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

[Batsu]

I saw this thread bubble up elsewhere, and thought it was important enough to say something about it.

Exploration is one of the things I do in-game-- not the only thing, but it's one of the more enjoyable aspects of it.

So I get that honking and scanning is a bit repetitive, especially on a long trip. (Been there, done that, yep, it's repetitive.) But is simply changing the scanning mechanic really the answer? All that looks like to me is replacing one thing that becomes boring with another thing that becomes boring. Or worse, annoying, if players don't like the new mechanic.

Rather than changing the basic honk/scan mechanic, which I can pretty much guarantee will anger a chunk of the community, I think it would be better to see FDev add new types of scanning for exploration bonuses when we find new systems. I want new scanners that do new things, like look for traces of civilization, life, special resources, tourist spots, military targets, points of interest, crashes, or maybe artifacts.

Rather than have the 1000 ls "Oh hey, you found something amazing (like a generation ship, or some ancient ruins)" auto-popup, I'd rather have a specialized module that finds certain radio signals to find ships/probes/etc. And another scanner to find magnetic anomalies (we already have one of those now IRL) and maybe one to find EM anomalies, too. You know, like real science probes have? That would be a LOT cooler than a new mini-game for honking/scanning. Maybe even add a module where I could hire scientist to boost my scientific and exploration abilities, just like I can with my fighter crew.

Imagine coming into a system, doing a honk, getting a message to do an EM scan. Do a scan, go to the 3rd planet, and get a breadcrumb suggesting I do a magneto-anomaly scan for signs of manufactured metals. Find a crashed ship, read its data core, then sell the data like in a Tip Off. Or the data may lead to finding ruins on another planet, and an alien artifact material I could trade to an engineer for an FSD boost. I dunno, there's a LOT to do with this IMO.

TL;DR: leave the honk alone. Instead, build on it to make exploration a deeper part of the game.

Going to leave it at that. I've already had to verify I'm a human being about 10 times while writing this, and the damn thing gets more and more aggressive the more I write.

 

[stephen_usher]

Now that the time has come (or has been announced, let's say) for the reworking of core mechanics, and getting them closer to the original concepts...
Let's talk exploration.

Would you be ready to give up on your infinite scanner range and exhaustive galaxy map for more rewarding probing / navigation gameplay? Rewarding in terms of money/rank/whatever else of course, but also in terms of feeling. Of course you can't be left in the dark and just downgrade to the intermediate discovery scanner now - it would feel like artifical handicap. But there could be modules that detect unfound gravitationnal perturbations... probes to launch that would detect planetary bodies and their surfaces, even system-scaled scanners ala SRV... To an extent, there could be secret systems in galmap, for you to find, with one-knows-what-tool.

I reckon some things can't be changed. You can't remove something the player base is used to - for nothing at least. I'm just trying to know if that particular godly honk and the ease of discovery is that important to you. Not saying exploring is easy though - but it's more a matter of endurance, most of the time, than navigational flair (ok, tbh there is true navigationnal flair in certain expeditions reaching really isolated stars).

Your thoughts?

Edit : reading through the thread, I need to clarify that I do not advocate for its removal. I'd just like to know your advice on it and other methods.

I would like to replace it (and the other levels of the discovery scanner) with degrees of visibility rather than just distance.

i.e. The determining factor for whether an object is detected is a combination of its angular size, its luminocity (star) or albedo and incident light (planet) (absolute magnitude) and its distance. So, the basic discovery scanner would detect large and bright objects, the medium would detect smaller and dimmer and the advanced smaller and dimmer still.

So, the main change from now for the ADS would be that you'd detect all the planets and moons around the current star but only see the star if it were a few hundred thousand light seconds away. Outposts etc. would be detectable from their "radio" broadcasts.

I would then add a proper surface mapping scanner which would require you to orbit the planetary body to gain data. Different levels of ability would determine the height to fly and the width of the scanning swath. This scan would give topography, mineral density and find structures. The better the scanner the smaller the structures/POIs it will detect. These scans will be sellable and get a higher price at a mining station relative to, say, a high-tech one. etc.

The current twirly scan would give you basic surface features but not topography or mineral abundance, which would require the surface mapping.

Oh, and one simple addition to the twirly scanner... a read-out of the statistics of the body it's scanning in the top-right text display. Should be simple to implement but make things a heck of a lot more interesting.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

We won't just be looking at stellar body discovery.

Whatever is done about system body discovery should not add any more time than what is already taken...

To be clear, the reasons I would like to replace the honk and eyeball scanning would not be to drag out exploration time, but to give the game play:

This looks exactly like it would lengthen the time for body discovery because...

* A modicum of player-skill, along with a suitable minor skill-based reward

Yep - this would add time to spinning-balls-in-space discovery

* A feeling of verisimilitude, that you're operating advanced sensor equipment like a boss

Discovering the spinning-balls-in-space is going to be taking longer, folks

* Satisfying processes, improved visual/audio/interactions

We're going to get pretty bleeps and lights with new time-consuming mechanics just to discover the spinning-balls-in-space

* A reduction required super cruise travel, so you only need to travel to a planet if you're definitely interested in investigating it

And now this is really muddying the waters between discovering how many spinning-balls-in-space there are in a system, and body surveying

Also worth noting, this is a separate point to the concept of having things to discover during exploration (which we see as equally important).

Sandro, with all due respect, it seems you have also succumbed to the very thing I've been trying to tell people in countless threads. You must distinguish in your mind between what would be compelling game play of discovery-of-spinning-balls-in-space, and surveying.

Ach, nah. Y'know what? Forget it.

I give up. I was in the middle of typing a rather long screed, but I've just removed it to be replaced by the following.

Go on right ahead and ruin body discovery by turning it into something which will probably be very nice looking and sounding and whatnot, but ultimately after 5 to 10 star systems will turn out to be a complete and annoying waste of time for everyone except the 0.X % of the player base who would probably find taking more time to find the same old balls in space to be a great idea.

I honestly believe I've now stopped caring. It's only a vidyuhgame after all. Why should I even be here on the forums caring about something which is nothing more than a pretty way to waste one's time on this Earth with?

I'll look on in horrified fascination when the time comes for the awesome body-discovery mechanics to be added.

Frack it. Had enough.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

<stuff>

Wouldn't it be a good idea to actually see what they come up with, instead of just getting drawn into your own fantasies and then projecting that fear onto Sandro and co before they've even announced what it is they are going to do? :/

 

[Jackie Silver]

Explorers : would you consider giving up

No.

 

[verminstar]

Wouldn't it be a good idea to actually see what they come up with, instead of just getting drawn into your own fantasies and then projecting that fear that onto Sandro and co before they've even announced what it is they are going to do? :/

I repped him because I agree absolutely with him, as well as the last bit which is why Im just not taking part in this thread past confirming my agreement to something. Exploration lost enough and now they gonna make something simple and unbroken into yet another timesink...yay I can hardly wait...

 

[lenna]

Hello Commander RLSG!

We won't just be looking at stellar body discovery.

To be clear, the reasons I would like to replace the honk and eyeball scanning would not be to drag out exploration time, but to give the game play:

* A modicum of player-skill, along with a suitable minor skill-based reward
* A feeling of verisimilitude, that you're operating advanced sensor equipment like a boss
* Satisfying processes, improved visual/audio/interactions
* A reduction required super cruise travel, so you only need to travel to a planet if you're definitely interested in investigating it

Also worth noting, this is a separate point to the concept of having things to discover during exploration (which we see as equally important).

Ok, lets draw a parallel with the realworld...

BDS/IDS/ADS is essentially a navigation radar (different power levels and/or number of transceivers and/or more powerful/capable signal processing) - in current naval/airforce terms it would probably be comparable to an I band Navigation radar. Justification for keeping the current DS mechanic being that in the "charge" time the system is collecting data about bodies in the system. In an earlier post, I proposed increasing the charge time for longer range scans and the level of returns scaling with the charge time. The key point here being the returns scaling with the charge time rather than the increase in charge time itself, which possibly gives greater verisimilitude in terms of building up a BASIC picture of the system you are in. Increased time for longer ranges would not be unreasonable but as you have already stated the intent is not to "drag out exploration time" so this would have to be balanced carefully.

While I appreciate there is a desire to make exploration more interactive/satisfying and improve verisimilitude I believe replacing the honk with a more interactive process would be the wrong way to go about it.

If the actual surface scan became more than just an eye-ball/point-and-wait process then I do not believe many would object to that.

 

[Godsailsaqueen]

No.

I know, I know. Phrased it badly. Biting my fingers now. Started a war. I do not regret as there were good ideas thrown and good feedback from everybody a bit interested by exploration, on the forums. But there always comes a time when some folks would do anything but acknowledging others' ideas of fun, in both sides.

I believe I lost a bit of the "unconsequential discussion" feeling when Sandro replied, but it's very welcome to have dev participation in an exploration thread.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

I repped him because I agree absolutely with him, as well as the last bit which is why Im just not taking part in this thread past confirming my agreement to something. Exploration lost enough and now they gonna make something simple and unbroken into yet another timesink...yay I can hardly wait...

You have three types of gamers, IMHO.


Developer: "We're going to do some random stuff, but it's not finalised and it's still in discussion. No ETA, No Guarantee."

Gamer 1, the Realist: Ok, let's wait and see and then judge.

Gamer 2, the Delusional Optimist: It's going to be awesome! I have no proof of this but I don't need it because the developer is the bee's knees and I wish I could sit outside their building and make them coffee so they can spend more time working and producing more stuff for me to love! I love the developer so much that I named my first born ferret after the founder of the company. Meet David the Ferret.

Gamer 3, the Pessimist: It's going to suck! It's going to be awful! I have absolutely no grounds to make this assertion; I'm just going to be pessimistic about it and automatically assume it sucks. If this developer were a country, it would be the USA and it's CEO would be Trump. Fail. Sucky. The developers are useless. When I play other online games, I use this company's name and then I go stand in the most populated area and enable PvP mode and then tell everyone they suck. That's how much suck this company is.

 

[verminstar]

You have three types of gamers, IMHO.


Developer: "We're going to do some random stuff, but it's not finalised and it's still in discussion. No ETA, No Guarantee."

Gamer 1, the Realist: Ok, let's wait and see and then judge.

Gamer 2, the Delusional Optimist: It's going to be awesome! I have no proof of this but I don't need it because the developer is the bee's knees and I wish I could sit outside their building and make them coffee so they can spend more time working and producing more stuff for me to love! I love the developer so much that I named my first born ferret after the founder of the company. Meet David the Ferret.

Gamer 3, the Pessimist: It's going to suck! It's going to be awful! I have absolutely no grounds to make this assertion; I'm just going to be pessimistic about it and automatically assume it sucks. If this developer were a country, it would be the USA and it's CEO would be Trump. Fail. Sucky. The developers are useless. When I play other online games, I use this company's name and then I go stand in the most populated area and enable PvP mode and then tell everyone they suck. That's how much suck this company is.

Gamer 4, the realist. This is someone who has been here before, bought the tee shirt and watched the forge turn beige after they tried to change what wasnt broken.

"shrugs" do what ye want...they will anyway ^

Note to self...when ye say yer staying off a thread, then in future do so...

 

[mojonaut]

You have three types of gamers, IMHO.

Gamer3 has the 'benefit?' of two and a half years experience of letdowns.

 

[EValve]

probes to launch that would detect planetary bodies and their surfaces

NO! I'd like to not throw junk towards a planet I would have to wait an hour for to descend in order to tell me what I already have in a convenient scan which I can FINALLY OMG engineer to scan faster. On top of that some "magical" explanation on how it comes back to your ship or just sends you the signals whatever. Elite has enough "magic" as it is.

 

[Godsailsaqueen]

NO! I'd like to not throw junk towards a planet I would have to wait an hour for to descend in order to tell me what I already have in a convenient scan which I can FINALLY OMG engineer to scan faster. On top of that some "magical" explanation on how it comes back to your ship or just sends you the signals whatever. Elite has enough "magic" as it is.

The ADS is quite magic in itself, "convenient" magic... But I get your point.

 

[who?]

Hello Commander RLSG!

We won't just be looking at stellar body discovery.

To be clear, the reasons I would like to replace the honk and eyeball scanning would not be to drag out exploration time, but to give the game play:

* A modicum of player-skill, along with a suitable minor skill-based reward
* A feeling of verisimilitude, that you're operating advanced sensor equipment like a boss
* Satisfying processes, improved visual/audio/interactions
* A reduction required super cruise travel, so you only need to travel to a planet if you're definitely interested in investigating it

Also worth noting, this is a separate point to the concept of having things to discover during exploration (which we see as equally important).

Great to hear Sandro, thanks! Very encouraging!

I hope you might consider looking at exploration outfitting too. As it stands, there's pretty much one option: buy an advanced discovery scanner and a detailed surface scanner and you're done. It'd add some skill and forethought if you could choose specialised versions for faster/more valuable scanning of certain body types (e.g. a Gas Giant equipment suite, which gives you faster/further/more rewarding scans of gas giants, but slightly reduced returns from other bodies.) With specialised sensors installed, the result of the system scan would be more meaningful, rather than just honk and move on.

Edit - would this be a good time to bring up again the possibility of "echo-location-like" audio feedback from the ping? Arrive in the system, activate the ADS (or replacement) and you hear a stream of audio echoes representing the bodies in that system, with the delay roughly indicating distance. This would give you a good idea what's in the system without having to bring up the System Map each time.

Edit Edit - since I'm spamming edits: how about we can drop a marker beacon to make any randomly-spawned location/signal source persistent for us? If we can sell it, even better. It'd make exploration a kind of scouting/pathfinding career.

 

[Chrisfs]

Thousand pardons, I just can't read through 28 pages. If this has come up earlier, I apologize.
I will brave the flames of twin O stars and say, I would ban ADS. The ability to infallibly find all the planets and stars by pressing a button for a few seconds takes away from lots of meaningful game play. You can have intermediate, perhaps one out to 2k ls, and possibly a narrow beam infinite one (though I am not sure about even that). The point of exploring is to look for and find things. The ADS takes that away as sure as a 'smart bomb' that instantly killed everything within X hundred km would take away the point of combat, The certainty takes away from the idea, that there may be just one more planet waiting to be found,

Yes this does slow down exploration, but I personally will take a longer time and a 'bigger' galaxy as a result, over the infinite honk.

 

[LP Garnell]

No.

Just, No.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Thousand pardons, I just can't read through 28 pages. If this has come up earlier, I apologize.
I will brave the flames of twin O stars and say, I would ban ADS. The ability to infallibly find all the planets and stars by pressing a button for a few seconds takes away from lots of meaningful game play. You can have intermediate, perhaps one out to 2k ls, and possibly a narrow beam infinite one (though I am not sure about even that). The point of exploring is to look for and find things. The ADS takes that away as sure as a 'smart bomb' that instantly killed everything within X hundred km would take away the point of combat, The certainty takes away from the idea, that there may be just one more planet waiting to be found,

Yes this does slow down exploration, but I personally will take a longer time and a 'bigger' galaxy as a result, over the infinite honk.

Don't like the ADS functionality?
Don't equip the ADS.

It's not a complex equation.

 

[Trickylion]

Slow down exploration, you have to be kidding
No system honk, how will you find any planets?
Ads is ok, you have to fly up to the body to Dss anyway, then scan which already takes forever.
But can we change the distant stars, if there is a binary system say 100,000 + Ls away, I dobt bother to go there, many such systems caould benefit from some kind of device to scan at distance or arrive there quicker.

 

[robbyp]

You have three types of gamers, IMHO.


Developer: "We're going to do some random stuff, but it's not finalised and it's still in discussion. No ETA, No Guarantee."

Gamer 1, the Realist: Ok, let's wait and see and then judge.

Gamer 2, the Delusional Optimist: It's going to be awesome! I have no proof of this but I don't need it because the developer is the bee's knees and I wish I could sit outside their building and make them coffee so they can spend more time working and producing more stuff for me to love! I love the developer so much that I named my first born ferret after the founder of the company. Meet David the Ferret.

Gamer 3, the Pessimist: It's going to suck! It's going to be awful! I have absolutely no grounds to make this assertion; I'm just going to be pessimistic about it and automatically assume it sucks. If this developer were a country, it would be the USA and it's CEO would be Trump. Fail. Sucky. The developers are useless. When I play other online games, I use this company's name and then I go stand in the most populated area and enable PvP mode and then tell everyone they suck. That's how much suck this company is.

Lol. There are a lot of Gamer 2's out there.. look at all the hype over certain released and unrelease games.

I hope I'm gamer 1 most of the time.

 

[mossfoot]

Hello Commander RLSG!

We won't just be looking at stellar body discovery.

To be clear, the reasons I would like to replace the honk and eyeball scanning would not be to drag out exploration time, but to give the game play:

* A modicum of player-skill, along with a suitable minor skill-based reward
* A feeling of verisimilitude, that you're operating advanced sensor equipment like a boss
* Satisfying processes, improved visual/audio/interactions
* A reduction required super cruise travel, so you only need to travel to a planet if you're definitely interested in investigating it

Also worth noting, this is a separate point to the concept of having things to discover during exploration (which we see as equally important).

Best news I've heard all game!