If I wanted a 'radio-tuning' game I would have rather bought an old radio.

[Blackcompany]

Is sitting and waiting (and let's be fair, sometimes for quite a long time - not engaging the player at all) really a fulfilling thing to do?

You do still have to fly your ships to the planets to map them.

I understand that people are unhappy, but FDev have replaced nothing with something. Is the nothing really preferable?

That's a whole separate issue.

No, SC in straight lines for minutes is NOT engaging. Or especially fun.

But neither is fiddling with virtual AM radio dials.

Neither method is especially engaging. That's the issue. They didnt improve anything, just replaced one type of tedium with another.

 

[SheepDip82]

Me ? Same thing any Explorer in the history did while navigating. Consulting maps, charts, ship logs, planning routes, etc.. (EDD, EDSM, Forums, etc..)
But we are talking of two different visions of what "Exploration" is.

Fair enough.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

That's a whole separate issue.

No, SC in straight lines for minutes is NOT engaging. Or especially fun.

But neither is fiddling with virtual AM radio dials.

Neither method is especially engaging. That's the issue. They didnt improve anything, just replaced one type of tedium with another.

Real explorers SC in curves

 

[biot]

Has a thread been created in "Suggestions & Feature Requests" to request the honk + populate system map functionality? It wasn't readily apparent.

 

[Old Duck]

Has a thread been created in "Suggestions & Feature Requests" to request the honk + populate system map functionality? It wasn't readily apparent.

Nobody wants that. Some of us will accept bringing back an optional ADS, because we do not want the sysmap populated automatically.

 

[killminster]

That's a whole separate issue.

No, SC in straight lines for minutes is NOT engaging. Or especially fun.

But neither is fiddling with virtual AM radio dials.

Neither method is especially engaging. That's the issue. They didnt improve anything, just replaced one type of tedium with another.

So come on then, describe exactly what you think would be an especially engaging and fun method and also why that wouldn't end up as tedium after the 50 or so times of doing it?

This really does seem to be something that isn't going to please everyone however they approach it and it's the same with multiple areas of the game.

 

[Scytale]

But neither is fiddling with virtual AM radio dials.

Neither method is especially engaging. That's the issue. They didnt improve anything, just replaced one type of tedium with another.

That's the point. The content. Supercruising hours for nothing.
I ended (not playing this spoiled game anymore) exploring the Stellar Forge more than the systems in it.
Would the FDevs have put exciting content inside the systems, everybody would have been happy to supercruise and eyeball.

 

[SheepDip82]

That's a whole separate issue.

No, SC in straight lines for minutes is NOT engaging. Or especially fun.

But neither is fiddling with virtual AM radio dials.

Neither method is especially engaging. That's the issue. They didnt improve anything, just replaced one type of tedium with another.

I would gladly sacrifice a few minutes of time spent -twiddling to do away with the much more time consuming idle super-cruising between bodies, the FSS makes it much easier to engage with the exploration content (like the stellar phenomena/geological/biological features).

 

[biot]

Nobody wants that. Some of us will accept bringing back an optional ADS, because we do not want the sysmap populated automatically.

Fair point, I see different people are asking for different things. But have any of the proposals (i.e. change from what we currently have) been floated in that forum?

 

[Scytale]

I... the exploration content (like the stellar phenomena/geological/biological features).

... so exciting...

 

[Riverside]

Has a thread been created in "Suggestions & Feature Requests" to request the honk + populate system map functionality? It wasn't readily apparent.

A More Advanced Discovery Scanner

 

[Ian Skippy]

Is sitting and waiting (and let's be fair, sometimes for quite a long time - not engaging the player at all) really a fulfilling thing to do?

FD explicitly said that in the opinion of many people flying forever in SC to planets that usually were rather uninteresting was not fun, and having thought about it they agreed. They then said they wanted there to be a way for people to quickly identify which planets could be interesting, so people would fly in SC only as part of an interesting little trip. Many said:"Cool, way to go!". A few said:"Boo, we like the old stuff better!". FD said:"We've heard all feedback, we're removing the ADS even though we know a small minority wont like that."

And that is all there is to it, really.

 

[biot]

A More Advanced Discovery Scanner

Thank you for the link!

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

Nobody wants that. Some of us will accept bringing back an optional ADS, because we do not want the sysmap populated automatically.

You have an interesting definition of "nobody" and "we".

I want the system map shown after the honk and I want it populated automatically.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Fair point, I see different people are asking for different things. But have any of the proposals (i.e. change from what we currently have) been floated in that forum?

Yes, but those tend to get a handful of responses and then die. Whats left is a few topics of hundreds of pages where a handful of people keep repeating they like the old stuff better. Ok, noted. FWIW: here was mine:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/467736-Exploration-Beyond-3-3

Riverside and Ziggy also had one.

 

[biot]

Yes, but those tend to get a handful of responses and then die. Whats left is a few topics of hundreds of pages where a handful of people keep repeating they like the old stuff better. Ok, noted. FWIW: here was mine:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/467736-Exploration-Beyond-3-3

Riverside and Ziggy also had one.

Thank you for sharing this. I don't necessarily think the handful of responses is a bad thing; I just looked at the link provided by Riverside and its nice and concise. I can't say if they get ignored by FD or not, I would like to think they don't, but speaking from the perspective of reading the threads for the first time, it's much easier to get the gist of what is being asked for in that forum than the threads in this one (just because of the sheer volume of posts).

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

Exploring.

Yeah, heaven forbid we have to fly our ships to so something in this game...

I'm finding these responses difficult to understand.

This is how I now see and have adapted to Exploration in ED;

1) Choosing a star system to go to. Which involves travelling to it.

2) Doing the surveying of that star system, by way of the FSS.

The old ADS way, you gave a honk and could instantly see the schematic of the star system. In order to detail scan you had to fly the ship to each body and wait until the scanner completed. You didn't get any PoI data. If the body was landable and had volcanism, you then had to spend literally hours - tens of hours - searching for volcanism PoI's.

The more recent FSS way, you survey each body with the FSS. You honk. The first data you receive is how many star there are, and how many bodies there are total in the star system. Then with the FSS you focus on each body - this gives you the same data that flying up to each one and scanning did with as per the old DSS scanner - plus it tells you how many PoI's there are on said body if it is landable and has volcanism.

By now you know what a body is, how it looks, if it's landable, if and what type of volcanism it has, and if so, how many PoI's are on the body.

You are now armed with all the information you need in order to come to a decision on whether to fly to that body or not.

"I want to see the <volcanism> on <that planet/moon>", or "I'm going to fly the 400,000Ls to that ELW/WW/AW/<other interesting body> in order to map it", or "that moon over there looks like it's got great canyons let's go!" and so on.

On top of that, the DSS probes for me are such a great boon! It's basically what I was asking for since mid-2017 except much better! No longer do you have to spend tens of hours using Mk.1 Eyeball[tm] in hope of stumbling across some volcanism!

On that - note that you can still choose to do that, by not probe-mapping a body! You have that choice.

On that same note - you don't even need to FSS-survey the system before exploring it - you can choose to fly around using parallax to discover bodies and have the FSS passively scan them once near enough to them, if that's your bag!

In other words, the new FSS mechanics haven't stopped anyone from flying to a body. This is why I'm puzzled at those responses. Help me understand why what I've typed above isn't the same for you two, please

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I don't think anybody, not even Burke, has claimed that exploration using the ADS was thrilling or exciting. The ADS was a tool that opened up gameplay that I personally found relaxing and which gave me a sense of achievement. The FSS is now the gameplay, rather than the tool, and for me it gets in the way of my relaxing gameplay and doesn't provide the same sense of achievement.

Happily, even if I get my wish (and optional module providing black-body information in the SysMap) your exciting/thrilling gameplay will still exist.

If it helps, just think of us as trainspotters or stamp collectors. Not everybody wants to jump out of an airplane for fun, but there's no reason why ED couldn't let us all 'blaze our own trails'

I do want to jump out of an airplane, but that’s a different matter entirely. I don’t see that the FSS keeps you from flying out to look at anything, relaxing on the way, especially since the zoomed view is still nowhere as detailed as a first hand look. And I get stamp collecting - I did a bit of it myself. To me the new method is more like Philately, rather than simple stamp collecting - now you know that that 1918 Inveted Jenny usn’t Just an oddity, but extremely rare and valuable. Kind of a good thing to know.

I didn't read past this, because you clearly haven't been reading my posts IndigoWyrd. The new system is a two dimensional piece of another game cludged into this one. It feigns depth yet the meta is to burn past any subtlety & just completion scan with no skill or thought required, it lays bare all of the things while offering no more clues to where anything not marked by a POI may lie.

The actual galaxy is a work of genius that I want to appreciate, the FSS only gets in the way of that without an ADS to accompany it. The ADS & interpreting the sysmap required some semblance of experience to interpret that was satisfying, the FSS is a simple, mindless chore that lacks imagination or scope and it is difficult to believe it was created by the same company as the stellar forge.

You’ve cheated yourself then. Go back and read the rest. You mistakenly believe I’m not reading your posts, I suspect because you’ve failed to convince me in any way, but believe me, I have. You claim the new method to be a mindless chore, I assert the old method to be vastly more mindless and tedious. You claim you derived some satisfaction from some how interpretating a 2d map, that is still displayed, and that some sort of experience is required here. I ask for an explanation, as this makes no sense at all. A fully populated 2d map leaves nothing to interpret. Everything is there to see. The new system requires actual intuition and interpretation, especially when you’ve scanned 23 of 25 bodies, know there are two more to find, yet the signal indicators, those blue blobs you seem to dread, simply do not appear on your display. Bodies with irregular, excentic orbits well off the orbital plane, that’s where interpretation and knowledge and dare I say, skill become a factor. In your old system, you’d just see those too. A flat gas giant and its moon, between the 21st and 23rd body, then mindlessly lock in and fly that direction, without having to know that direction is 147 degrees on your X axis, 51 degrees on your Y and 8 degrees on your Z (or above and behind you at a sharp angle).

I’d love to know how you divined this sort of information before, it might help me understand, because right now, I can’t do it. Walk a mile in someone’s shoes, but if you can’t recognize what they call a shoe, it can be tough.

 

[Burke]

FD explicitly said that in the opinion of many people flying forever in SC to planets that usually were rather uninteresting was not fun, and having thought about it they agreed. They then said they wanted there to be a way for people to quickly identify which planets could be interesting, so people would fly in SC only as part of an interesting little trip.

The FSS may well do all that. It does not explain why people who held a different opinion in the first place have had their game removed to satisfy the group that didnt like flying their spaceship.

 

[Evoflash]

I tag planets quicker with the new system. Miles better. Also feels more like hunting through the gloop vs just honking.