How do you understand the "heatmap" for planet exploration?

[Walter2]

I'll weigh in on the opposite side.

I really like the system as it is. It gives me a real reason to get down low and fly slowly over the terrain, which is where I see the best sights and views. I also find it very engaging and immersive to search for the stuff. Plus I get a lot of satisfaction from my skill going up (by that I mean it's much easier for me to find stuff now, because I know what to look for). Skill and experience matter.

For me it's been one of the best additions to the game.

It's not too bad, it just takes a little work to understand how it works - and what doesn't.

The system is amazingly useless at remembering what it has discovered. You do the scans and switch between various results of different species discovered - it will even tell you what they are.

<personal peeve>
Get down to the planet and it forgets everything - where the blue areas are and what types of plant were found - the accessible planetary data just has blanks of short-term memory loss. The only way to recover the information is to go back into space and switch back to discovery mode when the computer will confess to its little joke and show you all - just make sure you go far enough out as you are in SC and constantly on the move towards the planet surface, so don't waste time carefully examining the results and making written notes.

Anyone would think there wasn't an accessible terrain map that could be used to display what had been found.
</personal peeve>

Apart from that, the system works reasonably well, but its effectiveness should be judged against the explorer's frustration levels and what they think of the capabilities of 34th century computers.

 

[Riverside]

I'm absolutely lost and I've not found an efficient guide that actually explains all the the blue.

Ever since Ody released, I've not found a single biological or geological entity with this new heat map. What am I trying to differentiate from the insane amount of blue?

Thank you.

For most stuff (particularly on flat terrain) you are looking for the greeny-blue parts, the light & darker blues usually have much poorer spawn rates. Some types only spawn in rocky terrain & the greeny-blue parts can be very small but if they are on the heatmap you know you are at least searching in the right area & it's just harder to find. Some stuff is just very sparse or (for bacteria in particular) difficult to distinguish from the terrain textures.

Some planets are harder than others too, try a different planet (hopefully an easier one) to get used to how it works.

As a few others have said going through the DSS filter, take a bit of time examining the heatmap to see if you can work out the pattern for different plant types. A typical planet might have fungi & Frutexa on mountains & all the rest on the plains.

The Community Manager that said the colour variation was only the terrain showing through was wrong. The terrain does affect the colour but so does the spawn likelihood of a particular plant type.

It's not that hard once you get used to it but it's not particularly rewarding gameplay either, just something else to do while exploring.

 

[Trowa Deathwind]

This needs a vid or something as I didn't realize until my son told me about it very recently. It really does make a huge difference.

I'm glad you said this because this video just dropped and a segment explains better how to use the "heat map"

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4SuOhTHQUs

 

[Fizzatron]

I'm glad you said this because this video just dropped and a segment explains better how to use the "heat map"

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4SuOhTHQUs

Fair play, but Yamiks does not come with my recommendation.

edit: double negative :-/

 

[Fizzatron]

Not a fan of this, only because the heat map has lied to me in the past, especially as recent as two weeks ago. I couldn't find a single thing - until I went outside the heat map.

So it's just another turn-off to not do exo, even if it pays really well right now to do. I can spend an entire day looking for exo on a planet and not find a thing.

You mustn't be doing it right, and I will press x to doubt you had to look at a part that wasn't on the heat map to find a bio, unless you mistook the map of a single bio for the one that showed them all.

I find the exobiology pretty good actually. Though I can understand if it's not for those who may not have the patience for it.

 

[yianniv]

I went to 6 crystal “site” planets in Ody recently …

Three of them I aimed tor the lightest “teal” shaded areas from orbit, spotted some shard “trees” from my ship, landed and hit a motherlode of stuff within 30 seconds or so of SRV driving,

The other three? Massive pain in the rear … all the light shaded parts were mountains I had no chance of landing on or appeared totally barren! Cue multiple returns to orbit, additional attempts to find something before giving up and Googling for some co-ords that others had found stuff at … which a whole other kettle of “fun” trying to follow the correct bearings for what seems like hours …

So, yeh, not a fan.

I'd recommend E.D.I.S.O.N. for following coordinates. Very handy. I'm on my tablet, so please look it up, you won't regret it.

 

[Fizzatron]

Believe it or not, I frankly don't care.

I believe it.

 

[Rock Hunter]

I hadn’t really got too involved with exobiology since the change to the scanning mini game, was that still in Alpha? Anyway, with the issues affecting the mission servers, the bump to EDO payouts and some free time over Christmas I thought I’d finally give it another go.

I‘ve really enjoyed it so far, although mistakes have certainly been made on my part. Stupidly I assumed that once you’d discovered an exo-type there was no point scanning them again on other bodies - I’m not going to work out how many credits or rank progress I may have missed!

I‘ve always enjoyed flying low over the landscape and Odyssey does have some stunning landscapes and colours, discovering you could do this and just land, jump out and back in has been great. I’ve never been a huge fan of the SRV - put off by hours of endless driving and staring at a scanner to find a tiny outcrop of minerals some years back.

My tip, from a bio-novice, don’t boost. I’ve found that some of it loads in quite late if you‘re going too fast, maybe I just need to increase my LOD.

 

[metatheurgist]

I gave it another shot, even with the increased payout it's still mind numbingly dull. It's like the CR reward doesn't actually change the terrible game design. Curious that so many say "It's better!" now though....

Now I'm thinking about equipping my Chief with festive flak launchers and bringing Christmas cheer to the maelstroms. I think that would be infinitely more productive.

 

[Trowa Deathwind]

Fair play, but Yamiks doesn't not come with my recommendation.

I actually posted the wrong video. My apologies. This was the video I was wanting to share.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpqpD16wpUM&t=1340s

 

[Ohanka]

It just shows the area where whatever your looking for is. It’s not an actual heat map that displays density or whatever.

Apparently there was an actual heat map at one point but they thought players would find it too confusing so replaced it with what we have now.

 

[Fizzatron]

I hadn’t really got too involved with exobiology since the change to the scanning mini game, was that still in Alpha? Anyway, with the issues affecting the mission servers, the bump to EDO payouts and some free time over Christmas I thought I’d finally give it another go.

I‘ve really enjoyed it so far, although mistakes have certainly been made on my part. Stupidly I assumed that once you’d discovered an exo-type there was no point scanning them again on other bodies - I’m not going to work out how many credits or rank progress I may have missed!

I‘ve always enjoyed flying low over the landscape and Odyssey does have some stunning landscapes and colours, discovering you could do this and just land, jump out and back in has been great. I’ve never been a huge fan of the SRV - put off by hours of endless driving and staring at a scanner to find a tiny outcrop of minerals some years back.

My tip, from a bio-novice, don’t boost. I’ve found that some of it loads in quite late if you‘re going too fast, maybe I just need to increase my LOD.

There's a sweet spot, depending on the ship, and possibly requiring a HOTAS, where you can balance the forward thruster with the vertical lateral thruster to allow for a helicopter position where your nose is pointed to the ground so that the composition scanner can blip when you go over something while moving forwards over the terrain.

 

[Northpin]

I actually posted the wrong video. My apologies. This was the video I was wanting to share.

stop falling for YT money guides and play the game
else, there is a chance the next post you'll be making is to complain about The GRIND

 

[Cori]

We complained about the heatmap in the alpha test because it wasn't clear what each colour meant; we wanted a legend.

Instead, Frontier fixed it by making all the colours the same colour.

 

[jojon]

My main issue is the spawn- and draw rates/distances, which makes spotting "valueable" bio/geo scatter objects less intuitive than it could be... I have on more than a few occasions landed on a completely barren patch of ground, only to upon disembaring find it having transformed almost into a lush meadow.

Once a group of objects have deigned to spawn, you can usually withdraw quite a-ways, before they stop drawing, depending on their size, abundance, complexity, and other things that LOD properties will be chosen by, but getting them to show up in the first place can often take drifting really slowly, at really low altitude; Sometimes things will pop into existence behind you, just the moment after you flew over them.

I mean... I am cognisant of how forbiddingly, exponentially growingly, computing expensive it would be to have things generate earlier, and draw farther, but as it is, I feel it really puts a heavy hamper on excursions, and of course also makes planets look much more bland than they could have...

 

[Cori]

Of course, the most fun is had finding a grey pool of bacteria on a grey planet at night.

 

[Northpin]

My main issue is the spawn- and draw rates/distances, which makes spotting "valueable" bio/geo scatter objects less intuitive than it could be... I have on more than a few occasions landed on a completely barren patch of ground, only to upon disembaring find it having transformed almost into a lush meadow.

been there... more than once
most annoying.

 

[Fizzatron]

We complained about the heatmap in the alpha test because it wasn't clear what each colour meant; we wanted a legend.

Instead, Frontier fixed it by making all the colours the same colour.

You can cycle through the different bios in the DSS, it does the trick well enough, and it's probably less confusing than the heat map tbh.

 

[Rock Hunter]

There's a sweet spot, depending on the ship, and possibly requiring a HOTAS, where you can balance the forward thruster with the vertical lateral thruster to allow for a helicopter position where your nose is pointed to the ground so that the composition scanner can blip when you go over something while moving forwards over the terrain.

A-ha...much like the process many use for scanning for Cores with the pulse wave analyzer (e.g. boost just above/below the ring using that technique). That's a good idea, I'll try that next time I'm in game - I'm guessing the compo scanner is useful but too small to be fully relied upon as a 'bio-finder.' Good tip though.

I've just been in my DBX so far but wondering as I go along which ship I could try next as a dedicated Bio-ship (I do like a purpose for each of them .)

 

[Cori]

There's a sweet spot, depending on the ship, and possibly requiring a HOTAS, where you can balance the forward thruster with the vertical lateral thruster to allow for a helicopter position where your nose is pointed to the ground so that the composition scanner can blip when you go over something while moving forwards over the terrain.

I tend to do something similar with my controller (XB type) set slow forward throttle, tip nose down and push up on right stick (vertical thruster) to maintain about 40m height. Also helps to pick a direction and stick to it, only turning back if you see something of interest - either pick a compass heading or fly in the direction of the local star (sunrise / sunset).