How long is too long to spend looking for Stratum Tectonicas and only finding the bacterium?

[Aaron T]

I am showing the stratum in Bio insights, and my upper right section of the ship is showing 2 biological signals.

I have flown over much of the light side of this planet including going back up and over about 5 times over an hour.

Stratum is usually right there when you go down and is the easiest to find. At this point I think everything indicating anything more than a single type of bacterium is wrong and I have wasted much more than 75 million credits of time.

There two more small high metal content planets here indicating ST, but I have my doubts. ADDENDUM: I landed right on some immediately on the second planet, and now third..

BTW, no matter how many systems have no atmospheric HMC planets, never give up, I made 2 system discoveries in a row with 10 bodies each that both had the first discoveries, footfalls, and stratum tectonicas waiting for me tonight.

I have experienced a Bio insights not indicating stratum on a planet but finding it and after scanning it it says it was not expected or something, but I have never had it say there was some and then there not be, unless, after I did the surface scan it would place a red X on it indicating there is none.


Thank you Commanders.

 

[Anticon]

We all spend time chasing rainbows, and quite often we get the pot of gold. But not always. BioInsights is a great tool, but it offers probabilities, not promises.

 

[Elfener]

You did look at the stratum heatmap in the DSS, right?

 

[Aaron T]

You did look at the stratum heatmap in the DSS, right?

Yes, as Anticon said there are no promises.

 

[Sighman]

In the heatmap you want the teal areas. Not dark blue, not light blue, not any shade which matches the underlying planet terrain. Teal. Then you'll find it.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I have wasted much more than 75 million credits of time.

How long is 75 million credits?

ETA: I normally measure time in minutes, otherwise, on average, it would be weeks for me to waste 75 million credits of time.

 

[The Lawful]

If you do it for the money in the first place, this tool has proven to be worth way more than 75m: https://spansh.co.uk/exobiology

O7,

 

[Schattenmacher]

What is actually required? Efficiency or fun?

 

[Fixitman]

How long is a matter of personal preference. No-one can determine that for you. You may as well ask "how long is a piece of string".

Also: There is no heatmap. It's zones of probability. The term "heatmap" confuses new players who know what a heatmap is. Please stop using it in this context.

 

[Shadowsnog]

In the heatmap you want the teal areas. Not dark blue, not light blue, not any shade which matches the underlying planet terrain. Teal. Then you'll find it.

no

Hey all, blue areas basically mean the organics can be found in those areas as they meet the conditions. It doesn't mean that every part of that blue area will contain the organics though.

The slight shading is just the planet topography underneath.

exobio is very skill based activity. after time you can learn which plants preffer which terrain which will make your job easier. which plants like rough terrain or plain, hills or craters...
until then you have to realise that your efforts might be futile. so if you are going after some kind of expected income per time, skipping one or two here and there might not be a bad idea. depends on how much time you have and how much cr you want to yield. i do exobio rarely and when, then its usually either 1hour for a planet max, or no time limits and im just having fun and roaming around...

 

[SlickPBW]

Look in the areas near the base of hills where the plains begin to slope up and larger rocks start to appear.

 

[Aaron T]

In the heatmap you want the teal areas. Not dark blue, not light blue, not any shade which matches the underlying planet terrain. Teal. Then you'll find it.

That is what I do. I made 475 million in a short time. I always land right on it except for the one planet.

 

[The Lawful]

In the heatmap you want the teal areas. Not dark blue, not light blue, not any shade which matches the underlying planet terrain. Teal. Then you'll find it.

Thank you, this is a pro tip! Works indeed, \o/

O7,

 

[Arindor]

How long is too long? Do you want that in milli- or nanoseconds?

 

[andrewg_oz]

The "heatmap" shows different shades of blue depending on the underlaying terrain. You need know what sort of terrain the biological you're looking for favours and focus on that.

I also divide planets into equatorial (low latitude), polar (high latitude) and "in between". If I'm having no luck in one region I switch to a different one.

Sometimes you just need to be patient.

 

[Shurimal]

The "heatmap" shows different shades of blue depending on the underlaying terrain

The shade actually doesn't depend on terrain. Overlapping species can have different "heatmap" shade in the same geographical area. Nobody knows for sure what the shade really indicates, it seems to be very obscure and complex. But IME teal areas tend to have more probability of the species—unless some other species in the area takes precedence. And sometimes RNG just says "No!"

It's complicated

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

 

[Releaux]

As far as I’ve been able to tell, since they removed any actual “heat map” function from the overlay during beta (a mistake in my opinion), it has become a simple binary indicator as to whether or not it’s possible to find a sample.

If there’s no blue, there’s no chance. If there is blue, there’s a chance, but that chance is now dependent on other things, primarily terrain type. The strength of that chance is not reflected in the overlay. If it were, it would be an actual heat map.

I am in the camp that thinks the differences in overlay “color” are now just terrain types showing through. Completely flat areas (preferred by bacteria, some strata, and several other species) shows up as the “teal” described above because that’s the “pure” color of the overlay and there's nothing to interfere with it. The darker blue areas are darker because underlying terrain pixels stipples the teal with black.

When on approach and glide, I switch back and forth quite a bit between the overlay and raw planet view, because sometimes the (mostly) flat areas aren’t pure teal (there are patches of rocky area, so the "average" on the planet map shows "rocky"), or because I’m looking for rocky or hilly terrain where they meet flat or mountainous. I also try to land at the intersection of different soil colors (which you can't see through the overlay) because that has been important for some varieties (though I have no idea what the criteria might be).

On two recent planets, I wasn’t finding any stratum tectonicas even though Observatory indicated it was there. I finally found it when I left the equatorial region and went up closer to the poles. I've found plenty at mid latitudes on other planets, though, so there was something unique to those planets (e.g., star type, temperature) that I didn't figure out.

The overlay is the coarsest indicator available to you: "It might be here" vs "It's definitely not here." With experience, you'll know where to look for things, both in terms of terrain / location and the little graphic glitches in the programming (e.g., bacteria can "pop out" with a lot more contrast above 200m, and fungoidia stetsis has this sparkle/shimmer from a long way off, especially if the sun is low in the sky). You also learn some tricks like "I can't find any bacteria in this perfectly flat brown soil, so I'll switch over to the grey soil..." or "yeah, everything's going to be in that crater over there."

As for "how long is too long?" that is entirely personal. For me, it's mostly situational. I've spent over an hour looking for a fungoida because I wasn't going to let it beat me. I've also abandoned a stratum tectonicas after just 10 minutes because it wasn't showing up anywhere and I wanted to keep moving. If you're measuring your fun in credits/hour, 100 million / hour seems to be the standard people use for other things, so... 57 minutes?

 

[Shurimal]

I am in the camp that thinks the differences in overlay “color” are now just terrain types showing through.

But it isn't just that:

 

[Releaux]

Thanks for the marked-up screenshots, @Shurimal - that's probably the first time I've been able to see a difference. I wonder if you get different shades with the overlap of two areas because the blue values are being added to each other. The darker blue in the bacterium filter correlates directly to the concha areas, which are back to being the lighter blue in the second image.

Not trusting my aging eyes, I used a color meter on the two images and the concha zone pixels in the first image (bacterium filter) average much darker than the same area in the image with the concha alone. That could be due to the camera exposure auto adjusting with the new Odyssey lighting, but I don't typically see that happen when flipping between filters - it's super-subtle if it's actually doing that. Absent a dev ever acknowledging what they did or didn't do, my best guess is the color addition theory making things darker where multiple filters overlap.

Practically, though I still rarely find any useful info in the overlay other than the binary "it might / definitely won't appear in this area" indication and the "this area is as flat as it gets" teal vs everything else. Getting the experience of knowing which terrains the various species prefer has been far more helpful to me. Color differences in the overlay have been far less consistent to the point that I mostly just ignore them now. I do welcome any repeatable process that would make the overlay more useful, though.

Personally, I wish FDev had not listened to the people who griped about not being able to understand a heat map. It would have been far simpler with a reliable heat map than the "just turn off the probability shading but leave everything else in" kludge they appear to have used. For that matter, I wish I didn't have to go up into super cruise to change the filter.

Regardless, I'm still having fun. Except for the planet I'm currently on being a jerk and hiding the fungoida I know are there...

 

[Fixitman]

I've spent the last 2-3 weeks just exploring and looking for bio's. I used to think the overlay texture was a product of the terrain. It's now looking like the smoother the texture, the better the chances. It also seems as though elevation plays a role, but we don't have access to that information. Subtle terrain changes are easy to see, elevation not so much.