News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[Siobhan]

Ships are much smaller, less emissions (given the proposal changes won't detect populated planets emitting all sorts of junk signals), and less heat. A "pirate" should not see any squares, just potential emissions, and be forced to filter the electromagnetic emissions to see what ships are about. if any.

Unfortunately, by the same logic, you also won't be able to see anyone sneaking up on you either...

Of course, the experienced pilot (probably the pirate as they'll be doing it more often with combat intent) will learn to notice which of these EM blips are moving as if guided, and so they'll find the traders quick enough, unless they sorta... fly casual or something, and the trader won't even see them coming.

Fly without rhythm, and you won't attract the burn.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I really do hope that FDev will consider bringing in a Science Module. A tool that can partly short-cut aspects of the exploration mini-games (at a significant cost in credits & bragging rights), as well as a tool for decryption, hacking & translation.

Basically, part of my dream for giving us more ways to interact with the galaxy.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Well just the change to finding planets, and potentially very hot planets, without a minigame does make me think ship detection should be changed as well.


Ships are much smaller, less emissions (given the proposal changes won't detect populated planets emitting all sorts of junk signals), and less heat. A "pirate" should not see any squares, just potential emissions, and be forced to filter the electromagnetic emissions to see what ships are about. if any.

I agree. We need a form of "silent running" for supercruise. Ways to make our ships less visible to potential enemies. Full active scanning, though, should light a ship up like a Christmas tree.....hence why we need the ability to do low power scans.

 

[Lord_aNOOBis]

I love it! This is an absolute game-changer for explorers.

question:
Did I get that right? "Any persistent POI's will be displayed after the Body has been mapped" so this means we can not only see Alien Bases, Brain Trees, Barnacles, etc. but also Volcanic Sites, Geysers, Organic Life, crash sites, abandonned bases, etc?

If so this would be amazing! I always wondered what might be hidden in the bubble, on planets that you pass daily while you run Missions for your faction.
And I hated the feeling when I discovered a new system that there might be more to find.
However, with eyeballing 1.0 you'd have to spend days to "map" a planet. Now you can do it in reasonable time and KNOW if there is something cool to find.
I'm so looking forward to this!


Also love the fact that you can get the equal of a current Detailed Surface Scan without flying to the body. We lose time since we won't get the full system map instantly anymore (exception: Nav Beacon) but this "DSS from afar" makes up for it.
I do have the fear that this might get boring after 1000 systems scanned, but I guess once an explorer mastered reading the energy distribution he could quickly see if the system is worth scanning.
I guess we'll find out more in the beta.

 

[CunningStunt]

Special locations like guardian sites and brain trees are mentioned in the post, I'm hoping Volcanism is included so we don't also have to eyeball planets looking for them tiny POI markers.

Also please fix this bug as its a pain in the for volcanism hunters, getting bored of finding shrinker POIs which contain a single persistent outcrop.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...n-planet-surfaces-rarely-spawning-any-content

 

[Martin Afonso]

It will give you the exact location of persistent POIs. The more transient, smaller POIs such as a collection of skimmers will not be located by the surface scan.

We should get some clues about kind of non persistent POIs in a given area. I'm not asking for pinpoint locations and small anomalies, but finding big objects like crashed ships or mining camps shoud be possible. And rewarding.

 

[Oriath]

Holy, this may just get me back into the game. You bet I'm keeping an eye on this!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Special locations like guardian sites and brain trees are mentioned in the post, I'm hoping Volcanism is included so we don't also have to eyeball planets looking for them tiny POI markers.

I think they did mention Geysers at some point, but they also mentioned back in Q1 that future updates to planetary tech was also going to make finding volcanic activity from space much easier.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

With the DSS now having ammo does it make sense to have different size and grades to improve ammo capacity and give you a non-engineered choice around range, power draw and the like?

+1. One of the things I enjoy most about this game is working out how best to outfit a ship, trying different builds etc. and the choice the CMDR has. I do hope FD will be introducing more than just two vanilla modules and we get to make choices around ammo amounts, probe reload time, power draw, mass etc. Perhaps a premium synthesis option to increase accuracy of the probes or reduce scan time etc. Plus a couple of engineering options on top of course. Appreciate this makes things tricky for explorers out in the black who have no intention of returning to the bubble/Colonia any time soon as well as how FD approach the module "migration" but at least it gives players choices.

 

[Smiter1983]

This sounds great. I'm really looking forward to seeing it in action. It also means that lots of newer players have the chance to get their name immortalized on bodies within the bubble. The addition of multicrew support is also a nice touch.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

We should get some clues about kind of non persistent POIs in a given area. I'm not asking for pinpoint locations and small anomalies, but finding big objects like crashed ships or mining camps shoud be possible. And rewarding.

As I said, a proper search zone would be good. Not that circle that keeps moving around until the PoI magically pops into existence, but a visual indicator of the rough area that the PoI lies within-the size of the search zone could be related to the size of the PoI.

For missions, the search zone size could be related to the mission rank.

 

[Deep Thought 42]

if i honk SOL Will the new system detect things like voyager I/II ,The lost megaships or will we still have to search for them

 

[Marc_Hicks]

if i honk SOL Will the new system detect things like voyager I/II ,The lost megaships or will we still have to search for them

I suspect the former.

 

[THECATISDEAD]

This certainly a step into the right direction, but I hold my breath until it's released - I am excited though. I do wonder, and other people have mentioned this before, if the ADS honk should reveal all system bodies as it currently is. Otherwise it can become tedious to detail scan everything.

I hope the probes function like heat sinks, eg. no cargo requirement and easy to synthesise.

We really do need planetary coordinate system, so that we can bookmark cool places - please!

 

[George Shonia]

planetary navigation?

There is nothing wrong about it, you can easily learn planetary navigation by using math and from videos on YouTube.. Search "planetary navigation Elite dangerous".. You will be amazed to realize how easy it is.

 

[droflah]

Intriguing changes to exploration, thanks, looking forward to trying them out

Apologies if this has already been asked (Yikes, 82 pages long already), the changes to detailed surface scanning - I'm assuming they're going to be of most use/relevance for planets that are currently landable? Or will we be getting something useful (Or just credits) for planets that we *can't* currently land on? Brain trees, geysers etc. etc. are cool and all but the majority of landables right now are pretty much just barren rocks for material gathering.

 

[THECATISDEAD]

This certainly a step into the right direction, but I hold my breath until it's released - I am excited though. I do wonder, and other people have mentioned this before, if the ADS honk should reveal all system bodies as it currently is. Otherwise it can become tedious to detail scan everything.

I hope the probes function like heat sinks, eg. no cargo requirement and easy to synthesise.

We really do need planetary coordinate system, so that we can bookmark cool places - please!

 

[WhoCares]

My understanding:
- ADS honk reveals main star as well as stations, outposts, USSs; income as honk today + DSS of main star; same speed as today minus DSS scan requirement for main star
- body identification reveals same details and generates similar income as todays DSS scan; faster than old DSS scan as we don't have to get so close to the body
- new DSS to reveal static POIs on bodies; sounds like roughly similar effort to todays DSS scans (getting into launch distance for probes), works on landable and not landable bodies

Things I am not sure about
While it sounds like we can gain the same income faster, I wonder about the added (credit) value for the new DSS scan?
Is the body identification range limited or can we identify also the most distant planets from the main star 200kls away? Or will there be some kind of gradual reveal while aproaching distant secondary stars?
Will the body identification also identify a body as "terraformable" or will that require a scan by probe?
Does the body identification also work "through" other bodies, e.g. a metal rich planet just 10ls on the other side of the main star?
There also the already stated concern regarding material requirements and the influence on possible ship builds.

Oh, I expect a whole new road to riches by doing the new detailed surface scans for all the already discovered/listed ELWs inside and outside the bubble.
And I will miss the systems where a previous "surveyor" only scanned a single WW for 300k, but "ignored" the three terraformable HMCs on the way to it

 

[gooddoc]

Just trying to wrap my head around this part......

"...The system scan now returns an aggregated display of how energetic the electromagnetic emissions are in the system. Signals are sorted on a low to high scale by their apparent energy. For example, emissions from rocky clusters will appear at the lower end of the scale, hot gas giants at the upper range. This information requires some interpretation as signals can overlap.

You are able to tune the focus of your sensors to a particular point on the scale, making emissions from objects at this range much clearer, at the cost of filtering out signals returned from bodies not emitting at this range.

As you move the view around, you are aiming your discovery scanner sensors. To aid you, the discovery scanner view also features a repeating sweep of gravitational disturbance detected in the system. You can use this sweep to narrow your search for stellar bodies, as well as start your search around the star's orbital plane, which is revealed by the initial system scan.

Emissions that come close enough to your view’s focus are represented by signature patterns around a central reticule. If you are tuned to the correct point on the energy scale the signal will show as a symmetrical pattern clearly showing the direction towards the origin of the signal, allowing you to locate it. The further away your energy tuning, the more distorted and asymmetrical the pattern becomes, hiding the precise direction and location.

Once you have a candidate origin, you can use the scanner to reconstruct a massively zoomed in view. If you aimed precisely enough, you will discover the stellar body. If there are a number of stellar bodies in relative close proximity to your focus, you may need to repeat the process to isolate individual signals...."

Am I correct in my assumption that I would have to 'fine tune' this sensor for EACH different type of Planet in a system?

e.g. A system contains 2 ELW, 1 Ammonia, 1 WW, 4 Gas Giants (lets assume that each different type doesn't have it's own 'tune' frequency) 10 HMC's & 50 Ice Worlds.

Do I then have to scan the system 6 times using 6 different fine tune settings, in order to find the precise location of each?

 

[gpcustoms]

Now thats something I can't wait to get my hands on gang[yesnod]