Looks pretty cool and I’m excited to fully scan some new bubble planets! Furthermore, multi crew exploration seems pretty fun, especially if you can sling probes at planets as you pass them. I hope it doesn’t take a crap ton of probes to fully explore a planet however, like 6-10 for planets without rings if you wrap them around well using gravity.
News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal
I couldn’t disagree anymore with your comments Cmdr...I can’t speak for the rest of the community, but I can state with some confidence that there is a large % of Cmdrs who don’t just want things easier or faster...on the contrary we have seen enough changes to the game in an effort to appease the instant gratification players. Elite is not supposed to be an arcade game or made easy with hand holding and insta win, no sir those gaming attributes are more suited to an arcade type game certainly not a space simulation . If you care to learn how to navigate to a poi, you’ll soon find it easy. If you take away this learning process you take away the heart of Elite . It needs to be hard, it needs to be dangerous
That’s my spin on it.
No. The actual playing the game meaning the actual playing the game: making decisions based on actionable knowledge and interaction with the core gameplay loop to whatever end interests you (and to avoid the ends that do not). Meaning, you're not stuck in an unavoidable process of rote following UI instructions that do not actually make the slightest bit of difference, all before you even get to the point where you can start making the kind of decisions that drive gameplay.
If you admit that you have no argument since you must immediately jump to fallacies to cover up this embarrassing shortfall, to the point where you can't even think of a good answer to the question. Ok? Ok.
So: not only is it not even remotely among the dumbest things you've head on the forums, but it is actually very very apt for what they've designed.
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That would be an appropriate analogy IF 99% of dungeons in LoZ contained nothing but a rabbit and two potatoes.
You're definitely not alone on that. Personally I agree with you, but some do have different definitions of what adds fun and complexity and what just adds time.
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I'm agreeing... complexity and challenging simulation is one of the the most interesting parts of ED. Hope ED get a lot more of complex features in the future.
Hi - this whole thing sounds pretty good and it'd be nice to have a more immersive and engaging experience whilst exploring.
One question - are you considering bringing out any new explorer-type ships? As a player who has amassed quite a lot of cash during my 4 years playing, I'd kinda like to splash out on a really good explorer ship. However, whereas I can invest hundreds of millions of credits in a top of the range Federal Corvette for fighting or Imperial Cutter for trading, the best ship for exploring seems to still be the Asp Explorer (engineered) and even fully kitted out those don't really cost more than 20 mil or so.
Any plans on having a more top-of-the-range option in the future for those that wish to explore in style?
One question - are you considering bringing out any new explorer-type ships? As a player who has amassed quite a lot of cash during my 4 years playing, I'd kinda like to splash out on a really good explorer ship. However, whereas I can invest hundreds of millions of credits in a top of the range Federal Corvette for fighting or Imperial Cutter for trading, the best ship for exploring seems to still be the Asp Explorer (engineered) and even fully kitted out those don't really cost more than 20 mil or so.
Any plans on having a more top-of-the-range option in the future for those that wish to explore in style?
Ahem
My sincere apologies for straying off the guidelines, it is however important that players with opposing views are heard , thanks for the reminder
I'm getting my exploring and mining in *now*.
Only after you've radio scanned all the bodies
Where have they said we need to scan every planet to see USSs?
Well, I'm late to all this, but I reckon these changes could be a welcome change to honk-and-fly exploration. That was only even meant to be a placeholder system anyway, and it's a shame it's stayed as it is for so long.
I get the all the concerns that we might have to spend longer messing about to get a sense of whether planets are worth exploring, and that the new system will just be adding time to something that is already time consuming in other ways, but I'm not entirely sure that'll be so.
Depending on how well it's implemented, the histogram you get from the initial honk should be enough for an experienced explorer to tell whether the system contains exploration gold or if it's just a bunch of ice planet tosh. The same should apply for USS's too - if they're interesting phenomena, then they should emit more juicy readings on the histogram. We can only wait and see if this is the case.
There is the issue of bodies that are out of range of the initial honk/scan too. We've all seen systems with a secondary 500,000ls away which will be out of range of the initial scan, and we won't know if they even exist to fly out to discover. I don't think this is a bad thing. I love the idea that relatively well travelled systems might contain secrets that everyone else has missed. I think that could actually add a lot of what is missing from exploration.
Incidentally, as any OG explorer will tell you, there was a time when there were no discovery scanners at all, and even when they first appeared in the game, the advanced scanner was fabulously expensive by the economic standards of the time (well, for a week or so anyway). So how did we know what was out there? How did we find planets in all that black nothing? We used the Parallax Method.
Basically, you rotate your ship slowly on its point and watch for any "stars" that move separately to the starfield. Anything that stand out is in the system. Sure, it takes a lot more time to find these distant bodies, but that's how it should be. You do get better at it, and you develop a intuition as to where to look in a lot of cases. It's as much about situational awareness as anything else, and understanding anomalies on distant known orbits will help, so there's skill there too.
Exploration should never have been a one-click job and I've always missed that dead-eye, skill-based way of finding things that others might have missed.
Exploration has been more of a test of endurance than any real kind of skill for far too long, which is a shame. It's been about how many jumps you can stand to do, how many times you can open and close your system map, and how many times you can hear the honk before you start gibbering in your cockpit against the backdrop of infinity. There has never been an element of skill, born out of experience, that could minimise that implacable requirement for managing tedium.
These changes could do that. Getting good at reading the histograms, building up your efficiency with the Parallax Method, and generally learning how to be an actual explorer and not just a button presser and map opener are things that I'm looking forward to. Exploration has been missing the skill requirement for far too long.
Of course all this depends on how well the new system has been implemented. Hopefully the beta will last long enough for meaningful feedback to iron out any kinks.
I get the all the concerns that we might have to spend longer messing about to get a sense of whether planets are worth exploring, and that the new system will just be adding time to something that is already time consuming in other ways, but I'm not entirely sure that'll be so.
Depending on how well it's implemented, the histogram you get from the initial honk should be enough for an experienced explorer to tell whether the system contains exploration gold or if it's just a bunch of ice planet tosh. The same should apply for USS's too - if they're interesting phenomena, then they should emit more juicy readings on the histogram. We can only wait and see if this is the case.
There is the issue of bodies that are out of range of the initial honk/scan too. We've all seen systems with a secondary 500,000ls away which will be out of range of the initial scan, and we won't know if they even exist to fly out to discover. I don't think this is a bad thing. I love the idea that relatively well travelled systems might contain secrets that everyone else has missed. I think that could actually add a lot of what is missing from exploration.
Incidentally, as any OG explorer will tell you, there was a time when there were no discovery scanners at all, and even when they first appeared in the game, the advanced scanner was fabulously expensive by the economic standards of the time (well, for a week or so anyway). So how did we know what was out there? How did we find planets in all that black nothing? We used the Parallax Method.
Basically, you rotate your ship slowly on its point and watch for any "stars" that move separately to the starfield. Anything that stand out is in the system. Sure, it takes a lot more time to find these distant bodies, but that's how it should be. You do get better at it, and you develop a intuition as to where to look in a lot of cases. It's as much about situational awareness as anything else, and understanding anomalies on distant known orbits will help, so there's skill there too.
Exploration should never have been a one-click job and I've always missed that dead-eye, skill-based way of finding things that others might have missed.
Exploration has been more of a test of endurance than any real kind of skill for far too long, which is a shame. It's been about how many jumps you can stand to do, how many times you can open and close your system map, and how many times you can hear the honk before you start gibbering in your cockpit against the backdrop of infinity. There has never been an element of skill, born out of experience, that could minimise that implacable requirement for managing tedium.
These changes could do that. Getting good at reading the histograms, building up your efficiency with the Parallax Method, and generally learning how to be an actual explorer and not just a button presser and map opener are things that I'm looking forward to. Exploration has been missing the skill requirement for far too long.
Of course all this depends on how well the new system has been implemented. Hopefully the beta will last long enough for meaningful feedback to iron out any kinks.
Yeah I remember parallax exploring. Worst 2 weeks in the game.
The dots! They move!
The dots! They move!
I didn't last that long. I think I did maybe five planets over a few systems before I went back to trading until I could afford an ADS. Don't think I've ever owned an intermediate scanner.
And yet... that's how REAL explorers do it.
I think you'll find that 'real explorers' use the ADS and complain about it
