Currently the state of the Exploration is only neat and relaxing, unlike combat. You do not have to worry a whole bunch about an enemy or blowing something up before it blows you up! However, there is a general lack of content that COULD go into the Exploration aspects of this game. I love this game and I love exploring in games. Exploring is probably on my top things to do in games that allow me to do it, provided that it isn't just "sight Seeing" Although I feel as if the Exploration in this game is a lot of one button clicks, "Star gazing" for moving objects, and pointing your ship at things until they are scanned. For the purposes of getting this thread started, lets talk about the Discovery Scanner. While it may fool some that its just a clever "Inception Horn" to fool you into thinking this is a game about Inception, it is not, however, it could be so much more than just clicking your mouse button and waiting till its finished.
What changes could we do to this one specific thing? First of all the name its self when abbreviated by your HUD, D-Scanner. So with that one word in mind, another word clicks into mind, Directional Scanner. Although, the Discovery Scanner is NOT necessarily a Directional Scanner, what if we made it into one? Lets pretend you warp into a system. Lets call it HD 52. So you come out of Hyperspace in front of HD 52 and scan the star, like you always would. However, with this proposed "Directional Scanner" lets say that it works just like that and the direction is the cone on your radar screen. So say I move over to my Nav panel and theres a tab for the Directional Scanner when equipped. I can change things like distance and width of the cone. Increasing distance would give a decay in clarity. Sure, increasing the distance to its max setting, lets say its a basic model so 3,000 light seconds is all the further it'll go, will find you objects but it has a drop off zone of 2,500 light seconds. So anything within that 500ls window will blink and register entirely as unknown. This icon would look and function similar to the way the ship icon does when a ship is on the fringe of your radar indicator. It would blink, change color, and appearance. So you might not know if its a ship or planet but there is definitely something there! You cannot target it but will show up on your D-Scan panel with its distance. Leaving you to guess, from within your field of view where you should head out. Although you are still "guessing" You still have physical data that something truly IS out there.
This portion would function as a way to get the player a bit more involved with the process of exploring a system. It would at least give you data to go off of, rather than completely eye balling your screen for things that "move" or guessing which stars might be actually in the system or in entirely other systems and just part of the back drop. Embarrassed as I am, I have spent a good number of time just flying towards a point that "looks" like it could be planets or a star that I haven't discovered yet, only to realize that its actually in another system entirely and hasn't changed in size for the last 30,000 light seconds!
"Directional Scanners" are used commonly in a real world application when we investigate the universe. A common way that Scientists look for new stars or study current ones is the use of a Radio Telescope. Which picks up on the radio waves given off by stars and other celestial bodies. Despite the belief that space is "Quiet", it is not! Only to the human ear does our galaxy remain quiet. So its entirely plausible for a future explorer to have something like a scanner or radio telescope like device to find signal sources in an unknown solar system. He would then use this device to triangulate the position of different celestial bodies.
Summary:
Proposing a "Directional Scanner" in place or as well as the already implemented "Discovery Scanners"
- Player can change the size of the cone or "scan area" that gets scanned in front of their ship.
- Further away an object is the more "decay" the signal quality would have. Making the player change distance of cone or actively search to uncover objects
- Engages the player by making objects truly unknown rather than leaving them to stare at their screen for really long distance targets.
- Directional Scanner gives the Explorer data to work with when exploring a vast unknown system.
- Makes exploring fun while still retaining a challenging aspect that Elite seems to be all about.
- Helps narrow down Celestial Bodies that are on the very fringe of a solar system, instead of a "See All Scanner" aka an Advanced Discovery Scanner.
Hope you like my idea! Please feel free to add and I hope something like this gets considered for the game or an expansion to the game!
-Histarium
What changes could we do to this one specific thing? First of all the name its self when abbreviated by your HUD, D-Scanner. So with that one word in mind, another word clicks into mind, Directional Scanner. Although, the Discovery Scanner is NOT necessarily a Directional Scanner, what if we made it into one? Lets pretend you warp into a system. Lets call it HD 52. So you come out of Hyperspace in front of HD 52 and scan the star, like you always would. However, with this proposed "Directional Scanner" lets say that it works just like that and the direction is the cone on your radar screen. So say I move over to my Nav panel and theres a tab for the Directional Scanner when equipped. I can change things like distance and width of the cone. Increasing distance would give a decay in clarity. Sure, increasing the distance to its max setting, lets say its a basic model so 3,000 light seconds is all the further it'll go, will find you objects but it has a drop off zone of 2,500 light seconds. So anything within that 500ls window will blink and register entirely as unknown. This icon would look and function similar to the way the ship icon does when a ship is on the fringe of your radar indicator. It would blink, change color, and appearance. So you might not know if its a ship or planet but there is definitely something there! You cannot target it but will show up on your D-Scan panel with its distance. Leaving you to guess, from within your field of view where you should head out. Although you are still "guessing" You still have physical data that something truly IS out there.
This portion would function as a way to get the player a bit more involved with the process of exploring a system. It would at least give you data to go off of, rather than completely eye balling your screen for things that "move" or guessing which stars might be actually in the system or in entirely other systems and just part of the back drop. Embarrassed as I am, I have spent a good number of time just flying towards a point that "looks" like it could be planets or a star that I haven't discovered yet, only to realize that its actually in another system entirely and hasn't changed in size for the last 30,000 light seconds!
"Directional Scanners" are used commonly in a real world application when we investigate the universe. A common way that Scientists look for new stars or study current ones is the use of a Radio Telescope. Which picks up on the radio waves given off by stars and other celestial bodies. Despite the belief that space is "Quiet", it is not! Only to the human ear does our galaxy remain quiet. So its entirely plausible for a future explorer to have something like a scanner or radio telescope like device to find signal sources in an unknown solar system. He would then use this device to triangulate the position of different celestial bodies.
Summary:
Proposing a "Directional Scanner" in place or as well as the already implemented "Discovery Scanners"
- Player can change the size of the cone or "scan area" that gets scanned in front of their ship.
- Further away an object is the more "decay" the signal quality would have. Making the player change distance of cone or actively search to uncover objects
- Engages the player by making objects truly unknown rather than leaving them to stare at their screen for really long distance targets.
- Directional Scanner gives the Explorer data to work with when exploring a vast unknown system.
- Makes exploring fun while still retaining a challenging aspect that Elite seems to be all about.
- Helps narrow down Celestial Bodies that are on the very fringe of a solar system, instead of a "See All Scanner" aka an Advanced Discovery Scanner.
Hope you like my idea! Please feel free to add and I hope something like this gets considered for the game or an expansion to the game!
-Histarium
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