Make low-level "surveys" of planetary features possible

[SexyCat]

A new exploration data type to add to explorers' earnings and reward actual exploration of a planet's surface. This would add a further layer of data underneath honk, FSS, and DSS that would sit close to the Odyssey plant bagging, and codex stuff for surface features.

These "surveys" would just involve continuous low flying or (for better reward) driving, or (better still) on foot. A special sensing array module could be made purchasable that enables/enhances the scan (and its reward).

The survey would cover a swath centred on the CMDR's path taken. Rewards would initially depend on the total swath area covered.

There could be a multiplier for exploring interesting areas (mountain ranges, giant craters, geological transition zones, biotic-rich areas). Or alternatively indicate waypoints explicitly, representing valuable areas to survey (ideally, allow reinitiation of a survey at the last waypoint after logout or ascent away from the surface).

Pilots would be able switch between ship and SRV to traverse tough terrain (but proportionately altering the reward).

You could have a "first surveyed" award for the CMDR that first completes full surveys in all of a planet's distinct geomes.

The idea is to, in a simple way, add some task orientation within exploration, and some motivation for a planetside "journey", and to mitigate its credit opportunity cost (be it as a casual explorer, or a circumnavigator, hooner, SRV racer or whatever).

Given the new planetary tech is a selling point of Odyssey (yes, yes I know), this idea directs you to actually go and indulge in exploring it as part of a role. Also, it's odd for a planet's surface to be considered fully mapped from a matter of lightseconds away, never down in the dirt - getting up close should always yield otherwise unattainable data. "Scientific" exploration data gathering should have many layers and this would add another to the existing ones.

So that pretty worlds of all types can be valuable to survey, I'm inclined to think there should be decent rewards for all planet types, or at least less predictably based on planet type (remembering that e.g. there are lots of tourists and scientists in NPC land that would, in-universe, create value for interesting or remarkable places, along with who knows what other reasons).

I think the idea of surveying is great but as the game stands now, there is nothing worthwhile on planet surfaces to survey; new surface features would need to be created. Caves, ruins, more/alien crash sites,...

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

I think the idea of surveying is great but as the game stands now, there is nothing worthwhile on planet surfaces to survey; new surface features would need to be created. Caves, ruins, more/alien crash sites,...

I think that'd make it more interesting yes, but requires significant assets and dev time. It's a trade off for me between something lightweight that the devs could cook up quickly (my barebones OP - low risk, low effort, incentivises deeper appreciation of existing assets), and adding more rich and fleshed out content (new assets, more risky, adds gameplay, generates publicity, attracts new players). Given the outlay and effort on Odyssey and the technical debt that still persists fron before that, I'm loath to suggest a high effort version for just a single element of gameplay. Hats off to FDev if they go that way though.

I mean, you could already do what you're suggesting - what if a mission sent you to survey a list of crash sites or of Guardian ruins. Except that missions can't take more than a week with the current server system I think.

One last point - the "something to survey" here is just the planet itself. It's an environment that can be used by a faction to locate some facility or add to a science knowledge base. They (in my head canon) probably want a database where they can look up a set of properties and find a location that fits the bill. We're not told why DSS scans are useful and have to imagine why. How is this much different? It's a notionally more detailed and data-type-rich version of the same thing.

 

[varonica]

One last point - the "something to survey" here is just the planet itself. It's an environment that can be used by a faction to locate some facility or add to a science knowledge base. They (in my head canon) probably want a database where they can look up a set of properties and find a location that fits the bill. We're not told why DSS scans are useful and have to imagine why. How is this much different? It's a notionally more detailed and data-type-rich version of the same thing.

That's true now they have the probulator that basically gives us all the information about the planet with X probes, so I think that particular opportunity for the current planetary tech has gone, but it doesn't have to hold true for all future development.

But just imagine, you have a target for assassination, he's landed on a planet and your DSS will give you his ship location because it stands out, refined metal, power planet etc, but he's abandoned his ship and is hiding somewhere in a 50klm radius of the ship location, that's as far as he has had a chance to get, so you need to scan the surroundings of the ship at low level with sensitive instruments to locate him.

There are possibilities where a low level scan can be useful with game play loops. Even dare I say with the current tech a low lovel scan might pinpoint a particular type of bio. I spent a couple of hours the other day finding my last bio on a 10 bio body. I had to do it while flying low and looking at the ground because they were so spread out, this idea is just a refinement of that, rather than using eyes use instruments to do the same thing. That way also bacteria hunters who complain about not being able to find bacteria have another method to use.

There are possibilities for use.

 

[Mavsy 81]

A fine idea op.
Id like something similar planetside, but something that allows me to plot up(in a Mark Watney Hab thingy)and do something thats chill, engaging and rewarding.
For those days when dont I wanna fight, trade or explore long distance.
Not sure what tbh, sometthing science.

 

[Terry Daniels]

Put your ship in a stable orbit and do a surface scan for deep buried mineral deposits which you could drill for in the SRV (and find random valuable nuggets of unobtanium) then sell - I never understood why base minerals weren't part of the market part of the game.
See Starflight (1986 - my first computer game in glorious <ie puke inducing> 4 colour cga).

 

[Sighman]

I'd like it if they extended the veggie-scanning tool to work on geology. A lot of planets have areas with different surface colours, and taking a scan from each ought to reward the commander somehow.

If there was a tag like 'mapped' except for 'geological scan' it would encourage people to go out and scan a whole bunch of planets again, which is time-in-game, which seems to be a metric FDev values.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

I'd like it if they extended the veggie-scanning tool to work on geology. A lot of planets have areas with different surface colours, and taking a scan from each ought to reward the commander somehow.

If there was a tag like 'mapped' except for 'geological scan' it would encourage people to go out and scan a whole bunch of planets again, which is time-in-game, which seems to be a metric FDev values.

Geological sampling basically, yeah sounds good to me. You could even have a coring device. Would be nice if there were some way to feed your samples/data to some landable (or even just via some short range hook up) science vessel/installation too rather than always to a besuited faction exec. Something to better evoke science being done.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

That's true now they have the probulator that basically gives us all the information about the planet with X probes, so I think that particular opportunity for the current planetary tech has gone, but it doesn't have to hold true for all future development.

Not sure I fully agree things are so cut and dried, too late to change - for instance, geological activity used to be POI, now it's scattered all over. And crystal shards disappeared. Existing convenient gathering mechanics modified and actually made inconvenient for the sake of realism. And I'm suggesting something that creates opportunity, not inconvenience. Plus, DSS is cartographic, which suggests topography, I'm suggesting that low level scanning a) should make sense that it gives you better, more valuable topo data and b) could base on an idea that it concentrates instrument energy in a smaller area allowing for more energy dense scanning to give things like sub-surface profiling, composition and crust physical properties to be collected. It's no use the community saying we need gameplay fleshed out and then saying "but you already implemented this simple placeholder mechanic, so it must be the be all and end all, so we actually need new gameplay". No, we just want what's already there to mean more (and frequently new gameplay besides too, of course!).

Nice ideas besides though - i.e. have something of interest on the surface that requires closer examination to root out. We sort of have an evocation of this with the "search zone" planetary scan missions, but the blatant RNG flitting about of the search zone (that frankly serves as a simple inconvenience), with the site only rendered when this little dance has finished, no way to be particularly clever or skilful (beyond keeping your powder dry in OC pre-glide, etc.) to do it better, is... a missed opportunity.