Exploration Overhaul: Why Mecahnics is more important than Content
- Thread starter Ziljan
- Start date
i think there are two different ideas of explorers, which i both like - and one you described perfectly: exploration as an adventure.
the second one is somehow mentioned in OP already: exploration as a scientific job. sample data. on his world travel i don't recall darwin having a lot of accidents/monsters he met etc., but for sure it was an exploration tour he did.
i'd like to see both.
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The primary purpose of the Beagle's second voyage (which was the one Darwin went on) was a hydrographic survey of the coasts of South America. It was an important scientific voyage, made much more so because of how it informed Darwin and his theories, but it wasn't actually an "exploration" voyage as they didn't go anywhere other Europeans hadn't already been.
Surveying should always be a large & important part of any wider exploration mechanic, but in the context of what has gone before (and I see no reason to believe future exploration wouldn't be similar), it follows on after the initial exploration of a region. We find somewhere, then we survey it and then we exploit it. That's what history has taught us. And, FWIW, history has also taught us that the explorers die penniless, the surveyors die & the exploiters get rich!
I liked the scanning mini-game in ME2 too, but in that game there was a lot less scanning to be done. There is no depth to that mini-game, it's just a pretty bit of sci-fi-like vomit, and it would get old FAST. How many thousands of times could you play that mini-game before you never wanted to see it again? And it's a very time consuming process as well. The result would be that surface scan value would need to be a couple orders of magnitude higher or explorers wouldn't just cherry pick which bodies to scan, but how many times to bother in their entire careers.
"Spotted another Earth-Like today, but it's so much more profitable to honk-scoot-jump and I've already got my name on one."
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That's the Mass Effect 2 minigame. Hopefully Frontier can bang together something better than that.
I personally would like there to be "easter eggs" for explorers to find.
Let's say that when a DSS was complete the scan reveals an "anomaly" of some kind that you could choose to investigate. It would require you to get within very close orbit of planet before your sensor could see it. It would be an extremely rare stellar object that could be scooped up and sold for huge payday.
Not only make exploring potentially more profitable but also get more folks to actually use the DSS rather than honk and go.
Could be played out in unlimited ways and in any system at any time.
Just thinking out loud...
Let's say that when a DSS was complete the scan reveals an "anomaly" of some kind that you could choose to investigate. It would require you to get within very close orbit of planet before your sensor could see it. It would be an extremely rare stellar object that could be scooped up and sold for huge payday.
Not only make exploring potentially more profitable but also get more folks to actually use the DSS rather than honk and go.
Could be played out in unlimited ways and in any system at any time.
Just thinking out loud...
What a great thread.
I know that for me, finding an EL is awesome not because of the credits, but rather because of the buzz of finding it. I think of it not in terms of how many ELs there are in the galaxy but instead of how many systems you have to visit on average before encountering one.
So if I could sneak into the Frontier labs at midnight and be able to upload some stuff into their repo, I would invent a modest number of "rares" (maybe a dozen or so) and then assign them each a probability of appearing in a given system.
All the probabilities would be from "quite a bit lower than an EL" to "a LOT less likely than an EL".
Maybe one in 1500 at the "common rare" end and one in every 50,000 systems at the "rare rare" end.
Some would appear only in some particular corner of the galaxy.
Some might be "permanent" and part of the system. An immeasurably old abandoned structure perhaps. (Good for snaps but perhaps not much else besides).
Others might be "transient" and could appear in any system and even though it was there for someone else it might not still be there for you if you visit (or vice versa of course).
Some might be things you could pop in your cargo hold and take home.
In terms of payday, while some/most might not have a monetary value, certainly some would have a high "jackpot" rate for the discoverer. Perhaps in between the two there could also be things like an abandoned mining outposts with dozens or hundreds of cannisters full of refined material (and NOT flagged as Illegal, natch).
Creating a dozen or so such rares would be a fairly tractable for Frontier, I believe, and would add a ton to the core experience of exploration which is "anything might be around the next corner".
I know that for me, finding an EL is awesome not because of the credits, but rather because of the buzz of finding it. I think of it not in terms of how many ELs there are in the galaxy but instead of how many systems you have to visit on average before encountering one.
So if I could sneak into the Frontier labs at midnight and be able to upload some stuff into their repo, I would invent a modest number of "rares" (maybe a dozen or so) and then assign them each a probability of appearing in a given system.
All the probabilities would be from "quite a bit lower than an EL" to "a LOT less likely than an EL".
Maybe one in 1500 at the "common rare" end and one in every 50,000 systems at the "rare rare" end.
Some would appear only in some particular corner of the galaxy.
Some might be "permanent" and part of the system. An immeasurably old abandoned structure perhaps. (Good for snaps but perhaps not much else besides).
Others might be "transient" and could appear in any system and even though it was there for someone else it might not still be there for you if you visit (or vice versa of course).
Some might be things you could pop in your cargo hold and take home.
In terms of payday, while some/most might not have a monetary value, certainly some would have a high "jackpot" rate for the discoverer. Perhaps in between the two there could also be things like an abandoned mining outposts with dozens or hundreds of cannisters full of refined material (and NOT flagged as Illegal, natch).
Creating a dozen or so such rares would be a fairly tractable for Frontier, I believe, and would add a ton to the core experience of exploration which is "anything might be around the next corner".
Not the minigame itself, just that sort of look.
So, two points.
1) I actually disagree with the fundamental premise stated in the title of the OP. I think that the nature of exploration should be traveling to find things - I think more things to find is more important than more reasons to travel.
2) I full heartedly agree that the current scanning mechanic is brutally uninspired and tiresome. I am not opposed to making this more engaging, but as others have pointed out, a repetitive minigame could become just as tiresome or potentially even more tiresome.
I propose that the solution to this issue is to implement a telescope. Then, exploration becomes about traveling above the plain of the system and viewing stellar objects at a moderate distance. There could be a small minigame here involving focusing the telescope on the visible bodies and zooming in, but the core idea is that you get enough information from this process to identify what targets could yield more important ir valuable data, or sweet screenshots, without being as time consuming as the current process of SCing about over the whole system.
If we supplement that with limpets or mini-games, then that's awesome, but I think the core change to the mechanic should be faster, not break the idea of traveling around or finding thinhs, but still impart a sense of space and show you what the system looks like.
1) I actually disagree with the fundamental premise stated in the title of the OP. I think that the nature of exploration should be traveling to find things - I think more things to find is more important than more reasons to travel.
2) I full heartedly agree that the current scanning mechanic is brutally uninspired and tiresome. I am not opposed to making this more engaging, but as others have pointed out, a repetitive minigame could become just as tiresome or potentially even more tiresome.
I propose that the solution to this issue is to implement a telescope. Then, exploration becomes about traveling above the plain of the system and viewing stellar objects at a moderate distance. There could be a small minigame here involving focusing the telescope on the visible bodies and zooming in, but the core idea is that you get enough information from this process to identify what targets could yield more important ir valuable data, or sweet screenshots, without being as time consuming as the current process of SCing about over the whole system.
If we supplement that with limpets or mini-games, then that's awesome, but I think the core change to the mechanic should be faster, not break the idea of traveling around or finding thinhs, but still impart a sense of space and show you what the system looks like.
I like the idea of the telescope!!! I proposed one in a similar thread a few months back, and it was a pretty popular idea for obvious reasons. Somebody even created some concept art where the output was on the (currently blank) screen between your knees when you look down in the cockpit. Elite Dangerous is an astronomers dream, and if FD could work a telescope into the scanning mechanic, even if it was optional or passive, that would make it feel much more nostalgic and interesting for anyone who has ever peered through a lens at Saturn or Jupiter in RL.
Hi folks,
back from a 2 weeks vacation and I see my favorite topic is still on the wishlist
When it comes to exploration and the 'love' it needs from FDev I recently made a module proposal for exploration in order to make scanning down things and handling exploration data more immersively. I calles it the Autolab and you can see the (heavily frequented; not!) thread here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=162583&p=2479119#post2479119
My main point is still that there is a missing link between exploration and 'using' that exploration data in the game. There is no scientific entity in the game that harvests exploration data in order to turn scientific work into 'useful things' the galactic community needs. With the Autolab and some adjustments to Commodities and Supply/Demand specifically at Scientific or Military Outposts, and also to the USS and Mission system I was hoping to propose a very simple interface mechanic, from which more things could be generated and hence, create a 'feel' for a civilisation/Power advancing further into space.
Thanks for reading and considering, fly safe!
Andrew
back from a 2 weeks vacation and I see my favorite topic is still on the wishlist
When it comes to exploration and the 'love' it needs from FDev I recently made a module proposal for exploration in order to make scanning down things and handling exploration data more immersively. I calles it the Autolab and you can see the (heavily frequented; not!) thread here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=162583&p=2479119#post2479119
My main point is still that there is a missing link between exploration and 'using' that exploration data in the game. There is no scientific entity in the game that harvests exploration data in order to turn scientific work into 'useful things' the galactic community needs. With the Autolab and some adjustments to Commodities and Supply/Demand specifically at Scientific or Military Outposts, and also to the USS and Mission system I was hoping to propose a very simple interface mechanic, from which more things could be generated and hence, create a 'feel' for a civilisation/Power advancing further into space.
Thanks for reading and considering, fly safe!
Andrew
Bearing in mind the upcoming Thargoid invasion, there are lots of 'exploration' tasks that could be done. E.g. map fastest route between two stars, map all stars within 30 ly of that route, establish weapons cache, plant listening devices, respond to alerts from listening devices, find specific combinations e.g. a type f and type o binary. Etc. One extra thought - could one station develop a super-hyperspace which could throw you a huge distance but you have to get back unaided? Maybe it could only launch to prepared sites or to unusual star combinations (a FOAM four star system?)
Oh yeah, definitely something like that.
At the start planet looks all planety, then you whoop out the scanny thing they're going to implement in 1.4 and then there's the grid overlay. And then stuff happens! I'm all for stuff happening.
Hmm ... a grid. With 8 quadrants. Oh alright, 2 x 4 quadrants which cover the planet. If you come in from 1 side, you're able to scan 4 of them. If you want the other 4 scanned, you will have to circle around it.
Yeah I want a scanny thing too , one that goes whoop whoop after it`s finished
Ive always wondered how a single side could be considered a "deep surface scan".
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