Exploration really needs some care from the developers. It's a huge part of the game but it could be improved so more with just small additions that would work with current game mechanics.
The idea is quality instead of numbers. What explorers do now is make thousands of jumps stopping at every 100th system or so to scan 2 or 3 planets. It becomes boring quickly. What a real explorer would do is to spend hours exploring just one system or even one particular planet.
Many explorers take SRV with them but they are quite useless. People take them just for fun of driving. Instead devs could add something to actually do with them. For example full planet scan could require to land at several spots on a planet (different lattitudes for example) and take some samples. There could be a scientific scanner on the SRV and people could be urged to search for some characteristic scanning spots. Taking them at several different locations on a planet could make the scan complete revaling some data about the planet and giving fair payoff. I really dream of hours spent in SRV while exploring but I would like to get some feedback from it. I don't have a clear idea for it but by such a simple addition our exploration would be enchanced so much. Maybe we need somekind of exploration SRV (unarmed)?
I know that there are atmospheric flights in gas giants planned. This is another thing where we could do some exploring. This time SRV is useless but we could use dedicated scientific fighter (again unarmed) for that. Again we would need to drop the fighter at several locations in the gas giant to look for and collect samples to fully unlock the discovery. This would make big, fighter-equipped ships such nice explorers.
Another thing is gathering minerals. What if some minerals helped in exploration? I know we can do synthesis for example to make jump ranges greater but honestly how many explorers use that? It has some very limited usage (to reach an isolated star for example) but in most cases it's just not worth our time. What if few hours of search and collecting of minerals could boost our travels as much as we could earn back those hours spent on mining?
Rings is another thing. Especially those ice ones are quite useless. What if we had to mine some of the asteroids to collect samples again and get a full scan on the ring? In present state just few seconds scan revals everything on the planet and rings - we don't even need to get very close. It's really killing the idea of exploration. So much could have been achieved here by just simple modifications to current game mechanics. I hope that in future updates there will be a possibility to repair hull and powerplant (maybe by using EVE or specific limpets). Mining icy rings could be a way to reload these things somehow.
These ideas would also make the bigest ships much more useful in exploration. Even though they usually lack range, they could pick many different tools for exploration, making it more fun. Today two simple scanners reval everything.
I hope that devs can get some ideas from my point here and put a little more effort in the exploration subject.
The idea is quality instead of numbers. What explorers do now is make thousands of jumps stopping at every 100th system or so to scan 2 or 3 planets. It becomes boring quickly. What a real explorer would do is to spend hours exploring just one system or even one particular planet.
Many explorers take SRV with them but they are quite useless. People take them just for fun of driving. Instead devs could add something to actually do with them. For example full planet scan could require to land at several spots on a planet (different lattitudes for example) and take some samples. There could be a scientific scanner on the SRV and people could be urged to search for some characteristic scanning spots. Taking them at several different locations on a planet could make the scan complete revaling some data about the planet and giving fair payoff. I really dream of hours spent in SRV while exploring but I would like to get some feedback from it. I don't have a clear idea for it but by such a simple addition our exploration would be enchanced so much. Maybe we need somekind of exploration SRV (unarmed)?
I know that there are atmospheric flights in gas giants planned. This is another thing where we could do some exploring. This time SRV is useless but we could use dedicated scientific fighter (again unarmed) for that. Again we would need to drop the fighter at several locations in the gas giant to look for and collect samples to fully unlock the discovery. This would make big, fighter-equipped ships such nice explorers.
Another thing is gathering minerals. What if some minerals helped in exploration? I know we can do synthesis for example to make jump ranges greater but honestly how many explorers use that? It has some very limited usage (to reach an isolated star for example) but in most cases it's just not worth our time. What if few hours of search and collecting of minerals could boost our travels as much as we could earn back those hours spent on mining?
Rings is another thing. Especially those ice ones are quite useless. What if we had to mine some of the asteroids to collect samples again and get a full scan on the ring? In present state just few seconds scan revals everything on the planet and rings - we don't even need to get very close. It's really killing the idea of exploration. So much could have been achieved here by just simple modifications to current game mechanics. I hope that in future updates there will be a possibility to repair hull and powerplant (maybe by using EVE or specific limpets). Mining icy rings could be a way to reload these things somehow.
These ideas would also make the bigest ships much more useful in exploration. Even though they usually lack range, they could pick many different tools for exploration, making it more fun. Today two simple scanners reval everything.
I hope that devs can get some ideas from my point here and put a little more effort in the exploration subject.