Improve ways to recover from loss of scan data.

Noobilite · Feb 21, 2019

I explore completely based off using the non visited system. I crashed into a planet after doing hundreds upon hundreds of systems in order to completely fill out an area. An NGC. Now I can't even go back and recover it because all of those systems are still marked as visited. Normally I would just block visited and then go back and forth along the star cluster. This is now not possible. There is no way for me to make up for the loss of data by back tracking and redoing what I did. I'm sorry, but I give up. This game is completely underdeveloped and does not give and ounce of care to the people playing it. This is so simple. How do you expect people to play a game based on so much time spent doing something to just make them throw it away and not be able to do anything else. I'm exploring for the sake of filling out an area and getting all the scan data. There is no system to reset those systems back to unvisited. It's an extremely simple thing to allow a person to set more parameters and actually use the map to find things. I was almost done and accidental hit one planet on landing and blew up instantly. I'm sorry, but this game is atrociously under developed and in such simple ways. These are basic aspects of the chosen game design. It needs to be filled out. It should not be that hard.

You don't pull people into play a game this much and heavily to just make the never be able to recover from one mistake! I'm not manually going through hundreds of systems to find which ones are are still unexplored. It's too unreasonable to deal with and it should have taken nothing to think this out ahead of time from a design standpoint.

Basics of game design are to consider the frame of the game you implement and stay on top of it.This is not even a hard one to think out. There is no system to support exploration properly at all!

Peoples time and energy are not throw away. Even if that is how it is commonly viewed by so many people these days. It should take no though to make it either dump the visited standpoint or add in a way to see purple on those that are visited but unexplored. And make it so you can only visited those systems just like visited and unvisited. One more tick page in the gal map is all it takes and some minor coding. Until then. I give up. I will not play this game if it does not take the time to even consider it's most basic aspects. Exploration is one of the three things emphasized and it has no proper support or development to allow people to deal with the ins and outs of it. I can take the loss and redoing it but having the game ensure I can't even do that is beyond acceptable!

I was going to land and log off and possibly go into give money to get some rep and get a new ship. Not now. How is it a good idea to have 1 of two ways to safely log out of the game be it's biggest death trap?! I normally stay in space but thought it would be fun to land since I was at a planet around a black hole. 8\

Stupid_hippy · Feb 21, 2019

It's hard to take your rant seriously when it was your own silly mistake that caused the issue.

You screwed up and now everything is fdevs fault.

Sorry.

Hullreaver · Feb 21, 2019

Regarding OP, I get what you are saying, but it happens. We all make mistakes and then are stuck within the game framework. You could just move over 500 lys and keep exploring, since the overwhelming majority of space is undiscovered. After about 1 day, you will probably forget all about the lost data as space madness sets in again.

Noobilite · Feb 21, 2019

No, you are missing the point. I am trying to explore an entire region, NGC 1333, thoroughly! The game is flawed in that it keeps lost data(systems visited) from a death blue. This makes it exponentially harder to go back and find the unexplored systems/bodies. I'm not exploring for the money! I'm exploring to explore! So, no, It is not my fault.

They need to either:

1. Make blue visited system turn back to red on death if they have unexplored bodies.(AKA any system with any unexplored object is not blue)
2. Make blue visited systems purple because they have unexplored things in then(And any system that is blue with an unexplored object in it for that matter). And then add a tick box in the gal map to use or not use unexplored/visited system just like how they do with red and blue unvisited/visited. Call it, "unexplored"!

It is impossible to revisit a large amount of systems and recover with the current game infrastructure if you want to be thorough and completely explore something! I'm not recovering money. I'm recovering unexplored status in systems!

In case you aren't aware. Exploring NGC is not relatively profitable. It's probably a third or a 4th of the value of other areas. They are sparse systems with very few terraforms. I'm just doing it to be thorough because I want to. The problem is I just lost all or a part of 2+ days of work getting map data. And the current system will make it take much longer to recover. The easiest way to explore these is to change the map to only unvisited systems, economical jumps, and then run back and forth(pathing) on the region. We need that second option I proposed in order to recover from death if doing this. Else you have to go back through all the blue ones manually and it is way too difficult and inefficient.

Having just a single option to show purple visited systems with unexplored objects would improve all aspects of the game(Along with an accompanying tick box to visit/ignore those on the galmap). It would also aid in adding new content. If you had all blue stuff and then suddenly you see purple you know something has changed and you need to revisit it. This would also help fund bugs faster or see if your game somehow lost data etc. I'm sure there are other applications.

varonica · Feb 21, 2019

Noobilite said:
No, you are missing the point. I am trying to explore an entire region, NGC 1333, thoroughly! The game is flawed in that it keeps lost data(systems visited) from a death blue. This makes it exponentially harder to go back and find the unexplored systems/bodies. I'm not exploring for the money! I'm exploring to explore! So, no, It is not my fault.

You could just re-name the visited stars data cache and that would delete all that visited stars information so you could re-do that region, then name it back again to continue on with another region.

Barracudina · Feb 22, 2019

Clear your save, then they'll be unvisited.

Decksmeck · Feb 22, 2019

I guess you could do it again but this time bookmark visted stars to keep track.

Noobilite · Feb 22, 2019

I have have all bookmarks used up atm for future exploration missions. And I don't see how this would be hard. It's something that really should be in game. It's a nice quality of life thing to boot.

It takes along time to do all those stars. Even resetting all visted start would be a pain realtively. I still have to I was at least 66% through the area and I don't know how much of that data was lost. I would just love to see this type of feature in game though. It would make parts of the game so much easier. There are lots of places(especially ones before the update) that I only paritally visited because of the old mechanics. This would make it instantly visible for everyone to see where they could revisit to complete areas if the like.

They could also add some indicators/toggles for things like stellar phenomenon and possibly ground target discoveries. At least the ones you've found personally. Or have I missed this?

Basically we need more map options. Those should be relatively easy to implement.

Lestat · Feb 22, 2019

What I hope the op learned is to pay attention to what you are doing while flying.

1 DON'T FLY DRUNK OR ON DRUGS
2 DON'T WALK AWAY WHILE THE GAME RUNNING (LOG OFF)
3 DON'T FLY STUPID

Decksmeck · Feb 22, 2019

Should they just allow rebuy of lost data? Maybe...

varonica · Feb 22, 2019

Noobilite said:
I have have all bookmarks used up atm for future exploration missions. And I don't see how this would be hard. It's something that really should be in game. It's a nice quality of life thing to boot.

It takes along time to do all those stars. Even resetting all visted start would be a pain realtively. I still have to I was at least 66% through the area and I don't know how much of that data was lost. I would just love to see this type of feature in game though. It would make parts of the game so much easier. There are lots of places(especially ones before the update) that I only paritally visited because of the old mechanics. This would make it instantly visible for everyone to see where they could revisit to complete areas if the like.

They could also add some indicators/toggles for things like stellar phenomenon and possibly ground target discoveries. At least the ones you've found personally. Or have I missed this?

Basically we need more map options. Those should be relatively easy to implement.

Do you use a tool like EDDiscovery? You can use that to pull a list of systems you have visited between certain dates to remap all those lost systems.

I'm not sure what in game map options would help you currently, in theory you have lost all your data by being destroyed, should they give it all back to you?

Micha · Feb 22, 2019

Agreed, @OP, the game isn't always consistent; neither in its execution nor in its contents. Fact of life.

I was about to suggest using EdDiscovery @varonica beat me to it.

But as an extension to their suggestions so far, in case you already have NGC 1333 partially mapped/explored, you can use EdDiscovery to generate a "VisitedStars" file which only goes up to your last docking. Then delete/rename the current cache and import the newly-generated star list into the game. You will then have the same display you had as before you set out on your last voyage.

Should this be automatically in the game? Perhaps, but there's pros and cons to it as with most things.

Better would be a way for you to recover your scan data; we can already find data caches; it would be great if by dying we'd spawn our own which we'd have some period of time to try and recover. (This is not an original suggestion; it's been mooted many times, along with many tweaks such as other people being able to find them, or it finally making sense to pirate explorers, etc)

Micha · Feb 22, 2019

Decksmeck said:
Should they just allow rebuy of lost data? Maybe...

Rebuy? My vote goes to "no".

Recovery? My vote goes to "definitely".

varonica · Feb 22, 2019

Micha said:
Rebuy? My vote goes to "no".

Recovery? My vote goes to "definitely".

Recovery I agree with but that's always going to be a hard one to work out. If we set a data cache should only the loser of the cache be able to pick it up, if we are arguing from a realism perspective, because dropping an emergency data cache should be a thing, then surely by the same standards anyone else stumbling across it should also be able to pick it up, and that of course brings up the "but who gets first discovery then, the data loser or the day finder?" If we make it so only the player can collect it how long does it sit there waiting? Do we mark it on the galaxy map? If it sits there waiting forever then players could use low value data caches as a sort of bookmark.

I would say time limited depending on distance from the nearest station and value diminishes the longer it's left sitting there, so in theory you could get all your data back if you get there soon enough, but it might not be worth much credit wise.

Noobilite · Feb 22, 2019

Micha said:
Agreed, @OP, the game isn't always consistent; neither in its execution nor in its contents. Fact of life.

I was about to suggest using EdDiscovery @varonica beat me to it.

But as an extension to their suggestions so far, in case you already have NGC 1333 partially mapped/explored, you can use EdDiscovery to generate a "VisitedStars" file which only goes up to your last docking. Then delete/rename the current cache and import the newly-generated star list into the game. You will then have the same display you had as before you set out on your last voyage.

Should this be automatically in the game? Perhaps, but there's pros and cons to it as with most things.

Better would be a way for you to recover your scan data; we can already find data caches; it would be great if by dying we'd spawn our own which we'd have some period of time to try and recover. (This is not an original suggestion; it's been mooted many times, along with many tweaks such as other people being able to find them, or it finally making sense to pirate explorers, etc)

The problem isn't finding the systems(Although that is part of it). It's using the minimap and the hassle. Alt tabbing only increases it. It can be solved by a simple addition of a purple, "unexplored," section between visited and unvisited and an accompanying tic box.(should be easy to implement as you only have to check for any unexplored objects in the system.). That or make all lost data sectors red again. This can be done with the same check as the purple and make any system with unexplored stay red at all cost. Anything else is too difficult practically and interferes with gameplay. It's too time consuming compared to the original mechanics involved. They can implement simple solution to fix this and a lot of common issues in the game. These are things that need to be addressed as they are major aspects of the game.

I think the purple color would be nicer as it would add some extra color to that map view and might be easier to see and an accompany tic box can let you focus on that content if desired separate from or with red or blue systems.

Micha · Feb 22, 2019

Noobilite said:
That or make all lost data sectors red again.

Varonica & I suggested ways in which you can achieve this; take it or leave it.

As for your suggestion of a new "partially explored" filter in the Galaxy map, it's not a bad one. My main concern would be performance impact, although considering we've already got a "visited stars" cache, it shouldn't be -that- difficult nor data-intensive to make it a multi-value field instead of a binary one. The processing is on the local machine regardless so shouldn't impact servers or the network.

But when posting in the "Suggestions" forum, try to make your posts less of a rant/wall-of-text and more of a feature description which a developer can follow. ie:

----
Aim:
Full-system survey of a region of space.

Method:
Use Galaxy-Map filter to filter out visited systems. Proceed to visit and explore all systems not yet visited in the region.

Issue:
On death, an explorer loses all exploration data, however, the Galaxy Map's "visited" stars filter isn't reset. This makes exploring a partially-explored area difficult as the Galaxy Map filter can no longer be used.

Suggestion:
In addition to "visited" and "unvisited", add a Galaxy Map filter for "explored". "Explored" flag for a system is set when exploration data for all bodies in that system have been sold to Universal Cartographics. In the Galaxy Map, "explored" systems would show in a distinct colour to "visited" / "not visited" systems [and be an additional filter].

Marra Morgan · Feb 22, 2019

Noobilite said:
Basically we need more map options. Those should be relatively easy to implement.

I can agree with you on more map options - many other utilities and stats for the Gal-Map have been suggested here over the years and I'm in favour of most of them.

However, whether or not it's easy to implement is for the dev team to decide - not us.