Engineers Frontier should continue to make very rare planetary materials involved to find

[Deathbane]

For exploration and rare materials to be truly rare and important, I feel its important that they remain difficult to find.

Already, exploration is a very 'cut down' profession - it has little gameplay impact or importance and is done purely for the adventure aspect of it. This could do with greatly improving.

This would not be the case by adding a magical detailed surface scanner that will automatically prospect for you. What would be better is if Frontier expanded SRV or on planet modules to allow for more involved surveying of planets. This would not only be more fun for explorers, but give players more things to share and trade in - useful data, that other players that dont want to spend that time can buy or otherwise learn from other sources.

This keeps player interaction high, and gives a reason to actually go down to and carry out surveys of uninhabited and unsurveyed worlds rather than honk and go.

The reason this is in a different thread from the scanner, and other material moan threads? I think there is a severe chance that ED will throw the baby out with the bath water if rather than tweak engineer requirements,they rather simplify a promising mechanic that could be improved upon and expanded through this and next season.

I personally look forward to the day we can land, catalogue alien life and even dissect it to acquire unique, procedurally generated materials that have unique uses and markets to sell them on as an example. Giving us more things to work out, provided they are logically and consistently presented, is good for long term player retention.

Please keep up the good work ED. Alot to tweak, amidst the toxicity of this forum which is quite staggering. This is one of the most fun patches thus far.

 

[Funny]

Prospecting takes a long time. To properly do it takes numerous attempts, and you're looking at 1-2 hours per planet at that rate. Even as someone who loves doing it and even made their own spread sheet with 20+ planets on it, it's still a really, really large chunk of my time. Scanners pretty much are a must in that sense. They'll likely make it an engineer upgrade though, so I wouldn't get too worked up about it if I were you.
P.S.: The game you're describing is pretty much No Man's Sky in a nutshell. Maybe that's worth a look if it's not an awful port (I'll be doing the same by the way). What works in that game, likely won't work here. Engineers already barely do.

 

[Starender]

if we could scan materials using detailed surface scanner, i would agree with OP, but right now it's simply a pain.

 

[Thebadmf]

Gawd no! 8chars.

 

[Deathbane]

Prospecting takes a long time. To properly do it takes numerous attempts, and you're looking at 1-2 hours per planet at that rate. Even as someone who loves doing it and even made their own spread sheet with 20+ planets on it, it's still a really, really large chunk of my time. Scanners pretty much are a must in that sense. They'll likely make it an engineer upgrade though, so I wouldn't get too worked up about it if I were you.
P.S.: The game you're describing is pretty much No Man's Sky in a nutshell. Maybe that's worth a look if it's not an awful port (I'll be doing the same by the way). What works in that game, likely won't work here. Engineers already barely do.

Im really looking forward to No Mans Sky, heard it has been pushed back to August but will be checking it out for sure.

I know prospecting takes a long time.. and im not against the idea of scanners. I just think the scanners should be for the SRV, or be used from a ship scanning the local AREA of a planet. Not a target planet, honk, get the data.

I havn't looked at all the collected data, but if frontier has resources locked to appear on certain planet types modified for local geological features, it should become predictable with ingame experience where you are more likely to find what, and be able to head out and do a local scan of that area.

I am all for a more middle ground - im just really against the whole making things trivial to do (ie down to essentially two buttons - target, press scan, get 100% reliable data without any actual mechanic). There are plenty of avenues where elite dangerous could build on current game design to make all avenues deeper and more fleshed out. As it it, its already a great space sandbox game and there is room to take things further. Especially with expnded planet types and features. Scooping fuel from scanned hydrogen vents etc.

What I am against is making certain tasks within the game thoughtless - to be truly good at any profession should require time and practice - whilst throwing 'hardcore' and 'casuals' rewards as they go to make sure its interesting at every stage.

 

[Arjin]

Nothing wrong at all with a ship being able to scan a planet and get the chemical breakdown of what is on the planet, it is the 33rd century after all.

After scanning and the results showed the desired materials were on the planet, one would still have to land and then find the nodes to mine in the SRV, and with any luck find some rares or very rares, same as it works now. The only bonus to this setup is that is will save a little bit time by not having to land, drive around shooting every node to find out what is on it.

And I completely agree, rare and very rare exist for a reason, keep them that way..