FSS makes no sense
- Thread starter voidwalker
- Start date
Don't forget we have a very vocal part of the community here, who is all like "give us the old honk back". Because pressing a button for a few second is the apex of exploration gameplay, anything beyond that is not welcome. Imagine how things would be if you'd make things as complex as you'd like them to have.
lol 
btw, I just had to stard a flam ehr, a new thread on this, sorry!
btw, I just had to stard a flam ehr, a new thread on this, sorry!
That you mis-describe the issue does not diminish it. The old honk did not give everything, and needlessly removing the old modules was a change at the expense of existing players, leaving them in would have been at the expense of no one.
I think that went on a voyage of discovery to the sea bed.
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
That would be me
Actually I was hoping that FDev would make exploration more complex than a point-n-click minigame. Asking for the ADS back is just so I can avoid the childish tedium of the new mechanics, and get back to exploring by flying my ship around.
I wanted DCS-in-space, but FDev seem intent on turning ED into Afterburner. (Yes, SuperSnooze Assistant, I'm looking at you!)
I guess it's possible that some people have asked for the return of the Mighty Honk but I think you're oversimplifying most of the criticism.
Overall, it seems, to me, that people explore for two basic reasons; firstly to see cool stuff and secondly to find and catalogue things.
The issue is that the ADS served the first group but not the second and it's now been replaced with the FSS, which serves only the second group.
The criticism is that it would have been possible to retain the Honk (in a diminished capacity) and supplement it with the FSS.
There's no reason why the Honk couldn't have populated the Sysmap so that people could quickly decide if there was anything worth visiting in a system without yielding exploration credits or details of the planet and then people could have jumped across to the FSS in order to "do the science" to establish the material make-up of planets, identify USSs, get the exploration credits and discover anything special that might be there.
That would have supported both exploration preferences while being a detriment to neither and would have added a bit more credibility to the operation of the FSS at the same time.
The credit earning part of the old honk functionality is completely retained by the new process. The player just doesn't get to find out what the money was for without using the FSS Scanner Screen to survey the system.
IMO having the FSS Scanner Screen survey reveal information to the same [unexplored] level of data as the ADS would have made sense. Then the player would travel towards the body (once they were able to target it & take an educated guess at what it was as before) for a closer look and to reveal the full (old) Detailed Surface Scan as before, then once the player is nearby they can make the decision to go one step further and map the body to get clues about the approximate location of persistent POIs.
The new process as implemented mechanically works but is unengaging (imo). The meta approach is not to be selective but to just scan everything from the system entry point with no regard required for distance or system structure. It is just surveying, then choosing to travel to a body knowing everything required to make the decision to map it. No guesswork, no benefit of experience, no real sense of achievement (imo) once the basic controls have been set up.
A great surveying tool though, and a great time saver for the completionist.
Uhuh.
My point was that the Honk could be reinstated just to provide a simple graphical respresentation of a system, while not providing any income, discoveries or details about the system.
It'd be there simply so players could see if there was anything cool in a system - for those who just want to look at cool stuff.
The FSS could then retain all of it's current functionality, for people who're looking for mat's, want to catalog things or who're looking for things.
Nope, not asking for 3rd person anything.
I'm exploring. I would estimate that almost 90% of my time in this game has been spent exploring, and I've been doing it since the beta. The FSS mechanic is great, I like it, it's involving and requires some attentiveness. In some ways, it's easier, in others, it's more tedious, but whether it's easy or not is irrelevant to me. I'm looking for immersive. I'm also looking for more choice. For example, explorers often don't fit much in their hardpoints, but some of us carry weapons on certain ships. Now imagine if we had a reason to put something else there. The choice would become a harder one, with more variables. It makes things more interesting. To me, at least, and I posted this to see who else it would interest.
Someone posted above that they want this to be more like DCS-in-space. And I would totally buy that game. Imagine each ship having its own unique start-up and shut-down procedure that you had to go through? That would be cool for me. But I understand that it's unrealistic for a game like this, and that DCS has an incredibly niche appeal, even more so than Elite does. I'm sure our DCS in space is out there somewhere, and will show itself one of these days, but that's not what I'm suggesting here. Not even remotely. A little more variability, and a more realistic application of optical technology for better immersion.
You have to watch the livestream where they introduced it at length for it to make sense. I remember the very first feature they sold about it was removing the need to fly your spaceship when you're exploring. Truly. Very soon after, they said something about it supporting multicrew gameplay.
Everything else to do the fss is an implementation detail.
This is what gets me about it still. Its not even optional, like everything else they've done before and in the future.
Everything else to do the fss is an implementation detail.
This is what gets me about it still. Its not even optional, like everything else they've done before and in the future.
Not watched it all but I think the FSS bit starts about half way through.
Yeah so I've watched it, and the closest they got to selling "removing the need to fly your spaceship when you're exploring" as a point at all was explaining how you don't need to, at about 58 minutes in. They never ever, not once, mentioned 'removing' it. It was also definitely not the 'very first feature' they 'sold' about it, but it also doesn't surprise me at all.
How long have you been on the forums? Are you aware of how much of a problem people have had in the past about exploring in systems with stars that are extremely far apart? People didn't want to have to spend hours of their lives flying between stars in those systems, and there was far greater whining about that than there has been about FSS mechanics. I wonder why that is?
I'd like to see some citations for that.
Anyone that's been playing the game or at least engaging in the forums or the reddit for more than a year should be more than aware of such complaints, and I'm not going to create a 'wall of links' to satisfy this request. I was one such person that resisted such complaints, arguing against things like microjumps between stars that were far apart in the same system, quite frequently. But this has been a common complaint of exploration ever since the game's beta/gamma.
Here is one such post for your review. Others are easy enough to find that you should be more than capable of doing it yourself, unless you have some investment in not knowing.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/8fygtv/micro_sun_jumps_adding_content_not_shortening_the/
You said:
That requires more than one citation voidwalker, it requires 'far more' than the number of complaints about FSS mechanics.
Or we could just accept it was hyperbole
To be fair there have not been many complaints about the FSS, most of those players just stopped playing (and posting).