I think this is my first time to the forums so it's possible none of this is news to anyone but I had some thoughts regarding Exobiology and didn't see anywhere better to put them. I basically play Elite to live out my fantasy of exploring the Milky Way. I've dabbled in combat in the past, and probably will again in the future, but I can shoot pixels in any number of games. I come to Elite to explore and the idea of seeking new life on alien worlds had me giddy for weeks. All of which is to say that if I'm not the exact target player for this kind of system, I'm not sure who is, and if I'm finding it more tedious than fun then it probably needs some TLC to hit its stride. I'm not very connected to the larger community but the statistics on Inara would suggest that the playerbase as a whole isn't finding Exobiology that worthwhile either. I have to imagine that's even more disappointing for the developers after investing all the time and resources into a system like this so I'm not here to bash FDev or rain on anybody's parade. Just to describe what my experience has been and some ideas I had to close the gap between what the player experience should probably be and where it's falling right now.
My Process:
I'm currently recovering from surgery so for the past couple of weeks I've been bound to a chair and I took this opportunity to finally make the expedition out to Beagle Point. Along the way I picked up Odyssey just so I could chase down mold spores and probe some biomasses. I usually learn how to play Elite by first reading the Pilot's Handbook and then watching a bunch of YouTubes to see the thing in action. Unfortunately there's just not a lot of YouTubes about exobiology right now (due credit: this was the most helpful one I could find) so I wound up developing my own approach through trial and error:
Observations:
Suggestions
The process of finding plants when on a planet really should be faster. That's the core thing. I don't know how feasible any of these ideas would be to implement but I think they could aid the mechanic while maintaining that core theme of discovery.
Sidenote: I've developed a habit of landing on planets on my lunch break just to admire the view. I do really like planets and exploration in Elite and developing my Commander's little backstory and life. I find Immersion is one of the gameplay elements that Elite is uniquely good at (though it'd be a whole lot better with ship interiors) and taking a break on a random exoplanet is just so nice.
My Process:
I'm currently recovering from surgery so for the past couple of weeks I've been bound to a chair and I took this opportunity to finally make the expedition out to Beagle Point. Along the way I picked up Odyssey just so I could chase down mold spores and probe some biomasses. I usually learn how to play Elite by first reading the Pilot's Handbook and then watching a bunch of YouTubes to see the thing in action. Unfortunately there's just not a lot of YouTubes about exobiology right now (due credit: this was the most helpful one I could find) so I wound up developing my own approach through trial and error:
- Everytime I drop into a system I honk and FSS
- I try to watch out for planets with a lot of bio signals on them. Planets with 1-3 I generally don't bother with because even in my leisurely state it isn't worth my time to fly out to a planet and search for so few plants. For 4 or 5 I might take the time but it takes 6 or 7 signals on a single planet (which I've seen 2-3 times) to guarantee I'll pull over
- Once I SC to the planet I give it a good surface scan and note the different filters and where they overlap. I use that to pick a landing spot where I'll hopefully be able to find a number of plants close together
- After dropping out of glide I drop down to about 100m altitude, switch to the external camera, maneuver it until I can see most of the ground around the ship, and start combing the terrain looking for anything that stands out. Inevitably I'll stop several times and lean forward to play the most necessary minigame is whole process: Rock or not Rock? It's almost always rock.
- Once I find something that I recognize as plant (or at least has convinced me it isn't a rock), I land the ship and either deploy in the rover if it's something like tussock that's likely to be relatively common, or if it's more like Osseus or Fonticulua (really spread out and usually in tricky terrain) I'll just disembark on foot. Once I collect the sample it's back to the rover/ship to search out the next one.
- Once I've exhausted an area I need to head back to the ship, take off, and get to high orbit so I can reaccess the Surface Scanner and change the filter to some other signal so I can identify the next landing point.
Observations:
- This whole process usually takes 1-2 hours depending on how long my patience holds out and how many bio signals there are on a planet. It's a nontrivial amount of time, most of which was spent "playing" Rock or Not Rock rather than admiring the scenery or doing something that's more rewarding. Even if I've come away from a planet with 6 or 7 samples I wind up feeling like I've wasted the last few hours rather than had a good time. This, I think, is the most pressing problem with the current system.
- The scanner tool on the Genetic Sampler is only useful in determining if the plant I'm standing right in front of is one I can sample or not. I do use it a lot but the vast majority of the time it only saves me a few steps from the rover's hatch to the plant if it's not something I can sample. In practice, it does absolutely nothing to help me find the plants in the first place.
- Setting the camera to the rover's turret, turning on night vision, using jump jets to get a higher vantage point, and flying the ship upside down real slow and barely above the ground are techniques I've found that do help to locate plants
- Bacteria mats aren't worth the time to hunt down, ever. They're flush with the ground and seldom have much contrast with the dirt so you have to be practically standing on top of them to find them. Aside from that, they're very sparse and their ranges tend to be pretty wide so collecting 3 samples from bacterium often takes at least 2-3 times as long as it takes for any other type of plant. I just skip them.
- The advancing in a career for Exobiology is really, really slow. The amount of CR I need to make to go up a rank of Exobiology is noticeably higher than it is for Exploration even though the money comes in much more slowly. Perhaps this would be a bit different if I were taking the time to scan every bio signal I ran into, but the time that would take would be enormous. If making CR was my goal I'd be better of doing just about any other activity in the game, and that'd be well enough if it didn't take so much CR to raise a rank of Exobiology. It seems like the payout "per scan/sample" is higher for Exobiology than Exploration, but not so much that it accounts for the additional time to collect that sample.
- Just because you're in a plant's region, in the appropriate terrain (generally learned by trial and error) and you know exactly which plant you're looking for, is no guarantee that it exists there. This is particularly true for the plants that tend to grow in mountainous regions where I can spend a good 20 minutes flying from mountain to mountain before finding another patch of Fungoida.
Suggestions
The process of finding plants when on a planet really should be faster. That's the core thing. I don't know how feasible any of these ideas would be to implement but I think they could aid the mechanic while maintaining that core theme of discovery.
- If there were a "Life Vision" version of the Night Vision mode that'd make the Rock or Not Rock game a lot easier. I imagine Night Vision as it is (in ships and rovers) except it only renders the edge detection on objects flagged as plants.
- I get the sense that there was always the intention of adding more rovers than just the Scarab (though, so far as I can tell it's the only SRV still in the game). I'd love to see a Science based rover that hovers over the ground with a big open canopy and probably doesn't even have guns on it but might have some unique scanners or sensors. In my head it looks a lot like the shuttle transports in Surviving Mars (Big bubble of a canopy, simple smooth design). If it has to have some application for the violent land modes then maybe it could serve as a recon vessel. Being able to hover (probably at a fixed altitude?) would allow it to more easily navigate all the cranky terrain the Scarab gets a little slippery with. Tracking down that third Frutexa sample in the Scarab always gives me flashbacks to driving the Mako in Mass Effect 1.
- Increase the rate for advancing the career, probably not by increasing the base amount of CR rewards. This could mean lower the cap for each career rank, adding minigames/additional scans to increase the CR rewards (similar to FSS or Surface Scans for Exploration), or even just counting the First Logged bonus towards career advancement
- Improve the heat map, either by concentrating the opacity where the plants actually (seems like it would be technically dubious) or letting me check/change the filters without having to go back into orbit. I'm guessing the latter was intended on the planetary map but every time I open that map it just says "Loading Simulation" and never renders anything but the planet. It's possible this is a bug ya'll are aware of but if not I'm not sure what the utility of the Planetary Map is supposed to be.
- A pair of binoculars, especially with Night Vision or some other scan mode, that I could use to zoom in and out would be sooooooo useful.
- Just as a Quality of Life improvement, if the FSS interface could be tweaked so the Biological/Geological signals could be easier to tell apart at a quick glance when flying through planets that'd be super convenient. Maybe putting them on different lines and/or giving them pips for each signal (instead of a numerical counter) or even just some basic color coding.
Sidenote: I've developed a habit of landing on planets on my lunch break just to admire the view. I do really like planets and exploration in Elite and developing my Commander's little backstory and life. I find Immersion is one of the gameplay elements that Elite is uniquely good at (though it'd be a whole lot better with ship interiors) and taking a break on a random exoplanet is just so nice.
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