Newcomer / Intro Exploration: I had forgotten the reality

[HurstLlama]

What with one thing and another it has been a very long time since I had been out in the black. The FSS was not even a gleam in the developers eye the last time I went out. So I thought I'd have a change from my usual trucking/trading and playing with the BGS. Having fixed my self up with a nicely upgraded DBX I chose a direction at random and set off to go where no man has gone before.

After three evenings game play I am still a long way from virgin space but I have remembered the fundamental reality of exploring - it is bloody boring. Each to their own, of course, but I post this here as a warning to new pilots. If and only if you enjoy doing simple repetitive tasks hundreds, nay thousands of times, over and over again with little or no relief should you take up exploring. Remember too that you have to come back again. Once you reach your goal in space (or the edges of your sanity) you then have to go through it all again to get back to civilisation.

So beware young padawan pilot it takes a special kind of person who can enjoy exploration.

 

[Factabulous]

Uh huh. Seems you are doing it wrong. nvm, back to the BGS with you!

 

[marx]

If and only if you enjoy doing simple repetitive tasks hundreds, nay thousands of times, over and over again with little or no relief should you take up exploring.

I'm curious about your feedback: do you mean the FSS, or having to jump lots of times, or both? (Then there's the DSS as well, I suppose.)

 

[LeSamzer]

Exploration is a very personal thing, some people love it, some hate it.
I often explore to get away from it all and chill, and sometimes there are actually cool things out there.
Oh and also, lotsa money.

 

[Para Handy]

I think to do long-range exploration trips you would get frustrated if it was you only account. You have to be in the right mood for hunting down stuff like biologicals, NSP etc. So I for example have an account that is out still from the DW2 expedition but it maybe only gets one day a week, other accounts in the bubble for other stuff.

One thing though - I'd never take an Anaconda out in the black again, the wallowing about in s/c to DSS planets is terribly frustrating.

 

[Para Handy]

I should have mentioned this above but...

If you have some HCS voicepacks installed then you can have crew interactions, rotating the crew for even more variety and of course wondering when the Ship's Parrot is going to swear at you next. HCS voicepacks certainly make exploration more engaging and I think I'd have gone loopy* by Beagle Point without them.

(* - Okay - more loopy. )

 

[Sapyx]

There are people who spend their entire real-world lives sitting over a pool of gravel, carefully sifting through it. A neutral observer might consider such a task as being deadly boring, and for the most part it indeed is. But they're not searching for gravel, they're searching for gold, or gemstones, or fossils, or some other treasure of the earth. And for the people who live this lifestyle, that moment of finding that rare stone or nugget, is worth the weeks of tediously finding nothing.

Exploration in ED is much the same. Hours, days, even weeks of "nothing but gravel". Then you find a gem, that makes it all worthwhile.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

What with one thing and another it has been a very long time since I had been out in the black. The FSS was not even a gleam in the developers eye the last time I went out. So I thought I'd have a change from my usual trucking/trading and playing with the BGS. Having fixed my self up with a nicely upgraded DBX I chose a direction at random and set off to go where no man has gone before.

After three evenings game play I am still a long way from virgin space but I have remembered the fundamental reality of exploring - it is bloody boring. Each to their own, of course, but I post this here as a warning to new pilots. If and only if you enjoy doing simple repetitive tasks hundreds, nay thousands of times, over and over again with little or no relief should you take up exploring. Remember too that you have to come back again. Once you reach your goal in space (or the edges of your sanity) you then have to go through it all again to get back to civilisation.

So beware young padawan pilot it takes a special kind of person who can enjoy exploration.

One man's meat...

Edit. Incidentally, there is virgin territory about 20x65ly jumps from the bubble. If you know which direction to go in...

 

[Para Handy]

.........
Edit. Incidentally, there is virgin territory about 20x65ly jumps from the bubble. If you know which direction to go in...

The distance to virgin systems is naturally increasing but on one of my alt accounts I hit a completely undiscovered system less than 900ly from Sol. So there are still gaps even close by.

 

[HurstLlama]

Uh huh. Seems you are doing it wrong. nvm, back to the BGS with you!

I am more than happy to accept that I am doing exploration wrong but I 'll be damned if I can see what I should be doing. One arrives in a system, honk to get the number of bodies and find the orbit line. Then use the FSS scanning the celestial bodies and signals. Finally go to the interesting looking planets and map them with the surface scanner. Go to next system and repeat. What am I missing?

In last evening's gaming session I spent about an hour sorting out a 21 body system at the end of which I asked my self what comes next. The answer, of course, was to go and do the same in another system. Probably for at least another fortnight, the prospect is so exciting that I am tempted to clear my save or at least set up another account, al la Mr. Handy.

There is also of the real discovery that I did make last evening - the game lies like a hairy egg. I was using the surface scanner to map a ringed gas giant and I had got about 50% according to the meter in the bottom left hand of the screen when I accidentally sent a probe into the ring. I immediately got the mapping completed successfully message. Of course, I had not finished the game was just telling me lies. This bugette is repeatable and mildly annoying.

 

[Factabulous]

I am more than happy to accept that I am doing exploration wrong but I 'll be damned if I can see what I should be doing. One arrives in a system, honk to get the number of bodies and find the orbit line. Then use the FSS scanning the celestial bodies and signals. Finally go to the interesting looking planets and map them with the surface scanner. Go to next system and repeat. What am I missing?

In last evening's gaming session I spent about an hour sorting out a 21 body system at the end of which I asked my self what comes next. The answer, of course, was to go and do the same in another system. Probably for at least another fortnight, the prospect is so exciting that I am tempted to clear my save or at least set up another account, al la Mr. Handy.

There is also of the real discovery that I did make last evening - the game lies like a hairy egg. I was using the surface scanner to map a ringed gas giant and I had got about 50% according to the meter in the bottom left hand of the screen when I accidentally sent a probe into the ring. I immediately got the mapping completed successfully message. Of course, I had not finished the game was just telling me lies. This bugette is repeatable and mildly annoying.

Have a goal.

Take ship X to place Y
Search for lifeform X where it hasn't been found
Search for lifeform Y that we don't know exists yet
Look for rare planet types given clues as to where it has been previously found
Visit all the DSSA carriers
Visit all the DSSA carriers in alphabetic order
Use your route to draw a picture on the galaxy
Search a nebula thoroughly for stuff
Go as far as you can to an extreme of the galaxy

Just as the game can be boring if you just wander around the bubble taking random missions from random factions then it can also be boring if you just wander around waving your FSS at planets.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Any aspect of the game can get boring if all you do is that one aspect.

 

[Zieman]

Of course, I had not finished the game was just telling me lies

Nope. The game just told you mapped the ring, discovering any hotspots in the process.

 

[HurstLlama]

Nope. The game just told you mapped the ring, discovering any hotspots in the process.

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you and my apologies to the game.

 

[MishaTX]

I am more than happy to accept that I am doing exploration wrong but I 'll be damned if I can see what I should be doing. One arrives in a system, honk to get the number of bodies and find the orbit line.

For one thing, if you can see the orbital plane after the honk, that almost always means that somebody's been there before you, because otherwise you'd see nothing until you've FSS'ed it. Doesn't mean that there's nothing of value in it, it just means that you're not the first.

 

[znôrt]

if you enjoy doing simple repetitive tasks

this is what the game sort of prompts you to do (e.g. the standard gameloop carrots: engineering, pp, cg, codex, etc). it's as lame as it can be, it's truly mobile level gameplay, and cheap at that.

the twist however is that this all happens inside a quite luxurious galaxy sized sandbox where you can do whatever you want. so, don't expect anything from frontier, you are your own driver, and you are your own limit. if at some point it becomes old, that's just natural, eventually happens with everything. let it rest a bit or just move on.

 

[marx]

In last evening's gaming session I spent about an hour sorting out a 21 body system

An hour? That's far too long. Let me guess: did you fly to and map with the DSS each and every body in the system? Otherwise, I fail to see how it could have taken anywhere near that long.

However, if a body doesn't have any POIs, then mapping it using the DSS will only give you more credits and a second tag. Nothing more to explore, and no new information either. Or ring hotspots if you're looking to mine. To be frank, I think it was a mistake that Frontier let players use the DSS on non-landable planets, but what's done is done.

 

[Para Handy]

.......
In last evening's gaming session I spent about an hour sorting out a 21 body system ......

Lordy, lordy - something wrong there. Did you map every body and sniff-out the types of surface features on each? You are not doing that supercruise assist nonsense and trying to DSS map as it orbits you around a body are you? I heard of someone doing that and thought they were joking.

 

[Para Handy]

For one thing, if you can see the orbital plane after the honk, that almost always means that somebody's been there before you, because otherwise you'd see nothing until you've FSS'ed it. .........

EDIT: I realised that you are probably talking about what you can see in the HUD - of course you are right. (sorry)


That is actually wrong. However, you can see the line showing the orbital plane when you open the FSS in a completely virgin system. It might be faint, but it is there. Sometimes the lines look confused in multiple-star systems but the orbital plane line is still there. See this image of a completely unexplored system out in the black, honked, opened FSS, nothing zoomed-in on, note the orbital plane line running diagonally down from left to right (only body resolved is obviously the star):

* Further Edit - I made that edit some hours ago but it seems to have disappeared so I have had to inert that correction again - never seen that happen before.

 

[HurstLlama]

Lordy, lordy - something wrong there. Did you map every body and sniff-out the types of surface features on each? You are not doing that supercruise assist nonsense and trying to DSS map as it orbits you around a body are you? I heard of someone doing that and thought they were joking.

Am I really that slow? With 21 bodies to find and classify on the FSS and then 6 of those (5 heavy metal worlds & 1 gas giant with water based life) to fly to and scan in detail, is an hour very slow? Please keep in mind I have only been at this new found exploration method for a week or so & I am much faster at the FSS than I was.