Yes finally......someone with some proper ideas....thank you.
This would be great, exactly what I was hoping surface scans would be.
I'd also like to see the use of probes and probe launchers for some of those surface scan functions as well as some more sophisticated SRV exploration functionality like being able to take a rock/soil samples.
I also thought the ADS could reveal planets and location but then give us the results in terms of chemical composition of each body and we have to deduce the type of planet from the mix of elements. From that we can determine which planets to actually surface scan.
As for you guys discussing geysers and fumaroles.....really? That's the equivalent of kneeling down on the deck of the titanic with a magnifying glass looking at the wood grain on one leg of one deckchair.....you need to think a bit bigger than that.
Yeah, I know you have fun in locating the geysers / fumaroles, however I do think you are in the minority. I compare finding volcanism to finding earth-likes, which these days is simpler because we can plot a route through F stars only and "everyone" doing that will be guaranteed to find earth-like worlds.
But what kind of guarantee do we have to find volcanism if we don't make it simpler to find? I would even say, make the 1000km range optional so everyone having fun locating them by eye can do so when the 1000km scanner will be provided?
Have the "volcanism scanner" be an optional upgrade through engineering.
The thing is, I would just stop, what would be the point, it's the search I enjoy, so now zero game play for me?
Now you, you've flown up to a dozen or so planets, instantly found the vulcanism on all of them, visited every site, and then.......?
You're just going to stop aren't you, there's really no point so zero game play addition for you, you're not interested in the fun of exploration, you just want to fly up to a few. I can assure you, making things pathetically easy doesn't enhance game play, it just kills it. I wouldn't continue doing it because the fun of the search is gone, you wouldn't continue doing because you've seen 20 or 30 sites and it's now boring. We want things to make exploration more exciting, not boring!
Tourist beacons are for tourists, explorers like to explore!
I don't think people are looking for or expecting pinpoint scanners. They would just reveal areas of density. Those areas could be several dozen km in diameter, so searching would still be required.
If that's still too "easy mode" for you, then simply don't equip that scanner. Of course this is assuming a variety of scanners and exploration specific module slots in ships. Which I hope they do. I really hope they don't make a single DSS-does-all scanner.
exactly my point generic planets really irritate me and account for 95% of what's out there - its just not enough, when you think about it the RNG computer is either putting craters in or a little mound or a canyon (the latter two obviously set to a lower frequency)
I agree, although a bit less to the extreme, I am still enjoying planetary flights and landings.
I think the current planet generation already very sophisticated and enjoyable - it is just real life diversity that is very difficult to be replicated, and frankly I'm glad that FDev resists the bling and tries to make it interesting without losing connection to (believable) reality.
1. Entering a system. Honking.
2. Scanning an astronomical body, getting first layer detailed information. Including surface snapshots.
3. Going in closer, entering orbital range, starting deep layer scan, getting detailed continental information and top layer magma reports. Optionally going to the next astronomical body and start over from 2 aka (Opt2).
4. Going into the atmosphere, getting gas readings, starting detailed super deep layer scan, getting detailed area information and lower level magma reports. (Opt3)
5. Hovering above the surface, 10 km or less, getting detailed biology and geology survey, starting detailed hyper deep layer scan, getting detailed landing area information, getting sentient intent data, getting core composition reports.(Opt4)
6. Landing on the surface, getting detailed microbiology and microgeology survey, starting drilling operations for full surface crust composition scans and testing. Getting detailed unique structure information for molecular compositions. Getting magma samples and can start resource extraction and material extraction. Exploring larger caves and ship-inaccessible areas using SRV and Skimmers. First contact with life and low tech sentient life.(Opt5)
7. Going under the surface using magma drill vehicles and submarines. Getting liquid and magma samples and deep biological samples. Testing for deep sentient organisms and invisible hyperdimensional activity. (Opt6)
8. Finding hyperdimensional entry points for sub-dimensional surveys. Sending probes into sub-dimensional cavities, reading historical data by dimensional timeloops and testing for odd paranormal phenomenas. Checking for earlier alien visitation and demonic or angelic background interference. Testing for "The Grief" and applying "The Bliss" if found. (Opt7)
9. Creating small survey station and optional plans for bases or outposts on the surface or in the system. Sending small probe home with data in case of ship destruction later.(Opt8)
10. Notifying any optional 3rd party associates about the finds.(Opt9)
11. Starting construction of bases and/or outposts. Putting up sentries and hiring workforce. (Opt10)
12. Estimating revenues and hiring police security forces accordingly. Doing pirate and hostile faction activity estimations.(Opt11)
13. Setting up local loyalist government and preparing for departure.(Opt12)
14. Moving on to the next exploration target.(Opt13)
Each Opt option makes a hierarchical exploration tree that increase manifold in options, thus making each astronomical body an entire local universe of optional deeper exploration and exploitation.
There is no end to the possibilities!
And it is all fully possible to do with progressive coding using the "Stellar Forge" ( Or a sub-level of the Stellar Forge we can call the Detailed Exploration Forge or something.)
THAT IS WHAT I WANT WITH EXPLORATION.
Explanation of The Grief and The Bliss mechanics:
Meta-immersive invention insertion. What someone could call The Rolling Menace or "winter" or whatever is coming and it ain't good:
The Grief is like the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars, but self spreading and affecting the mind and mental ability and intent of sentient beings, very dangerous and similar to pure evil. It makes people into Harry Potter, and not the Good version.
The Bliss is a technological psychological weapon that contains and eventually may neutralize The Grief, making it suitable and safe for humans to locate to that area.
Deeper explanation about the weird stuff at point 8:
Anything that is not as expected when exploring, can be called "paranormal activity". It doesn't mean it isn't natural, just that we do not yet understand what it is. The current Flower ship hyperdiction thingy is "paranormal" until they figure it all out, it is then classified as a "rare or very rare natural event" or something like that, but not paranormal. Paranormal activity is to be expected when exploring new things, as logic would say by discovering new things, whatever it may be.
For the "weird" additions, of course there will be weird stuff going on when we reach the paranormal phase of explorations, there is nothing defined, nothing explained and just weird and exciting. The Grief and The Bliss are just place holder concept of such weird things that goes beyond todays technology or understanding of things. You can replace the placeholder names with "Sickness" and "Cure", "Evil" and "Good", "Rational" and "Irrational", "War" and "Peace", "Radiation" and "Radiation Shielding" or whatever.
If you put the future technology into the hands of humans of the 21th century, that technology would be indistinguishable from magic.
So adding stuff that is beyond our understanding is what to be expected and even "normal" for the future as we always explore the "unknown" both in timespace and in our own minds. Having stuff happening to us mentally is as viable as sci-fi or even science already today. And it is and will be important in the future.
And paranormal activity could be very rare, or common, depending on how we want to model our simulation. That is up to FD to decide, because they would probably want to simulate the weird stuff and stuff that is unknown for explorations sake and for game plays sake. It is actually why we explore in the first place. It is what drives us into the unknown. The risk of discovering something that we did not expect.
Submersibles are special vessels that can traverse the extreme high pressure liquid layers of an astronomical body. We could see it as a type of mod to our own spaceships, allowing for higher pressure than vacuum.
Outposts, bases and resource extraction site building is part of the continuation and the logical immersive next step in the process, the "why we go do these things in the first place". We go because we can do something progressive, and get our name on it, make some money, help people, spreading society and civilization through the galaxy. It is a long progress chain to reach those deep levels of explorations, as I described well in my previous post ( it is so many layers of exploring that it would take weeks or months to complete ).
My main wishlist is all visual, but I love the gameplay ideas you're all working on!
* Accretion discs
* Black hole event horizons
* Oblate objects, when tightly orbiting each other
* Spiraling streamers for tightly bound binaries (yeah, this one may never happen)
I don't think people are looking for or expecting pinpoint scanners. They would just reveal areas of density. Those areas could be several dozen km in diameter, so searching would still be required.
If that's still too "easy mode" for you, then simply don't equip that scanner. Of course this is assuming a variety of scanners and exploration specific module slots in ships. Which I hope they do. I really hope they don't make a single DSS-does-all scanner.
Dozens of km IS pinpointing. You can see plumes from 15 to 20 km away. And you can fly dozens of km in a coulple minutes. We need tools to aid the act of searching, (keep track of where we've been with bookmarks and coordinate displayed on the map) and tools that give an idea of where it could be. I'd like a heat overlay. Hotter areas are more likely to have active sites. But may not.
Failure is definitely a possibility. Also get rid of the volcanism field in the planet info. Maybe a vague activity stement: inactive, barely active, highly active. Then we judge by the overlay if it's worth looking.
I also really hate the "optional" argument. Gee, I propose guns that oneshot all NPCs. If anybody doesn't like it, well it's optional.
A friend of mine suggested having a hull repair option. Perhaps as a "repair gel" that you could apply while landed, using the SRV, even if it does something like "+1% hull and -1% integrity" per application, as a time consuming trade off. EDIT: Or better yet, if we get space legs, to be able to do minor hull repairs via EVA.
Explanation of The Grief and The Bliss mechanics:
Meta-immersive invention insertion. What someone could call The Rolling Menace or "winter" or whatever is coming and it ain't good:
The Grief is like the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars, but self spreading and affecting the mind and mental ability and intent of sentient beings, very dangerous and similar to pure evil. It makes people into Harry Potter, and not the Good version.
The Bliss is a technological psychological weapon that contains and eventually may neutralize The Grief, making it suitable and safe for humans to locate to that area.
I was with you right up to point 8 of your list .....then it goes very weird, paranormal activity?
Grief and Bliss....I can't tell is this is some sort of meta pvp/carebear joke I don't get....
The rest of your list is excellent btw....not sure about submersibles, this is meant to be expanding the exploration mechanic without creating additional content so I can't see that happening, maybe new varieties of SRVs are possible.
But the aim is not to remove, but add gameplay to exploration. Identifying ELWs is one thing, perhaps discovering other stuff that belong to it is another. Now we can only land on airless planets - and the only meaningful 'natural' content is volcanism.
You bang the ADS, see candidate planets. You fly closer, and get an idea about its composition, volcanism. Then you need to actually do some efforts to locate the sites or features, whatever it may be.
I agree that the current is just too difficult and makes searching larger planets impossible.
I think an SRV-like scanner on the ship would be fine, and I would also make some of the sites much larger, especially on larger planets. Some of them should be visible from low-orbit.
I would love to see less bleating from the ED community before during and after patch releases (not the explorer community ofc because we are generally decent here). I'd also love to see community members whinging less about the very small amount of money we pay to support FD considering this is not a subscription pay game (I personally think it should be, it would weed out said whingers...price the [EXPLETIVES DELETED] out)
But my 2.4 wishlist is here:
1. Core gameplay tweaks (too numerous to mention all here)
2. Walking around or at least moves towards walking around your ship, this could be later developed into walking around stations.
3. Hull repair options
4. Space walking/Planetary walking
5. Atmospheric planetary landings
6. A larger dedicated explorer variant of ship
7. More faction ships
8. A dedicated server for open, let them kill each other separate from normal players
9. Completely ditch CQC
10. Optimize multi-crew
11. More buy-able engineering mats
* Drifting in supercruise (i.e. FA/Off)
* More interesting scan mechanics (as suggested elsewhere, like wave-scanner for the ship, or some kind of overlay in the cockpit.)
* Engineering moving to a slot-based/"mod" system. Mods cost integrity to slot based on grade. Module rating has #mod slots: A - 4, B - 5, C - 3, D - 1, E - 2. When you go to an engineer your roll produces a mod that can be slotted into a given module provided the module has enough integrity (can't be reduced bast 0/X.) This takes a lot of the grind out of engineers and provides a lot of interesting directions Frontier can go.
For me
1) Multiple light sources
2) More fluffy stars for certain stellar types (mainly giant stars)
3) Lobe distortion for close binaries, possible actual contact binary
4) Accretion disks for relivent stellar bodies (close binary pairs, x-ray binaries etc)
5) Variable stars, while this would not be noticeable in the most part, there are some variables that do have periods of hours, would be interesting to see, especially an opacity driven star which should have a radial change
6) Fixing of the Beige (the cause of this was discussed by the dev team previously, the colour of the surface is defined by the composition) BUT assumes the sun as the light source. so yeah the colours are all wrong, needs tweaking and i suspect this is one of the QoL fixes that will come soon
7) DSS - provide useful information, possible heatmap for material density, orbital search for objects of interest... it can be a minigame or something but, the current POI system is fairly limited
8) More surface structures and objects, the limit of about 3 is kind of annoying making searches on large planets totally pointless
9) Caves? - you wouldn't expect too much in the ways of caves on a none atmospheric, but still... tech test?
10) More variation on planetary height maps, there seems to be a somewhat Top, middle, bottom kind of behavour, it would appear plateaus are the most common structures in the universe which... i don't think they should be
11) Comets and other transiant objects
12) even smaller moons/planets
13) more potato planets, most small objects are way way way to spherical.
14) *****THIS ONE***** Orbitals around planets that are not all along the equator of their host planet. These are currently very rare, and based on the solar system alone, we know this not to be the case
15) Retrograde orbits (rare) probably not noticeable
16) Highly eccentric orbits, again, probably in the game already but, everything looks basically circular.
17) Advance tear and tare mechanic on FSD outside the bubble, could be something as simple as a maintenance variable on the drive, which, is set to 100% when you dock, so normal bubble travel is totally unaffected. Once you are outside the bubble the drive would slowly deteriorate meaning you need to stop and repair it. BUT this would be a repair made by walking around in your ship, and using materials to play some kind of mini-game engineer/mechanic thing. (pretty basic and likely crappy idea but id like to make exploration a bit more demanding than jump honk jump there should be some danger or risk to being so far from humanity, ship systems messing up should be one of them)
18) Asteroid belts around stellar objects. While this is already in, it would be wonderful to have very large very sparse asteroid fields. Even if the rocks are 100s of KM apart, with the introduction of astroid bases this would be a useful mechanic for factions to have a hidden base that can only be scanned down from very close proximity or via invite only.
19) Gravitational lensing of in system objects not just stars
20) Transient phenomenon, things like flare stars that are dangerous depending where you are / distance and current flare activity
21) Sunspots
22) More land-able types?
23) Actual volcanoes as large structures
24) Use of Engineering notation for very large and very small units (IE, orbits always being in days is not good, distances on the sys map always being in AU also, should be more flexable or show multiple)
We're just saying there should be a balance between no clues at all and "Hey, volcanic surface feature right here where I'm pointing." My pictures aren't as snazzy as the ones you posted. Here is my overlay idea, sorry I just threw these together obviously.
But this would be a pretty active tiny planet:
Looking for good canyons in the darker areas would probably yield features.
Here is similar for a huge planet:
The very dark red areas are your best bet here, but remember this is a several thousand KM diameter planet, so the area is still pretty large.
Then of course you hope to find a mildly active moon that looks like this:
As for additional gameplay, or at least expanding existing gameplay. When you first scan the planet, it just gives you activity levels on the planet. THEN when you approach the site, you can scan it and it'll tell you the type it is, water geysers, or CO2 Geysers, or Iron Magma, etc and gives you a nice description of what the sites mean. Different types will have different value. It also tells you the intensity of the site. Stronger sites are also worth more, and I'd love to see something like Enceladus's ejections. And of course you sell this data to UC:Geologics division.
I would love to see less bleating from the ED community before during and after patch releases (not the explorer community ofc because we are generally decent here). I'd also love to see community members whinging less about the very small amount of money we pay to support FD considering this is not a subscription pay game (I personally think it should be, it would weed out said whingers...price the [EXPLETIVES DELETED] out)
But my 2.4 wishlist is here:
1. Core gameplay tweaks (too numerous to mention all here)
2. Walking around or at least moves towards walking around your ship, this could be later developed into walking around stations.
3. Hull repair options
4. Space walking/Planetary walking
5. Atmospheric planetary landings
6. A larger dedicated explorer variant of ship
7. More faction ships
8. A dedicated server for open, let them kill each other separate from normal players
9. Completely ditch CQC
10. Optimize multi-crew
11. More buy-able engineering mats
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