Do you think the suggestion two posts above could work?
Proposal: alternative to outright removal of ADS instascan & system map minigame for explorers
- Thread starter StuartGT
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Do you think the suggestion two posts above could work?
Frontier's entire system of Discovery is based on only knowing the signal. Once you remove the need to know the signal (which can ONLY be direction based), then you remove the purpose of the energy signal filter altogether.
Having a pre-generated map (of any kind) of the exact location and distance to every object in the system means that you should be able to select any object, hence the 2 dials on Frontier's entire scanning mechanic become superfluous since their entire job is to help you sort out the location. Everything after this new seeking mechanic is identical to the empty mechanic we have now. So removing the seeking portion is essentially removing the whole thing.
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In general compromises are good solutions. In this case I don't think so.
I like the new mechanics as shown by FDEV, I don't need modifications from what I've seen so far.
We still don't know the new mechanics in details so our judgement is purely based on our own opinions, here is mine about exploration:
The actual ADS and Stuart proposal stick to a completely wrong exploration concept: "Honking".
The closer thing to "Honk" that comes to my mind is the first scene from Jurassic Park where the protagonists "honk" the soil to see the Velociraptor skeleton underground. Before doing so the paleontologists studied the area, looked for clues, digged the soil and only at the end they "honked". In Elite Dangerous we do the opposite! We honk at the beginning of the process and in most cases we skip all the rest.
The only Honking I may like is the one at the very end of the discovery chain: dig into the soil with an SRV to collect the last piece of information about a planet.
1. The ADS finds emissions, I do the job to define what the emissions are and I discover the planets.
2. Once I discover a planet, the scanner tells me if something cool is on its surface. I don't care a lot about ELW and WW (I care only for credits, cause there's no gameplay associated yet).
3. If something cool is detected I get there and I launch probes to map the planet and to find interesting POIs.
4. I land to the POIs and I drop the SRV to analyse and scan the features. Here, only here I accept the HONK.
The actual ADS shows the planets layout but it's not really representative of what cool features you're gonna find. With a simple honk you know a gas giant has 8 satellites, still you can't see the orbital planes and at which distance it's their orbits so you can't estimate if that is going to be cool or not. You can listen to the audio to discover if that green and blue ball is an earth like but let's be honest here...it's not so difficult, there's no actual game play to discover a ELW, WW or Ammonia World, they're pretty obvious! Terraformable ones have a bit more challenge.
So I still don't get the point of a spoiling Honk to get information about the system
I like the new mechanics as shown by FDEV, I don't need modifications from what I've seen so far.
We still don't know the new mechanics in details so our judgement is purely based on our own opinions, here is mine about exploration:
The actual ADS and Stuart proposal stick to a completely wrong exploration concept: "Honking".
The closer thing to "Honk" that comes to my mind is the first scene from Jurassic Park where the protagonists "honk" the soil to see the Velociraptor skeleton underground. Before doing so the paleontologists studied the area, looked for clues, digged the soil and only at the end they "honked". In Elite Dangerous we do the opposite! We honk at the beginning of the process and in most cases we skip all the rest.
The only Honking I may like is the one at the very end of the discovery chain: dig into the soil with an SRV to collect the last piece of information about a planet.
1. The ADS finds emissions, I do the job to define what the emissions are and I discover the planets.
2. Once I discover a planet, the scanner tells me if something cool is on its surface. I don't care a lot about ELW and WW (I care only for credits, cause there's no gameplay associated yet).
3. If something cool is detected I get there and I launch probes to map the planet and to find interesting POIs.
4. I land to the POIs and I drop the SRV to analyse and scan the features. Here, only here I accept the HONK.
The actual ADS shows the planets layout but it's not really representative of what cool features you're gonna find. With a simple honk you know a gas giant has 8 satellites, still you can't see the orbital planes and at which distance it's their orbits so you can't estimate if that is going to be cool or not. You can listen to the audio to discover if that green and blue ball is an earth like but let's be honest here...it's not so difficult, there's no actual game play to discover a ELW, WW or Ammonia World, they're pretty obvious! Terraformable ones have a bit more challenge.
So I still don't get the point of a spoiling Honk to get information about the system
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I agree, that's how it is.
Here's my proposal... If a system has nav beacon, the discovery scanner interrogates it and all know locations such as planets and bases are shown as they presently are with current mechanics. All POIs and other things are that are transitory are found with the new scan mechanics.
Then you should get zero credits from this operation because you discovered nothing!
This prposal IMHO must be observed considering exploration outside the bubble, not in populated systems. That's not exploration for me...
Good idea,this could well remove the need to spend time using a dedicated explorer mechanic when traversing the bubble.At the moment i gather the idea is to visit the nav beacon,which could become quite tedious.
+1 @ OP
I really like this proposal.
However, I would be just fine with getting a map with no more information other then the black hollow circles as in the first image:
I don't even need the half-ring as an indicator for landable worlds; it would be nice though that any information that is presentend by the new scanner/s and does NOT need interpretation due to being obvious (what ever that will be) is presented in the map as well (like, for instance, distance from main star).
Targeting any of the objects in the map will not directly show the object in our ship's HUD, but rather hint at the area we need to zoom in to find and reveal the object.
Once we zoomed in and revealed the object we could get the hollow circle filled with a picture (non-rotating, non zoom-able).
Once that object is fully scanned we would get the full, zoomable map of that object.
(I assume that revealing POI's and the makeup of an object - material-wise - still needs a close-up scan or scan via probes.
P.S.: I would like to see material-hotspots on planets (i.e. areas where there is a much higher spawn rate for high grade raw materials) and a full scan revealing those areas to us.
I really like this proposal.
However, I would be just fine with getting a map with no more information other then the black hollow circles as in the first image:
I don't even need the half-ring as an indicator for landable worlds; it would be nice though that any information that is presentend by the new scanner/s and does NOT need interpretation due to being obvious (what ever that will be) is presented in the map as well (like, for instance, distance from main star).
Targeting any of the objects in the map will not directly show the object in our ship's HUD, but rather hint at the area we need to zoom in to find and reveal the object.
Once we zoomed in and revealed the object we could get the hollow circle filled with a picture (non-rotating, non zoom-able).
Once that object is fully scanned we would get the full, zoomable map of that object.
(I assume that revealing POI's and the makeup of an object - material-wise - still needs a close-up scan or scan via probes.
P.S.: I would like to see material-hotspots on planets (i.e. areas where there is a much higher spawn rate for high grade raw materials) and a full scan revealing those areas to us.
From how they described it you should be able to set your scanner filters to identify particular kinds of planet. The issues around that though are:
1) It's still going to take more time to get the basic overview of planets in the system their orbital relationships and so on than the current ADS scan.
2) The fact the new ADS/DSS combined scan will also give you the current detailed scanner info when it's been completed is only of value if the bodies you discover are ones that you would have DSS scanned today anyway - if not, although the new combined scanning process will probably be faster than doing both kinds of current scan due to detail scanning not requiring you to fly to planets any more, the data you're collecting is going to be junk data. The issue is that there's no longer any separation between a basic view of a system and a detailed scan, when in many cases the basic scan would be all people need to decide they don't want to investigate further in many cases.
3) A lot of people who are saying 'it will be OK' seem to be focusing solely on the identification of particular kinds of planet. That's one thing I'm interested in when deciding whether to look at a system in more detail but it's far from the only one. As I said above, orbital relationships as shown on the current system map are a big factor and I can't see any way that the new process is going to give any significant information about that until actual scans have been done.
Yeah but the changes to being able to find surface content (which is the stuff you're talking about there) are brought about by the drones which will only be deployable after you've done the new combination ADS/DSS scanning to find a body to begin with. I think the drones themselves sound great, the game has been crying out for a way to let us find surface content. I just didn't anticipate that it would come as part of a take-it-or-leave-it package that will front-load time into the process of what is currently a discovery scan.
I agree that we obviously need to try the new system in practice but no matter how you dress it up, it's beyond dispute that simply getting a system overview will take longer than the current ten seconds as a result of it now being combined with the detail scan. I like all other aspects of the proposed system, but the addition of a time gate at the very beginning of the process, which isn't enforced at all under the current system, takes a lot of the gloss off it for me.
Seriously.
FDev should have linked (in the official thread explaining the new exploration mechanics) a gameplay video of the actual system even if it's in alpha / still in developpment / subject to change...a lot of people are confused about a lot of aspects (and Fdev seems too from what i saw in the livestream).
Now they are crawling under a 170 + pages official thread of people arguing on things we don't even know lol
Perhaps that the actual new system will allow us to know very quickly the kind of planets that are in the system...but we don't have a clue.
I love the OP proposal since I shared a similar one on the official thread. Some help for sightseeing explorers would be nice.
But...no pity for cherry-picking !!!
FDev should have linked (in the official thread explaining the new exploration mechanics) a gameplay video of the actual system even if it's in alpha / still in developpment / subject to change...a lot of people are confused about a lot of aspects (and Fdev seems too from what i saw in the livestream).
Now they are crawling under a 170 + pages official thread of people arguing on things we don't even know lol
Perhaps that the actual new system will allow us to know very quickly the kind of planets that are in the system...but we don't have a clue.
I love the OP proposal since I shared a similar one on the official thread. Some help for sightseeing explorers would be nice.
But...no pity for cherry-picking !!!
Apparently this question needs to be repeated:
What would be the point of the energy signal filter or the distance filter under the proposed system of the OP? Currently the function is only to find the location. Everything else is identical to the current vacuous scan mechanic: select > point > wait.
What would be the point of the energy signal filter or the distance filter under the proposed system of the OP? Currently the function is only to find the location. Everything else is identical to the current vacuous scan mechanic: select > point > wait.
I love the idea but wonder, why do people make suggestions for the game here?
FD have shown time and time again they do what they want to, and listen to the community only in a crisis moment.
Even the when they ask for feedback they seem to simply be offering it up as an unacknowledged appeasement.
I have to admit. I missed this when considering the proposal. If you can click on the black bodies, hunting for the energy signal is moot. It would ruin the proposed exploration method, because people would just system map, click, and follow the compass to the target.
What if black bodies weren't clickable? Strictly a visual representation of what the computer estimates is out there in terms of distribution but has no more data until you scan it?
Good suggestion. Certainly i like it more than the proposed official changes.
My first choice however is just keeping the way the advanced discovery scanner works now. It works fine. No need to change it at all imho.
Just add more content in system to find and any new mechanics should be focused on finding the new things easier. So in other words my priority would be
1.) More kinds of things to find and discover.
2.) Add mechanics to make finding these things easier and faster than currently (particularly on planetary surfaces).
3.) Add in the Codex mentioned last year.
I wouldn't bother with replacing the way the discovery scanner works at all. The main problem with exploration is on planetary surfaces imho. I would sooner focus there not on the bit that works.
My first choice however is just keeping the way the advanced discovery scanner works now. It works fine. No need to change it at all imho.
Just add more content in system to find and any new mechanics should be focused on finding the new things easier. So in other words my priority would be
1.) More kinds of things to find and discover.
2.) Add mechanics to make finding these things easier and faster than currently (particularly on planetary surfaces).
3.) Add in the Codex mentioned last year.
I wouldn't bother with replacing the way the discovery scanner works at all. The main problem with exploration is on planetary surfaces imho. I would sooner focus there not on the bit that works.
This is complete nonsense. Explorers aren’t asking for anything of the kind. We don’t care about credits. If we did we wouldn’t explore! I want exploration to be richer during the process of finding things interesting on the planets or the planets themselves and I want actual interesting things to find. I don’t want another grind wall where I have to play a mini game to decide if I even want to explore the system. It sounds like you have no idea what explorers want and FD as well! As I’ve said repeatedly in many of these threads, FD can make planet mapping as complicated as they want, just leave the original scan alone. You can remove credits all together on the initial honk for all I care.
The above post is a fair point in that when 'exploration changes' were first announced, my head wasn't particularly filled with thoughts of how the current process of finding things could be made more involved. My thoughts were more on a situation where the process yielded more than the current sheet of facts and figures, tied to a new system of recording whatever we do discover in-game.
Fact is, based on what we've been told so far there is nothing specifically new in terms of what can be found. Well apart from space lightning and I'll leave it to the more scientifically inclined among you to deliver a verdict on that.
The codex hasn't been mentioned even in passing.
The one actual update to the galaxy (ice planets) has been rolled back out of this update.
The drones sound like a great idea to allow us to actually find the stuff that's already in the game. Other than that, the focus on 'how' rather than 'what' has me a little underwhelmed.
I swear if I see one more person whose imagination is so limited they can only conceive that people expressing concern about this are motivated by credits per hour and not being able to find bloody water worlds or whatever to scan for cash quickly, there's a chance I might actually go on some kind of rampage. It's particularly annoying given how many people who have expressed concerns have said very clearly that it is not about credits.
The beta for this can't come fast enough.
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They did talk about there being new things to find in the livestream. I doubt they will list them out so we can just check them off a list. At least, I hope they don't
That's nowhere in my proposal. There's no selection or any other information available. It's just a way to tell you this system might be worth checking out. All the checking out still has to be done.
Yeah, me too
Not even bodies, just a representation of a signal.
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Yep, I've come to believe that this is the best version of the "honk" for 3.3 as well. It's a compromise between the 4 year old honk and Frontier's proposed "3.3 honk reveals main star only" design.
Explorers need to have some tool to quickly judge whether a system is interesting and worth further study or not, and this black body system map would provide that tool nicely. The new FSS can't fill this role as it will take longer than a few seconds to gather an overall system layout. The FSS should be the tool you use to take closer looks at the planets AFTER you've decided to stay awhile and listen.
I agree 1000% Stuart.
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Frankly, I am shocked that this made it 8 pages and into an OA video, and no one realized that the OP's suggestion wholly obviates the entirety of the dev's scanning mechanic, and returns us back to the current brain dead point-n-wait mechanic.
If they have any kind of auto-revealed "black sphere" map, then the entire function of the 2 active filters (energy & distance) would have to be revamped. It would have to be necessary to select the object, or manually center it on a gravity anomaly, and then move the 2 active filters to the correct part of the spectrum (focusing on the right distance, and the right energy) in order to resolve the object. Basically the filter would have to work in reverse. Instead of auto zooming on the object, you'd need to ID its correct signal & distance. Frankly, that's not a terrible idea, but I wonder if the devs have the time needed to switch up their functionality. This would also mean that the map could only reveal the basic structure, but not any actual distances, which is fine because the system map isn't to scale anyway.
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