POI investigation mechanics

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I posted this in a thread in the Dangerous Discussions forum, upon rereading it it struck me as worth submitting as a formal suggestion for consideration and review

I find it saddening that season two which was meant to be planets is drawing to an end and as of the close of beta for 2.4, the final bug update to Horizons, planetary POI is still very much a lame place holder and planetary navigation tools are non existant.


IMHO the exploration cartography scanners should pick up all the POI's in a system. If I had my way we would have orrery system map, a honk of the Advanced Discovery Scanner would pick up and tag all the USS's in that system (USS#001, USS#02, Etc...) which you could then target and scan to get more of a clue what is in that instance, ie is it a distress call, a convoy beacon, degraded emissions from a cargo drop, a fight (weapons fire detected) etc.


On planets surfaces I'd make the Detailed Surface Scan flag up all the POI's on that planets surface and tag them as Atypical Sensor Readings (ASR#1, ASR#2, ASR#3 etc). Then I'd have a mechanic in the system map / planet view where the ASR's would be marked on the planets surface in much the same way as star ports currently are. The new mechanic would would allow the player to select an ASR, select from a menu such choices as set as destination, bookmark, more detailed analysis. Upon selecting the more detailed analysis option the player would be moved into a new interface which would look vaguely like an advanced graphics manipulation program, and by means of manipulating some elements, sliders/knobs/values pull down selection of tools/software/spectrum segments to analyse they could deobfuscate the ASR, and know what is there and be able to navigate to it as a destination.


So much better than jumping in planetary cruise and looking for blue circles.

 

[Stellar Gambit]

+ 1

 

[IiliI PEL IiliI]

While im not really sure how the whole USS honk and reveal thing would work, seeing as theyre random moments of the game as you fly through a system....

I'm all for the planetary surface part of your idea. The thought of using the detailed surface scanner for the reveal of these POI's is something I would welcome...even if they created a new type of scanner, id happily take the hit of another module slot if it meant that i could navigate these things much easier. Saying that though, isnt that what a "detailed surface scanner" should do?

Yeah i know theyre only meant for geological make up but hey, stretch that imagination a little.

Im not really into the mini game part of dechiphering the ASR's...because lets face it...if they did implement this into the game, thats what it would become, just an annoying mini game and/or quick time event thingy....nope.

Maybe we could set the detailed surface scanner to only discover different types of POI's. Say for example:

Grade 1: Crashed satellite. Or cargo strew about, guarded by skimmers. (Low interest signal)
Grade 2: Crashed ship with possible follow up mission and/or coords for further study and investigation. (Medium interest signal)
Grade 3: Abandoned Outpost or other massive POI's, many materials to be gathered and possible mystery and Comms logs adding backstory to outpost. (High interest signal)

We could approach a planet, do a fly by with the grade 3 sensors on...if nothing is found, switch to grade 2 and so on. Whatever grade signals are found, they would pop up as navigation markers just like ground bases and the like.

But, saying all that...Fdev would have to actually create more of these interesting POI's for us to find, the only thing worth hunting on planets at the moment is arsenic for G5 FSD upgrades, all the rest is boring. Every single "installation" you run across is just a copy and paste effort with useless cargo dotted around. Satellites you drive into you simply scan and get about 10k credits worth of scan data...pointless. Crashed ships you find have both pointless cargo and data point scan data, I dont know anybody who even picks up this cargo because its pretty much worthless junk.

We need planetary POI's to be worth our time...otherwise these good ideas you have arent going to be used...which is a shame because i back you on the whole "blue circle" fiasco of yawnorama.