Map Module

[Riverside]

I'd be more than happy to have the advanced module minus the ability to target anything there (or the nav panel). Finding stuff with the FSS isn't difficult, and if I can see that there's an interesting colored gas giant there I'm happy to go back to the FSS and scan the gas giants. Easy peasy.

Of course, that doesn't help those who simply want to target a body and fly to it and not use the FSS. And there I guess is the issue - no one size fits all solution is perfect.

Perhaps the only map that could be targetable would be the anonymous one, and the advanced one wouldn't populate the nav panel... Eh, getting awfully complicated.

Honestly FD, just give players some alternatives on how to explore...

Having the blue blob effect from the FSS Scanner Screen be put onto the HUD, requiring either moving closer or using the telescope (FSS Scanner Screen) to obtain more detail both makes sense and allows more ways to achieve a goal than having to either triangulate (more effort than I am prepared to put into finding what are almost certainly uninteresting bodies) or only use the telescope fitted to a FTL vessel designed to move through and between systems.

Simply being able to target a thing and fly to it's precise location is dull, but it also achieves the desired objective. Ironically mapping a planet presents us with that exact dull, easy gameplay that simply gets the job done and the feedback (such as it is) so far has mostly been about obtaining the planet map in the first place (infinite probes, space golf etc) - the same issue that comes up with the FSS.

So I suppose I could summarise the contention with any discovery mechanic is that (in my view and my interpretation of the views others have expressed) the top level info should be quick and easy to obtain, with challenge or workload increasing in order to reveal further information. None of it has to be really hard, but a useful overview of the system should be the easiest/least grindy part, and finding a fumerole or whatever is the hardest or most skill/time based.


The discussion here is focusing on the initial reveal, and objections are arbitrary rather than rational. There is is nothing wrong with wanting what a thing looks like, or where it is, or what type of thing it is, or even all three to be the top level of info. For me it used to be what it looks like and not what type of thing it is, with the FSS is it what type. A picture supplies both of those, the wave analysis only one. The new system is objectively worse at providing a top level overview than the old one.

We have an included module that tells us what types of things are in the system. It makes sense that there be an optional module that tells us where they are and their relationships, and another that tells us what they look like. In a game with a heavy focus on it's imagery, during an activity where lots of screenshots are taken.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

There's absolutely no equivalence between micro-jumps or jump gates and the subject of this thread.
You bringing them into the discussion is a blatant deflection and completely irrelevant.

They only thing it has everything to do with your particular posting style of inserting bogus analogies at every opportunity.

Believe what you want to. I don't really care. If you can't see it, you never will.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I don’t have a problem with an Omni-scanner. I actually love that the DSS pinpoints things on the surfaces of planets. These sorts of things are what I’d expect in a high-tech, sci-fi environment.

But they still leave room for more. So I can pinpoint a cluster of alien anemones on a planet’s surface, I can fly down and zap them with my scrapbook scanner. But I want to know more. I want details down to their cellular structure. I want to know what nutrients make them grow. Do they produce seeds? Spores? Do they reproduce by budding? Do they divide and walk to a new place to grow? What effects do they have on the soil? Hundreds of questions, no way to answer them.

How about crystalline formations made by microorganisms? What do these M.O.’s look like? How do they behave? Are they still present or are they long dead? Are the crystals they produce useful in some way? Again, question after question and no tools to answer these.

I’ll concede mining for the most part - it was expanded on greatly, though the limited number of destroyable asteroids makes these changes a bit less than spectacular.

Exploration does need more expansion. Even Combat would benefit from some focused attention beyond mere weapons, armor and shields.

I also understand that Elite evolves only slightly faster than Evolution itself. It took how many years for Exploration to be updated? For mining to develop? And there are still plenty of “original systems” in place that need to come full circle as well. I’ve no doubt Frontier will get to all these things, at Frontier speed. We just need to wait.

This doesn’t mean we don’t float suggestion or stop discussing ways things could be improved, especially if those ideas can be refined into something that benefits everyone, or at least has as small of a negative impact as possible.

I wish I still had your confidence that FDev have any intention of adding 'science' gameplay to ED.

I'd love to be able to research the lifecycles of the biologicals we find, to discover how the have propagated throughout the galaxy, why so many of them love nebulae and particular star types. I'd be happy if we could just take samples from them, for delivery to scientific outposts and have that ultimately result in new technologies or commodities available for purchase.

However, the current exploration implementation isn't even consistent about what anomalies are targetable, so it doesn't appear that any real thought has been put into them. Maybe it will come, but in all the things DB has talked about wanting to add to ED 'science' has been a notable omission.

 

[Sunyavadin]

it’s far easier to write Exploration macros so the computer can do the exploring while you do the web browsing or whatever.

Yep. On my XBox. Uh-huh.

It can't be just that this kind of exploration is the fun engaging gameplay I fell in love with, flying my ship to places. Watching the planets get closer, and slowly come into focus.

I don’t have an issue with more modules for greater levels of ship specialization and role-focus. Make “Exploration Ship” really mean something, make it outfitted differently enough that it’s not just a warship with a sensor.

Given how they just keep giving us more class 1 module slots, it'd be great to have the option to use them to truly specialise ships in all fields.

Explorers could get geological and biological analysis modules to interact more with things which currently only exist to tick a box in the codex, Combat ships could get specialised dedicated targeting systems, stealth hardware, etc. Trade ships could get modules which provide additional market info on nearby systems and which can plot optimal trade routes.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Yep. On my XBox. Uh-huh.

It can't be just that this kind of exploration is the fun engaging gameplay I fell in love with, flying my ship to places. Watching the planets get closer, and slowly come into focus.

Let me start off by saying just how sorry I am, to hear you’re experiencing Elite on an XBox. There’s one in my house too. Has been there for over a year. In that time I have tried turning it on 5 times. The first time was to set it up so my wife could play a couple games and install an app our smart tv can’t run. The second time was about a month later, and it did not matter how many times I pressed or held the button, the stupid thing would not turn on, until I unplugged it and plugged it back in. The third time was to see if there was anything on the app my wife installed I wanted to watch. There wasn’t. The forth time, like the second, the stupid thing would not turn on until unplugged and plugged in again, and once more I found nothing on the app I wanted to watch. The last time I turned it on because my wife wasn’t sure if her controller was not working, had dead batteries, or the thing was locked up. Turns out the controller batteries were dead.

That’s the extent of my XBox time. My wife did buy me my own controller as well. It still hasn’t been opened. It may well never be opened. I despise the feel of it, and there are no games on it I would want to play.

PS4 at least has some good Resident Evil, Star Ocean and Final Fantasy titles. I haven’t played any of those in over a year though, still haven’t opened a number of games, and if I never do, well, I never do.

That said, that’s the extent of my regard for console gaming. No, you can’t run macros. You can’t even get a decent programmable keyboard. Hell, you can’t even change your HUD colors.

Given how they just keep giving us more class 1 module slots, it'd be great to have the option to use them to truly specialise ships in all fields.

Explorers could get geological and biological analysis modules to interact more with things which currently only exist to tick a box in the codex, Combat ships could get specialised dedicated targeting systems, stealth hardware, etc. Trade ships could get modules which provide additional market info on nearby systems and which can plot optimal trade routes.

At least we agree on the important stuff here. What we have to do is vastly more important than how we do it.

 

[Faded Glory]

The discussion here is focusing on the initial reveal, and objections are arbitrary rather than rational. There is is nothing wrong with wanting what a thing looks like, or where it is, or what type of thing it is, or even all three to be the top level of info. For me it used to be what it looks like and not what type of thing it is, with the FSS is it what type. A picture supplies both of those, the wave analysis only one. The new system is objectively worse at providing a top level overview than the old one.

Yes, and in case there's any confusion, I agree and have done since the word go.

I guess my post wasn't clear, and I was simply suggesting a potential compromise for those who might object because they feel that identifying something with the system map is too easy compared to using the energy spectrum, and to be fair I have always said that if a player wants the benefit of scanning from a distance, I do feel that they should actually locate the body they want to scan with the tool that enables distance scanning - the FSS, so not allowing a body to be targeted from the system map.

(It should be said that I think the 'exploit' of targeting from the system map to avoid having to look for something with the FSS is highly overrated, as finding any body using the FSS is so easy.)

And of course, I have always maintained that for objects that are revealed by both the system map and the FSS, then the FSS wins hands down in terms of ease and speed. However, as you point out, there are things that the FSS doesn't reveal at all (shapes or colors for example) that might be of interest to some, and if the thing you're looking for isn't revealed at all, then it's a useless tool for finding it.

 

[Maolagin]

I'd love to be able to research the lifecycles of the biologicals we find, to discover how the have propagated throughout the galaxy, why so many of them love nebulae and particular star types. I'd be happy if we could just take samples from them, for delivery to scientific outposts and have that ultimately result in new technologies or commodities available for purchase.

+1 for omni-scanner science gameplay. +100000 for coherent underlying scientific stories to unravel! But given the static and somewhat arbitrary set of POI features we have right now, and the clear paucity of unusual features outside regions where they have been hand-placed, I'm not holding my breath for anything like that.

I guess my post wasn't clear, and I was simply suggesting a potential compromise for those who might object because they feel that identifying something with the system map is too easy compared to using the energy spectrum, and to be fair I have always said that if a player wants the benefit of scanning from a distance, I do feel that they should actually locate the body they want to scan with the tool that enables distance scanning - the FSS, so not allowing a body to be targeted from the system map.

It's been said a million times that FDev aren't going to bring back anything too similar to the old ADS (and full disclosure, I'm one of the ones who is fine with that), but reading this thread gave me a new idea. What if the FSS gained an "advanced mode" that made the "energy spectrum" readouts much richer? The FSS we have now is clearly crafted to give the flavor of a scientific instrument, while still being pretty simple for newbies to pick up. The cost is that the information it gives is severely limited - body type most obviously, but with practice you can also recognize (if there aren't too many similar bodies confusing the signal) presence of rings and atmosphere. Maybe there's other things subtly layered in.

How about an advanced mode that adds additional spectra? E.g. a visible-light spectrum that lets you home in on objects of particular colors, and a gravity wave spectrum that allows picking out objects with unusual orbits or high multiplicity, and a time-of-flight scale that lets you see at a glance the distribution of distances to objects in the system. In each case, you'd still have to use the FSS zoom tool to resolve a body, or else find a blob to fly toward for proximity scanning, but this would give the advanced user much more precise knobs to turn to choose the object of interest.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

I'd be more than happy to have the advanced module minus the ability to target anything there (or the nav panel). Finding stuff with the FSS isn't difficult, and if I can see that there's an interesting colored gas giant there I'm happy to go back to the FSS and scan the gas giants. Easy peasy.

Of course, that doesn't help those who simply want to target a body and fly to it and not use the FSS. And there I guess is the issue - no one size fits all solution is perfect.

Perhaps the only map that could be targetable would be the anonymous one, and the advanced one wouldn't populate the nav panel... Eh, getting awfully complicated.

Honestly FD, just give players some alternatives on how to explore...

You're right in the fact that one size doesn't fit all, of course the FSS is indeed one of those things.
The introduction of the Basic Map would suit me as I'm not looking for anything in particular but I am a traveller explorer,
The Advanced map would suit the GGG and other special planet searchers.
The Nav panel is how others like to work, and added to the fact if the map knew the mass was there then the Nav panel would know also,
I've tried to make it as broad as possible not for those who are indebted to frontier developments for their wonderful FSS but for the people that are less than happy with only one way to skin a cat, and get that initial level of information,

Some have doubts about selecting from the map before travelling to it... well, to be honest that to me is a little trivial as you may save a few seconds before setting off to it what difference does it make, and if you honk the map it's not going to give any advantage when you go into the FSS to zap em you'll still have to honk them from there, the info doesn't go from Map to FSS but does go from FSS to mMap, that way FSS use will be the same as always.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

+1 for omni-scanner science gameplay. +100000 for coherent underlying scientific stories to unravel! But given the static and somewhat arbitrary set of POI features we have right now, and the clear paucity of unusual features outside regions where they have been hand-placed, I'm not holding my breath for anything like that.


It's been said a million times that FDev aren't going to bring back anything too similar to the old ADS (and full disclosure, I'm one of the ones who is fine with that), but reading this thread gave me a new idea. What if the FSS gained an "advanced mode" that made the "energy spectrum" readouts much richer? The FSS we have now is clearly crafted to give the flavor of a scientific instrument, while still being pretty simple for newbies to pick up. The cost is that the information it gives is severely limited - body type most obviously, but with practice you can also recognize (if there aren't too many similar bodies confusing the signal) presence of rings and atmosphere. Maybe there's other things subtly layered in.

How about an advanced mode that adds additional spectra? E.g. a visible-light spectrum that lets you home in on objects of particular colors, and a gravity wave spectrum that allows picking out objects with unusual orbits or high multiplicity, and a time-of-flight scale that lets you see at a glance the distribution of distances to objects in the system. In each case, you'd still have to use the FSS zoom tool to resolve a body, or else find a blob to fly toward for proximity scanning, but this would give the advanced user much more precise knobs to turn to choose the object of interest.

Thanks for your thoughts but I'm not really sure I'd want the FSS to have even more songs and dances to do

 

[Faded Glory]

You're right in the fact that one size doesn't fit all, of course the FSS is indeed one of those things.
The introduction of the Basic Map would suit me as I'm not looking for anything in particular but I am a traveller explorer,
The Advanced map would suit the GGG and other special planet searchers.
The Nav panel is how others like to work, and added to the fact if the map knew the mass was there then the Nav panel would know also,
I've tried to make it as broad as possible not for those who are indebted to frontier developments for their wonderful FSS but for the people that are less than happy with only one way to skin a cat, and get that initial level of information,

Some have doubts about selecting from the map before travelling to it... well, to be honest that to me is a little trivial as you may save a few seconds before setting off to it what difference does it make, and if you honk the map it's not going to give any advantage when you go into the FSS to zap em you'll still have to honk them from there, the info doesn't go from Map to FSS but does go from FSS to mMap, that way FSS use will be the same as always.

Yes, I understand, and I'm most certainly one of those who, while not hating the FSS at all, think that options in how we get to approach and do the different activities in the game would be an overwhelmingly positive thing.

So, to keep it as simple as possible.

Option 1: A basic system map module providing a targetable map with generic bodies with no identifiable information. This would allow those who either don't care what they are looking for, or want to use their skill and knowledge of the stellar forge to make educated guesses, then target the bodies and fly to them (or subsequently fire up the FSS).

Option 2: A nav panel module that lists all bodies as unexplored and available for targeting. No map view.

Option 3: An advanced system map that provides shape and color information, but which is not targetable. Players can identify things from the map, but must use the FSS to locate and scan them.

Only one map module can be installed in a ship at a time.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

Yes, I understand, and I'm most certainly one of those who, while not hating the FSS at all, think that options in how we get to approach and do the different activities in the game would be an overwhelmingly positive thing.

So, to keep it as simple as possible.

Option 1: A basic system map module providing a targetable map with generic bodies with no identifiable information. This would allow those who either don't care what they are looking for, or want to use their skill and knowledge of the stellar forge to make educated guesses, then target the bodies and fly to them (or subsequently fire up the FSS).

Option 2: A nav panel module that lists all bodies as unexplored and available for targeting. No map view.

Option 3: An advanced system map that provides shape and color information, but which is not targetable. Players can identify things from the map, but must use the FSS to locate and scan them.

Only one map module can be installed in a ship at a time.

that would do for me, options are the spice of life.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Y’all do realize you CAN still honk your Discovery Scanner, just like you’ve always done, at full super cruise speed, while sling-shorting around a star, lining up your next jump, right?

To top that off, it actually gives you LESS information than even the Basic Discovery Scanner. It gives you a count of non-asteroid bodies in the system, and the scan data of the star(s) in that system, and that’s all.

You’ll get your pittance of credits you don’t care about, and can be on your way, without ever starting the FSS or “too much data” scanning anything at all.

Of course, this “less information” you’ve been begging for, well, the system map is it. That’s what you’re giving up to know less.

If you choose to populate it, that means you DO want to know more, and that’s what you get, more information. You get a level 1, 2 and 3 scan worth of information. Your old hand-held magnifying glass, with the air bubble in it has been replaced with a scanning electron microscope, linked to a Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer. Your table of elements no longer consists of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Ether, but protons, neutrons, electrons, elements and compounds.

The Dark Ages are gone, and modern science is upon you. To quote the prophet:

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.”

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Y’all do realize you CAN still honk your Discovery Scanner, just like you’ve always done, at full super cruise speed, while sling-shorting around a star, lining up your next jump, right?

To top that off, it actually gives you LESS information than even the Basic Discovery Scanner. It gives you a count of non-asteroid bodies in the system, and the scan data of the star(s) in that system, and that’s all.

You’ll get your pittance of credits you don’t care about, and can be on your way, without ever starting the FSS or “too much data” scanning anything at all.

Of course, this “less information” you’ve been begging for, well, the system map is it. That’s what you’re giving up to know less.

If you choose to populate it, that means you DO want to know more, and that’s what you get, more information. You get a level 1, 2 and 3 scan worth of information. Your old hand-held magnifying glass, with the air bubble in it has been replaced with a scanning electron microscope, linked to a Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer. Your table of elements no longer consists of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Ether, but protons, neutrons, electrons, elements and compounds.

The Dark Ages are gone, and modern science is upon you. To quote the prophet:

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.”

I honestly don't know what point you think you're making here.

Are you trying to say that the FSS is science and the ADS isnt? Or trying to equate wanting to fly around a system to explore it to not flting around a system at all?

And what relevance does the HGTTG quote have to eirher your post, or anything else in the entire thread?

Alternatively I'm trying to read meaning into 'Too much scotch'.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I honestly don't know what point you think you're making here.

Are you trying to say that the FSS is science and the ADS isnt? Or trying to equate wanting to fly around a system to explore it to not flting around a system at all?

And what relevance does the HGTTG quote have to eirher your post, or anything else in the entire thread?

Alternatively I'm trying to read meaning into 'Too much scotch'.

There is no such thing as “too much Scotch.”

My point is, as the expression goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Our tools have changed, but not quite nearly as much as it seems. Many things are still the same, except how the system map is populated. You’re still free to fly as close to any stellar body you like, before or after scanning it.

You just don’t HAVE to. We now have more options than fewer.

As for what THHGTRG has to do with this, much like the location of Raxxla, you’ll have to figure it out.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

There is no such thing as “too much Scotch.”

My point is, as the expression goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Our tools have changed, but not quite nearly as much as it seems. Many things are still the same, except how the system map is populated. You’re still free to fly as close to any stellar body you like, before or after scanning it.

You just don’t HAVE to. We now have more options than fewer.

As for what THHGTRG has to do with this, much like the location of Raxxla, you’ll have to figure it out.

I don't agree (well, I agree about the scotch, but not the rest of it).
However, I'm also done arguing about it - since FDev have spoken it's utterly redundant.

 

[Riverside]

I don't agree (well, I agree about the scotch, but not the rest of it).
However, I'm also done arguing about it - since FDev have spoken it's utterly redundant.

I contributed to this discussion on the basis that reinstating the old modules was not an option. It is still the obvious solution to many of the core design issues and I still expect that functionality to be reinstated simply because it is so obvious that even a proposal like this one (in the OP) is accused of being 'like the ADS'.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

I honestly don't know what point you think you're making here.

Are you trying to say that the FSS is science and the ADS isnt? Or trying to equate wanting to fly around a system to explore it to not flting around a system at all?

And what relevance does the HGTTG quote have to eirher your post, or anything else in the entire thread?

Alternatively I'm trying to read meaning into 'Too much scotch'.

I'm just picturing a science team using an electron microscope that functions like the FSS.
A team of 4 PHD students holding the corners of an A1 sized piece of cardboard with a few grains of the sample somewhere on it.
The professor tells them 'left a bit, back a bit' until the sample to scan is actually under the scope.

Indigo does at least provide some of the comedy in these threads, if little else.

 

[Sunyavadin]

And of course, I have always maintained that for objects that are revealed by both the system map and the FSS, then the FSS wins hands down in terms of ease and speed. However, as you point out, there are things that the FSS doesn't reveal at all (shapes or colors for example) that might be of interest to some, and if the thing you're looking for isn't revealed at all, then it's a useless tool for finding it.

QFT

The FSS is always going to be the faster option for the things the FSS is efficient at, like tagging ELWs and ignoring the rest of the stuff in a system, and the slowest conceivable option for the things that were never a priority when designing it. Like a bunch of the rest of aspects of exploration.

Option 1: A basic system map module providing a targetable map with generic bodies with no identifiable information. This would allow those who either don't care what they are looking for, or want to use their skill and knowledge of the stellar forge to make educated guesses, then target the bodies and fly to them (or subsequently fire up the FSS).

Option 2: A nav panel module that lists all bodies as unexplored and available for targeting. No map view.

Option 3: An advanced system map that provides shape and color information, but which is not targetable. Players can identify things from the map, but must use the FSS to locate and scan them.

Only one map module can be installed in a ship at a time.

Yep, that kind of idea sounds like it'd provide what I'm looking for, and what a few others are. Every ship gets to install a single one of these, boom. Done.