I will preface this by saying I am not looking for planets or systems that contain specific raw materials. This is not a request to be pointed towards such things. I only wish to discuss the methods of finding them on one's own.
Anyways...
I don't understand this new method of doing things. I truly don't get it. I understand that they wanted geological and biological deposits to be more realistic, i.e. not clustered together in a handful of sites, and I respect that. In fact, when I first started playing the game, it was one of the things that struck me as odd. However, it seems like this change has inadvertently (or advertently) led to approximately a 50x increase in workload in order to accomplish the same task. The implementation is one of the most backwards, nonsensical things I've ever seen.
Let's start with the DSS. This new minigame of theirs is so odd that I thought it was a visual bug. I had to look up why my planets were covered in blue paint all of a sudden. According to the dozens of posts I have read both here and on reddit, the blue area that appears when you DSS a planet is supposed to be where geological signals appear. You are allegedly supposed to be able to filter these and see a map for the individual signal types that appear on a planet, and yet this feature clearly, objectively does not function. Here are 4 screenshots from a planet with 3 geological signals on it:
There is no difference whatsoever between filters. It has been the exact same at every single planet that I have scanned in the last 4 days. Cycling signal types does nothing.
So now, more often than not you will be looking at an entire planet covered in blue and have no idea where to go to find geological sites. I've tried low flybys in my ship, but this is unreliable because not only are you fighting to see fumaroles against Odyssey's extreme high contrast lighting, but you also have the ty terrain LOD to contend with that won't even guarantee that you will see geological features no matter how close you get. Seriously, even with the hull of my ship literally scraping the planet, I can't find them. At that altitude, boosting is out of the question unless you happened to find an extremely flat area. If you fly higher so that you can boost and cover more ground, you are even less likely to see geological features.
So now the only answer left is to just take the SRV and guess a heading. Sometimes I will run across some geological features, but they will be very sparse--spread out over multiple kilometers. Like 5 or 6 features per km. However, more often than not, I will simply get no hits on my wave scanner upon landing, and I am left with no information. I frequently see nothing for dozens of minutes at a time other than the occasional bronzite chondrite if I am lucky. In fact, on most planets I've landed on, I've found more geological features outside of the blue area than inside it, such as on the planet I am currently landed on. I found some fumaroles and vents just outside of the blue area (about a dozen), and then once I drove my SRV into the blue area, I saw nothing for over half an hour. Eventually I just gave up.
Finally, I wanna discuss what has happened the few times I have found a decent sized cluster of geological features by pure luck. See, I've been chasing a particular grade 4 element for the last 4 days (I won't say which one because then someone will just tell me where to go to get it), and I've only been landing on planets that have it in relatively high abundance. Unfortunately, the only times I have found geological sites on these planets, they are almost exclusively junk. It is always upwards of 90% piceous cobble (screenshot below--I swear to god I havent harvested anything at this site yet). I've seen very little of anything else. In fact, after harvesting literally hundreds of materials on two planets with very high percentages of the element in question listed under planetary information, I have found literally zero from geological sites. I got lucky and got two pieces out of an outcrop, but that is it. I can only conclude that the element percentages they list are also broken in Odyssey.
It should NOT be this difficult to find elements in Odyssey. I don't know what they were thinking, but this is absurd. To actively hunt for an element for days and find nothing just feels awful. My entire supply of this element was gained while still on Horizons, and since switching, I've seen 0 aside from the two from the outcrop. If there's anything I'm doing wrong here, I am happy to be pointed in the right direction, but as far as I can tell, there is no better way to do this.
Anyways...
I don't understand this new method of doing things. I truly don't get it. I understand that they wanted geological and biological deposits to be more realistic, i.e. not clustered together in a handful of sites, and I respect that. In fact, when I first started playing the game, it was one of the things that struck me as odd. However, it seems like this change has inadvertently (or advertently) led to approximately a 50x increase in workload in order to accomplish the same task. The implementation is one of the most backwards, nonsensical things I've ever seen.
Let's start with the DSS. This new minigame of theirs is so odd that I thought it was a visual bug. I had to look up why my planets were covered in blue paint all of a sudden. According to the dozens of posts I have read both here and on reddit, the blue area that appears when you DSS a planet is supposed to be where geological signals appear. You are allegedly supposed to be able to filter these and see a map for the individual signal types that appear on a planet, and yet this feature clearly, objectively does not function. Here are 4 screenshots from a planet with 3 geological signals on it:
There is no difference whatsoever between filters. It has been the exact same at every single planet that I have scanned in the last 4 days. Cycling signal types does nothing.
So now, more often than not you will be looking at an entire planet covered in blue and have no idea where to go to find geological sites. I've tried low flybys in my ship, but this is unreliable because not only are you fighting to see fumaroles against Odyssey's extreme high contrast lighting, but you also have the ty terrain LOD to contend with that won't even guarantee that you will see geological features no matter how close you get. Seriously, even with the hull of my ship literally scraping the planet, I can't find them. At that altitude, boosting is out of the question unless you happened to find an extremely flat area. If you fly higher so that you can boost and cover more ground, you are even less likely to see geological features.
So now the only answer left is to just take the SRV and guess a heading. Sometimes I will run across some geological features, but they will be very sparse--spread out over multiple kilometers. Like 5 or 6 features per km. However, more often than not, I will simply get no hits on my wave scanner upon landing, and I am left with no information. I frequently see nothing for dozens of minutes at a time other than the occasional bronzite chondrite if I am lucky. In fact, on most planets I've landed on, I've found more geological features outside of the blue area than inside it, such as on the planet I am currently landed on. I found some fumaroles and vents just outside of the blue area (about a dozen), and then once I drove my SRV into the blue area, I saw nothing for over half an hour. Eventually I just gave up.
Finally, I wanna discuss what has happened the few times I have found a decent sized cluster of geological features by pure luck. See, I've been chasing a particular grade 4 element for the last 4 days (I won't say which one because then someone will just tell me where to go to get it), and I've only been landing on planets that have it in relatively high abundance. Unfortunately, the only times I have found geological sites on these planets, they are almost exclusively junk. It is always upwards of 90% piceous cobble (screenshot below--I swear to god I havent harvested anything at this site yet). I've seen very little of anything else. In fact, after harvesting literally hundreds of materials on two planets with very high percentages of the element in question listed under planetary information, I have found literally zero from geological sites. I got lucky and got two pieces out of an outcrop, but that is it. I can only conclude that the element percentages they list are also broken in Odyssey.
It should NOT be this difficult to find elements in Odyssey. I don't know what they were thinking, but this is absurd. To actively hunt for an element for days and find nothing just feels awful. My entire supply of this element was gained while still on Horizons, and since switching, I've seen 0 aside from the two from the outcrop. If there's anything I'm doing wrong here, I am happy to be pointed in the right direction, but as far as I can tell, there is no better way to do this.
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