Hello,
I was one of the 17 individuals that were invited to Frontiers HQ a few weeks ago and after reading this thread I think there are a couple major things that everyone seems to be omitting.
The system map shows you bodies.
How does the system map show you the voyager probes, the generation ships, the space static discharges. It wont, but you can see their waveforms.
Also,
The new Honk >
Waveform checking > Scan gameplay is
only out in the black where
no one else has ever been before.
If a player has been to the system before you ( and have turned that data in) , your system map is already going to be populated because it is shared. Once you learn where the Earthlike waveform is at, you are going to honk, look for that area on the bar, and if there is nothing there, head to the next system.
I see explorers as falling into one of four groups.
1) The people that don't
2) Travelers - the ones that take advantage of the honking as they travel from A to B.
3) The ones that look for things of interest. - The ones that are looking for the earth-likes, water-worlds, cool looking things to see/systems, etc
4) The One-hundred per-centers.
For each of these, I only see net positives for each, yeah, there might be pluses and minuses when it comes to time spent, but overall for each level is a net time saved, which for gameplay the user can do more during their game play time and less time is wasted
Let me go into a bit more detail:
Because of the new community shared mapping, the people that never explore wont be required to do most of the stuff, they jump into a system, the system map has already been populated, they dont need to even honk anymore because it is already there. The majority of populated systems and most of the systems between those in the bubble are going to already be mapped out for these players. Even if they do decided to go somewhere, they will have the major straight lines between the Bubble, Colonia and Sag A* already mapped for them. and then they move into category 2.
2) Travelers - the ones that take advantage of the honking as they travel from A to B.
These players will still be receiving the same credits that they do in the current system, the honk still gets the commander the same amount of credits as the current system. If they decide to take a look around they move into category 3
3) The ones that look for things of interest. - The ones that are looking for the earth-likes, water-worlds, cool looking things/systems, etc
Here is the only time there is a negative ( in a single type of scenario, read to end, the end net is positive. )
If you jump into the system and honk, and glance at the wave form, once you understand that a waveform in a specific area is the Earth-like, that will be the one that people are looking for. Skill based gameplay, just like learning what the different bands on the SRV wave-scanner meant.
Now, the Honk, the scan of the waveforms, ident of something and finding it. At this point the commander can point at it, scan it and get all the details on it. They will leave that screen and then start flying to it to launch probes to get that mapping tier as well.
An Earth-like is still 4-6000 k out, it still takes time to fly there for the probe mapping. Maybe...
scan the other things in the system while you are in supercruse? At this point in the time you would have spent previously doing nothing but travel, you could have gotten even more discoveries and maybe even find a reason to go check out the "uninteresting" planets that might hold something new, so making you more credits, giving something to do and maybe even finding some reason to check out other things.The funny thing is if you only look for and go to the single thing in a system is the only time there is a slowdown, as compared to the extra time for the scanning of the single thing compared to the current system. However, the moment you add in a second body you want to map, you now just greatly sped things up compared to how it is now, you can do all primary scans from the drop in point if you wanted, and you no longer have to fly there, saving you time, and then if you do want to map things, the new orrery map gives you a way to best plot a course to minimize your time spent in system so you can get from body to body with shortest distance traveled.
The things to find might not move these types of commanders into the last category, but it makes at least the tier 2 scanning much easier to do, and gives the player the time they would have spent traveling to do it.
If you are looking for cool things to look at or take pictures, the system map just showed colors, now you get a full on zoomed in view of the body without having to fly there in advance, so you are not wasting your time before you decide to go there.
4) The One-hundred per-centers.
Doing a full system is just faster, you can scan everything from the drop in point, you can chose a best plot route from the orrery map so you minimize travel time. They would have flown to each planet in the previous system, but now they still do to launch probes so efficient routing greatly speeds things up.
Most replies that I have read though that have complaints seem to be focusing on a single aspect of the new system without looking at the overall picture. Yes there might be some cases that the old system was faster, but this is in very specific senarios, what time you lost in a single star system you make up thrice or more over in the next star system. You would have to go out of your way or RNG into a very dead space of the galaxy to have it take longer then the current system to do the same thing. Overall the process is greatly sped up.
I just see those kind of things as kicking in the Flight Assist in various emergency protocols and whatnot.
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