- I'm worried that they might be turning exploring into more of a time sink than it currently is. The beta will be important for balancing the times for each of the actions.
I think it's far more likely that the new mechanic will save time for a lot of players. Having watched Obsidiant Ants video on it, he made some interesting points I didn't catch from Frontier's post namely that we'll have a range discriminator, and that signals at that range will be stronger this means that finding terrraformables will be potentially MUCH faster than it currently is as long as you are familiar with the habitable zone ranges for specific types of stars.
example:
1) pop into a G star system
2) set the scanner range to discrimnate for 400-600 Ls
3) look for a telltale ELW/WW/Terraformable energy signal
That could take less than 10 seconds + actual scan time (which is apparently skill dependent)
Compare that to the current system:
1) honk ADS
2) check system map
3) fly over to scan
4) check system map again to verify that it's terraformable
this whole process usually takes 1-2 minutes at least
Likewise with completionists, it's entirely possible that as people gain experience, scanning an entire system might be something that you can do much quicker than you can currently. The flightime + scan time of the current "mechanic" isn't exactly a short process, and it's likely given Frontier's track record, that the skill based aspect of the mechanic (ie being familiar with the energy distribution/signal of the object you're looking for) will significantly decrease the time it takes to scan a whole system.
It's possible that some exploration playstyles might go away at least partially, like jonking while giving a cursory glance to the system map. That was always more of a lame way to kill time while buckyballing to an actual exploration destination.
As for the people who think they will be losing some key information that they can grab quickly at a glance right now, if they are experienced explorers, they will likely be able to get a similar quick glance by learning to quickly ID the energy distribution patterns of common system types.