Exploration Borked From the Start...

[Fishy]

I'd have rather liked something along the lines of You can't Jump Straight to system without a Nav Beacon...
You have to take scanner measurements to a system without a beacon from 3 or 4 different systems spread out across different axis to get jump co-ordinates...then you can create an FSD jump...and place in a beacon in the new system...
It would have made the process of "pushing out" from the bubble slower...and created popular flyways linked by beacons that see traffic...and area's off the beaten track that explorers could revel in...
Also perhaps restricting the classes of stars that could be scooped from the entire main sequence down to a smaller sub-set would have made it more difficult to just push off on long missions...made route planning more complex..perhaps necessitated setting up intermediate fuel caches in orbit etc etc...

Yeah, that would have been neat, but that ship has sailed. I also got surprised that Universal Cartographics wouldn't have previously explored systems data for sale. When i started the game and found that i could purchase system data, i assumed it was previously explored/sold data, but not, it's just naturally available bubble systems.

For the scooping, i'm a bit disappointed that it's star based. I get that it's the handiest system as you appear near it, but gas giants would have seemed a more natural and less dangerous fit. It will come of course, but had it been there from the start, scooping stars could have been implemented as a desperate last resort.

 

[Drax Reborn]

But as soon as you leave the bubble to uncharted systems, you need to plot manually. Would be interesting. Or tedious. Lol

It could have pros and cons.
Plotting manually could gain you XX% jump range increase, at the cost of higher fuel burn. But be harder to follow(wake scan takes longer).
So smugglers could plot obscure routes to their destinations.

On the other hand, established hyperspace routes would be really efficient. But you are easily followed.

I dunno though... not a game designer. Lol

This is what I dreamed exploration would be, back in the old days before Gamma.

 

[shreddog]

For the scooping, i'm a bit disappointed that it's star based. I get that it's the handiest system as you appear near it, but gas giants would have seemed a more natural and less dangerous fit. It will come of course, but had it been there from the start, scooping stars could have been implemented as a desperate last resort.

Indeed. I hate that we are dropped right on top of a fuel depot after each jump. It's just to convenient and easy.

Imagine instead exiting out of hyperspace in the pitch black outer edges of a solar system, with no data on the system other than star type. Your discovery scanner only giving vague information about possible planetoids locations. Will you find a suitable gas giant to scoop fuel from, or possible an icy asteroid field you can extract hydrogen from? Or will you risk the heat and gravity of the star to gain your precious fuel.

Oh yeah another boring thing Frontier decided on.. ships unaffected by gravity Making black holes the least dangerous thing imaginable. Eating a burger and french fries is more dangerous than sitting parked right on top of Sagittarius A.

 

[Allitnil]

While I thought the idea of being able to only explore slowly with each jump taking careful - and perhaps cooperative, for efficiency - work to even jump to an unexplored system sounded good at the time ... having seen how exploration has worked out I'm not so sure it was a good idea anyway.

Pretty much every system within 500 LY of Sol has been detail-scanned down to the last iceball. Most systems out to 1000 LY have been at least partly scanned. This is with exploration mechanics which encourage heading out much further, not scanning iceballs, and so on. If a new explorer wants to find something new, then it's not difficult to do so.

If every jump had been a challenge in its own right - and assuming this didn't materially affect the amount of time put into exploration - then by the end of the first six months everything practically reachable would have been. The first discovery bonus might be something new explorers would never stand a chance of seeing, reaching any nebula other than Pleiades would require a massive coordinated expedition, and the forums would be full of complaints about "why is this whole galaxy out there when we can't ever reach it?"

With the benefit of hindsight, what we have now - which allows for incremental addition of detail for what's in the systems but does not bar access to most of them - is I think probably the better option.

Whilst jumping to a never before visited system should present challenges, jumping to known systems should be easy, probably even easier than it is at present (*). That way, anyone could easily reach the edge of known space and then have as much chance as the most seasoned explorer of extending the boundaries. Like that, it wouldn't exclude anyone and all of us would continually have the chance to discover something truly new and maybe push back the boundary by a significant amount.

As it is, the galaxy is basically explored. Sure, only a tiny fraction of the systems have been visited, let alone fully scanned, but when considering areas rather than individual systems, pretty much the only parts of the galaxy yet to be visited are those small areas that have been permit restricted since the start. FDev are supposed to have a 10 year plan for ED and if that's true and exploration is to remain meaningful then we should still be a year or two away from even getting to Sag A*, let alone being able to do so in under 5.5 hours.

* - my own view is that jumping to unknown systems should require some form of preparation with no certainty of finding what you need to go further in your next system (a bit like gathering jumponium materials but nothing like so time consuming!) along with a really small jump range. But if you know the details of the target system then you could jump a significant distance to it (eg 50 LY) in any ship. Ship type wouldn't so much represent jump range as the amount of instruments you could carry to make jumping to unknown systems easier.

 

[Fishy]

Oh yeah another boring thing Frontier decided on.. ships unaffected by gravity Making black holes the least dangerous thing imaginable. Eating a burger and french fries is more dangerous than sitting parked right on top of Sagittarius A.

Haha. I still remember my first Neutron Star encounter in Frontier... You could generally go and loop around star by managing your vector and juggling with time compression, but this time round, i found myself suddenly watching my speed increasing out of control until my ship crashed into the star, leaving me with the view of the bright ball of death i was now compressed into.

 

[znôrt]

Unfortunately it's too late to change it.

not really, look:

It could be changed : Thargoid malware erase all known cartographic data.

but i agree. the community addresses this somehow through the effort of actually mapping the whole colossal thing, but it really doesn't capture the romantic notion of discovery.

what about this: make it just like surface scan. any unscanned system is invisible. you can have a deep scanner on your ship, much like your srv's, that gives you a general direction and signature. you fly there in sc (with top speed uncapped, maybe a special fsd?) and if you actually get close to a main star, scan it and bring the data back, anyone can jump to it and the whole system becomes accessible.

 

[shreddog]

* - my own view is that jumping to unknown systems should require some form of preparation with no certainty of finding what you need to go further in your next system (a bit like gathering jumponium materials but nothing like so time consuming!) along with a really small jump range. But if you know the details of the target system then you could jump a significant distance to it (eg 50 LY) in any ship. Ship type wouldn't so much represent jump range as the amount of instruments you could carry to make jumping to unknown systems easier.

Love this idea. This would have been perfect from the launch. With this, known exploration routes would be allot more meaningful to use and extremely important.

 

[Henkka77]

If you think its easy, by all means take a Sidewinder to the Beagle Point and back.
Another matter, i know, but i really wouldnt say exploration is easy..

 

[iain666]

Another matter, i know, but i really wouldnt say exploration is easy..

The challenges are different to what we may have been hoping for...

 

[bkrownd]

Personally I think the problem with exploration is that serial honk-scoop-jump pays credits. It should not. The Detailed Surface Scanner should live up to its name and require the explorer to go into low orbit around a planet for a few orbits to collect its "detailed" data. That kind of detailed up-close study is how the credits should be earned. More credits could be earned from sending down probes or doing surface or atmospheric exploration. Right now most "detailed" scans are finished while the planet is still a distant DOT, which is a sad joke. Exploration should be about going somewhere and taking the time to explore and experience it carefully and thoroughly, not just stamping "I Was Here" in the UC database and moving on to the next anonymous dot.

 

[koop26]

I think the way in which we travel is fine. Jumping, supercruise and all that. The problem to me is fuel scooping, oxygen, food etc. It's like starting an RPG and they decide to give you the best weapon in the game in the first 5 minutes. Fuel scooping is basically a cheat code. You snuggle a star and sing it sweet songs and jump to the next. Your ship is like "yeah that's literally all we need for you to survive this 60,000 ly trip, we can probably make hamburger and water out of this star plasma you sucked up".

It's nonsensical. Jumps need to double for most ships, explorers need to triple the jump distance. But you'll need to stop and hunt resources, whether it's extracting water vapor from a gas giant (new utility mount?), mine fuel and jump juice from asteroids, modules should start wearing down after 250 jumps with no station, and you'll need materials to keep them in top shape.

Ultimately the goal is to implement these types of functions while still keeping the time it takes to reach these areas the same as before. I don't think FD can regress things at this point. It'd be the same backlash WoW faced after removing flying from their expansion. Once you implement the quality of life mechanics, you can't take them away. It's just a missed opportunity.

 

[Borgkube]

There is nothing wrong with the exploration mechanic, it works just fine. The problem is that space is big and EMPTY. Frontier has created the Milky Way Galaxy of 2016, where we have yet to discover any alien microbes let alone civilizations. Can you imagine what Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Firefly would be like if the protagonists weren't tripping over alien races right and left. Pretty boring watching the Enterprise fly through space discovering one lifeless system after another. Frontier needs to remember that this is a game, it needs to be fun. Fun is having a busy galaxy full of other civilizations to discover not just mostly barren planets with only other commanders for company. There is nothing wrong with the way we explore, there just needs to be more to find out there.

 

[Krunchie]

...

Just think what will happen with exploration when we can land on ELW or other planets with atmosphere.

Oh, I know the answer to that one - my puny Core 2 Duo CPU will explode.

 

[Fishy]

There is nothing wrong with the exploration mechanic, it works just fine. The problem is that space is big and EMPTY. Frontier has created the Milky Way Galaxy of 2016, where we have yet to discover any alien microbes let alone civilizations. Can you imagine what Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Firefly would be like if the protagonists weren't tripping over alien races right and left. Pretty boring watching the Enterprise fly through space discovering one lifeless system after another. Frontier needs to remember that this is a game, it needs to be fun. Fun is having a busy galaxy full of other civilizations to discover not just mostly barren planets with only other commanders for company. There is nothing wrong with the way we explore, there just needs to be more to find out there.

I'll respectfully disagree with that. The galaxy should be pretty much empty, and the very very few non-empty areas should be there for a reason. I think Barnacles (so far) are hitting a perfect spot in terms of rarity. Sure, there won't be first discoveries for everybody. But that's what we got when the game went exclusively online. The last thing i'd want to see is alien cities and dinosaurs every second planet that for some reason nobody knew about despite ships taking you anywhere in the galaxy in a week at most.

The sightseeing is close to perfect (though i'd wish celestial bodies were not rendered with magical exposure and filtering, and that you'd have a range of colour filters to select from that'd be applied to the canopy) and planetary landings have expanded it tremendously (and should keep improving on it even in Horizons, with volcanism/cryovolcanism). The pretend-science part is very weak and could certainly be vastly improved upon. Regarding discoveries though, I'm happy with the needle in a haystack. Just like the pretend-science bit, I just wish hunting the needle was a bit more of an engaging process.

(and on an off-topic grumpy note, there's no aliens in Firefly, your Browncoat license is revoked as we speak and you're going to the special hell, grrrr)

 

[Howard o Pato]

Personally I think the problem with exploration is that serial honk-scoop-jump pays credits. It should not. The Detailed Surface Scanner should live up to its name and require the explorer to go into low orbit around a planet for a few orbits to collect its "detailed" data. That kind of detailed up-close study is how the credits should be earned. More credits could be earned from sending down probes or doing surface or atmospheric exploration. Right now most "detailed" scans are finished while the planet is still a distant DOT, which is a sad joke. Exploration should be about going somewhere and taking the time to explore and experience it carefully and thoroughly, not just stamping "I Was Here" in the UC database and moving on to the next anonymous dot.

quite agree with this.


Something that came to mind as I read all feedback. Every bubble has an easy access due to navbeacons etc. the data is there, easy to buy, easy to jump because of signaling nav.

But one thing can be easy to program (not sure) and rather improve the operating experience to unknown locations. Changing the way the Hyperspace junp is done. Currently we jump straight to the larger star of system, which in a way is what would be more obvious to happen. But, based on lack of information, and other random interference on the opening of a warp. The jump to unknown locations could put in randomly anywhere in the system, from near the gas giants, or away from it all, but within the site map, or in a more random accident yet, the jump does not lead anywhere, leaving the ship in the gap between two systems, forcing them to start a new jump.
All this would make the commanders, reserved an extra amount of gasoline, or jump into smaller distances to approach the target. In addition to give you a system operating time in case you have to get around to the star to refuel and get the main data system. allowing each to have a local operating experience, would cause the commander to stay in place for longer, and not just jump from star to star.

And a new mechanical jumping calculation approach, as the coordinate manual placement or the example I mentioned in a previous post as some mini-game model that can facilitate alignment of star and minimize those random errors.

 

[Varrag]

If I were to decide, the way we are exploring and moving through the galaxy would have been played out very differently. For example, going anywhere outside of the bubble (where there are no nav beacons, basically) should require from us to discover and actually work on pinpointing hyperspace routes; risk of misjumps and other failures included. Once/if we succeed, new route would be then shared via UC so that everyone else can use it easily afterwards. And that's just something to begin with...

Back in the days when DDF was a thing, some very nicely conceptualized mechanics were on table, but at this point it's pretty safe to say it's all history.