Anyone have any tips on this? On planets where only bacterium is present, it's a little harder to figure out where it is. On planets with other life, you can usually find some bacterium near that other life in a few places, but it's a tad harder on planets with it alone. Anyone have any tips on how they find it?
Finding bacterium alone on planets
- Thread starter Angelpichu
- Start date
They're far more subtle than space-plants. I find that I just have to pay better attention, and hope the planet doesn't have dark puddles. The death of the crotch panel makes looking down easier, though. Maybe get a cockpit with more windows facing down. Flying upside down might be an option?
Deleted member 38366
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- fly approx. at 100m Altitude
- point nose down with the Composition Scanner reticle active (it'll flash up as soon as it detects anything)
- use Thrusters to move Ship forward and visually assess the Surface while roughly maintaining Altitude
- do not exceed 150-200m, as that quickly approaches the upper limit where those are still rendered
- don't be too fast, the pop-in of new tiles containing all the Details can take a little while to render, so 50-100m/sec absolute tops should be plenty
- you can use Night Vision as a helper as well... Every Detail on the Surface will be clear green while Bacteria patches typically aren't. You'll be looking for those patches that aren't glowing green.
- flat and smooth Terrain is where you'll find them the most (Terrain to smooth that you could race an SRV over without any issues); Bacteria is basically the opposite of i.e. Fungoid or Concha, for which you'd need to check out rocky and steeper Terrain
Most Bacteria Patches on the Ground are simple and circular (small), some larger ones look a bit like a "cat's paw" on the ground.
Once the 1st one is found and the visual footprint vs. the ground is known, Altitude can be increased upto ~150m if required. Normally that's not required, as the next batch of Bacteria should be found quite easily.
Example Images can be found here : https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/finding-bio-signals.576565/#post-9190847
New Images :
(43km Altitude : seeking out the clear, smooth areas)
(3.7km Altitude)
(found some patches of Bacteria shortly thereafter)
(a large Patch, good contrast against the Terrain - which isn't always the case)
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Ah, so getting in your ship won't reset the biological on foot scanner? I knew it wouldn't in the SRV from trying it, but wasn't sure about the ship.
Deleted member 38366
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No, you can hop into and out of the Ship or SRV as often as you like. Logging off while holding only 1 or 2 Samples and logging back in also doesn't do any harm.
Only scanning - against the displayed warning - another type of Biological while not having completed all 3 Samples of a previous type yet will erase your Sampling Canister content.
Or, of course, scanning your third sample for the species, but then you're done with that species anyway, so a non-issue.
I often use the free camera to have a good look around my location for bacteria, it's easier and quicker than driving around or getting in your ship and launching, most times I spot it pretty quickly.
Fly at around 15m from the surface at around 25% or less, bacterium will often look like roundish shadows on the ground at distance.
I have found that craters (when available) are often good places to look for bio of all sorts.