Exploration - Could easily be 100x more fun

[Diabolicas]

I know this isn't a place for feature requests, so since I rarely ever have those answered in other forums, I figured I'd just see what the local community thought. This is just regarding exploration.

1.) Upgraded Deployable Exploration-Fighters - Mostly in VR, but when I first started exploring one of my favorite things was to just jump in a fighter and fly around while the mothership follows. With how maneuverable and fast they are, and the lack of worry of destruction, makes simply looking for important ground features so much fun.

That being said, once I would find one, I then had to go up and find the ship and dock...and then go and land, deploy the SRV since it had to be far away, and then go over so I can scan that bacteria cluster...Almost makes the latter not even worth it; which in turn...makes the former pointless.

Question - Wouldn't it be awesome if we could use a composition scanner, data-link, and possibly even land for on-foot exploration in one of the fighters? They could even keep it so there's no landing gear, and it just wears down the shield and eventually blows up if you don't return in time. Something to make it so the SRV is still viable, really. And, if you're collecting materials, it does still require the SRV.

That would make my planet exploring soooooo much more fun and rewarding...and make me think I have a chance of finding Raxxla

2.) Group Exploration - Please forgive me if this is the case, as I'm about to start exploring with my Nephew but have not started yet. But basically, I'm wondering about the 'first discovered' while in a group. Do we have to decide who goes first for each planet? Not only for money (which I don't care, but he will), but for the name stamped on the 'first discovered'? Will it be both of us, and if not...can it? Can there maybe be a special 'Exploration Group' feature so if we do discover something together, it's "The Johnsons" or whatever our group name might be? And maybe, split the profits 50/50 instead of adding 10% to the other person's purse? Anyway, please forgive me if I'm wrong about this.

3.) Change Color Scheme for DSS - I myself am red-green colorblind, which I'm told 20% of men are and I have yet to observe that in the real world. Anyway, from the videos I've watched, it's not only confusing for me but anyone that uses it. Can you please simplify this? I mean, if you're going to use colors, can you make it so I select 'fumaroles', it highlights the areas in BRIGHT NEON ORANGE or something...and then, the places they're less likely...be a dull gray? If it's meant to be a challenge, or to be tricky in some way, then maybe not use colors? I really don't know, and I know asking to acommodate the supposed '20%' would be difficult, but maybe even a display setting change or something. I don't know, just figured I'd throw that out there.

4.) More control with the SRV - OK, I get that the lack of gravity, and the surface material (whether it be ice etc) affects the control of the SRV, but I mean, really? I'll be 500m from the ship, pointed right towards it, 0 pips in engines, slowly get to half throttle and hit a rock...spin around 9 times, end up upside down and somehow 501m from my ship...It literally takes me 2 min sometimes to reach the ship, even 100m away.

Come on now, if 90% of the bodies I'm going to be on will be <1g, then why the heck is it not designed for such? Why can't I inflate the tires to be massive and run over these rocks on my way to the ship?

I get it, it's the same as if we took a side-by-side here from 2021, and dropped it on the moon with some sweet space-tires...Well, I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but this is over 1000 years in the future. I'm pretty sure the 'smart-terrain-monitoring with Danika Patrick style driving with lifesize hollogram - Class A Module' would've been installed a loooooong time ago...

Seriously, all the SRV is an air-tight, single person, 2021 dune buggy with some radar and guns. Let's get some year 3300 upgrades on this thing please?

5.) Add Some Crazy Stuff - Alright, now...this might be the most important when it comes to exploration. What we're dealing with in Elite: Dangerous is the Milky Way Galaxy, which as far as we can tell, is as old as the universe at 13.7B years old. Sol being 4.5B years old, and was created from the death of a much larger star in a previous system. What this means is that, as demonstrated by the Guardians, civilizations most likely have existed all over the place for billions of years!

BUT! What I want is for Frontier to just grab a group of 10 physicists/biologists or whatever the best combination would be, and really think about what we would find in a galaxy will potentially millions of civilizations that have made it and most likely died off in so many different ways. Give them a month to think of all kinds of ideas, and just throw 10 copies of those ideas all over the galaxy...For us to find.

How cool would it to be be discovering systems, and find an earth like system. We can't land on it, no problem (don't even care, really), but I just happen to pass it's moon and I see that it has a small settlement there. So I go to that settlement and land, go inside however I can, to find dead alien intelligent life...appears to have been dead for a loooong time...hard to tell due to space's preservation. But the last message from one of them is written on the floor next to their body, with drawings just depicting their civilization...and that they knew the asteroid coming was going to kill all life on the planet. Their last ditch effort to save their species was a quickly and poorly designed shuttle to the moon...where they didn't make it either...

Ok, so I may not have the most creative mind, but that's why I play video games by those who do! I want to see things that I didn't even think of, that don't have to do with the overall story or lore, but chances are would be what we would find if we could visit systems like we can here.

There are so many features in this game, and I absolutely love the level of realism. I've been playing since launch (with the Oculus DK2) and haven't stopped. This is my first time posting on the forums I believe, and will not even think about stopping playing if nothing changes. I enjoy almost every aspect of this game and will continue to play until all star systems are mapped...even if I have to do it myself.

o7 Commanders,

CMDR Diabolicas

 

[Diabolicas]

Or, you arrive at a planet where the entire 'earth-like world' is covered in a blanket of clouds...almost resembling Venus or Titan, but just a little different, and you're not sure why. As you approach this, rocky-ice based celestial body, your ship's temperature starts to rise. You were going down to investigate that "Gelogical [1]" you see, but as you enter orbital flight, your ship's temperature is now at 200%. You have no choice but to deploy some heatsinks and aim towards the escape vector.

But why? How is it possible that this planet is heating my ship more than the star just a few 100m miles away?

Oh, that's right...the immense radiation given off by a race who discovered the nature of fusion far earlier than they should have...

 

[Diabolicas]

Or, if you want to venture even further into the bizarre....

You're going along, doing your exploration and what-not, only to come across another earth-like planet. However, this time you can see lights on the night side and every sensor indicates a breathable, warm atmosphere welcoming life.

On your way there, you discover an 'unknown signal'...and it leads you to a space probe called "Venturer 2" with a golden record on it, and some drawings...

Well, now you have a choice as to make them aware of your presense, hide and observe, dominate and destroy or just leave them alone...Maybe make it a community goal to decide their fate...

If Odyssey was preparation for a much larger vision then I will take the steps as they come. Just please know that there's never a lack of desire for the possible yet extremely rare situations, to which E has virtually unlimited facits to exploit.

 

[ORANGEORANGE]

On group exploration you need to join a wing. Here's what you do:

1) Create a wing
2) Invite other player to wing.
3) Have other player join said wing.

4) Now you can explore. You both need to be in the same system (within ~30 seconds) in order to share data with each other. For example, if both of you guys are in a system and one guy scans an Earth-like World, then both of you will share the data. If one guy is in that system while the other person isn't you won't share the data. If you scan it and then the other guy comes in after you scan it, you won't share the data. The 30 second thing is not something you should worry about unless you want to share the star data, since you will automatically scan it when you jump a system now. You can always wait if you think there is an ELW on the FSS, but you can't wait to scan the star, so you would both need to jump into the system at the exact same time. It's annoying, but doable (see screenshot below)

5) You can also scan the planet using the DSS (probe launcher), in which case the same rules apply for sharing data.
6) If one person sells the data, both name tags will be applied, even if the other person hasn't sold the data yet. That other person must sell their data if they want the money reward for it, but if name tags are the only thing you want, that wouldn't be necessary and the 2nd person can sell at their own pace. In fact if one person dies and the other guy cashes in the data, both name tags will still be applied since you share the data. If both die though, then you both lost the data.

 

[varonica]

4.) More control with the SRV - OK, I get that the lack of gravity, and the surface material (whether it be ice etc) affects the control of the SRV, but I mean, really? I'll be 500m from the ship, pointed right towards it, 0 pips in engines, slowly get to half throttle and hit a rock...spin around 9 times, end up upside down and somehow 501m from my ship...It literally takes me 2 min sometimes to reach the ship, even 100m away.

The SRV is actually very controllable, first turn Drive Assist off, get used to using your rockets for jumping small rocks you can't avoid, drive around the big ones, use the throttle according to the surface conditions. You do realise that half throttle in the SRV is around 50-60kph so hitting something at that speed is of course going to bounce you around a bit, but there's no possible reason for ending up 500m away from your ship.

The rest of your post is merely content request and has been made many times. Thick atmospheric worlds haven't been implemented and how they treat those is up to FDEV, and everyone wants more stuff out there, but there's no argument that stands up for how much life is actually out there in the real galaxy. It's been argued by some scientists that human life is quite early in the existence of the universe, but all that aside, it's FDEV's game and I am sure they have a plan of some sort for future content, so we can suggest a lot, what happens is up to FDEV.

 

[Diabolicas]

The SRV is actually very controllable, first turn Drive Assist off, get used to using your rockets for jumping small rocks you can't avoid, drive around the big ones, use the throttle according to the surface conditions. You do realise that half throttle in the SRV is around 50-60kph so hitting something at that speed is of course going to bounce you around a bit, but there's no possible reason for ending up 500m away from your ship.

The rest of your post is merely content request and has been made many times. Thick atmospheric worlds haven't been implemented and how they treat those is up to FDEV, and everyone wants more stuff out there, but there's no argument that stands up for how much life is actually out there in the real galaxy. It's been argued by some scientists that human life is quite early in the existence of the universe, but all that aside, it's FDEV's game and I am sure they have a plan of some sort for future content, so we can suggest a lot, what happens is up to FDEV.

Yes, the SRV is controllable but my possibly over-exaggerated explanation was to the fact that I shouldn't have to try SO hard. I get the complications with regards to the physics, but the year 3300 should account for some software that aids in the driving of the SRV through rough terrain. I've been riding dirtbikes, 4 wheelers and custom buggies me whole life and I have PLENTY of experience controlling them.

Elite is taking the same equipment I have in RL right here, and putting them 1200 years into the future...there would be SO much software and everything to enable 0 problems, full throttle, towards destination A....disable a setting if you want it to be super crazy bouncing around stuff constantly, like a monkey with a computer...

 

[Diabolicas]

On group exploration you need to join a wing. Here's what you do:

1) Create a wing
2) Invite other player to wing.
3) Have other player join said wing.

4) Now you can explore. You both need to be in the same system (within ~30 seconds) in order to share data with each other. For example, if both of you guys are in a system and one guy scans an Earth-like World, then both of you will share the data. If one guy is in that system while the other person isn't you won't share the data. If you scan it and then the other guy comes in after you scan it, you won't share the data. The 30 second thing is not something you should worry about unless you want to share the star data, since you will automatically scan it when you jump a system now. You can always wait if you think there is an ELW on the FSS, but you can't wait to scan the star, so you would both need to jump into the system at the exact same time. It's annoying, but doable (see screenshot below)

5) You can also scan the planet using the DSS (probe launcher), in which case the same rules apply for sharing data.
6) If one person sells the data, both name tags will be applied, even if the other person hasn't sold the data yet. That other person must sell their data if they want the money reward for it, but if name tags are the only thing you want, that wouldn't be necessary and the 2nd person can sell at their own pace. In fact if one person dies and the other guy cashes in the data, both name tags will still be applied since you share the data. If both die though, then you both lost the data.

View attachment 259709

Thank you very much for clarifying that! As I said in my original post, I apologize if this a moot point. I just didn't have the time to research it before I posted it.

But thank you so much! That answers everything! I had never seen a 'two person' discovered system before.

Thank you again.

 

[Sapyx]

1. Paradox detected. You want flying around in the "exploration fighter" to be risk-free, which means telepresence. Yet you also suggest landing and hopping out of the fighter to walk around, which means you have to be physically in the fighter, whihc means it cannot be risk-free to fly it. I suppose you "can have both", if you are given a menu to choose telepresence or physical boarding of the fighter. But it will mean going to full rebuy if you crash your fighter in that mode.

2. Answered above.

3. I believe this was implemented, then de-implemented halfway through beta. Many requests for re-implementation have so far come to naught.

4. If you keep losing control of your SRV, then maybe... drive slower? As for more options for the SRV, consider adding your plea to implement different SRV types. I'd personally prefer a hovertank that simply flew over the rocks...

5. Here's the problem with "Adding crazy stuff": it has to be either hand-made, or procedurally-generated.

If they make it hand-made, then a whole bunch of people - artists, sound engineers, story-writers, programmers - need to put time and effort into creating the assets to be put into the game. If FDev are going to go to all that trouble (and expense), then they're going to want to make sure that players consume that content and find those assets in-game. That means they aren't just going to dump these things thousands of LY away in some random part of the galaxy, where no-one is ever likely to find them. They'll put flags, signposts, big neon signs pointing explorers to "GO LOOK THERE".

If on the other hand, they make it procedurally-generated, then there's a bleeding-edge-sharp dividing line between "making something so scarce there's a good chance no-one will find it, ever" and "making something that's so common, players will soon be saying "ho hum, another stupid ruined civilization monument, already seen 100 of those". Plus, of course, procedurally-generated would mean FD have no control over where such things would be placed. Adding such artifacts now would "cheat" anyone who had already explored those systems. Furthermore, if such things were super-rare, FD would have no way themselves of knowing where these items end up being placed - or even if the procedural-generator decided to place any at all.

As far as the Fermi Paradox is concerned - "If the galaxy is full of aliens, then where are they all?" - ED's answer is "The Thargoids were first in space, and destroy any low-tech aliens they encounter before they can become a threat". Only a couple of races - humans and Guardians, most recently - arise fast enough from stone age to interstellar superpower to have a chance at evading instant extinction. So most of your alien extinction stories would read the same: "We looked out the window and there were these big octagonal deathships in the sky, sterilizing everything".

 

[Orvidius]

For #3, something to keep in mind is that right now it's just "blue" vs "not blue", with the blue areas possibly containing the thing you're scanning for. How likely you are to find the geology/biology within those blue areas will vary, and it's no longer an actual heat map (it started out as a heat map during the Alpha test, then they simplified it). Maybe they'll improve this, but for now, as long as you can tell where the blue is, you have the same amount of information as anyone with full color vision.

I think the 20% figure for red/green color blindness probably refers to anyone with even a small deficiency in color differentiation. The severity is probably on a spectrum, and a lot of people don't even know they have it unless tested for it.

 

[Diabolicas]

1. Paradox detected. You want flying around in the "exploration fighter" to be risk-free, which means telepresence. Yet you also suggest landing and hopping out of the fighter to walk around, which means you have to be physically in the fighter, whihc means it cannot be risk-free to fly it. I suppose you "can have both", if you are given a menu to choose telepresence or physical boarding of the fighter. But it will mean going to full rebuy if you crash your fighter in that mode.

2. Answered above.

3. I believe this was implemented, then de-implemented halfway through beta. Many requests for re-implementation have so far come to naught.

4. If you keep losing control of your SRV, then maybe... drive slower? As for more options for the SRV, consider adding your plea to implement different SRV types. I'd personally prefer a hovertank that simply flew over the rocks...

5. Here's the problem with "Adding crazy stuff": it has to be either hand-made, or procedurally-generated.

If they make it hand-made, then a whole bunch of people - artists, sound engineers, story-writers, programmers - need to put time and effort into creating the assets to be put into the game. If FDev are going to go to all that trouble (and expense), then they're going to want to make sure that players consume that content and find those assets in-game. That means they aren't just going to dump these things thousands of LY away in some random part of the galaxy, where no-one is ever likely to find them. They'll put flags, signposts, big neon signs pointing explorers to "GO LOOK THERE".

If on the other hand, they make it procedurally-generated, then there's a bleeding-edge-sharp dividing line between "making something so scarce there's a good chance no-one will find it, ever" and "making something that's so common, players will soon be saying "ho hum, another stupid ruined civilization monument, already seen 100 of those". Plus, of course, procedurally-generated would mean FD have no control over where such things would be placed. Adding such artifacts now would "cheat" anyone who had already explored those systems. Furthermore, if such things were super-rare, FD would have no way themselves of knowing where these items end up being placed - or even if the procedural-generator decided to place any at all.

As far as the Fermi Paradox is concerned - "If the galaxy is full of aliens, then where are they all?" - ED's answer is "The Thargoids were first in space, and destroy any low-tech aliens they encounter before they can become a threat". Only a couple of races - humans and Guardians, most recently - arise fast enough from stone age to interstellar superpower to have a chance at evading instant extinction. So most of your alien extinction stories would read the same: "We looked out the window and there were these big octagonal deathships in the sky, sterilizing everything".

Thank you very much for your well thought out and detailed response.

First, your paradox is completely accurate and I feel dumb for not even thinking about that. However, it really was just a quick example of some way to incorporate the fighters into exploration. A custom one with data/composition scanners would be cool, but yeah...landable doesn't make sense. Maybe let us land tthe big ship with the fighter out? It just hovers 1km above or something and can't engage anything on the ground? I don't know.

And yeah, I know I can drive slower and make it, I was just again exaggerating. A hover version of it yes, perfect...just something to make it more usable in low gravity environments.

Now, in regards to the 'crazy stuff' you make very valid points. I do agree that putting a team together, which could use existing textures but certainly would break realism if they did, to generate this stuff in the off chance that someone might accidentally find it, could possibly be a large waste of money/resources. And yes, generating it procedurely doesn't make much sense either. But what about placing 100,000 of them out there temporarily until one of them are found, and then remove the rest...things like that can work around the 'not finding' aspect, meaning wasted work.

That last part about the Thargoids, I did not know, so thank you for informing me. It just seems like that even with the Thargoids intervening and destroying any intelligent life, there should still be a 'middle-ground' of some kind. I should find some 'Sputnik' type devices in orbit while I'm doing the surface scan, even if I'm scanning a now extinct planet. What about planets with runaway greenhouse caused by intelligent life? I want to find Venus with a small space station floating around it, etc. I feel like this isn't too much out of the realm of possibility, but there's also a ton I'm probably not considering.

Either way, thank you for the response, that helped quite a bit.

 

[Gut]

All i want is a space station and 2-5 planet economy , every 10kLy through out the galaxy . finding them all would take a while and economies could be different in each one .

 

[Diabolicas]

All i want is a space station and 2-5 planet economy , every 10kLy through out the galaxy . finding them all would take a while and economies could be different in each one .

Yeah, I don't know about that.

If these stations are human, then that means there's a CRAPLOAD of stations that are not sending back their location? Doesn't seem very likely. Alien based stations/economies? Obviously there's FAR too many problems with that to list, so I'll assume you meant the former.

--------------

To my original post, I have been listening/reading the stories throughout the Elite Milky Way, they have definitely put in a lot of effort without any crazy new textures, but definitely a lot of well-thought out scenarios, as well as wonderful voice acting for most of them.

From what I've read, there's been thousands of mega-ships sent out since a certain year? Does Frontier confirm that they're actually out there, and we can currently find them? Or are the 6 we know of, the only ones found? I'm not sure how much Frontier has commented about what there really is out there... Obviously, they can't reveal much.

BUT, if I knew that there were thousands of civilizations out there? Killed off in however many ways? Like I posted before? -- If you add that with a LARGE reward (materials would make the most sense) for finding it...I feel like we'd see 50% of the Elite population leave the bubble and start exploring, trying to find them. The story lines really wouldn't be that hard. You could even make it one race, (meaning same textures/models etc), sent out thousands of ships like we did...except, they were successful a TON of times....and each of those planets are the ones that had various stories/problems. I don't know, just think it would be cool.

 

[ENCHANTMEN]

I like the idea of deploying a smaller ship for exploration. I figure a special sidewinder that has no hyperdrive (but can still supercruise) would be cool and relatively easy to implement.

I'm mostly fine with the SRV, although it irks me that it can't turn in place. It seems to be loosely based off of the six-wheeled mars rovers, and the whole point of their wheel/suspension system was the ability to turn in place.

 

[CMDR Yates]

Yeah, I don't know about that.

If these stations are human, then that means there's a CRAPLOAD of stations that are not sending back their location? Doesn't seem very likely. Alien based stations/economies? Obviously there's FAR too many problems with that to list, so I'll assume you meant the former.

Not advocating either way for the OP's idea, but the body of fiction around the Elite games does include Rock Hermits; grizzled, stateless survivalists who live on the fringes and in the deep black, in small hollowed-out asteroids and far-flung moons, mostly withdrawn from mainstream civilisation and mainly just keeping to themselves.

I've often thought it would be cool to have them as a sort of barter-based shadow economy and as thinly-spread unmapped pit stops across the galaxy, where you uncover batches of locations from salvage data, tipoffs and from befriending other hermits. Sort of like the Engineers but thousands of them procedurally placed around the galaxy.

 

[cmdr chequers]

Elite seems to attract so many games designers