CMDR Heydan Seegil
Banned
This weekend the player group I run, The Confederacy of Vulcan, which is just starting out will be discussing how we should go about conducting a planetary survey of our home planet Vulcan in LHS 3006 in our Assembly, a.k.a. when we vote/discuss stuff as a group, so that we can upload interesting facts to our website, confederacyofvulcan.com (its a work in progress, but will provide a way to contact us), and name some of the more interesting features we find there.
This got me thinking about Horizons and something I felt was missing and I am not sure if it is in the works to be added so I figured I'd write a post about it. I understand we have Stellar Scanners which can provide basic information on how many planets there are in a system and Surface Scanners to tell us what type of planet the planet is. However there isn't a scanner that can be used once we are on the surface of the planet to provide any further detail, maybe like what the soil is comprised of for mining purposes in a given area, or with the new bubble being a thing (Congratulations explorers I'm proud to say one of our Ministry of Science members assisted and is assisting in it's development, for what is a Vulcan without the logic of science and will to explore) a scanner might tell us where a decent area for building would be. In this latter point I mean it more in the way that maybe all planets with solid ground might not be the best to build a outpost on due to things like unlevel terrain or quicksand or some other factor. Such a survey might also be a good CG to have before the transport of building materials even.
It might add another step into things, but I think it would make exploration that much more interesting. See a nice looking planet? Why not make some credits for taking a more in depth look at it and doing some surface scans? Want to mine, but don't want to mine rings? Why not go planet side do a fly-by over an interesting series of craters and see if it has the material your looking for?
Of course the scanner wouldn't map the entire surface of a planet in a single go, but maybe it would map the distance of one square of the surface, the square's size being defined as the same size as the squares in the current system map when you view the surface of a planet. This way surface mapping becomes more of an event that is best to do in a group if your looking to map the entire planet and more immersive/profitable if you actually spend time on the surface of a planet flying around. Maybe it wouldn't pay out as big as discovering a planet, but I would think that finding a nice sized vein of some rare mineral might have a sizeable payout.
Another interesting idea would be to have the scanned regions viewable on the planetary map when you hover your mouse over a spot on the planet which would provide details like what sort of materials are in the area for mining or something similar.*
It just seemed like a very logical and good idea to me. Please let me know what you think or what ideas you would have for it.
*Additional content that was added
This got me thinking about Horizons and something I felt was missing and I am not sure if it is in the works to be added so I figured I'd write a post about it. I understand we have Stellar Scanners which can provide basic information on how many planets there are in a system and Surface Scanners to tell us what type of planet the planet is. However there isn't a scanner that can be used once we are on the surface of the planet to provide any further detail, maybe like what the soil is comprised of for mining purposes in a given area, or with the new bubble being a thing (Congratulations explorers I'm proud to say one of our Ministry of Science members assisted and is assisting in it's development, for what is a Vulcan without the logic of science and will to explore) a scanner might tell us where a decent area for building would be. In this latter point I mean it more in the way that maybe all planets with solid ground might not be the best to build a outpost on due to things like unlevel terrain or quicksand or some other factor. Such a survey might also be a good CG to have before the transport of building materials even.
It might add another step into things, but I think it would make exploration that much more interesting. See a nice looking planet? Why not make some credits for taking a more in depth look at it and doing some surface scans? Want to mine, but don't want to mine rings? Why not go planet side do a fly-by over an interesting series of craters and see if it has the material your looking for?
Of course the scanner wouldn't map the entire surface of a planet in a single go, but maybe it would map the distance of one square of the surface, the square's size being defined as the same size as the squares in the current system map when you view the surface of a planet. This way surface mapping becomes more of an event that is best to do in a group if your looking to map the entire planet and more immersive/profitable if you actually spend time on the surface of a planet flying around. Maybe it wouldn't pay out as big as discovering a planet, but I would think that finding a nice sized vein of some rare mineral might have a sizeable payout.
Another interesting idea would be to have the scanned regions viewable on the planetary map when you hover your mouse over a spot on the planet which would provide details like what sort of materials are in the area for mining or something similar.*
It just seemed like a very logical and good idea to me. Please let me know what you think or what ideas you would have for it.
*Additional content that was added
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