The discovery scanner should provide a complete list of items (body types, biology types, interesting features) in a system, and the Full Spectrum System Scanner and Detailed Surface Scanner should be solely for locating already identified items, and maybe providing a few more minor details. The FSS is far too fiddly to be using as our primary discovery tool and should only be mandatory for actually locating things once we've determined via the Discovery Scanner that the system is worth spending time on.
Make the Discovery Scanner the Primary Tool
- Thread starter avarusbrightfyre
- Start date
Completely disagree.
Entering the FSS Scanner Screen (without taking any further action to resolve signals) already provides lots of info, certainly enough for the player to make a meaningful decision on whether a system is worth investigating further. A simple example would be whether a system contains an earth-like or not.
This is an analogous level of detail to the old ADS, just a different slice of the data. I agree the FSS Scanner Screen 'fiddly' but it's still way, way easier to make the second decision of whether a specific body is worth further exploration than it was with the ADS, and without travelling to the body there is still a great deal of detail that can be gleaned from resolving a signature, definitely enough to make a meaningful decision on whether to take the time to travel to it or not (eg to map a terraformable or landable planet with bio/geo etc).
The exact detail of what bio will be on the planet, or what mining hotspots will be in a planetary ring is not available without travelling closer & using the DSS but I'd say that's fair enough, it's still easy enough to make educated guesses based on the info that is available from that initial system scan (ie an icy ring might have a tritium hotspot but won't have a platinum one, or that a body of a certain size, temp & atmo type will probably have something interesting and/or valuable to scan).
I think the current steps towards obtaining full detail are easy enough (and significantly less time consuming than before the 3.3 Beyond changes) so I'm not looking for it to be even faster to find out all the goodies a system has to offer but then there's plenty of systems out there so I don't really see how it would do much harm to make it even quicker than it already is
I suppose it would reduce the likelihood of discovering unexpected stuff 
Maybe adding a specific module for miners to give detailed ring/asteroid cluster info at the FSS stage of discovery, and one for exobio too maybe. Takes up an optional slot, isn't compulsory but allows a ship to specialise on what the player is looking for?
I personally would like to have a filter to ignore certain types of signals.
You're forgetting the part where you had to manually fly to every, single, planet, moon, or rock that you wanted to investigate further or mark as your discovery. FSS is a big timesaver.
I confess though I rather miss one thing about that time - the aspect of listening to the planets in the System View to ascertain what kind of planet they are. I always thought that added a nice touch of subtle mystique & puzzle gameplay that got rather subverted entirely by the changes to honking & scanning. They still sound cool, at least.
How would you feel about the following as a compromise: a honk gives a list that basically says, “there is at least one” which is identical to what you get by looking at the waveforms on the fss. You know there’s at least one earth like, for example. And it could also give a probability of life.
That's more or less what I meant. It would be something like:
There are the following items in this system:
- Gas Giants
- Water Worlds
- Stratum
Enough information to decide that you're interested in doing further investigation. Then, if you see something you want to go look at, you use the FSS to find it in the system, then the DSS to find it on the surface of the planet. I'm just not a fan of having to use glorified binoculars in every system just to find out if there's something I want to check out.
I get what you're saying, but the problem is that with the way the system works now, I have to put rules in place to minimize my exposure to the tedious nature of using the FSS, which probably ends up with missing out on the extremely rare cool things. When you start getting into more than about 20 bodies, you start getting a lot of overlapping signals, which require constantly adjusting the frequency tool and zooming in and out and slightly adjusting the cursor left or right or up or down trying to get it "just right". That's a terrible gameplay loop that needs to be streamlined. I'd honestly be fine with the FSS just having a timed scan process based on the number of signals present that just gives me a list of what it found. At least then I can find something else more engaging to do with the time it takes to scan the system, like stare blankly at the wall or something.Entering the FSS Scanner Screen (without taking any further action to resolve signals) already provides lots of info, certainly enough for the player to make a meaningful decision on whether a system is worth investigating further. A simple example would be whether a system contains an earth-like or not.
This is an analogous level of detail to the old ADS, just a different slice of the data. I agree the FSS Scanner Screen 'fiddly' but it's still way, way easier to make the second decision of whether a specific body is worth further exploration than it was with the ADS, and without travelling to the body there is still a great deal of detail that can be gleaned from resolving a signature, definitely enough to make a meaningful decision on whether to take the time to travel to it or not (eg to map a terraformable or landable planet with bio/geo etc).
The exact detail of what bio will be on the planet, or what mining hotspots will be in a planetary ring is not available without travelling closer & using the DSS but I'd say that's fair enough, it's still easy enough to make educated guesses based on the info that is available from that initial system scan (ie an icy ring might have a tritium hotspot but won't have a platinum one, or that a body of a certain size, temp & atmo type will probably have something interesting and/or valuable to scan).
I think the current steps towards obtaining full detail are easy enough (and significantly less time consuming than before the 3.3 Beyond changes) so I'm not looking for it to be even faster to find out all the goodies a system has to offer but then there's plenty of systems out there so I don't really see how it would do much harm to make it even quicker than it already is
Maybe adding a specific module for miners to give detailed ring/asteroid cluster info at the FSS stage of discovery, and one for exobio too maybe. Takes up an optional slot, isn't compulsory but allows a ship to specialise on what the player is looking for?
So... honk and use system view?
The system view doesn't give you any kind of specific information until you use the FSS. You can sort of parse out visually what kind of planet it is, but you don't get any geological/biological sources, nor do you get what category of biology it is. Being able to use the DSS and get a list of each type of feature in the system (not where or how many) would at least allow me to decide whether I want to fiddle with the super tedious glorified binoculars.
Have you tried fiddling with the sensitivity settings for it? The defaults, like the defaults for mostly everything in the game, are terrible. Properly configured it's just a matter of left click, right click, swipe mouse, A/D here and there.
Like I mentioned you used to have to fly into proximity of every single object in the system in order to get the detail you want. The system view gives you a general idea of what is in the system and what might be worth a closer examination, and nowadays, you have the tool to do exactly that at a press of a button.
Disagree.
Maybe there are great ways to enhance the gameplay loop. But a honk and get 100% of system data isn't engaging game-play either. I don't like time-wasters that don't affect anyone like ship transfer times, but exploration shouldn't be instant- it should be one of the harder aspects of the game actually- to be out in the black alone and surveying star systems.
I like the need to put an expansion beacon in the new colonization mechanic- and had proposed way, way back that explorers could pave the way for more accurate jumps to new systems by 3d printing navigation beacons from gathered materials and dropping them in systems they visit- getting a logical reason for "discovered by" labels in systems. This was at the start when "mis-jumps" were still in some discussions (when FD actually discussed the design proposals and plans for the game).
I agree, too many things are click once and magic happens, and I don't even like the FSS.
Actually, alot of people didn't want that. They were afraid someone transfer a battleship to remote areas and destroy their paper machete ship.
I always thought the beacons would be a great addition to the game.