Could Frontier please demonstrate how to use the FSS enjoyably?

[Rampant]

The FSS is the curates egg.

For an explorer, out in the great yonder, the FSS is Good - in part.

My Exploring "work-cycle" is based around the following sequence:

1. Charge FSD to next system in route
[2. Write down the name of the system and star class of next body in my exploration log during FSD charging and maybe fill in some extra detail of system just left while in witchspace.]
3. Arrive in new system - line up for next jump and surf the corona to scoop, retaining full throttle and pressing Honk.
4. When lined up safely surfing/scooping and Honk is complete, mentally note number of bodies, stay full throttle: open system map, check whether visited, check number of stars and star classes.
5. Close system map - Check left panel for Signal Sources.
[6. Write down number of stars and number of other system bodies, and write down the other star classes, tick if not tagged.]
7. Once scooped and just clear of corona, Open FSS
8. Check FSS for bodies of interest:
IF none, close FSS; GOTO #1 (charge FSD for next jump).
ELSE, explore bodies of interest, up to full system scan to resolve any GEO (and BIO) signals, [writing down details in journal] prior to closing FSS and visiting each signal body for DSS and landing on.. then composition scanning GEO and BIO [and writing down the details in the journal...], (and filling up on any worthwhile mats); GOTO #1

The technique I use to resolve GEO and BIO is to zoom into the body, and check if the scan resolves to NONE within 2 sec. If not, take a mental note of the body, move onto the next body and at some point later while still in the FSS, go back to that noted body to see what secrets lie awaiting... there's no need to wait for 30 sec on each body - your FSS can conduct concurrent activity to cut the waiting time and boredom factor.


The way I see it is that, for an explorer the whole jump; scoop; honk/ jump; scoop; honk/ jump; scoop; honk/ would get pretty tiresome if there was no other activity to break that cycle up.
The other point to note is that BIO signals are pretty rare such that you actually never know if you are going to find any or not, so when the FSS reveals that BIOLOGICAL is present, that moment of success is the reward for all the effort invested.

Sometimes, I'm on an express leg, and don't scan the FSS unless there are WW, ELW or AW present. Staying in the FSS is the best way to slow progress when simply "travelling".
Sometimes, I'm on a go-slow and using economical jumps and only travelling between O,B,A,F,W,Non-sequence,Proto, and fully explore most systems in the FSS... ie. "exploring".


For what it is supposed to do, I reckon it's a fairly decent stab at something workable and still holds interest.
(For sure, I'd change a few minor things, mechanically, but overall, it's still fairly decent at its intended function)

Yours Aye

Mark H

 

[biot]

I enjoy the FSS too. I scanned over 45k bodies on the way to Beagle and back. One technique I used was after the initial honk to fly perpendicular to the orbital plane before dropping into the FSS. This had two benefits - it reduced the possibility of obscuring a body behind the main sun. The perspective also allowed to get a sense of how the system was laid out around the sun - you are looking down onto the layers of the onion so to speak. You get a better sense of the regions where the high metals and gas giants etc are probably hanging out. Of course in multi stellar systems that have distant secondary stars you can't make much of how stuff is laid out around those stars, but I guess you can't have it all

The technique I use to resolve GEO and BIO is to zoom into the body, and check if the scan resolves to NONE within 2 sec. If not, take a mental note of the body, move onto the next body and at some point later while still in the FSS, go back to that noted body to see what secrets lie awaiting... there's no need to wait for 30 sec on each body - your FSS can conduct concurrent activity to cut the waiting time and boredom factor.

This is what I did too, rather than stare at the spinning wheel (hexagon?)

 

[IndigoWyrd]

What a beautiful strawman you've constructed.

Since I find the FSS to be overly simplistic I've replaced it for body discovery with parallax searching, which involves a lot more effort to both locate the bodies and resolve them. But yeah, I'M the one who's lazy.

Scared the crow out of you, didn’t it?

Though I must ask, if the FSS is over-simplistic, what was the ADS?

I find 3 distinct groups of players in Elite:

1. Those who just play the game. They use what tools we have, sometimes make suggestions on how they could be improved, and go about their lives.

2. Those Who Want the Game to Play For Them. Everything is a grind, too hard, they only get 10 minutes of computer time a month, whine endlessly and are not taken seriously by anyone because listening to them is the real grind.

3. Those Who Must Suffer. Mostly Brits, largely opinionated, quote things they’ve read on other sites constantly, and find everything to be far too easy and invent new ways to compound their misery by making even the simplest concepts into Rube Goldberg inspired torture-devices. They’ll fly circles around a station for at least two hours, “because real air/space traffic would have holding patterns, don’t you know. It says so on reddit, and I have a fake meme about it too.” They’re almost as hard as #2 to take seriously, but must be watched, because they won’t be satisfied until nothing is fun for anyone.

 

[Riverside]

Scared the crow out of you, didn’t it?

Though I must ask, if the FSS is over-simplistic, what was the ADS?

I find 3 distinct groups of players in Elite:

1. Those who just play the game. They use what tools we have, sometimes make suggestions on how they could be improved, and go about their lives.

2. Those Who Want the Game to Play For Them. Everything is a grind, too hard, they only get 10 minutes of computer time a month, whine endlessly and are not taken seriously by anyone because listening to them is the real grind.

3. Those Who Must Suffer. Mostly Brits, largely opinionated, quote things they’ve read on other sites constantly, and find everything to be far too easy and invent new ways to compound their misery by making even the simplest concepts into Rube Goldberg inspired torture-devices. They’ll fly circles around a station for at least two hours, “because real air/space traffic would have holding patterns, don’t you know. It says so on reddit, and I have a fake meme about it too.” They’re almost as hard as #2 to take seriously, but must be watched, because they won’t be satisfied until nothing is fun for anyone.

The meta for the old discovery process wasn't to just scan everything as quickly as possible, it was to identify & prioritise targets.

What do you enjoy about the new process?

 

[John Guevara]

The meta for the old discovery process wasn't to just scan everything as quickly as possible, it was to identify & prioritise targets.

What do you enjoy about the new process?

In the old way, I just flew the required distance to the planet to scan and fly to the next one. NOW I see (in zoom mode) the true beauty of some planets / gas giants and this animates me to fly closer and take some nice screenshots.

 

[Riverside]

I can't tell how to enjoy the FSS (just that I do) but I highly recommend getting used to it as more and more functionality is getting covert by the FSS now. Mission USS'es for instance are very easy to find now, look for an orange circle in the FSS view... It's not a tool exclusively for exploring and apparently not the right tool for postcard explorers.

For missions the FSS is unreliable, scanning the nav beacon is quicker unless you get lucky (I usually quickly check the FSS & if the target isn't immediately apparent I just go for the nav beacon). There is a choice at least. For exploration there is not a viable alternative.

Perhaps you could describe how you enjoy the FSS, or make it enjoyable?

 

[Winterwalker]

I can't tell how to enjoy the FSS (just that I do) but I highly recommend getting used to it as more and more functionality is getting covert by the FSS now. Mission USS'es for instance are very easy to find now, look for an orange circle in the FSS view... It's not a tool exclusively for exploring and apparently not the right tool for postcard explorers.

I think there might be an improvement possible for USS's because in high pop areas it can be tough to keep up with all the new spawning ones. If resolving one of them resolved them all (like resolving asteroid belts seems to, for me anyway) that might be cool? But I also like the FSS in general. In my case because it's all futuristic and stuff like innit. Some might not call this a good argument but it's my opinion, as for me it works like instrumentation and if you care enough to get (well) paid for the cartographics you should probably care enough to know what you surveyed. I pay more attention to the discoveries, and spot more oddities, than I used to.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Scared the crow out of you, didn’t it?

Though I must ask, if the FSS is over-simplistic, what was the ADS?

I find 3 distinct groups of players in Elite:

1. Those who just play the game. They use what tools we have, sometimes make suggestions on how they could be improved, and go about their lives.

2. Those Who Want the Game to Play For Them. Everything is a grind, too hard, they only get 10 minutes of computer time a month, whine endlessly and are not taken seriously by anyone because listening to them is the real grind.

3. Those Who Must Suffer. Mostly Brits, largely opinionated, quote things they’ve read on other sites constantly, and find everything to be far too easy and invent new ways to compound their misery by making even the simplest concepts into Rube Goldberg inspired torture-devices. They’ll fly circles around a station for at least two hours, “because real air/space traffic would have holding patterns, don’t you know. It says so on reddit, and I have a fake meme about it too.” They’re almost as hard as #2 to take seriously, but must be watched, because they won’t be satisfied until nothing is fun for anyone.

The ADS was simplistic too, but at least you had to fly around the system to explore stuff. I can't get any enjoyment out of pressing the zoom in and zoom out buttons over and over again.

As for your pigeonholing of players, it's clear that FDev catered to category 2 with the FSS implementation. It's just a shame they didn't leave the old tools in place for category 1.

 

[Riverside]

In the old way, I just flew the required distance to the planet to scan and fly to the next one. NOW I see (in zoom mode) the true beauty of some planets / gas giants and this animates me to fly closer and take some nice screenshots.

That exact statement works the other way (old vs new) too

 

[John Guevara]

That exact statement works the other way (old vs new) too

My statement works for me just as I wrote it. In the old way you first had to fly closer to discover.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

A game you actually have to play? Hell no, where's the entertainment?
pssst... rumors are that netflix is going to start an anti-FSS campain as it's too bad for their business...

Surely playing a spaceship game would involve flying your spaceship? The FSS was designed explicitly to remove that 'grind'.

 

[marx]

Though I must ask, if the FSS is over-simplistic, what was the ADS?

The FSS is bad, and the ADS was also bad. Frontier could do better than either of them.

For the record, I mean the FSS as the interface and its gameplay. The auto-scanner is good, and I quite like the parallax suggestion, but that's not a part of the FSS. It's the same as how scanning a nav beacon to find all the signal sources in the system (great for hunting HGEs) is a mechanic that allows side-stepping the FSS.

 

[Jukelo]

Nonsense.

Ah yes, tell us more about how we are somehow wrong to like the things we like.

Well, I very much enjoy the FSS as well.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Your statement makes me wonder if you actually used the ADS to find something.

Perhaps you could have a go at answering the OP's question on Frontier's behalf with a video or description of what you enjoy about it? I like the benefit of being able to scan at a distance but it seems like a repetitive, disjointed chore to me.

I did. Pre-FSS I have a number of First Discoveries to my name, mostly in Guardian Space. However, since the advent of the FSS, I have been exploring pretty much non-stop. I departed Shinrarta on patch release day, set a course for the edge of the galaxy and have been circumnavigating ever since.

How about, instead of a video, a rather well-liked thread link: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...to-use-the-fss-enjoyably.514074/#post-7837346

I think this should spell out what there is to like and why I like it, but if not...

The ADS gave an instant snapshot of an entire system. If you wanted the details of any given planet you had to fly, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes, many times, much, much further. If, in a spacious binary system, the nearest planet orbiting the secondary star was 306,292 light seconds away from entry, that meant a long flight to scan a featureless ball of rock. You could wrack up hours of very pointless flying from planet to planet, especially when distant planets has opposing orbits. To find what?

That was another problem. The Detailed Surface Scanner gave us no details about the surface. Composition, sure. Loads of nerd data, sure. But surface data? None.

If you had cause to suspect something MIGHT be down there, you’d find yourself flying low and slow for hours upon hours hoping to spot by eye a geyser or cluster of brain trees, or anything, and you could still miss it.

The upgraded DSS remedies that.

The FSS gives us something to actually do, not just honk and be done. Activity always beats a lack of activity.

Old ADS+DSS Exploration was “Watch lots of Netflix while holding trigger 2”.

New FSS+DSS is actually looking at the screen, being involved in the process.

 

[Winterwalker]

The ADS was simplistic too, but at least you had to fly around the system to explore stuff. I can't get any enjoyment out of pressing the zoom in and zoom out buttons over and over again.

If you want to do that then drop some probes? Mapping planets is surely the new 'fly about to discover stuff'. Being able to discover whole planets from a distance is definitely an improvement for me, as what's happened is the scale of the discoveries got smaller; You still need to get up close to really explore and find surface features but that works for me.

 

[Enderby]

Ah yes, tell us more about how we are somehow wrong to like the things we like.

Well, I very much enjoy the FSS as well.

Not wrong. Don’t be too hard on yourselves.

Just confused.

heeeey

 

[IndigoWyrd]

The ADS was simplistic too, but at least you had to fly around the system to explore stuff. I can't get any enjoyment out of pressing the zoom in and zoom out buttons over and over again.

As for your pigeonholing of players, it's clear that FDev catered to category 2 with the FSS implementation. It's just a shame they didn't leave the old tools in place for category 1.

Which makes you a #3.

And guess what, it’s OK. Labels and categories are not the horrible, evil things you’ve been lied to about your whole life. Humans have and will continue to label and categorize things as long as either exist. It’s what we do. Even all the “different like everyone else” kids do it, and don’t even know it. Now can we get back to glorifying the FSS now?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Here's a challenge. Find someone inside frontier, familiar with the fss, that goes home and plays elite in anticipation of using the fss to go exploring or find signal sources. Get them to come on stream, and use it over an extended period, sharing insights about what they're enjoying about the experience, and critically what they're thinking thoughout its use. Ever since its launch, i can't do it, and i've tried seriously... i'm very fond of elite, and all i've ever wanted to do was make it work.

I just watched Paiges live stream, and for the first time in history saw someone at frontier use the fss is a non dismissive way. How she used it was closer to how i try to use it, as when trying the way Will demonstrates I almost quit the game. But im genuinely lost on how that experience can be used enjoyably for longer exploration trips.

Just in case, avoiding another type of gameplay does not count as enjoyment to me. That's fools gold there.

Please help, and thankyou. A demonstration of 2-3 systems in sequence is all i need help with.

I open the FSS and look at the signitures first (I think these should appear in analysis mode after a honk). I see if there is potential of something interesting in a system.

I concentrate on gas giants as these are the places where strange orbits are located. After that, I check binarys for close binaries. Its not the basic using that makes it fun, its the anticipation, its the information you can get, its whether you will get to find a planetary anomolie, finding bizarre orbit lines of the planets, finding things for myself. That is what makes it fun for me.

Also the break of the monotamy of jump, scoop, honk is good too.

The mechanic on it's own is bland, like nearly every other mechanic in every game ever made. What makes it insteresting is what you can discover from the mechanic and what it shows you. That makes it fun for me. Obviously that is impossiible to show on a video screen.

I think what most people do that don't like it, is smash through it as quickly as possible to get to the system map. Unforuntatly for them, they miss out on a lot as they are not actually looking at the results of what they have found until afterward.

There loss and choice at the end of the day.

I enjoy using the FSS. Others will enjoy it for completely different reasons to me. Others will have completely different styles to me. I have found a way to enjoy it. I hope you do to.

 

[m0rl0ck]

Here's a challenge. Find someone inside frontier, familiar with the fss, that goes home and plays elite in anticipation of using the fss to go exploring or find signal sources. Get them to come on stream, and use it over an extended period, sharing insights about what they're enjoying about the experience, and critically what they're thinking thoughout its use. Ever since its launch, i can't do it, and i've tried seriously... i'm very fond of elite, and all i've ever wanted to do was make it work.

I just watched Paiges live stream, and for the first time in history saw someone at frontier use the fss is a non dismissive way. How she used it was closer to how i try to use it, as when trying the way Will demonstrates I almost quit the game. But im genuinely lost on how that experience can be used enjoyably for longer exploration trips.

Just in case, avoiding another type of gameplay does not count as enjoyment to me. That's fools gold there.

Please help, and thankyou. A demonstration of 2-3 systems in sequence is all i need help with.

Its not the same caliber of travesty as the engineers, but its pretty irritating. I try to avoid using it myself.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Which makes you a #3.

And guess what, it’s OK. Labels and categories are not the horrible, evil things you’ve been lied to about your whole life. Humans have and will continue to label and categorize things as long as either exist. It’s what we do. Even all the “different like everyone else” kids do it, and don’t even know it. Now can we get back to glorifying the FSS now?

I'm totally a category 1:
Using the tools available? See my description of how I play (post #2, I think) using ALL the tools available, not just the FSS.
Making suggestions to improve things? I've suggested an optional ADS, and I'd also rather like to be able to fit cameras to utility mounts, so I can improve my ability to spot bodies using parallax

So yeah, totally Cat 1.

The only part of Cat 3 that I actually fit is that I'm mostly Brit.