Finding bacteria is a bit too difficult and suggested improvements.

Today I found a planet with a single biological signal, but 4 unidentified organics, and they were not bacteria, so I started my search in high spirits, as the heat map did not cover the whole planet, but just isolated areas, so the search was going to be a bit more straightforward.

No matter how much time I spent searching high and low, on different soil, at different altitudes and different latitudes, on the day side on the dark side (tidally locked planet), I was only able to find a single strain of the plant. I would have been happy to find at least a second one, but my search was fruitless. I even jumped inside big patches of scanned plants, just to see whether there was an intruder that the genetic sampler would pick up with its pulse, but I had no luck. :(
I have done similar searches, one bio signal, 4 unidentified organics. Searched 6 different planet fall random areas and only found the same strain in each. Also the screen shots I have posted show a planet that has no detectable life but shows a U.O. I’m wondering if it is just a bug or maybe the new DSS scanner about to come into game may shed light on this.
 
Ya - some times i find the bacteria some times i dont. I dont want to expect to find them everytime. I actually like that sometimes it should be there and you just cant find it
Don't you find it odd that, despite being the most common and most abundant biological signal by far, that bacterium is also the one that's hardest to actually find?

The reason you can't find it is because there's a bug - the assets aren't loading:


It's great that you like not finding something that should be there, but most people just think it's a waste of their time.
 
I have done similar searches, one bio signal, 4 unidentified organics. Searched 6 different planet fall random areas and only found the same strain in each. Also the screen shots I have posted show a planet that has no detectable life but shows a U.O. I’m wondering if it is just a bug or maybe the new DSS scanner about to come into game may shed light on this.
What?? Did I miss an announcement? Where did FDev say they were introducing a new DSS scanner?
 
I have my doubts that the bacteria aren't loading in. I too have found 'invisible' bacteria patches that light an empty area green when pinged. If you stand in the right spot you can actually scan the air and it works. It is a single instance issue though. The other 2 patches were easily visible. Generally, they can often be a pain to locate, but, I can think of maybe 3 planets that supposedly had bacteria that I didn't find when I really looked, and that was way back when I was first starting out so I chalk them up to my noobiness.

In my experience there is one type of planet that the generator triggered a spike flag and so are literally covered in stalagmites. Even though the planet is coated blue in the DSS overlay it won't be found due to the impossible terrain. Other than that clear 1 of 400 exception I'd bet I could find the bacteria on planets others are having problems with. The issue is that when they are hard to find they are HARD TO FIND. Problematic planets are ones that have that yellowish-grey theme covered in burned mottling that camouflage the bacteria. Couple that planet camo with the bacteria being a matching grey colour and yeah i give it a hard pass.
 
Don't you find it odd that, despite being the most common and most abundant biological signal by far, that bacterium is also the one that's hardest to actually find?

The reason you can't find it is because there's a bug - the assets aren't loading:


It's great that you like not finding something that should be there, but most people just think it's a waste of their time.

FEATUREEEEEEE !
 
Hello!! So sorry for the delay :) It's been such a busy week, hence me kind of doing things here outside of the "usual Thursday" to spread the load a bit :)
Right then!
Bio sites are not picked up by the SRV sine-wave scanner, no. The shootable materials on the Horizons organics and geologicals will show up on the scanner, but none of the new Odyssey Organics currently will.
At the moment, if Odyssey organics were to show as targetable objects on the sine-wave scanner, it would mean that when you're in your SRV in an area densely populated with them; if every one of them showed as a target signal, it would light up like a Christmas tree. There would be way too much noise and you would have a really hard time being able to see the terrain.
The design team are aware of potential issues around this decision however and are 100% looking into those. This thread here is super helpful! Thank you!

One possible way to alleviate this is to add an alternate mode to the SRV scanner that lets you switch through the same filters as your ship's DSS. So say I'm looking for fungoids, I switch my SRV's scanner to bio mode and set the filter for fungoids. Then it works the same way as it would with geological contacts and what not but only spikes for fungoids. Might still get huge spikes as you said, but let's face it... the only time we really need this is to try and find those elusive organics on planets where they're spread apart quite far.
 
I think the SRV wave scanner should show biologicals. At least the one we already have a partial sample of. The worst thing about hunting bacteria is finding the two other samples once you've gotten the first one.
 
Perhaps you would also like a big blue bouncy arrow over the spot too. 🤪
Reductio ad absurdum.
Nobody asked for anything like that. There's a difference between having it shown to us and leaving it completely invisible. Gameplay depends on the players DOING something. If there is nothing we can do to detect these things, then there's no GAME. Flying over the planet and hoping to spot an almost invisible smudge of pixels in a thousand square miles isn't gameplay. All we've asked for are the tools to allow us to track the things down more reliably, that's not based on randomly stumbling over them.
 
I have to say, I felt the increased fauna spawning during the alpha was best. Now everything seems like a very sparse desert.
 
I have to say, I felt the increased fauna spawning during the alpha was best. Now everything seems like a very sparse desert.
Life forms being sparse is a bit more realistic and wouldn’t be a problem if we (1) have the right tools to find them, and (2) they actually appear when they’re supposed to.
 
I've given up looking for them... It's worse than a needle in a haystack when the entire planet shows as having them, and you spend hours traveling around and find nothing.
 
Like everyone here I can exaggerate. 🤪

I find it one of the more challenging genera to find, that said "It's not impossible!" as I said, with an SRV, sitting in the turret using the composition scanner. I don't think it needs changing so that it becomes more 'gamey - point me to my gratification like!'

Everyone to their own - that's my opinion. I could go further and say you're all just lazy... but that would be personal. So I won't say it. Instead, I'd say the methods you are suggesting will make us and lazy - and not worth doing exobiology!

Meh!
 
I know. I'm just saying to me it felt like a much more normal distribution than what we have now.
What's normal for exobiology for low-g, low atmospheric worlds? How do you quantify that? How did they?

Perhaps it's worth asking why they chose the spread that they did.
 
Reductio ad absurdum.
Nobody asked for anything like that. There's a difference between having it shown to us and leaving it completely invisible. Gameplay depends on the players DOING something. If there is nothing we can do to detect these things, then there's no GAME. Flying over the planet and hoping to spot an almost invisible smudge of pixels in a thousand square miles isn't gameplay. All we've asked for are the tools to allow us to track the things down more reliably, that's not based on randomly stumbling over them.

Pretty much sums it up. While I find the idea of exobiology fun, the only time I really bother with it is when I happen to land in an area that has densely packed organics and I know I'll be able to easily find them, rather than spending hours driving around and stopping to use my camera suite to look around, all to find the next sample. So usually if it looks like I'll have to spend a lot of time driving around fruitlessly, I just don't bother. Care to guess which organics type I actually NEVER bother with?
 
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