FSS improvement thread

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
OP, I don’t personally particularly encounter the issue you describe. For me the zoom works well. Not sure why it wouldn’t work as well for you, but I’d certainly endorse how it works for you being brought up to the same level.

Lots of lots of suggestions, which have been made before, (I was looking back at my and others suggestions from the Beta the other day), so nothing new to add.

Key existing ones to reiterate:

- display the FSA bar temporarily in the HUD in Analysis Mode following the honk.

- add an toggle option to be able to use the FSS at speed (defaulting to off, and with warnings/disclaimers about the risks of its use at speed).

- add the number of POIs detected by the FSS scans to the System Map (have suggested this very early, and it was done but only for after the DSS probing for some reason)

- don’t reveal numbers of POIs detected, just types - this is specifically to avoid the long scan times for planets with geological sites*

Also:

- stop the FSS detecting the whole planet’s surface, and only detect the parts viewable through the FSS. - i.e. tie the reveal of the surface to what can actually be seen (so orbiting a planet, FSSing from various angles (or times), or DSS probing reveal the full surface.). - might be asking a bit much technically for little benefit with this one admittedly though.



*happens due to how far the planet generation system has to go to determine the sites. Knowing that a planet will have sites is enough for the FSS scan IMHO. Whether a planet has vulcanism is determined almost instantly, and it’s about a 99.9% match of that to whether a planet will have geological sites. A simple ‘if (has vulcanism) then (show ‘Geological Sites Detected’) type thing should do it. Resolving the planet generation to a level of determining the locations and numbers of sites can be shifted to when approaching the bodies in SC and the DSS probing. 1 in every 1,000 or so turning out not to have geological sites when DSS probed seems absolutely fine to me in comparison to the current scan time issue. (Though having suggested this resolution to the issue various times it’s very possible that there’s something else which prevents the solution being viable. :D )
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
Old Duck said:
Frontier just recently improved trading, which has been in the game since day one. They have yet to improve multicrew or PowerPlay, so the very new FSS is at the bottom of a long list of "needs improvement" items that will probably never get improved. I hate being the depressing realist, but it's just the way Frontier rolls.
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Yep. Though having said that, multi-crew isn’t necessarily completely separate from the topic at hand. For example, @MadDogMurdock ’s suggestion contributes to improving multi-crew.

What multi-crew needs* IMHO is improved ability to separate and define roles and assign rights. So for example, being able to separate ‘pilot’ and ‘navigator’ roles. That ‘navigator’ role would cover the things that take you away from the cockpit view such as going into the Galmap, SysMap. That could even be extended to the NavPanel and Comms and anything else that doesn’t involve the actual flying of the ship, giving much more of a co-pilot role. Bringing it back to the topic in hand, relieve the speed restrictions for when using the FSS, make it a multi-crew permissions assignable feature, and there you go, it forms part of that improved multi-crew system.

Edit - *part of what multi-crew needs, anyway. There also needs to things going on in the game for which at least some people will prefer to do it as part of a crew rather than as the cmdr of their own ship. That’s a whole different matter. And OT for this thread.
 
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-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
My ideas for improving the FSS:

1. After a honk, add the wave forms into analysis mode.

2. The honk will also add the main planets (not moons as their distortions are obscured) as blank orbs in the system map. This will give people some idea if there are strange orbits and odd planetary configurations. These are not targetable if you are in a virgin system. Already explored systems remain the same.

3. When using the FSS, if you hover over the gravity distortion and you find the planet signal (the little circle that appear when you hit the planet with your curser), this will allow that gravity distortion to be targetable as you now know it's exact location. You can still zoom into the planet to gain all its information, but it give you options so you don't have to. It allows for space planet type exploration while minimising the use of the FSS for those that don't like it. When you hover over the gravity distortions, these will be added on to the system map and be targetable.

4. Under the planetary descriptions, they type of geological activity should be removed, instead it should be a yes or no. They type of geological should be left to the DSS.

5. The amount of POI should also be moved to the DSS. The FSS should only give us the type. It leads to e better gameplay loop.

6. The FSS should give you the type of materials on the planets but not the percentages, again this should be left to the DSS. This will give us reasons to probe landable planets that don't have any POI as currently the only reason to probe those planets are tags and credits. Having other reasons would be good and again provides a better gameplay loop.

7. It would be nice to use it at speed, but I'm not sure how practical that would be, but having the options would be nice.

8. This is for the DSS, but once you do the probes, it should give you search regions, not pinpoint locations. Once you have used the comp scanner on the POI, them you get the pinpoint coordinates. Again this would give another use for the comp scanner and again makes a better and interesting gameplay loop.

I believe this system will allow for all types of exploration, but won't invalidate the FSS core function. It will make the gameplay loops better and make more sense with an added sense of mystery of what's there.

Off course this doesn't include new mechanics such as soil and bio samples and new types of POI which are really needed.
 
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ThatSmileyGuy

T
Old Duck said:
Frontier just recently improved trading, which has been in the game since day one. They have yet to improve multicrew or PowerPlay, so the very new FSS is at the bottom of a long list of "needs improvement" items that will probably never get improved. I hate being the depressing realist, but it's just the way Frontier rolls.
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Wanted to hear what others would like done to the FSS nonetheless.

Stigbob said:
There has been a conclusion on it FDEV said the ADS isn't coming back. People just refuse to accept it.
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Hanerib said:
That is their choice
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Gentlemen, please, let's not discuss ADS in this FSS thread.
 

Sysmon

Sysmon
Hmm... Improvements... Right!

1) Display information gained from the initial DS scan in the cockpit HUD. The spectrogram, for example.
2) Let the FSA be usable at speed, although it will obviously be less accurate and harder to target the faster the ship is going. Allow ship control as well, although that may only benefit HOTAS and mouse/keyboard pilots. In fact, do this for all screens except the exit screen. And velocity change could lower the scan precision for a few seconds while the system recalculates.
3) Add colour variations to the blue blobs based on target composition, maybe even more detailed at each step of zoom-in.
4) Make notifications about body types optional or into toggles.
5) Improve PoI scan speed.
6) For the DSS, resolve PoIs into search regions rather than exact locations.
7) Make an alternative option (upgrade? Sidegrade? Engineered version?) where the spherical FSA screen is projected onto a flat plane instead. People can then click on each of the points there to get scan data from that point. The position of the points (as representing blobs in the FSA) does not have to be a direct reference to the FSA location. The points can alternatively be listed, but still with the same need to target each and resolve the scan.

:D S
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
Old Duck said:
Frontier just recently improved trading, which has been in the game since day one. They have yet to improve multicrew or PowerPlay, so the very new FSS is at the bottom of a long list of "needs improvement" items that will probably never get improved. I hate being the depressing realist, but it's just the way Frontier rolls.
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That's not true. They fixed EBL by making you buy a PC.
 

d8veh

d8veh
I know how to improve it. Make it like the ADS only better: Jump to a new system, honk and get all the data. Why would you want anything else? I suppose you could go one better and make it automatic: Just fly to a new system and it gets all the data without doing anything. Next, they can work on the FSD; Just press the button and arrive at your destination without wasting time getting out of the station, supercruise, etc., which are real time-sinks. Also, they should bring back the hyper-bombs or whatever they were called in the 1984 version: Fly into the CZ, push a button and every ship in the instance is instantly annihilated except you. Combat is now the only Elite that can't be done in a couple of sessions. This would speed it up to the same sort of time as Explorer and Trader.
 

MadDogMurdock

MadDogMurdock
picommander said:
Generally agree with that, not quite sure with the speed restrictions though. Two possible reasons behind this decision comes to mind:
a pure technical related reason that they don't need to explain to us (or can't because it's too complicated to explain) or they just wanted to be nice to us. Cause that would turn what someone already called 'space-golf' into 'space-trapshooting'. Personally I definitely would love it! But the way I assess the bulk of explorers, I highly doubt this would be much appreciated (to say it carefully). Not to start with the small desperate group that already hates the current incarnation of the FSS with a passion. They certainly would adore 'space-trapshooting'. :p
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I’d love it. In fact I suggested it.
I’m not convinced by ‘technical limitations’ either.

The FSS view is exactly the same objects in exactly the same positions as the view out of the cockpit.
So it’s just another renderIng of SC space which has no issues with us moving.

The parallax motion of bodies is relatively slow, unless you are already very close to them. At which point, you either slow down or turn to reduce the relative motion where it would obviously help if we were still in the cockpit.

Relative motion while zoomed could be eliminated by target locking the camera while zoomed. Standard practice on military drones.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
d8veh said:
I know how to improve it. Make it like the ADS only better: Jump to a new system, honk and get all the data. Why would you want anything else? I suppose you could go one better and make it automatic:
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You’ve been able to do this for years now with hcs voice packs, and I have to rate it as amazing. Not having to hold down the trigger is so good.
 

Mengy

Mengy
marx said:
Sure, let's see the low-hanging fruit, which could be done without reworking the FSS entirely.

  • Shorten the wait times for geographical POI scanning through whatever method (it would be best if the game just told you up front what kinds there are, not their exact numbers)
  • Include POI information on the system map after you've scanned a body, without having to map them (so you can quickly check which bodies had POIs)
  • Add crew rewards to exploration multicrew (some credit vouchers would do, similar to other activities)
  • Add an option to toggle the cascading effects, so that could be turned off, and preferrably the blue grid overlay too
  • Add an option to toggle showing bodies discovered by others (but unscanned by you), so that could be turned off
  • In analysis mode, show the FSS barcode in the cockpit view, without having to switch to the FSS screen
  • Modify the FSS barcode to at least include green gas giants there
  • More work involved: extend the FSS barcode to be two-dimensional instead of one, to add extra information there (such as how bodies might be clustered at certain distances)
  • Allow NPC crew to use the FSS for you too, same as how they can use fighters (maybe add an optional module required for this)
  • Add an optional module that would populate the system map with grey untargettable bodies (and their distances) after the honk, so we can see orbital hierarchies
  • Allow us to use the FSS at speed, without having to throttle to zero
Frontier isn't even really fixing bugs with the FSS (nor the Codex) though, so I don't expect them to make even the most minor changes from the above just yet. Maybe they'll touch it at the next expansion, but more likely some time after.
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This list is perfect. Any one of these improvements would be good, all of them would be game changingly great.
 

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
marx said:
Sure, let's see the low-hanging fruit, which could be done without reworking the FSS entirely.

  • Shorten the wait times for geographical POI scanning through whatever method (it would be best if the game just told you up front what kinds there are, not their exact numbers)
  • Include POI information on the system map after you've scanned a body, without having to map them (so you can quickly check which bodies had POIs)
  • Add crew rewards to exploration multicrew (some credit vouchers would do, similar to other activities)
  • Add an option to toggle the cascading effects, so that could be turned off, and preferrably the blue grid overlay too
  • Add an option to toggle showing bodies discovered by others (but unscanned by you), so that could be turned off
  • In analysis mode, show the FSS barcode in the cockpit view, without having to switch to the FSS screen
  • Modify the FSS barcode to at least include green gas giants there
  • More work involved: extend the FSS barcode to be two-dimensional instead of one, to add extra information there (such as how bodies might be clustered at certain distances)
  • Allow NPC crew to use the FSS for you too, same as how they can use fighters (maybe add an optional module required for this)
  • Add an optional module that would populate the system map with grey untargettable bodies (and their distances) after the honk, so we can see orbital hierarchies
  • Allow us to use the FSS at speed, without having to throttle to zero
Frontier isn't even really fixing bugs with the FSS (nor the Codex) though, so I don't expect them to make even the most minor changes from the above just yet. Maybe they'll touch it at the next expansion, but more likely some time after.
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I like most of this and is very similar to my preferred improvements. Mine are a bit larger as I want to include all types of exploration.
 
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