Explorers : would you consider giving up on the infinite honk for...?

[duckofdeath]

I don't see why we should give up on one thing to get new content. Yes, I wan't more detailed exploration of planets, materials, life (!), energy and everything. I don't want the game reset in any way for that to happen. Limited honks in an "endless" three dimensional sphere doesn't work. Try exploring with a basic discovery scanner and you'll quickly realise why.
I do think we could get more variations to the discovery scanners, giving them abilities to project plausibility for valuable discoveries and such. But, then again, wouldn't that be more of a surface scanner option?

 

[duckofdeath]

Please scrap the honk. Bear minimum honk should only detect LARGE objects. Smaller objects should require some searching NOT by flying around but by manually operating telemetry and or some sort of exploration UI. Wavescanner idea was perfect for on the surface. Lets see something similar. I had posted my ideas last year with screen shots as to how I'd do it. The more rare and hard to find objects you find the more money you'll get.

Each system should have a % found meter for the sake of "fun" showing us whether or not we've discovered all of the stellar and planetary mass in the solar system. The % should not include man made things. For finding man made anomalies, satellites relics derelicts etc it should be a different system.

The Basic discovery scanner isn't hard limited to detecting things at 500 Ls. It sometimes picks up (random) distant stars and objects. So, that part already works as you want. We just pay a bit extra to get the good scanner that detects everything, because it's a lot more convenient.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Somewhere in here you used the word 'persistence', so...

A lot of the gameplay ideas I've seen for exploration will involve proc gen being replaced by persistence - which seems like an easy thing, but potentially isn't.
The galaxy currently weighs in at 400,000,000,000 systems which at a rough guess is going to equate to around 4 trillion planetary bodies.
Adding persistence to the POIs and especially material spawn locations is going to add potentially thousands of new pieces of information for each of these trillions of objects.
That's going to come with a cost, both in terms of server storage capacity and probably system load times.

All this for systems that to a reasonable degree of accuracy we can say are going to be visited once

I'm not suggesting that FDev can't, or shouldn't, do it - just pointing out that it isn't going to be trivial.

 

[mossfoot]

I'd be fine with them keeping the infinite honk if they reduced its usefulness. Say, have two ranges per scanner, because the basic and intermediate scanners are largely useless.

make it so that a honk reveals its current information at its basic ranges for basic and intermediate, but extends ten times as far with highly reduced information. Like if you saw it on the system map with an intermediate, everything would be normal up to 1000LS, but up to 10,000LS you see only shadow forms and have mass information only. You know something is there, but not what.

then for the advanced you scale it down so the honk only goes 100,000LS with its current information, but infinite for the shadow/mass results.

 

[RandomGun]

Maybe, maybe not... it is probably pretty realistic though. Consider the power of current telescopes to provide basic information on bodies with-in our own solar system...

Using our current telescopes it would take days or weeks to discover all planets in our own solar system. Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would be obvious because they are so bright -- obvious candidates to point your telescope. Mercury, Uranus and especially Neptune would prove tricky to find with a telescope.

Originally Uranus was found in 1871 and Neptune 1846 and Pluto in 1930. So it took decades. Telescopes of 2017 would not make the process much easier. Finding planets, moons and asteroids using a telescope is hard.

A computerized telescope-camera with automated image analysis would be faster, but still nothing like ADS. It would still probably take hours find all non-obstructed planets and moons in an average system.

So realistic would be to make ADS very very slow.

 

[Trickylion]

Have you been on a long explore? It takes ages to detail scan a system and ones with distant stars like 300,000 + ly away, take some resolve to fly to. Please don't make it more difficult..

 

[Gypsy12]

SANDRO. All I can say is that everyone has been going on about this incessantly for a long time now - that is - anyone not involved in simple pew pew. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD YOU GUYS DO THIS???
-----------PLEASE!-----------

 

[Arindor]

I've never understood the advanced scanner, it makes the others appear obsolete. The only thing that makes sense for the existence of basic and intermediate versions, is that FD wanted to accommodate different play styles: those that love flying around in systems trying to locate objects through parallax observations, and those who can't be bothered. I fall in the latter category, but I would like exploration to be a little more involved than honk-scan-honk (etc.).

 

[RandomGun]

Limited honks in an "endless" three dimensional sphere doesn't work. Try exploring with a basic discovery scanner and you'll quickly realise why.

That's exactly the problem. Currently BDS and IDS are pretty much pointless. ADS on the other hand has god-like all-seeing power. So that's why I suggested limiting the current god-like scan of ADS and adding a usable directional scan to all xDS models. I would still keep ADS very good and quick to use (it's what we pay for).

Yes, I wan't more detailed exploration of planets, materials, life (!), energy and everything. I don't want the game reset in any way for that to happen.

I agree with this. Then the pointless "honk"-grind would disappear and ADS would have one reason less to be god-like.

 

[lenna]

I'd be fine with them keeping the infinite honk if they reduced its usefulness. Say, have two ranges per scanner, because the basic and intermediate scanners are largely useless.

Not really, they are useful during early progression exploration gameplay. I remember it was a long time before I could justify adding an ADS to my ships during my early gameplay.

 

[StiTch]

All I can say is that everyone has been going on about this incessantly for a long time now - that is - anyone not involved in simple pew pew.

As someone involved in "simple" pew pew, I take offense to this.

I too have been wishing they would put a lid on the novelty combat gimmicks and sort out exploration.

Oh, and I realise there is humour in sarcastically quoting "simple" and continuing to imply combat would be better stripped down...sometimes less is more though, aye?

I'm glad you feel the same way. Please take into consideration something I've proposed before - There was a game called "Flight of the old dog" (Megafortress) about a B52 with super technology in it and ECM suite. You could man countermeasures, radar detection, there was terrain following radar etc all in a very fun UI. It was basic but it required different stations and technology to do whatever you were doing. I'd so love to have something like that with multicrew eventually.

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/public/aban_img_screens/megafortress-3.jpg

Make a UI with scanners that allow us to select areas to explore and fine tune our scanning. Just like fighter pilots do to lock onto targets. Ultimately to see something like this though.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/HR_8799_Orbiting_Exoplanets.gif

I have to say that an exploration mechanic that ties in with multicrew would be a spiffing idea.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

i have seen lots of ideas now in this thread and others. the ones that advocate probes of some kind - where will you put them? or is it going to wind up only anacondas explore because they have more slots to replace things than asps do? probes (probably limpets) would require a controller module. my asp ex has ADS and DSS, hangar and srv, no weapons, shield (so i live to get back and sell the data, and limit damage from collisions hopefully) and powerplant and the basic stuff a ship needs to run, modded for range and efficiency. i will have to drop soemthing if i suddenly need a probe in addition to a DSS to find the rest of what a DSS currently gives. unless you are going to redesign ships for more module spaces - which the pewpews will stuff with armour reinforcement no doubt lol - then stop wanting new modules.

as for removing the ADS ability to find all objects in the system instance - i have found lots of systems out there where someone only had a basic or intermediate and never found something good as a result of not knowing there was another star. just telling them there is another star wont fix that if they dont see planets around it on sysmap they wont point at it and scan again and then travel 500000LS in order to see the types of planets. the result will be THOUSANDS of systems where only the primary and a few close planets have any first discovered tag and the finder moved on because it was too trdious now to bother flying to each planet because only the DSS now tells you if its metal rich icy rocky or a figment of the ADS imagination or whatever.

forcing someone to fly around the system because we suddenly can discover LESS is adding time wasting to the game. we all (mostly) have real lives and other things to do. i want MORE things to find not grindier ways to make it a lot longer and more boring to find the same things i find now with honk to get em on sysmap and then i can see if theres a planet that could be water world/elw or a gas giant to fly to and DSS. or something to land on with a rare mat i can use FSD injection. i want occasionally as i say to see mysterious abandoned in space derelicts, maybe a lifeless planet with no atmosphere but traces of cities which appear similar to our 20th century tech (the sun went nova or something and removed the atmosphere or something) but you can scan a satellite and the ship computer translates the data to show what happened. maybe rescue the artifacts of a lost culture and sell to a scientific contact.

i think there should be very low reward but constant science missions on mission board. someone suggested that already discovered systems shouldnt earn you any money for selling - i disagree; science probably still cant fully understand stars and thus the constant data coming in from rescans can flag up possible warning signs of instability, or an increase in flare activity ramping up which could threaten any close systems or in-system facilities. yes, they can probably scan with the nav beacon - but a back up from a ship which gets even closer on jump in would be better quality. so these missions could be to in bubble but population 0 systems that nobdy has scanned for a month or so. 'We need you to scan the primary in xxx system as you pass it on your way to your destination. we had no data, and no nav beacon, so we havent a clue what the state of it is for months now. its an unscoopable to make sure your fuel state is good for another jump out.' and you get a few hundred more credits plus the data if you havent already sold it for that system. there is an organisation really exists called WOVO - world organisation of volcano observatories. i believe there would have been tregedies in past space colonisation from stellar incidents such that there would be a pan bubble one for stars probably called the internation stellar observatories organisation (pronounced 'i sue') with responsibility for monitoring all stars particularly the dangerous ones. THATS why rescans of stars and the system would earn money. the data on the whole system might show a flare scorched planets out to a surprising distance or soemthing.

more stuff to find. not making it harder and longer to scan than now. that will just make less stuff be scanned. its still going to take 10000 years to scan every star.

 

[lenna]

Using our current telescopes it would take days or weeks to discover all planets in our own solar system. Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would be obvious because they are so bright -- obvious candidates to point your telescope. Mercury, Uranus and especially Neptune would prove tricky to find with a telescope.

Maybe, but we are talking about at least 1000yrs in the future and even Star Trek includes something akin to or better than the current ADS.

So realistic would be to make ADS very very slow.

I am not opposed to scan times being increased for the relevant scanners BUT that must come with partial scan charges yielding at least partial results.

BDS maybe taking 5s to charge, IDS maybe taking 15s to charge, and an ADS possibly taking 45s to fully charge. Engineer upgrades could be added to increase power draw in exchange for decreased charge/honk time.

With an IDS, BDS level results could be achieved after 7.5s.

With an ADS, BDS level results could be achieved after 13.75s, and IDS level results could be achieved after 27.5s.

Such a change could rebalance the scanners and make the lower ones perhaps more useful in later gameplay. The times are for illustrative purposes only and not intended to be an actual fully considered proposal.

 

[Mengy]

I have to say that an exploration mechanic that ties in with multicrew would be a spiffing idea.

Yep, my new addended exploration core loop concept has a multicrew feature for exploration now. I changed stage 2 to use a turreted DSS which also doubles as a multicrew function for exploration. I feel like my concept might actually take less time to completely scan a system than it currently takes, due to the shortened scan times/longer ranges/removal of the requirement to fly the ship very close to objects. I've updated my Exploration Suggestion thread with this too (in my signature).



CHANGES TO THE EXPLORATION GAME LOOP: Here are some changes and tweaks to the main core game loop of exploration, dividing it into four main stages. The goal here is to add levels of actions, decisions, and discovery to the core exploration loop, while also providing opportunity for some new mechanics AND reducing the time it would take to complete scan a normal system. It also implements a mechanic for multicrew exploration to utilize too:

• First Stage - The ADS (honk). This reveals gravitational data on objects, giving you an Orrery map with "black" stellar bodies (no graphics), their orbital paths, and their gravity data. With that Orrery map you can see if the system structure looks interesting or not, how many bodies it has, etc.
• Second Stage - Visual Scan. Next would be a long distance visual scan. The DSS would be improved into a turret style sensor with a full range of motion, like a vision canon / telescope. Pointing the DSS at a planet or star quickly scans the object visually, discoverying the Orrery map graphic along with the surface map and planet/star type. This would have a very long range, something like 30K lys or so. This turreted DSS could also be utilized during multicrew sessions, allowing crew to man the DSS while the pilot flies the ship around.
• Third Stage - Detail Scan. Here is where you can fly to within a certain distance of a stellar body (say 5K or so for large planets, like 5X the range of live currently) and perform a scan to get all of the body data like age, orbital info, materials, etc. This also provides you with the Surface Heat Map (see below), which highlights large potential search areas on the planet surface where things can be found like geysers/fumeroles, unknown structures, life forms, high material concentrations, etc. Note that this scan would should be very fast, almost instant, to reduce time sink. The time to fly "close" to the planet should be time sink enough to do the scan.
• Fourth Stage - Surface Exploration. The heat map now in hand, the commander can choose to fly down into search zones to look for POI's. Upon entering the zone a search indicator pops up (like surface salvage missions currently use only more intensive) to guide the player incrementally, gradually narrowing down the search area to a more localized zone where the commander would need to land and use the SRV scanners to finally pinpoint the POI.

The total time to completely scan an entire system should be equal or less than it currently takes in game due to the much increased scan distances, much reduced scan times, along with the removal of the need to fly right up to the smaller planets. The turreted DSS means a ship can sit just off the perimeter of a gas giant with a dozen moons and quickly detail scan them all without even needing to move the ship at all, but the commander needs to manually point the DSS turret at them all to do so. It is quick and active, not passive.

Each level would pay incrementally. A basic honk (stage 1) would give some credits. Visually scanning objects (stage 2) would give more on top of that, detail scanning objects (stage 3) would pay large amounts of credits, especially for ELW, AW, and TF worlds, and then landing on the surface to scan POIs or take core samples (stage 4) would pay huge amounts of credits. Reward explorers for actually exploring, but much less for just jump and honking.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

Yep, my new addended exploration core loop concept has a multicrew feature for exploration now. I changed stage 2 to use a turreted DSS which also doubles as a multicrew function for exploration. I feel like my concept might actually take less time to completely scan a system than it currently takes, due to the shortened scan times/longer ranges/removal of the requirement to fly the ship very close to objects. I've updated my Exploration Suggestion thread with this too (in my signature).



CHANGES TO THE EXPLORATION GAME LOOP: Here are some changes and tweaks to the main core game loop of exploration, dividing it into four main stages. The goal here is to add levels of actions, decisions, and discovery to the core exploration loop, while also providing opportunity for some new mechanics AND reducing the time it would take to complete scan a normal system. It also implements a mechanic for multicrew exploration to utilize too:

• First Stage - The ADS (honk). This reveals gravitational data on objects, giving you an Orrery map with "black" stellar bodies (no graphics), their orbital paths, and their gravity data. With that Orrery map you can see if the system structure looks interesting or not, how many bodies it has, etc.
• Second Stage - Visual Scan. Next would be a long distance visual scan. The DSS would be improved into a turret style sensor with a full range of motion, like a vision canon / telescope. Pointing the DSS at a planet or star quickly scans the object visually, discoverying the Orrery map graphic along with the surface map and planet/star type. This would have a very long range, something like 30K lys or so. This turreted DSS could also be utilized during multicrew sessions, allowing crew to man the DSS while the pilot flies the ship around.
• Third Stage - Detail Scan. Here is where you can fly to within a certain distance of a stellar body (say 5K or so for large planets, like 5X the range of live currently) and perform a scan to get all of the body data like age, orbital info, materials, etc. This also provides you with the Surface Heat Map (see below), which highlights large potential search areas on the planet surface where things can be found like geysers/fumeroles, unknown structures, life forms, high material concentrations, etc. Note that this scan would should be very fast, almost instant, to reduce time sink. The time to fly "close" to the planet should be time sink enough to do the scan.
• Fourth Stage - Surface Exploration. The heat map now in hand, the commander can choose to fly down into search zones to look for POI's. Upon entering the zone a search indicator pops up (like surface salvage missions currently use only more intensive) to guide the player incrementally, gradually narrowing down the search area to a more localized zone where the commander would need to land and use the SRV scanners to finally pinpoint the POI.

The total time to completely scan an entire system should be equal or less than it currently takes in game due to the much increased scan distances, much reduced scan times, along with the removal of the need to fly right up to the smaller planets. The turreted DSS means a ship can sit just off the perimeter of a gas giant with a dozen moons and quickly detail scan them all without even needing to move the ship at all, but the commander needs to manually point the DSS turret at them all to do so. It is quick and active, not passive.

Each level would pay incrementally. A basic honk (stage 1) would give some credits. Visually scanning objects (stage 2) would give more on top of that, detail scanning objects (stage 3) would pay large amounts of credits, especially for ELW, AW, and TF worlds, and then landing on the surface to scan POIs or take core samples (stage 4) would pay huge amounts of credits. Reward explorers for actually exploring, but much less for just jump and honking.

no it wouldn take same time. any star out of 30k range plus its planets wouldnt be shown, and thus FEWER details about systems would be found by people jumping in unless they fly out there of course. and whos going to waste 20 minutes in SC 500k ls to find the other star is a class L with 5 beige rocks of no value or interest and not even landable? they wont bother. if you want to deter explorers from finding elw around anything but close to the primary thats one way to do it. and what about planets that orbit the system not one of the stars? they wont appear visible at all.

 

[Jezzah]

See I dislike the the second stage. It's point and scan time again.

I know it's personal opinion but wouldn't it be cool to launch some exploration limpets at the findings of the first stage from the player position and get some data back that indicates in quite a lot of detail what's on those first stage findings. Then on to the 3rd stage where you actually go into orbit and get a 100% identification of the detail.

A lot of what we are talking about here will require a fair level of persistence on the servers part which I think is something that ED has been lacking for some time now.

 

[Mengy]

no it wouldn take same time. any star out of 30k range plus its planets wouldnt be shown, and thus FEWER details about systems would be found by people jumping in unless they fly out there of course. and whos going to waste 20 minutes in SC 500k ls to find the other star is a class L with 5 beige rocks of no value or interest and not even landable? they wont bother. if you want to deter explorers from finding elw around anything but close to the primary thats one way to do it. and what about planets that orbit the system not one of the stars? they wont appear visible at all.

Well the range of the visual DSS could certainly be increased, or even "infinite" for that matter. Still, yes the goal is to reduce the "power" of the all knowing ADS honk a tad.

See I dislike the the second stage. It's point and scan time again.

Sure, but it's a much faster and streamlined point and scan, without the need to actually point the ship or even fly the ship right up to a planet. The point is that it's interactive, it requires user input other than a button press or sitting and waiting for a wheel to spin.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Sure, but it's a much faster and streamlined point and scan, without the need to actually point the ship or even fly the ship right up to a planet. The point is that it's interactive, it requires user input other than a button press or sitting and waiting for a wheel to spin.

There's a line between 'interactive' and 'pointless busy-work' - and we all draw that line in different places

 

[tafkabb]

Just have planet surfaces on ADS, as most players wanted.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Yep, my new addended exploration core loop concept has a multicrew feature for exploration now. I changed stage 2 to use a turreted DSS which also doubles as a multicrew function for exploration. I feel like my concept might actually take less time to completely scan a system than it currently takes, due to the shortened scan times/longer ranges/removal of the requirement to fly the ship very close to objects. I've updated my Exploration Suggestion thread with this too (in my signature).



CHANGES TO THE EXPLORATION GAME LOOP: Here are some changes and tweaks to the main core game loop of exploration, dividing it into four main stages. The goal here is to add levels of actions, decisions, and discovery to the core exploration loop, while also providing opportunity for some new mechanics AND reducing the time it would take to complete scan a normal system. It also implements a mechanic for multicrew exploration to utilize too:

• First Stage - The ADS (honk). This reveals gravitational data on objects, giving you an Orrery map with "black" stellar bodies (no graphics), their orbital paths, and their gravity data. With that Orrery map you can see if the system structure looks interesting or not, how many bodies it has, etc.
• Second Stage - Visual Scan. Next would be a long distance visual scan. The DSS would be improved into a turret style sensor with a full range of motion, like a vision canon / telescope. Pointing the DSS at a planet or star quickly scans the object visually, discoverying the Orrery map graphic along with the surface map and planet/star type. This would have a very long range, something like 30K lys or so. This turreted DSS could also be utilized during multicrew sessions, allowing crew to man the DSS while the pilot flies the ship around.
• Third Stage - Detail Scan. Here is where you can fly to within a certain distance of a stellar body (say 5K or so for large planets, like 5X the range of live currently) and perform a scan to get all of the body data like age, orbital info, materials, etc. This also provides you with the Surface Heat Map (see below), which highlights large potential search areas on the planet surface where things can be found like geysers/fumeroles, unknown structures, life forms, high material concentrations, etc. Note that this scan would should be very fast, almost instant, to reduce time sink. The time to fly "close" to the planet should be time sink enough to do the scan.
• Fourth Stage - Surface Exploration. The heat map now in hand, the commander can choose to fly down into search zones to look for POI's. Upon entering the zone a search indicator pops up (like surface salvage missions currently use only more intensive) to guide the player incrementally, gradually narrowing down the search area to a more localized zone where the commander would need to land and use the SRV scanners to finally pinpoint the POI.

The total time to completely scan an entire system should be equal or less than it currently takes in game due to the much increased scan distances, much reduced scan times, along with the removal of the need to fly right up to the smaller planets. The turreted DSS means a ship can sit just off the perimeter of a gas giant with a dozen moons and quickly detail scan them all without even needing to move the ship at all, but the commander needs to manually point the DSS turret at them all to do so. It is quick and active, not passive.

Each level would pay incrementally. A basic honk (stage 1) would give some credits. Visually scanning objects (stage 2) would give more on top of that, detail scanning objects (stage 3) would pay large amounts of credits, especially for ELW, AW, and TF worlds, and then landing on the surface to scan POIs or take core samples (stage 4) would pay huge amounts of credits. Reward explorers for actually exploring, but much less for just jump and honking.

I actually already wrote almost the identical idea over a year ago after Horizons was released. Very similar, very logical and I think I had 5 stages. I called them levels or tiers. Don't remember but it tied in to what the existing system already had for scans. Level 1 was entire system basic info, level 2 was the detailed scan of large planetary bodies, level 3 was close up detailed mineralogical/biome based scan, possibly POI scans for major landmarks and geographical features to explore. 4 was direct surface samples similar to KSP where you needed samples of the unique things in each system. 5 would be anomalous discoveries which were puzzle based or finding "hidden" things/information that would reap the largest reward.

Searching through archives also found an idea on probes I had

"

You carry a Probe Service Bay/Controller. This enables you to repair, refuel your probes and to launch them.
Probes take 1 ton of cargo. You can hold as many as you want.
Probes can travel and jump up to 10ly and return.
Probes will launch in a dispersal pattern of 1,3,5 and 7 at a time (like refineries the bigger the service bay the more you can control)
Probes will automatically launch and head to its nearest stars to jump to, scan all the planetary bodies and jump back and wait at the local star.
They will supercruise and do additional scans on each body if it has time before it runs out of fuel and need to jump back. (possibly based on the quality of the probe)
There will be timers for each probe and a brief communication as to what it is doing in the info panel
While the probes are scanning each planet etc you can scan the local system.
Return to the local star to a Rendezvous Point (Signal Source) where your probes have returned.
Retrieve them into your cargo bay to be refueled and repaired.
All data will be updated in your galaxy map including highlights of anything interesting found with a flashing icon indicating to check it out.





Caveats

There can be damage done, micro meteors, wear and tear, radiation.
They can return if they don't have time to scan all objects.
The probe service bay requires ammo like the AFM
They are unshielded and fragile.

"