excited as I am by these changes ... could you perhaps just go the extra mile and give me the horn? (see what I did there? )

o7 and have a nice day FD!

1) I second this. For quickly grabbing some data (and as I understood it, honking will still get us some data) the whole interface popping up would be annoying. Perhaps it activates on a second tap, or when the button is held down after honking, or both?
2) I didn't even think about other players being able to hear it...

Concerning the overlay, I think it's used to look around in the system and requires a 360° view like in camera mode, which we can't have from the cockpit.

 

[Henkka77]

I'm not in to the first discovery name tag, but does this reset mean we get a new updated stellar forge?

Nothing is going to be reset.

 

[Alec Turner]

Concerning the overlay, I think it's used to look around in the system and requires a 360° view like in camera mode, which we can't have from the cockpit.

Yeah, you're right - OK, I see that. I imagine it will be a bit like the transition to the SRV telepresenced turret view. We'll probably need to wait for the livestreams to see just how jarring (or not) this is going to be.

 

[stormyuk]

HONK2) Is there any way we could generate the sound without the popup/overlay appearing? Currently I sometimes use the honk as horn, e.g. to notify a pilot on an outpost pad that I'm wiating or just as a way to say hi to another pilot at an engineer's base. Alternatively, excited as I am by these changes ... could you perhaps just go the extra mile and give me the horn? (see what I did there? )

o7 and have a nice day FD!

That's another great point, I remember "honk" fests at the PS4 meet ups, but, that's because we are all children , but its nice to create a honk symphony now and again, I would hate to lose that.

 

[VR Golgot]

Hello space-faring devs!

On flying down to surface discoveries:

Earlier in development you were hoping to get an extra 'breadcrumb trail' process in here. Are there any plans or hopes to do so in the future? (Using the Analysis Mode view to allow for flight skills on approach / 'analysis on the fly' would seem to have great potential )

 

[dm06]

[yesnod]

 

[Barking_Mad]

I think the other thing to bear in mind is that once we can fly into/land on more planet types (coming next?) then the actual process of scanning will change again in that we'll have a lot more options that weren't previously possible.

 

[Whitmann]

There is, as usual, a seemingly-endless number of people who know for sure the game should only be played how they play it and can't wait to say so when people raise queries or worries about how these changes are going to impact exploration.

I'm happy for anyone to play the game how they see fit, from exploration completists to seal clubbers. Nothing to do with me.

I'm looking forward to seeing how these new mechanics work in practice, hopefully with a livestream in the near future where some nice FDev people explore a few random systems. Then I'll be able to see if my fears are justified or if it's going to be a brilliant new innovation that will inspire me to keep exploring. (Or any point in between.)

I'm just a tad concerned that how I explore will be altered for the worse by this. I like jumping into a new system, honking, and then checking to see how it looks. And it's not all about simply tagging WWs, ELWs and Ammonias, although I DO scan those. Ice moons might not be worth much but if they're close to a gas giant the canyons and fissures can be incredible. I like being able to tell this after a honk. Having to scan many, many moons to find these sort of worthless-but-amazing geological features will pretty much remove that from my M.O.

"Ah", some have said, "jonking isn't exploration - it's travelling. Ha!" But travelling is something I do on the way to exploration, and sometimes I break off from travelling to explore, and vice versa. Sometimes you have to go a long way to explore something. I love nebulae, for example, and have just been to the Bubble Nebula. Which takes a fair bit of travelling. It's been nice checking out systems quickly on the way, and breaking off from travelling to look at interesting features from time to time. The galaxy is NOT uniform - I'm thinking of the skybox in the core, the view of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds from the far Eastern rim, the dust curling up on the horizon out near the Eta Carina nebula, the way the galaxy is a dim strip of light from Beagle Point. This new mechanic might actually ensure that getting to places like that makes me MORE of a "mere" traveller rather than an explorer.

And for what it's worth, I like travelling a long way in supercruise. It's relaxing, like sitting on a riverbank waiting for a bite must be relaxing for people who go fishing. It's part of exploring. I resent the idea that it should be work. I've of kind got, well, WORK for that.

So we'll see. I remain curious, but apprehensive.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Might have to drop from DW2. Playing keep-up with the pack in a Vulture while needing more time to know if I want to hang around in a system longer might not make it worth it to me. Don't want to just jump-honk along the way and back again, not to mention dealing with the added time needed to find waypoints and POI. We'll have to see how it plays out though.

They seemed to hint though that in-system travel time would be reduced, so a trade off. Or, don't take a vulture?

 

[Zuriel]

The changes sound interesting and I hope they will work out well.

If I read this correct the new minigame will replace the "get the whole system map by ADS honk". So I really have to go to the complete minigame in every system or scan the nav beacon to get all stellar bodies?

Currently i drop in the system and after the scan I check the system map if something there looks interesting for me. The way I currently see it I will have to spend more time in dull systems or miss something I would have gone to if I had it on the system map. Also a landable planet with low resources can be interesting if the stellar setup is right to take screenshots from the surface .
If I imagine to go a long distance, for example 100 jumps, do I really want to do the minigame after every jump?

I hope the synthesis for the surface scanner micro-probes will also be possible for the explorers that are out in the black and do not have an SRV or lost it.
There maybe still explorers out there who do not have the horizons update or did not place an SRV on their ship. Maybe they could also pop out some USS that contain them in addition to another source.

There is still much speculation at that time, but I hope for the best.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Again, why make the probes mandatory? Why can't we use the scanner to actually scan the planet on the side we are facing and use the probes to scan remote areas? Make it more time consuming for all i care, but don't make the probes mandatory.

They aren't mandatory, as far as I understand it. You can still DSS the same way as before, it just requires you to get closer to the planet. Plus, the initial scan reveals almost as much info as the DSS used to.

 

[ModishNouns]

This is all very welcome. I can't wait to try the new systems out.

I was kind of hoping for new modules (I'm not sure what, though, tbh. Something shiny) but the reasoning for not going that way is solid. Bring it on!

 

[gooddoc]

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.

Personally, I think like you, I wouldn't call it exploring either. Some players do though & they are at one end of the spectrum & players that scan the lot are at the other end.
Somewhere in between is the 'happy medium' where a maximum number of explorers are happy.

At the moment we can only speculate our views & concerns back to FD, some maybe right some wrong, that all depends on what an individual players thinks is actually exploring within this game.
It's not going to happen that FD will please every single explorer with this new system. The test for each of us will be when we are trying it out ourselves!

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Well this way seems nice