...using FSS and DSS while moving would be a start. ...
I never tried it, but isn't it possible to use SCA and orbit a planet while using the DSS?
...using FSS and DSS while moving would be a start. ...
The greatest single aspect of ED is without doubt Stellar Forge and the recreation of a 1-1 galaxy with all the variety that RNG can muster with 400 billion potentially unique outcomes.
Unfortunately, almost every single decision made about exploring it has been wrong and has undermined the glorious scale and variety of our home, the Milky Way.
Blunder 1. The Open Galaxy
By making travel unrestricted, FD immediately and irrevocably removed the wide possibilities of path-finding as an exploration mechanism.
A huge amount of gameplay could have been built around the idea that hyperspace routes between systems need to be established before they can be used.
Imagine a hard frontier around the bubble of explored space, as there was on a smaller scale during Beta. A key gameplay mechanism could have involved some form of route discovery to both push the frontier outwards, and improve transport links inside the bubble.
Instead, the #1 attraction in the entire galaxy, the centre of it, was reached becore the game even officially launched.
Rather than an exercise in path-finding led expansion, travelling our galaxy became an exercise in endurance.
Blunder 2. Ever-Increasing Jump Ranges
Space is big, really big, you wouldn't believe... you get the idea. Prior to Engineers, jump ranges maxxed out at about 40ly. The top range from 30-40ly was in a sweet spot that gave the galaxy a structure - the difference between the core, the spiral arms, and the gaps between them was clearly noticable and represented a genuine navigation challenge.
Possibly due to pressure from this community, instead of addressing the very poor jump ranges of certain ships, engineering grossly exagerrated the jump ranges of ships that were already the best at it.
Sure, getting around the bubble is now a lot more convenient, but the cost was the removal of any texture in the galaxy.
Prior to this change, a trip to the next spiral arm posed minor route finding problems, and the further out you went, the more tricky it got. This is arguably, the only navigation problem the game has ever contained. Removing it trivialized the scale of the galaxy, and made it a generic unstructured clump of stars instead of an interesting stuctured spiral requiring route planning.
That route finding gameplay does still exist, but now it is very much a fringe activity out on the extreme edges of the galaxy, with a rapidly diminishing set of unreachable locations.
Blunder 3. The Full System Scanner
Space is big, really big, you wouldn't believe... oh, I already said that. Yup, even individual systems are big. Supercruise was a late change to the original design but it is absolutely essential to getting even the slightest sense of the vast distances even within a system.
Yup, it is not fully fleshed out, it seems like a timesink in very large systems, and there isn't enough to do on one of those trips to Hutton Orbital. But just think about Hutton Orbital - the most iconic outpost in the game - only because it is so far away.
The glory of Stellar Forge is the variety it creates, some systems are big, some systems are tiny, and everything in between. There is no lack of choice available, and the truth is that if you don't like long SC trips, you can easily avoid them.
What's that got to do with the FSS - it's the wrong solution to something that isn't actually a problem.
The problem with SC isn't so much the time it takes to get to secondary stars, it's the lack of things to do on the way there.
Instead of making an in-flight scanner, the FSS brings us to a standstill, removes us from the cockpit, and then commits the worst offence of all - it flattens out every system into the same generic sized strobing blue sphere containing the same generic blue blobs.
System discovery becomes an exercise in camera panning where distance is irrelevant - somehow the developers surrendered to the idea that SC is a problem and created a mechanism to avoid it instead of adding it as something to do while you travel.
So where does that leave us.
A galaxy where almost every trip is a straight line due to excessive jump range, where there are almost no geographical barriers to negotiate (except permit locks), where we don't even need to move within a system to discover its content.
That's an awful long way from the original vision set out in the dim and distant past that was the DDF.
Sadly ED hasn't come close to its potential, and from day one, was heading in the wrong direction.
That direction has become more embedded as time passes and with the confirmation that the FSS is the final word, with no alternatives to be offered, the generification of the galaxy is now complete.
Game over man, game over
While part of this thread is just yet another "I dislike the FSS" in disguise, there's one aspect of the OP where I agree: there's not enough to do while going long distances in supercruise.
I wish we'd have more interesting gameplay available there. (Being able to use the FSS and surface scanner while on the move would be a start. ) But we also have to see: We for sure also have players who enjoy the current system. Fundamentally changing it would have them up in arms. (And bet on it, some would declare their hate even before taking a look at the changes. We have some famous "I never tried the FSS, but I utterly hate it and using it makes me feel bad" people here, after all. ) There's plenty of people who enjoy games like the Truck Simulator. I've seen "gameplay" videos of people who seemingly drove there in a straight line for an hour and had perfect fun doing that.
So whatever new we could have during supercruise, it would have to be optional. No "deal with malfunction here", "repair system there" and other artificial busywork. The base game should remain the same. The new activities would have to optional.
And here we are at the real problem: what would "something to do" really be? For me, using FSS and DSS while moving would be a start. Perhaps we can have some more scanning and information processing tools, but I wouldn't right away know which. But to be constructive, it doesn't help to say "invent something". Actual ideas on what the activities could be, while they would remain completely optional, would be what we need.
it is an opinion that what we have now is inferior to what the OP wants... it is a fact however that what we have now is NOT what was used to hook those early backers into paying sometimes obscene large amounts of cash in. I like that you like what we have now but that does not make OP wrong.Can't say I agree with any of the objections in the OP. They are simply opinions.
Everyone, as happens from time to time around here. He made an absoloute statement rather than saying it was his opinion.
Just wanted to check he meant it was his opinion.
There were supposed to be "dark" systems around, which were really undiscovered. I could imagine using an FSS like scanner to find such system and then decide to dare a jump to them. Would be much more interesting for exploration and we would be able to actually discover new routes.I liked the original deep-space navigation proposal in the DDF and was quite disappointed when the game launched with the whole Galaxy “unlocked”. It’s never going to happen, but I’d love a Thargoid handwavium reason to ditch the current Universal Cartographics database (nasty virus?) and implement the original proposals - keep all the original discovery tags, but make a new “re-discovered by” tag.
Bin instantaneous FTL comms, create gameplay around pony-express style information dissemination and make the Frontier beyond the bubble feel like one.
Thought-provoking stuff.
With hindsight, it might've been better if FDev had, somehow, made it so ships could only travel a limited distance "into the unknown".
Set it up so that, perhaps, you have long-range sensors that can only detect new systems within a limited range - until a system is discovered and entered into the UniCart database.
That way, the game would have started off with people charting courses, and discovering routes between popular locations, along fairly narrow "pathways" and then it'd be up to the explorers to build their jumpy ships and go out and expand the number of systems in the UniCart database so that everybody else could plot courses to them.
Basically, a kind of galactic "fog of war".
I guess you're not going to get the toothpaste back in the tube, though.
You won't find any disagreement from me OP, I also wholeheartedly agree with Iskariot's post (#22), about more agency for the pilot during supercruise.
Elite D's, and as a result Frontier's, problem is that far too often in this game you are not piloting the ship you are just a passenger on it. After all this time, (a loooonnnggggg time), I still get a nice buzz from landing at my destination, (no DC here folks!), but for the most part supercruising from entry point to destination is a 'sit back and wait' affair. I often go off route looking for fights and points of interest/vistas etc but even then there's a little too much 'waiting watching numbers decrease' and not enough fine tuning and engagement with the actual ship. I know, I know, there is a fine line there too in terms of over egging the pudding but there are, (were?), a lot of possibilities between where we are now and reaching that over egging stage.
Thats how they DID design it. However, its not how they implemented it.Mechanics aside, yes that is exactly (conceptually) how they should have designed exploring/charting the galaxy.
My OP is a set of absolute statements about what FD have done and my views on their consequences.
But this idea that everyone has an opinion and that they are all perfectly valid is horse-dung though.
People should just come out and say what they think and why they disagree instead of this passive-aggressive 'well, that's just your opinion' nonsense, as if that somehow addresses what I said.
If you have an opinion, state it, and let the peanut gallery pass judgement.
I never tried it, but isn't it possible to use SCA and orbit a planet while using the DSS?
That FSS view does make every system the same size (effectively zero) for the purpose of system exploration.
it is an opinion that what we have now is inferior to what the OP wants... it is a fact however that what we have now is NOT what was used to hook those early backers into paying sometimes obscene large amounts of cash in. I like that you like what we have now but that does not make OP wrong.
Personally i do prefer the new exploration mechanics over the old ones, if i had to choose i would take the new one.