General Exploration Update

[Tamamo-no-Bae]

I joined the game in 2023, bright eyed to have over 99% of a Galaxy to explore.
I immediately began exploring, I remember the excitement when I found the first unmapped planet, then the first unexplored planet, and finally as I went far enough from the bubble, the first unexplored system!

Eventually as I explored I ended up finding Earthlikes and such.
But as I explored hundreds of systems, I noticed I never found cool stuff.

No Megaships, No Guardian ruins, no Thargoids, no abandoned settlements.
Now I merely thought those things are rare, eventually I would find something...right?

Then I looked into it, and realized that basically all of the Guardian ruins have been found, and a were overlooked.
They only spawn in Brain tree regions and are exceptionally rare and have all basically been found...

Thargoids? Only a few near the bubble, all have been found.
Abandoned settlements? Nothing, they only existed as part of some events.

Megaships? Almost all been found.

Basically it feels like I joined the game too late, almost everything has been found already, and there's such a big unexplored Galaxy where I basically know I will find nothing unusual.
It really takes away the wind of exploration. I want a chance to find EXCITING stuff...More exciting than some stratum tectonitas, or a ringed star.

Alien ruins, Thargoids, etc. While Colonization is great, and I am hyped for it...
This game needs an exploration update that adds stuff to find in the black.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying this should be common.
Far from it, I want cool stuff to be RARE.
BUT...right now, it isn't rare, it is not there.

There is 0% chance of finding a Guardian ruin if I just go in a random direction in the black.

What do you think? Do you agree with me?

 

[varonica]

No Megaships, No Guardian ruins, no Thargoids, no abandoned settlements.
Now I merely thought those things are rare, eventually I would find something...right?

Guardians and Thargoids are known to exist in certain areas, they can be found along way out of the bubble but not all over the galaxy, the early days of mapping out their territories are all but over, but people are still finding a few guardian sites. They certainly won't be all over the galaxy, but other alien ruins, that would be nice. No megaships really because the early exploration megaships, the ones we were finding a few years back, didn't have the capability of traveling far across the galaxy, they were all near the bubble, the odd abandoned settlement sure, but the thing is, and here is the catcher, without putting millions, and I mean literally millions, out there, the chances of anyone finding them is almost zero. I mean if they randomly seeded the galaxy with 1 million abandoned settlements your chance of stumbling across a single one is still minimum 1/400,000.

There is 0% chance of finding a Guardian ruin if I just go in a random direction in the black.

Yes that's right, because they aren't random, they follow rules. There's an area near the core where people were still finding Guardian ruins fairly recently, they may still be, because they followed the rules of where to find them. That's how we found the ruins in the some of the nebula, first find Brain Trees, then look for Guardian ruins and structures.

What do you think? Do you agree with me?

Oh I agree, it is sad there aren't things to be found but the old exciting days of the Formidine Rift and Zurara are over, in general I think you are focusing on the wrong targets. Human megaships for instance, there may be a few dredger clans out there to be found, but we've done almost of all the ones that are ever going to be found. Guardian and Thargoids, there's still stuff to be found, but not randomly, it will be story line based I suspect. However there's plenty of scope out in the galaxy for other stuff, different stuff, dead civilisations, abandoned alien bases and ships, the question is how dense do they have to be seeded to be possible for a single explorer to find? Hard to say, I mean you don't want to be stumbling across stuff every second jump, that was annoying when it was happening in the early days, in fact so annoying it was changed by FDEV at the request of players.

You have, unfortunately, come in at a time of the game when a lot of stuff to do with guardians, thargoids and human megaships has been done and dusted, you needed to be here when the first Guardian ruins were being hunted down many years ago, when the mad cyborg got lost in space and etc, exciting times, it remains to be seen what FDEV do now the Thargoid war is over (hint: it's not yet over) but we can only wait for them to make thier move.

 

[Tamamo-no-Bae]

Guardians and Thargoids are known to exist in certain areas, they can be found along way out of the bubble but not all over the galaxy, the early days of mapping out their territories are all but over, but people are still finding a few guardian sites. They certainly won't be all over the galaxy, but other alien ruins, that would be nice. No megaships really because the early exploration megaships, the ones we were finding a few years back, didn't have the capability of traveling far across the galaxy, they were all near the bubble, the odd abandoned settlement sure, but the thing is, and here is the catcher, without putting millions, and I mean literally millions, out there, the chances of anyone finding them is almost zero. I mean if they randomly seeded the galaxy with 1 million abandoned settlements your chance of stumbling across a single one is still minimum 1/400,000.



Yes that's right, because they aren't random, they follow rules. There's an area near the core where people were still finding Guardian ruins fairly recently, they may still be, because they followed the rules of where to find them. That's how we found the ruins in the some of the nebula, first find Brain Trees, then look for Guardian ruins and structures.



Oh I agree, it is sad there aren't things to be found but the old exciting days of the Formidine Rift and Zurara are over, in general I think you are focusing on the wrong targets. Human megaships for instance, there may be a few dredger clans out there to be found, but we've done almost of all the ones that are ever going to be found. Guardian and Thargoids, there's still stuff to be found, but not randomly, it will be story line based I suspect. However there's plenty of scope out in the galaxy for other stuff, different stuff, dead civilisations, abandoned alien bases and ships, the question is how dense do they have to be seeded to be possible for a single explorer to find? Hard to say, I mean you don't want to be stumbling across stuff every second jump, that was annoying when it was happening in the early days, in fact so annoying it was changed by FDEV at the request of players.

You have, unfortunately, come in at a time of the game when a lot of stuff to do with guardians, thargoids and human megaships has been done and dusted, you needed to be here when the first Guardian ruins were being hunted down many years ago, when the mad cyborg got lost in space and etc, exciting times, it remains to be seen what FDEV do now the Thargoid war is over (hint: it's not yet over) but we can only wait for them to make thier move.

That's the thing though, not everything should be storyline based, some things should be procedural.

The Thargoids are hinted to reside in a large area of the Galaxy yet there's no trace of them.
The Guardians had colonies all over the Galaxy but their ruins can only be found in a few nebulas and around some permit locked areas.


It'd be nice if more could be found.
I wish I was around during this days, alas I was not. But I want exploration to be exciting like that.

Imagine going out, finding something and announcing it, it ending up on Galnet and it kickstarts a new storyline...How could would that be?
Lots of people are out there exploring, but there should be stuff to find.

 

[metatheurgist]

Exploration is just one big bowl of disappointment. I agree with the notion that there might not be many active space faring species about but there might be traces of dead civilisations, either space faring or pre-space. And except for pattern recognition in some cases there's no deduction or detective work that can be conducted to find these things. In short there is no exploration gameplay. Except jump, jump, jump.

 

[varonica]

That's the thing though, not everything should be storyline based, some things should be procedural.

That's been a point of mine for many years, however Thargoids and Guardian are a strictly story line based event series, making them procedural would be difficult and risk messing up the ongoing story line due to a procedural misunderstanding. It wouldn't be the first time a story has been short cut by the game mechanics, I mean the mad cyborg was found almost purely by accident just a few days after the mysterious message arrived, there was certainly some unspun story line there but it never happened because they forgot to hide the location of the station effectively and it showed up in the galmap for a nearby player. Thargoids and Guardians need to be left for the story, procedural needs to be used for other stuff, new stuff.

 

[Tamamo-no-Bae]

That's been a point of mine for many years, however Thargoids and Guardian are a strictly story line based event series, making them procedural would be difficult and risk messing up the ongoing story line due to a procedural misunderstanding. It wouldn't be the first time a story has been short cut by the game mechanics, I mean the mad cyborg was found almost purely by accident just a few days after the mysterious message arrived, there was certainly some unspun story line there but it never happened because they forgot to hide the location of the station effectively and it showed up in the galmap for a nearby player. Thargoids and Guardians need to be left for the story, procedural needs to be used for other stuff, new stuff.

I am not sure what the story of the mad cyborg is, however...
This cannot be said for Guardian ruins. They'd be the playground for a future event. Let's assume a cluster of 4-5 ruins was found somewhere. Maybe finding it could kickstart more story.

Thargoids even more so. If you found a bunch of Thargoid controlled space in the deep, what would that do other than increase immersion? It'd mean there's Thargoid space out there. Maybe AX pilots could decide to invade these outer Thargoids and kickstart a new conflict, but that's once again, up to the players.

I don't see how limiting Guardian and Thargoid stuff strictly like that is any good.
They can still exist procedurally and be part of a greater storyline.

 

[varonica]

I am not sure what the story of the mad cyborg is, however...

Time for some looking up lore then!

I don't see how limiting Guardian and Thargoid stuff strictly like that is any good.
They can still exist procedurally and be part of a greater storyline.

Because that would remove FDEV's control over the way the story proceeds. It would introduce complications if procedural stuff was being found out of order of the story.

If you found a bunch of Thargoid controlled space in the deep, what would that do other than increase immersion? It'd mean there's Thargoid space out there.

Except there isn't, or maybe there is, there are still permit locked areas out there, maybe intended for future Thargoid or Guardian story lines, but it's probably a given that these story lines are already mapped out by FDEV, the secret of a consistent story line is for it be, well, consistent, and Thargoid and Guardian stuff suddenly and without warning popping up all over the galaxy would be inconsistent with how the story has been told thus far. If we find more Thargoids and Guardians further out in the galaxy it will be as directed by FDEV, after all we don't know exactly where the Guardian home world is yet, or do we? A little Hen may be hiding it!

 

[Tamamo-no-Bae]

I mean, Fdev would set where the Guardian and Thargoid areas would be, I am just saying there should be more outt here in the galaxy.

 

[Ohanka]

Some procedurally generated ruins of aliens might be nice, I agree. Would have to be extremely rare though.

At the moment there is nothing out there at all. Totally dead Galaxy.

Also remember 80% of the solar systems are worthless brown dwarf systems, and a good chunk of the remainder are red dwarf systems, both of which will never contain anything interesting.

About 5% of the Galaxy is actually worth exploring.

 

[Pask]

I mean, Fdev would set where the Guardian and Thargoid areas would be, I am just saying there should be more outt here in the galaxy.

in last FDevs twitch streaming there was few statements about relaunch of exploration and I hope it is not only about finding system to expand civilization near Bubble.
I am very hopeful for a revitalization of xeno-archelogy content, it is true that the "perception" is that everything has already been found, but a few years ago a new Guardian site was found, alot of us rush there in search of new content and scanning nearby systems for the "reference Guardin Beacon", failing, maybe there was nothing maybe slipped under our noses.

let's remember that 99% of the milky way is unexplored and in the past we have been "guided", with some suggestions, Guardian Beacon or other hints.

There is a lot of untapped potential, between the canonical story, the one hinted or supposed, just to name a few, a second (not hostile) faction of Thargoids, a "return" of the Guardians (ok, not exactly them), new Goids "sound pictograms", the "ever-present" Raxxla, and so on.

With the end of the second Thargoid war I have a lot of hope for a revitalization of exploration contents in 2025.

 

[Ultra Fluffy]

Fdev does not want you outside the galaxy, away from other players. Powerplay doesn't work well out there, neither does PVP, on foot sites etc. What does work is mining (without pirates bothering you), material gathering, finding undiscovered systems, exobiology.

This means that because FDev is not setting the challenges, you have to set them yourself. Set yourself the challenge of finding the smallest/largest planet, collecting every type of exobiology, take your SRV out for a a ride and try and get it to jump high, drive over a geyser that propels yourself into the air and then try and land safely, etc. Go on an organised expedition with other commanders. Try to get as far away from Sol as you can. Visit all the discovered POIs (There are lists around on the Internet e.g. https://edastro.com/poi/). Go on the Cannon Challenge route (https://canonn.science/codex/canonn-challenge/) and discover loads of cool stuff.

It could be better, FDev have tried. They expanded on the exobiology, added several new species, but even so they end up being the same thing, but in blue instead of green. They added guardian sites, but restricted the areas. I presume this was so that they reduced the number of manual POIs. They add procedural generated POIs, but people figure out the procedures and they all get found.

Like I said, FDev are only interested in the bubble, even the new colonisation feature coming next year will be limited to expanding the bubble. I have seen plans to have organised expansions, but they are the same old "Let's create colonisation between the bubble and Colonia".

Explorers are a rare breed. Look at the map of commander's in the galaxy (https://www.edsm.net/en/map/users) 80-90% of commanders are lingering around the bubble and Colonia. It's a catch 22 situation. Nobody ventures out into the black, so no features added there, so nobody goes there.

 

[Pask]

This means that because FDev is not setting the challenges, you have to set them yourself. Set yourself the challenge of finding the smallest/largest planet, collecting every type of exobiology, take your SRV out for a a ride and try and get it to jump high, drive over a geyser that propels yourself into the air and then try and land safely, etc. Go on an organised expedition with other commanders. Try to get as far away from Sol as you can. Visit all the discovered POIs (There are lists around on the Internet e.g. https://edastro.com/poi/). Go on the Cannon Challenge route (https://canonn.science/codex/canonn-challenge/) and discover loads of cool stuff.

What you write is true, it must be said that it can be seen as a strength or weakness depending on the player vision, but the old model must be enriched, to develop business FDevs must renew by breaking old preconceptions, and I think that 2024 shows that they have understood it.

Few have noticed but we are having a generational change in the writers in Frontier team, so old dogmas such as "no wormholes" or "space anomalies", could be broken, and I sincerely hope so.

After all ED is a sci-fi game set in a 1:1 representation of the milky way, it is not a space simulator, freedom for fantasy and wonders.

so give me space anomalies to study, on-foot exploration of ancient ruins and riddles to solve....
...ok, will not happen, but that was the feeling years ago landing near a Guardian site even if limited to stay inside an SRV, now i can put foot on ground, just let's do a step ahead.

 

[Rubbernuke]

'New' exploration is the scouting for colonisation.

 

[Pask]

'New' exploration is the scouting for colonisation.

you're probably right, but as I wrote, "I hope it is not only about finding system to expand civilization near Bubble."
definitely nothing new from an exploration point of view, next year will be focused on expanding the bubble, hopefully not just that.

 

[CMDR Big Pete]

'New' exploration is the scouting for colonisation.

In a 10 ly radius of the bubble ? (May reach 100 ly if that need 10 ly colonisation jump ? )

You can call this prospection, but exploration ...

 

[Markov Chaney]

Time for some looking up lore then!



Because that would remove FDEV's control over the way the story proceeds. It would introduce complications if procedural stuff was being found out of order of the story.

Yes and no - these are all levers to pull, so there are some reverse-engineering tricks you could use. ("Reverse-engineering" including retcon...)

Say there's a new storyline set in the black. You could procgen any background "find at random and fairly often" content you need by using procgen and masking it off with a list of systems that were already discovered (remember, that data is present in FDev's universe). If you put that content far enough out, it's quite reasonable to handwave it and say "well, it just so happened nobody saw it yet" - I see lots of threads here where people just forget how big this galaxy is.

And then once someone finds the whole new wave of "there's something out there" you can set some more scenarios based on where players happened to have found content already and start weaving in hand-placed content, full scenarios like the Titans, and tweaking procgen.

There's no out-of-order problem here because the content is still time-based coming from the ... showrunner? (I don't know what a game studio would call that role) and arriving in tranches.

There are also gameloops and properties of the Stellar Forge which have never really had stories wrapped around them, eg Mining. Some Belter content would be great, and adding it to the universe could be done the same way SCO drives appeared and Colonisation will appear. New capability because new tech. And suddenly, discovering a system with 8 clusters becomes immensely more valuable than it was, and you just let players find the existing procgen. You could even have a scenario ready to go based on the first time it happens.

 

[Jmanis]

Yes that's right, because they aren't random, they follow rules. There's an area near the core where people were still finding Guardian ruins fairly recently, they may still be, because they followed the rules of where to find them. That's how we found the ruins in the some of the nebula, first find Brain Trees, then look for Guardian ruins and structures.

Guardian/Thargoid stuff aside (although that trends too), my main problem is that the rules as they appear in-game are incomplete, and are not really rules either.

Explicitly, if you look at the rules the codex states and follow them to-the-letter, you are more than likely not going to find the thing. That's because:

• The rules aren't hard and fast, they're just guidelines which give a set of conditions such that's "it's possible" that something exists.
• The codex doesn't display galactic region limitations, which will just outright snub the rules the codex states and creates weird situations where dense concentrations of things will have odd borders for where they're found, based entirely on those arbitrary sector borders.
• Even then, you might be in the right region anyway, but within that you're simply not somewhere they will spawn.

To the point... Brain Trees are no guarantee of Guardian Ruins.

The problem is, this creates a poor game experience where your ability to "find things" is entirely at the whim of whether you just happened to pick the right place that matches those rules. That is, you could be looking for a black cat, in a dark room, when there is no black cat in the first place, even though someone told you "there's a black cat in there to be found"... which is pretty bad.

This was the same problem with finding Guardian Ruins, Barnacles and Thargoid Structures pre-FSS... you could be in the Pleiades, at a moon with the right environmental conditions, orbiting an Ammonia world/gas giant, but there wouldn't be anything there, and you couldn't tell.

 

[Markov Chaney]

I agree with all of that @Jmanis - historically, FDev's storytelling skills (both eidetic and mimetic) have been off the pace and the neglect of in-game discovery of... anything... was so bad it started to look wilful.

I'm hoping that's changing though because whilst there are some holes in PP 2.0 they are the sort of holes anyone would miss when creating content on a shoestring, and the amount of work that must have gone into the UI for PP 2.0 is excellent to see. The issues with it are definitely from overcommitting the team not from undercommitting on how it should all work.

The Thargoid arc is great too, so really if FDev just take a breath and this time around try not to do PP 2.0 and a huge Thargoid event and a huge update for another game at the same time, they might just leave themselves some room for success. And yes, Colonisation ought to reinvigorate Explo in some way or another, that is definitely on the table. Let's hope someone in the content team spots it.

 

[Rubbernuke]

you're probably right, but as I wrote, "I hope it is not only about finding system to expand civilization near Bubble."
definitely nothing new from an exploration point of view, next year will be focused on expanding the bubble, hopefully not just that.

Personally I think this is what its going to be- its players looking for sites that are pretty, far away, far away and pretty and then expanding.

A long, long time ago I wondered what exploration in ED would really be for, and frankly its what colonisation is- its (a very small amount) of prospecting, then topographic exploration along with the view. In short its a means to an end with colonies the missing 'end'.

The only way to reconcile what exploration is now (which is sightseeing) and colnisation is to link what you find to an economy- for example if you find a unique resource you then produce something from that.

Exploration from day one is not actual exploration and will never really be what people want- it should be like pushing back the fog of war from games like Civ, mapping planets and then calculating and crating jump points to new systems (i.e. push outwards into the unknown). What you have is known jump distances, known end points, known stars......its very much this:

Just adding more mushrooms or space balls won't change anything, at least for me.

 

[varonica]

In a 10 ly radius of the bubble ? (May reach 100 ly if that need 10 ly colonisation jump ? )

You can call this prospection, but exploration ...

All systems in a hundred light years will need to be checked and the colonisation value will need to be discovered so the colonising players will know where to aim for, that's exploration.