Unique Randomly seeded exploration sites:
One of the main issues with Exploration is Elite is the lack of content. Exploration with the knowledge that there is essentially nothing out there to find has very little to motivate players. Outside of a small niche of dedicated deep space wanderers.
One of my proposals is the addition of unique procedurally seeded sites. There are also issues with the exploration mechanics but we will leave that for now, but a method of pinpointing signals is needed.
Wrecks, ancient alien ruins, gear stashes, etc Example: you scan down a weak EM signature to a planet, it coalesces into a repeating unknown signal. You do a high def scan, get a search area, land and use the SRV scanner to pinpoint it. It's a wrecked alien ship of type N. You investigate and find a unique alien piece of tech that will sell for x millions. Others can find this wreck, but not the loot that was a one off.
Finds when cashed in are saved to the exploration database. The site will be flagged with the Commanders name, and show up on Nav panels. It could also be procedurally integrated into the mission system. Ie: “Scientist wants to visit the recently discovered site discovered by commander X 3000LY away to analyse it”.
As an extension of this system I imagine the galaxy being seeded with extinct civilisations. This is a bit more involved, but still uses the magic of predictable random numbers.
There are X number of procedurally created alien races that have died out and left their remains around the galaxy. These sites are as described above. Unique and permanent, with the possibility of valuable one off items, as well as exploration data.
Lets say there are 10,000. Each race has a tech level , 1-10. 10 being very advanced. One being primitive. Each race has a home world, a procedural name, a type, ie insectoid, aquatic, humanoid etc (yes original Elite I'm looking at you) It also has an age, how long ago they flourished , when they died out and how they died out.
The tech level dictates where and what type of remains they left, the type the style, the age the condition.
A tech level 1 society will not have left its home world. Whereas a tech level 3 might have expanded to fill a whole solar system. 5 might have sent out generation ships and colonised a few worlds, or left large wrecks floating in space. 6+ will be interstellar and stretch over a wider and wider area .
Example:
Commander Kirk picks up a signal one day exploring in deep space. It takes a while but he tracks it down. To his delight it's a crashed ship on a moon. He explorers the wreck , his scans indicate it's over a million years old. Its smashed to but still emitting energy, this is a wreck from a hi tech FTL civilisation.
His scans log it for exploration payment later. To his even greater amazement he finds that a piece of alien tech is still working and he manages to extract a piece of it, if he can get this home it will be worth 5-30 million credits. Further more his advanced SRV data scanner can read some data from what's left of the ships memory core, it seems that it's corrupted nav data. But it gives him part of the ships course that brought it here. He now has a clue where to look for other remains from this civilisation. He narrows down it's origin system based on its travel time and heading and sets off in that direction to continue exploring.
All of this stuff can be procedurally generated. Tech level / age / crash type / luck all factored in. There might be no data the wreck might be totally inert. It might give the location down to solar system level of the station it left from all that time ago, or the destination of a sister vessel. Eventually a dedicated explorer might be able to work his way back to an alien homeworld. You might find an abandoned station floating in space, or a small outpost on a planet. It might give no data at all. But your scanners might be able to give you more information, the accuracy of data increasing as you find more information about a given species. Eventually we uncover more and more of the proceduraly generated history of said species as well.
The size of the galaxy means that there can be millions of these unique sites out there and although it will still be really hard to find them, the knowledge that there IS stuff out there to discover will drive pilots on. The data will feedback to the community via Galnet and passenger missions. Allowing everyone not only to see the discoverers name, but visit the sites and earn money doing it. Other explorers that swing by a previously discovered site can perform secondary scans on it that give lower payouts than the original.
Players looking up this stuff in universal cartographic might see a whole range of information depending on how much has been uncovered.
Example:
The Th'tange are a relatively recently extinct tech level 7 insectoid race. We estimate they became extinct 55,000 years ago.
7 remains have been found in the area of the Parrots Head nebula by 2 different commanders. They were first discovered by Commander Padaxes on July 7th.
4 ships, one probe and one surface installation have been found, mostly in medium to heavy degradation and. Three Items of Th'tange technology have been returned to human space for analysis fetching a total of 65million credits.
Their shield technology seems to have surpassed ours but their ship hulls were much weaker. If their species was much older they wrecks would be far more degraded.
One of the main issues with Exploration is Elite is the lack of content. Exploration with the knowledge that there is essentially nothing out there to find has very little to motivate players. Outside of a small niche of dedicated deep space wanderers.
One of my proposals is the addition of unique procedurally seeded sites. There are also issues with the exploration mechanics but we will leave that for now, but a method of pinpointing signals is needed.
Wrecks, ancient alien ruins, gear stashes, etc Example: you scan down a weak EM signature to a planet, it coalesces into a repeating unknown signal. You do a high def scan, get a search area, land and use the SRV scanner to pinpoint it. It's a wrecked alien ship of type N. You investigate and find a unique alien piece of tech that will sell for x millions. Others can find this wreck, but not the loot that was a one off.
Finds when cashed in are saved to the exploration database. The site will be flagged with the Commanders name, and show up on Nav panels. It could also be procedurally integrated into the mission system. Ie: “Scientist wants to visit the recently discovered site discovered by commander X 3000LY away to analyse it”.
As an extension of this system I imagine the galaxy being seeded with extinct civilisations. This is a bit more involved, but still uses the magic of predictable random numbers.
There are X number of procedurally created alien races that have died out and left their remains around the galaxy. These sites are as described above. Unique and permanent, with the possibility of valuable one off items, as well as exploration data.
Lets say there are 10,000. Each race has a tech level , 1-10. 10 being very advanced. One being primitive. Each race has a home world, a procedural name, a type, ie insectoid, aquatic, humanoid etc (yes original Elite I'm looking at you) It also has an age, how long ago they flourished , when they died out and how they died out.
The tech level dictates where and what type of remains they left, the type the style, the age the condition.
A tech level 1 society will not have left its home world. Whereas a tech level 3 might have expanded to fill a whole solar system. 5 might have sent out generation ships and colonised a few worlds, or left large wrecks floating in space. 6+ will be interstellar and stretch over a wider and wider area .
Example:
Commander Kirk picks up a signal one day exploring in deep space. It takes a while but he tracks it down. To his delight it's a crashed ship on a moon. He explorers the wreck , his scans indicate it's over a million years old. Its smashed to but still emitting energy, this is a wreck from a hi tech FTL civilisation.
His scans log it for exploration payment later. To his even greater amazement he finds that a piece of alien tech is still working and he manages to extract a piece of it, if he can get this home it will be worth 5-30 million credits. Further more his advanced SRV data scanner can read some data from what's left of the ships memory core, it seems that it's corrupted nav data. But it gives him part of the ships course that brought it here. He now has a clue where to look for other remains from this civilisation. He narrows down it's origin system based on its travel time and heading and sets off in that direction to continue exploring.
All of this stuff can be procedurally generated. Tech level / age / crash type / luck all factored in. There might be no data the wreck might be totally inert. It might give the location down to solar system level of the station it left from all that time ago, or the destination of a sister vessel. Eventually a dedicated explorer might be able to work his way back to an alien homeworld. You might find an abandoned station floating in space, or a small outpost on a planet. It might give no data at all. But your scanners might be able to give you more information, the accuracy of data increasing as you find more information about a given species. Eventually we uncover more and more of the proceduraly generated history of said species as well.
The size of the galaxy means that there can be millions of these unique sites out there and although it will still be really hard to find them, the knowledge that there IS stuff out there to discover will drive pilots on. The data will feedback to the community via Galnet and passenger missions. Allowing everyone not only to see the discoverers name, but visit the sites and earn money doing it. Other explorers that swing by a previously discovered site can perform secondary scans on it that give lower payouts than the original.
Players looking up this stuff in universal cartographic might see a whole range of information depending on how much has been uncovered.
Example:
The Th'tange are a relatively recently extinct tech level 7 insectoid race. We estimate they became extinct 55,000 years ago.
7 remains have been found in the area of the Parrots Head nebula by 2 different commanders. They were first discovered by Commander Padaxes on July 7th.
4 ships, one probe and one surface installation have been found, mostly in medium to heavy degradation and. Three Items of Th'tange technology have been returned to human space for analysis fetching a total of 65million credits.
Their shield technology seems to have surpassed ours but their ship hulls were much weaker. If their species was much older they wrecks would be far more degraded.
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