The recent improvements added to the galnet during Beyond were great. They added a variety of filters that made travel, trade, and locating Guardian structures quite easy, but some of the features are failing to work as intended and in general didn't do nearly as much as they could to further facilitate exploration. I have a few suggestions that could improve the utility of the galmap and route-plotting that would make exploration and data-driven discovery more effective and enjoyable.
Fix "Visited" filter: The "visited" star system filter currently has only tracked my progress since the last major update. I have a sector where I've logged over 4000 jumps, and I intended to use the "not visited" filter to explore the region further without overlapping with myself, but the filter seems to have reset. However, I still can access the system map for all the places I have visited, so my visiting the system has been logged and preserved, but the Galmap filter is not properly reading or displaying the value; simple bug fix there.
Secondary filters: Many of the filters in the galmap are very useful, particularly for exploration, but we currently have a very limited capacity to poly-filter our routes. In the bubble, this can mean filtering by star class and population to avoid uninhabited and unscoopable systems. This is a very powerful tool, but is a rather toothless feature with population as the ONLY secondary filter. I understand these secondary filters are using a numerical value rather than a nominal value to filter, so that could mean that most filters are not applicable as secondary filters, but there are values that we can place in that secondary filter section: temperature, mass, age, luminosity. Those first 3 are verifiably applied to all stars, and mass at least is applied to systems in general with "mass tags" (e.g. Sphoef rw-x "D"7-43). Adding some more interesting stellar-forge related secondary variables could revolutionize exploration.
Stacking Filters: Additionally, allowing multiple filters to simultaneously apply to route when you tab away from them would also be a simple and powerful improvement to multiple aspects of gameplay, but particularly to exploration.
Set-Range Improvement: under the current system, explorers who want to modulate their jump range down from their maximum to pass through an area more thoroughly and efficiently have a few options: use economy routing, turn off your Guardian FSD booster, and/or pack a huge cargo rack and us the slider to pretend that it's full. Turning off the booster and using a size 7 cargo rack allows me to modulate my range down by 20 lyrs, which is great, but I needed to spend a size 7 slot on a cargo rack rather than a fuel scoop in order to do it; achieving my desired modulated range of 45 (-30lyr from max) would require 250 tons of cargo space (3-6 of my 11 internals). Economy routing is problematic because it modulates distance/jump too closely to local density of systems; economy routes will run 40lyr/jump in some regions and 5lyr/jump in other regions. Adding a function to manually set your jump range anywhere between your maximum range and 0 would be a drastic improvement for explorers wanting to pass slowly and efficiently through a region but without plotting 50 jumps to travel 400lyrs.
Final Comments: For the most veteran explorers, exploration often becomes less of a journey and more a "hunt" for the anomaly they seek. My own unicorn is a close-binary system consisting of a neutron star and a scoopable one that also has landable metal rich bodies, an ELW, and multiple gas giants with moons and a variety of ring types all within 10k of the drop point. Each of the these phenomena I have witnessed coexisting with each other, but not all of them at once. I know that certain conditions favor generating the unicorn that I am searching for. Particularly, I want to filter my route for Neutron stars with temperatures below 2 million Kelvin that have binary partners, and I want to filter out systems I've already visited too. I know many other explorers have similarly specific Holy Grails; introducing the opportunity for more varied and precise filters would make some of them more attainable and could allow for a more investigative approach to locating stellar anomalies and biological signals out in the vast unknown. With Distant Worlds 2 currently underway, improvements to exploration are of fundamental importance to the Elite Dangerous community. I hope you will carefully consider the merits of my suggestions.
Fly Safe, commanders, o7
Fix "Visited" filter: The "visited" star system filter currently has only tracked my progress since the last major update. I have a sector where I've logged over 4000 jumps, and I intended to use the "not visited" filter to explore the region further without overlapping with myself, but the filter seems to have reset. However, I still can access the system map for all the places I have visited, so my visiting the system has been logged and preserved, but the Galmap filter is not properly reading or displaying the value; simple bug fix there.
Secondary filters: Many of the filters in the galmap are very useful, particularly for exploration, but we currently have a very limited capacity to poly-filter our routes. In the bubble, this can mean filtering by star class and population to avoid uninhabited and unscoopable systems. This is a very powerful tool, but is a rather toothless feature with population as the ONLY secondary filter. I understand these secondary filters are using a numerical value rather than a nominal value to filter, so that could mean that most filters are not applicable as secondary filters, but there are values that we can place in that secondary filter section: temperature, mass, age, luminosity. Those first 3 are verifiably applied to all stars, and mass at least is applied to systems in general with "mass tags" (e.g. Sphoef rw-x "D"7-43). Adding some more interesting stellar-forge related secondary variables could revolutionize exploration.
Stacking Filters: Additionally, allowing multiple filters to simultaneously apply to route when you tab away from them would also be a simple and powerful improvement to multiple aspects of gameplay, but particularly to exploration.
Set-Range Improvement: under the current system, explorers who want to modulate their jump range down from their maximum to pass through an area more thoroughly and efficiently have a few options: use economy routing, turn off your Guardian FSD booster, and/or pack a huge cargo rack and us the slider to pretend that it's full. Turning off the booster and using a size 7 cargo rack allows me to modulate my range down by 20 lyrs, which is great, but I needed to spend a size 7 slot on a cargo rack rather than a fuel scoop in order to do it; achieving my desired modulated range of 45 (-30lyr from max) would require 250 tons of cargo space (3-6 of my 11 internals). Economy routing is problematic because it modulates distance/jump too closely to local density of systems; economy routes will run 40lyr/jump in some regions and 5lyr/jump in other regions. Adding a function to manually set your jump range anywhere between your maximum range and 0 would be a drastic improvement for explorers wanting to pass slowly and efficiently through a region but without plotting 50 jumps to travel 400lyrs.
Final Comments: For the most veteran explorers, exploration often becomes less of a journey and more a "hunt" for the anomaly they seek. My own unicorn is a close-binary system consisting of a neutron star and a scoopable one that also has landable metal rich bodies, an ELW, and multiple gas giants with moons and a variety of ring types all within 10k of the drop point. Each of the these phenomena I have witnessed coexisting with each other, but not all of them at once. I know that certain conditions favor generating the unicorn that I am searching for. Particularly, I want to filter my route for Neutron stars with temperatures below 2 million Kelvin that have binary partners, and I want to filter out systems I've already visited too. I know many other explorers have similarly specific Holy Grails; introducing the opportunity for more varied and precise filters would make some of them more attainable and could allow for a more investigative approach to locating stellar anomalies and biological signals out in the vast unknown. With Distant Worlds 2 currently underway, improvements to exploration are of fundamental importance to the Elite Dangerous community. I hope you will carefully consider the merits of my suggestions.
Fly Safe, commanders, o7
