Dear Frontier Devs,
ask any new young explorer, and you will see the thrill to discover new worlds !
I managed in a few hours of gameplay to get my hands in an ASP, mostly through exploration, travelling roughly 10k Ly (max 1800) in 50 hours, and I think you guys really need to implement a few more features to make exploration much more appealing and less frustrating. For now, I'm in SYNUEFE ED-N B25-0, roughly 700Ly from SOL, travelling sideways at -400 to reach orion (I know it's a pretty explored path), but nevertheless I've encountered most of the time systems that are already explored. I know it's still close, but my point is that with some more filters and waypoint-managing features, exploration would be much more fun AND efficient for everybody. We ALL want to discover new systems whenever possible, and hopping from an explored one to another, for like a thousand Ly, where there are certainly hundreds of systems all around at maybe 100 Ly which are unexplored, on the same path, feels like frustrating. The problem is that there is no way for us to know if all those paths are at least partially explored or not ...
Therefore, what about adding these :
. bookmarks, please ! for inhabitants AND for explorers, this is definitely needed, why is this not implemented yet ? I want to be able to find back this utterly beautiful system, pinpoint where i went, find back this system where I can sell my large data caches and the one where I can sell my exploration data to this or that faction, and so on...
All in all, it's only a very few implementations that would make our lives as explorers so much easier AND interesting, rather than frustrating, and would allow everybody to see ALL WHAT'S LEFT TO EXPLORE because I'm pretty certain it's insanely HUGE and we all end up wandering around the same systems because we're all dumb humans going blindly all in the same places ... If only we could see where to go and where not to really go, or at least focus on : here I'm travelling towards this landmark I WANT to see, there I'm exploring, for money or pleasure, knowing I'm one of the 1st (or even being a thorough and filling the gaps, coz some of us are also like that !).
o7
Best
CMDR Lya Naylo
X-post from Reddit
ask any new young explorer, and you will see the thrill to discover new worlds !
I managed in a few hours of gameplay to get my hands in an ASP, mostly through exploration, travelling roughly 10k Ly (max 1800) in 50 hours, and I think you guys really need to implement a few more features to make exploration much more appealing and less frustrating. For now, I'm in SYNUEFE ED-N B25-0, roughly 700Ly from SOL, travelling sideways at -400 to reach orion (I know it's a pretty explored path), but nevertheless I've encountered most of the time systems that are already explored. I know it's still close, but my point is that with some more filters and waypoint-managing features, exploration would be much more fun AND efficient for everybody. We ALL want to discover new systems whenever possible, and hopping from an explored one to another, for like a thousand Ly, where there are certainly hundreds of systems all around at maybe 100 Ly which are unexplored, on the same path, feels like frustrating. The problem is that there is no way for us to know if all those paths are at least partially explored or not ...
Therefore, what about adding these :
- extended visualisation scope : extend the scope of displayed stars ; sometimes we have to zoom in and out, it goes too fast for no real reason at some point, have to re-centre and re-zoom, etc .. it feels really annoying to be able to see a little bubble and not even the whole inhabited space with one de-zoom. Some of us have good computers, giving the possibility to display more dots would really feel something else.
- New filter : exploration status
- WAYPOINTS and BOOKMARKS !!
. bookmarks, please ! for inhabitants AND for explorers, this is definitely needed, why is this not implemented yet ? I want to be able to find back this utterly beautiful system, pinpoint where i went, find back this system where I can sell my large data caches and the one where I can sell my exploration data to this or that faction, and so on...
- Route calculation feature : make the auto-calculator able to "avoid" most of the explored systems, finding the ways leading to the destination using side-paths : it will take longer, but most of us will most likely be OK with that if it means discovering unexplored systems. Can be combined with the "exploration status filter".
- make the data gathered USEFUL ! why not being able to buy data from explored systems (showing also the level of exploration, cf. filter), to everybody ?? in the same way we can buy data from nearby systems, if the exploration society thingy has the data, maybe the players would like to buy it ? I first thouth that it could be fun to give even a very small royalties to the discoverer for each person who buys a data he explored 1s, but it can be redundant with the 1st-guy-out-there-bonus which is already a good incentive. However, maybe it would even give miners opportunities to go out there, mine some rare minerals, and come back, rather than staying in inhabited space ?
- Be able to set a new route with the Star-Class filter activated ? i.e. I want to travel (mostly, when possible) through F/G/K star systems, between this point and that point, and the automatic route calculator favors those systems (sometimes my route is like going in the middle of those, when it could take like 70% more, and the route is not re-calibrated after I hop off the waypoints ... so freaking painful if you ask me ... really, Sci-Fi navcomps !!) ; of course, they are already more explored and it would feel to me like cheating, kindof ; this is countered, however, by the ability to do WAYPOINTS ourselves !
- Be able to see which system a player has discovered ? be able to see which systems I have discovered ? I think it could be pretty cool, as well as a chart of all best explored, not only system-wise but content-wise (use money earned total, I'm pretty sure it's not code-heavy
) - Give a bonus for completing the FULL exploration of a system !/? If you want us to explore all those stupid moons, you have to give another incentive than paying 500 for each, considering the time it takes. Moreover, with New Horizons coming, for what I've seen, it would most definitely make more sense to have explorers do thorouh work rather than just scanning the most valuable and accessible bodies (which at start we most certainly do for money, but now that I'm safe, I want to explore ; however, what's the point of exploring those moons atm ?)
All in all, it's only a very few implementations that would make our lives as explorers so much easier AND interesting, rather than frustrating, and would allow everybody to see ALL WHAT'S LEFT TO EXPLORE because I'm pretty certain it's insanely HUGE and we all end up wandering around the same systems because we're all dumb humans going blindly all in the same places ... If only we could see where to go and where not to really go, or at least focus on : here I'm travelling towards this landmark I WANT to see, there I'm exploring, for money or pleasure, knowing I'm one of the 1st (or even being a thorough and filling the gaps, coz some of us are also like that !).
o7
Best
CMDR Lya Naylo
X-post from Reddit
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