I'm not sure if this belongs here or whether I should file a bug report because it seems the game designers are horribly broken!
The following is a bit lengthy. Skip to the end for the suggestion.
Before everything got messed up, I used to occasionally just fly somewhere, then somewhere else, and explore the systems I passed through. So I would enter a system, immediately head for the star and while refueling do a honk scan. After refueling I would direct the ship to the next system and while flying away from the star my engines cooled and I had time to look at the system map to see if there was something worth my attention. If there was an interesting planet, I would fly there and scan that thing.
And then there was an update. Now, I enter a system (which looks better than before), head right for the star to refuel and have to do a honk scan, which reveals the "orbital plane" but no planets? I am no astrophysicist but how can a device detect orbits while not detecting the things which are in orbit? It should rather detect the planets (or nothing at all) without orbits. All this while I am pestered with 27 messages that I have discovered a belt cluster. ONE AFTER ANOTHER?!
Anyway, after detecting nothing of value, I have to move away from the star to not get roasted and then come to a grinding halt. In the middle of nowhere. In an anarchy system! To fire up some sort of space tetris?! I am then burdened to use that thing. I have to tune some fantasy dial (which is a pain to use) and then point and click to discover a planet. Rinse and repeat until everything is discovered. Sounds like a simple search algorithm to me, which could be programmed by a child. If so, I only had to press a button and all is discovered without wasting my time. Oh! Wait! That's what we had, isn't it?
But maybe that is just the way I did it. And maybe I did it wrong all the years. Maybe I should view the matter a bit more impartial. In a game people want to have fun and do things they can't (or shouldn't) do in the real world. So, people start a game and become leaders of civilisations or go on a killing spree to murder other characters in the most horrible way possible. So, let's look at ED: There is a huge virtual galaxy you can fly around in your own personal spaceship! "How cool is that?", I thought and bought the game several years ago. Only to see (now), that I have to park the spaceship right next to a star and have to use a scanner instead of actually travelling somewhere.
If I wanted to use a telescope (however fancy), I'd use my bloody telescope. I don't need a game for this. And maybe it's not clear enough by now: I actually like flying to each and every planet but I can't do that without your telescope simulation game.
"There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble to point out the faults in a ... game, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind of person!"
And indeed, only a small change would fix this mess. If the discovery scanner temporarily (until you leave the system) revealed all the astronomical bodies in a system (as before but without reward or any additional information), most players should be satisfied:
- The lazy people would still have to use the fancy telescope in order to permanently and properly discover a thing and get money,
- people not interested in exploration (maybe they went to an undiscovered system because ... reasons), will quickly find their destination and
- the real explorers could use that information, don't have to be bothered by yet another thing to do and could fly straight to the planets they are interested in.
That way everyone could choose, which style they want to play when exploring. If I want to "waste" my time travelling to a planet, then please let me. It's mine to waste.
Cheers,
CMDR SLO
The following is a bit lengthy. Skip to the end for the suggestion.
Before everything got messed up, I used to occasionally just fly somewhere, then somewhere else, and explore the systems I passed through. So I would enter a system, immediately head for the star and while refueling do a honk scan. After refueling I would direct the ship to the next system and while flying away from the star my engines cooled and I had time to look at the system map to see if there was something worth my attention. If there was an interesting planet, I would fly there and scan that thing.
And then there was an update. Now, I enter a system (which looks better than before), head right for the star to refuel and have to do a honk scan, which reveals the "orbital plane" but no planets? I am no astrophysicist but how can a device detect orbits while not detecting the things which are in orbit? It should rather detect the planets (or nothing at all) without orbits. All this while I am pestered with 27 messages that I have discovered a belt cluster. ONE AFTER ANOTHER?!
Anyway, after detecting nothing of value, I have to move away from the star to not get roasted and then come to a grinding halt. In the middle of nowhere. In an anarchy system! To fire up some sort of space tetris?! I am then burdened to use that thing. I have to tune some fantasy dial (which is a pain to use) and then point and click to discover a planet. Rinse and repeat until everything is discovered. Sounds like a simple search algorithm to me, which could be programmed by a child. If so, I only had to press a button and all is discovered without wasting my time. Oh! Wait! That's what we had, isn't it?
But maybe that is just the way I did it. And maybe I did it wrong all the years. Maybe I should view the matter a bit more impartial. In a game people want to have fun and do things they can't (or shouldn't) do in the real world. So, people start a game and become leaders of civilisations or go on a killing spree to murder other characters in the most horrible way possible. So, let's look at ED: There is a huge virtual galaxy you can fly around in your own personal spaceship! "How cool is that?", I thought and bought the game several years ago. Only to see (now), that I have to park the spaceship right next to a star and have to use a scanner instead of actually travelling somewhere.
If I wanted to use a telescope (however fancy), I'd use my bloody telescope. I don't need a game for this. And maybe it's not clear enough by now: I actually like flying to each and every planet but I can't do that without your telescope simulation game.
"There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble to point out the faults in a ... game, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind of person!"
And indeed, only a small change would fix this mess. If the discovery scanner temporarily (until you leave the system) revealed all the astronomical bodies in a system (as before but without reward or any additional information), most players should be satisfied:
- The lazy people would still have to use the fancy telescope in order to permanently and properly discover a thing and get money,
- people not interested in exploration (maybe they went to an undiscovered system because ... reasons), will quickly find their destination and
- the real explorers could use that information, don't have to be bothered by yet another thing to do and could fly straight to the planets they are interested in.
That way everyone could choose, which style they want to play when exploring. If I want to "waste" my time travelling to a planet, then please let me. It's mine to waste.
Cheers,
CMDR SLO