I still hate the new style of exploration even after adjusting to it.

[Heavy Johnson]

Hmmm. So how is someone suppose to choose whether to spend that ten minutes without having the information they can only get after the ten minutes?

Seriously, people trying to dress this up as laziness like yourself are flat-out trolling. Enough people have already explained exactly what their problem is, several times over the course of a year or more in some cases, that I refuse to believe anybody genuinely fails to grasp it. If you like the current way of doing things fine, nobody is telling you not to, but spare me the insulting crap you wrote there.

By the way you do realise that it's infinitely faster to tag a system with the FSS, right? And that even fully mapping it only takes the same time as fully tagging a system would have done with the old ADS/DSS combo?

0) "So how is someone suppose to choose whether to spend that ten minutes without having the information they can only get after the ten minutes?"

You mean like how you can't tell what is actually in a star system without actually jumping to that star system? Congratulations, you've found the point. You're playing a gambling game with your time. If you want to try to roll big, spend the time. If you don't... then you don't. If you want some other game where you get to know that you have something interesting before spending the time to find it... HAHA, NO. That's not how this works.

Those who are willing to spend the extra time can find the more "interesting" things, or they may just get unlucky. That's the game you're playing. It's also how reality works: No scientist knows they're going to find something amazing; they make an educated guess and then they hope to get lucky. This is roughly how most extrasolar planets are found - astronomers make a reasonable guess about what stars might have extrasolar planets, then they focus instruments on it, collect a bunch of data, and analyze the results. Expensive instrument time might get them something, or it might be a flat bust.

Except in our case, we actually get a BONUS, because a quick look at the FSS spectrum will tell you roughly what body types exist. I can tell at-a-glance now if ELW, WW, AW, HRGG, WG, or HMCs exist in a system without every having to try to scan it down. We have it pretty good, really.

1) I grasp [the complaint], and reject it as laziness. You can either a) choose to stop and spend the 2-6 seconds per/body FSSing it or b) just get the basic info via honk and move on. Scanner tells you quickly if you've got any interesting bodies once you can quickly read the spectrum plot. This is a direct time choice. There isn't anything else.

2) People want the old ADS-only system where they can just honk,jump,honk,jump, repeat repeat repeat.

3)

 

[Shinji Ikari]

0) "So how is someone suppose to choose whether to spend that ten minutes without having the information they can only get after the ten minutes?"

You mean like how you can't tell what is actually in a star system without actually jumping to that star system? Congratulations, you've found the point. You're playing a gambling game with your time. If you want to try to roll big, spend the time. If you don't... then you don't. If you want some other game where you get to know that you have something interesting before spending the time to find it... HAHA, NO. That's not how this works.

Those who are willing to spend the extra time can find the more "interesting" things, or they may just get unlucky. That's the game you're playing. It's also how reality works: No scientist knows they're going to find something amazing; they make an educated guess and then they hope to get lucky. This is roughly how most extrasolar planets are found - astronomers make a reasonable guess about what stars might have extrasolar planets, then they focus instruments on it, collect a bunch of data, and analyze the results. Expensive instrument time might get them something, or it might be a flat bust.

Except in our case, we actually get a BONUS, because a quick look at the FSS spectrum will tell you roughly what body types exist. I can tell at-a-glance now if ELW, WW, AW, HRGG, WG, or HMCs exist in a system without every having to try to scan it down. We have it pretty good, really.

1) I grasp [the complaint], and reject it as laziness. You can either a) choose to stop and spend the 2-6 seconds per/body FSSing it or b) just get the basic info via honk and move on. Scanner tells you quickly if you've got any interesting bodies once you can quickly read the spectrum plot. This is a direct time choice. There isn't anything else.

2) People want the old ADS-only system where they can just honk,jump,honk,jump, repeat repeat repeat.

3)

0.1) You are making a fallacious analogy because we never had the ability to see what was inside a system, it would also be a MUCH more degrading addition as it would essentially undermine exploration as a whole. The other half is easily disproven by the own FSS and the state of exploration before such addition, in fact, you implied this in your own post: "Scanner tells you quickly if you've got any interesting bodies once you can quickly read the spectrum plot."

0.2) Sorry no, you can tell very well when a scientific endeavour will prove to be interesting by the own goals of it and "educated guess" falls very short of what can and is predicted. The rest of the post speaks as if ED panned out in the 21st century but that is over a millenia off the spot, then again, this same argument undermines the FSS which made it MUCH easier to scan the whole system.

0.3) How benevolent of FD, we should be grateful we get information at all.

1) Here is where you show your lack of grasp of the complaint, the scanner does not provide enough information to judge if X body is interesting, at least not for a considerable portion of the community.

2) Honk, scroll, zoom, scroll, zoom, scroll, zoom, ..., scroll, zoom, jump. Oh wait, that's just for a single system...

3) https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cringy

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

0) "So how is someone suppose to choose whether to spend that ten minutes without having the information they can only get after the ten minutes?"

You mean like how you can't tell what is actually in a star system without actually jumping to that star system? Congratulations, you've found the point. You're playing a gambling game with your time. If you want to try to roll big, spend the time. If you don't... then you don't. If you want some other game where you get to know that you have something interesting before spending the time to find it... HAHA, NO. That's not how this works.

Those who are willing to spend the extra time can find the more "interesting" things, or they may just get unlucky. That's the game you're playing. It's also how reality works: No scientist knows they're going to find something amazing; they make an educated guess and then they hope to get lucky. This is roughly how most extrasolar planets are found - astronomers make a reasonable guess about what stars might have extrasolar planets, then they focus instruments on it, collect a bunch of data, and analyze the results. Expensive instrument time might get them something, or it might be a flat bust.

Except in our case, we actually get a BONUS, because a quick look at the FSS spectrum will tell you roughly what body types exist. I can tell at-a-glance now if ELW, WW, AW, HRGG, WG, or HMCs exist in a system without every having to try to scan it down. We have it pretty good, really.

1) I grasp [the complaint], and reject it as laziness. You can either a) choose to stop and spend the 2-6 seconds per/body FSSing it or b) just get the basic info via honk and move on. Scanner tells you quickly if you've got any interesting bodies once you can quickly read the spectrum plot. This is a direct time choice. There isn't anything else.

2) People want the old ADS-only system where they can just honk,jump,honk,jump, repeat repeat repeat.

3)

Listen dear clueless cherry picking troll, 2 is still possible. So no, that's not the point.

Next time read a post.

 

[Pirin]

It's almost as if... now you have to choose where to spend your time, instead of being given everything without having to do any work. SHOCKING.

The shocking part here is that you are actually the admin of the galactic mapping project. If FSS was in the game from the start, your project would be almost empty. You realize that, dont you? Because the number of interesting things found by a given cmdr is a function of the number of systems visited by that cmdr. Which depends of the time spent in each system. FSS makes that time many times longer.
So, unless you are interested in mapping a gadzillion of trivial icy moons, you are actually advocating the idea of less interesting entries to your mapping project. You are the last cmdr i would expect to take such a hostile and aggressive stance against the system which provided the majority of the entries in your project. Truly shocking, indeed.

All that is a shame, since i really like the project. One of the best community initiatives and something FD should have implemented themselves.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You are the last cmdr i would expect to take such a hostile and aggressive stance against the system which provided the majority of the entries in your project. Truly shocking, indeed.

All that is a shame, since i really like the project. One of the best community initiatives and something FD should have implemented themselves.

Especially ironic since the founder of that project also isn't a fan of the new system.

 

[Red Anders]

blah

Yeah that did so much to convince me you're not just trolling.

You have in fact completely failed to grasp my own issue though, your reply seems to be directed at someone who is looking for ELWs, or water worlds, or something else that you can readily identify from 'a quick look at the FSS spectrum'.

Frankly there's so much lame in that post, I can't even be bothered engaging with you beyond this.

 

[Mengy]

Except in our case, we actually get a BONUS, because a quick look at the FSS spectrum will tell you roughly what body types exist. I can tell at-a-glance now if ELW, WW, AW, HRGG, WG, or HMCs exist in a system without every having to try to scan it down. We have it pretty good, really.

The ADS did this better, as we could not only tell planet type with a quick glance but we could also:

1. Charge the FSD while doing so
2. Look for ringed bodies quickly while doing so
3. Look for uniquely colored planets quickly while doing so, like GGG's
4. See the system map and layout quickly.

We lost more than we gained with the FSS. I didn't think so at first, but after heavy use of the FSS I do think so now.

 

[Crusina Luachra]

Listen dear clueless cherry picking troll, 2 is still possible. So no, that's not the point.

Next time read a post.

It's been over a year now I think ziggy? And people still don't understand what we are saying.

I'm absolutely floored, that people can not grasp what we are saying. It's beyond any kind of comprehension that no matter how many times you explain something, no matter how much detail you give, no matter how many examples and comparisons you show, they still don't even understand what we are saying.

It's not even a matter of people agreeing with us, that's not even the struggle.

The struggle is that they are literally incapable of even understanding what we are even saying in the first place. Virtually nobody against my post has actually responded to what I actually posted. It's baffling.

 

[Crusina Luachra]

By the same logic, the FSS is a 5 sec win game compared to actually travelling to the celestial object to make a scan.

Except

Nobody who knew how to effectively use the old system flew to any planet they didn't find interesting.

And since I'm here, what do you define as a "interesting" planet or stellar body?

 

[robbyp]

The new system, IMHO, is much better. Much more like exploring. The old honk and everything was revealed was just a placeholder mechanic.

 

[Zieman]

everything was revealed

Like BIO & GEO sites, or terraformable status ?
</sarcasm>

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Except

Nobody who knew how to effectively use the old system flew to any planet they didn't find interesting.

Thus...

And since I'm here, what do you define as a "interesting" planet or stellar body?

Really small or really large planets, high G planets, planets with large craters, planets with very large rings, planets with weird colors (green or purple for instance), nested orbits, moons very close to rings or the planet, planets close to their star. That is for planets only, I also look for specific stars and odd configurations, then again, there is a "stellar phenomena" category for POIs. Here are two personal examples that made it to the galactic mapping proyect:

EDSM - Elite Dangerous Star Map

The Galactic Positioning System of Elite: Dangerous at your service.

www.edsm.net

EDSM - Elite Dangerous Star Map

The Galactic Positioning System of Elite: Dangerous at your service.

www.edsm.net

Of course systems within nebulas are great.

 

[duckofdeath]

People can post personal pros and cons to eternity but the point still stands, the FSS grinds a fast explorer's progress to a complete halt. The equally slow new DSS makes that multiples times slower. Like others has said, none of the big mapping projects would have been possible with how the game works today. That fairly simple attempt to re-map everything within 200 LY of Sol, in the hunt for clues to those original riddles in the game, is barely moving forward at this point as most involved seems to have gotten tired of the slowness.
Covering large areas to look for specific things is utterly boring with the current setup as there is no way around the slowness of the new design.
I could have accepted the redesign if the redesign wasn't only geared towards CMDRs tagging all the things for whatever reasons they have doing that. I'm not that type of player and I have not grown an interest in doing that just because the game design is trying to force me in that direction.

If they would just add layers to the FSS to let us use it as a substitute for the old system map glance and either completely remove the new DSS or make it a lot faster to use and I'll be fine with having to use them.

 

[disorganise]

With the odyssey thingy I thought I'd drop by the forums. Good to see we're still having the same discussion 18 months later

I tried to like the FSS, and occasionally....I do. But mostly I find it tedious and unrewarding.
Used to be insta-discovery, slow explore (if you found something interesting). Now its slow discovery, slow explore (if you find something interesting)

The answer remains, imho, to let the system map come back after the honk [but with no credits] - it's already in the game when the system has been FSS'd by someone else, just bring it back for undiscovered systems too. If you don't like that gameplay, don't look at the system map until you complete the FSS. Heck, make it a toggle. It's not like my knowing what colour a planet is, or that two are really close together gives me any kind of advantage over you if you choose not to look....but the colour could be interesting and lead me to want to explore it.

Anyway, horse is long deceased and I accepted Elite is now a once every couple o' months game instead of daily game.

 

[Jackie Silver]

The struggle is that they are literally incapable of even understanding what we are even saying in the first place. Virtually nobody against my post has actually responded to what I actually posted. It's baffling.

Yes. The issue was that a number of these uncomprehending people had the ear of the devs and consequently were able to force through the downgrade on people who actually explore, mostly through whining about people cherry picking (ironically enough, you appear to share this fault, but moving swiftly on) and pretending that the FSS etc. would bring "skill" to exploration - measured by their own ignorance of what exploration skill actually means and displaying an astonishing optimism.

In practice, of course, the FSS is a grinding time-sink which directly facilitates cherry-picking (your heart may fill with rage to know that I have been gleefully using it for that purpose to test the limits of cash-grabbing, leaving a slew of partially scanned systems across the width of the Milky Way) and involves less skill than almost any other aspect of the game.

There is one benefit of the FSS (which could, of course, have been incorporated into the old system, which would have been a much better approach) in that when one can muster the enthusiasm to twiddle those little dials long enough, entire systems can be mapped in detail quicker.

Really, all FD needed to do was provide the FSS as a way of getting detail scans on top of the existing system map, but no, they had to throw out the baby with the bathwater and start again with a bathtub-full of loach urine instead.

 

[disorganise]

Scanner tells you quickly if you've got any interesting bodies once you can quickly read the spectrum plot

Really? Then I need training.
How do I tell colour, size and proximity to each other. I like driving around red potato moons, especially if there's a ring nearby. I also look for oversized planets that might have high G's.
How do I tell that in a few seconds from the FSS wave scanner? I've only been able to find that by FSS'ing the whole system for a few minutes and then looking at the system map

 

[marx]

Yes. The issue was that a number of these uncomprehending people had the ear of the devs and consequently were able to force through the downgrade on people who actually explore, mostly through whining about people cherry picking (ironically enough, you appear to share this fault, but moving swiftly on) and pretending that the FSS etc. would bring "skill" to exploration - measured by their own ignorance of what exploration skill actually means and displaying an astonishing optimism.

I'm not so sure about this. I think the problem mostly was that the developers knew next to nothing about exploration, and whoever they ran their internal tests with also knew little. Even the "influencers" who were invited to show off the various prototypes didn't have any explorers either, although I was worried when some of them said that their first expressions of the new exploration would be that it's clunky, but they think it'll work well. Now, the goal of Chapter Four was to get more people interested in exploration, but the kicker was that the devs didn't actually get enough time / resources to do much with it. So, I suppose wider reforms were out of the question. What else do you do then?
Try to increase activity by drawing in new players not with much improved gameplay, but with much improved rewards. And so, we had many more credits, many more tags, and even new tags to slap on old stuff, just to be sure.
For the many more credits, finding Earth-likes also had to be made easier, so we got the cherry-picking barcode. Of course, the bigger credits are actually in terraformables, but due to a lack of knowledge, the FSS actually made them a bit harder to find. (You can only tell distance from arrival much slower than you could with the system map.)

Turning up the tag shower had an unexpected and I'd bet entirely unintended benefit: much more data in the journals. After all, the DSS is slow and gets monotonous even quicker than the FSS, so the devs wanted to reward people with easy tags. Enter quick scans at any distance. Probably the best thing that happened to exploration in these past couple of neglected years was the influx of data which enabled EDObservatory and other data trawling to work much better. Ironically enough, for a release that was supposed to be about introducing more manual work to exploration, the best thing turned out to be better automation.
In some way, the Codex is also this, what with the automatic sharing of certain discoveries with all the other explorers.

To sum it up: the things Frontier intended as good actually turned out to be bad, and what they didn't intend actually turned out to be good. (Also see: neutron star boosts, and fleet carriers. Of course, both had to have the outcries of communities to actually be implemented, since NS boosts were originally meant to give a +25% range and the current boosted range was a bug slated to be "fixed", and carriers didn't have UC.)


On another note:

In practice, of course, the FSS is a grinding time-sink which directly facilitates cherry-picking [...] and involves less skill than almost any other aspect of the game.

Well, yes. It requires less skill than even docking does. The system map at least had pattern recognition, but now, the FSS has memorising barcode positions, and even that is only to shave off a couple of seconds.
I mean, you can compare from my guide to finding ELWs how it was before and after the FSS. Here they are, put behind a spoiler because the former is quite long. The old one:

Spoiler

Now that you've (hopefully) decided what to look for, let's see some tips on how to recognize Earth-likes on the system map.

They are blue.

Of course, so are water worlds, and some high metal content planets in orbit of class A stars, so that's very not helpful.

So, let's extend it: they are blue, and have patches of green on them. Water worlds are entirely covered by water (now), while Earth-like worlds have landmasses. Some have only a few small continents, but others can be mostly covered in land and have only a few seas. But if it's blue and green, then congratulations! You've found one.
Also, Earth-like worlds are a "special" shade of blue. With practice, you'll be able to recognize it.

However, note that the light of different kinds of parent stars will give these colours some hues. Most notably, carbon stars will colour them slightly green (example, and another example), while red dwarf stars will give them a red hue (example).

If after all this, you'd still like to see some examples of how actual Earth-like worlds look in-game, the ELW list has literally thousands of example screenshots. Look at enough of them, and you will go mad like I did get a pretty good feel of what they might look like. Should you be in doubt, it's always best to go investigate. Also, there is another way...

New in 2.3: you can now also identify Earth-like worlds based on their hologram icon that shows up when you target them. Previously, they shared the same icon with other types of worlds: now, they only share it with ammonia worlds. You can see all the examples on this sheet, courtesy of Radio Sidewinder. So if you're unsure about whether or not your target is an ELW, there is now also this method of visual verification. But there's more...

Before you travel there and scan the planet, you can confirm its type by listening to its sound. No, I'm not making this up.
You see, when you zoom in on planets in the system map, the background music changes depending on what type of planet it is. Thankfully, the sound of ELWs is rather unique, so it's not too difficult to tell them apart from others. Listen for the sound of birds chirping.

For this, make sure your audio is set up correctly: make sure music is unmuted, and stellar cartography music is on. Also, if you have headphones, I recommend setting the "Optimise for" option to "Night Time". Unless you have an expensive, high quality headphone setup.
You can find a sample of how it should sound like here, and I also recommend reading the guide to planet sounds if you wish to know more.

You can test if your setup is working correctly by calling up the system map for a known Earth-like planet - for example, like Earth in Sol. They don't get more Earth-like than that!

And then, here's the current version, already quite verbose for what it actually is:

Spoiler

Now that you've (hopefully) decided what to look for, let's see some tips on how to recognize Earth-likes. Well, with the FSS, this'll be a short one!
As you no doubt know by now (unless you're entirely new to the game yet, in which case, hey, thanks for reading this guide so soon!), the FSS's "Filtered Spectral Analysis" graph tells you exactly what kinds of bodies there are in a system. There's a specific range for Earth-like Worlds there, roughly between R and L in the word "Spectral" - so it would be "SpectRAL". If you see something there, there's at least one ELW in the system.
In case you're not entirely sure whether you're in the correct range, check the "Signal Analysis" part in the bottom right: it tells you what range you're currently tuned to, and exactly what you're going to find there.

If you don't wish to memorise every possible part of the graph, a handy visual help is to overlay an image of the entire FSA spectrum on top of the game. I'd recommend using MattG's EDJPO for this, which you can find here - it's currently in beta, but works fine.

So yeah, the argument that the ADS handed you everything on a silver platter, required less skill and so on certainly falls flat here.


On the bright side, since the next expansion was now revealed to have space legs, I'm fairly certain we'll see the developers at least take another look at the FSS, or to offer in-cockpit alternatives to it, if for nothing else then simply because it would be even worse with legs than it already is. (Teleporting you outside of "your" body when the entire rest of the game involves either sitting in your chair or walking around will be even more jarring.)

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

On the bright side, since the next expansion was now revealed to have space legs, I'm fairly certain we'll see the developers at least take another look at the FSS, or to offer in-cockpit alternatives to it, if for nothing else then simply because it would be even worse with legs than it already is. (Teleporting you outside of "your" body when the entire rest of the game involves either sitting in your chair or walking around will be even more jarring.)

Not so certain the developers will take a look at FSS. FSS is exploration after all. Fairly certain that spacelegs will cater to the FPS demography. The trailer didn't have scientist running around.

Also wonder, if you're in your boat, you get minutes of oxygen in your suit when the power fails. Outside your boat, you don't have power ... so you need to link up with the boat every 15 minutes? Or what happens if you step out on a 9G planet?

Whatever the result may be, where before I would pre-order any Elite update, I think I'll sit back for this one.

 

[robbyp]

Like BIO & GEO sites, or terraformable status ?
</sarcasm>

Did they exist when the honking system was around? I'm not clear. If not, the sarcasm tag bounces right back at ya!

 

[baqar79]

The ADS did this better, as we could not only tell planet type with a quick glance but we could also:

1. Charge the FSD while doing so
2. Look for ringed bodies quickly while doing so
3. Look for uniquely colored planets quickly while doing so, like GGG's
4. See the system map and layout quickly.

We lost more than we gained with the FSS. I didn't think so at first, but after heavy use of the FSS I do think so now.

I also made use of the basic numbers that were provided on the initial ADS scan (mass, orbital distance, radius, rotational rate, though I forget exactly which ones now).

I have a feeling that there are several groups of explorers and the group that is happy with the FSS has never explored the way I have and can only put it in context with what they think the ADS was all about for me from their own understanding.

It probably isn't a malicious thing, just something impossible to communicate without being from the same crowd at least. It is very frustrating, but perhaps there is still hope for the future. Maybe kicking up a fuss every now and then might eventually get the message to FD. I still love the game, but I also enjoy engineering ships so I can fall back on that if exploration doesn't work out.