Scanning Biological Stuff

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
Quick question, hopefully someone can clarify... :)

So I'm out exploring and I've been finding a bunch of biological things, lately it's bacterium of various hues. Thing is, every time I go to scan one, it says it's discarding my previous scan data (or it says it can't be scanned because it's not different - which I get). But why is it always discarding what I scanned previously on a different body?

I can't remember the exact flavors, but I know bacterium lime was definitely one, and I know there's been at least one different flavor...

Not a big deal as I mainly land to get first footfall, but I'm presuming that when I finally get back I won't really have any exobiology data to sell. 🤷‍♂️
 

Jack Winter

Jack Winter
You have to scan each thing 3 times and it has to be a certain distance away.. And you can't change sample while scanning, which means that if you find 2 species growing in the same places, you'll have to find the first set of 3 far enough from each other, and then you have to run a similar circuit once more?? 🤷‍♂️
 

KRONFROMGALVATRON

KRONFROMGALVATRON
Yeah this mechanic is gonna be rough if we ever get earth likes. But yeah as others have said, you need to scan the sa,e species 3 times. Must find specimens a few hundred meters apart too, they can’t be right next to each other. I think that’s what you’re missing. Because you still get a few credits for a single scan. But you need 3 scans to fully complete the task.
 

Sleepyman

Sleepyman
There is a series of lights on the side of the tool that tells you how many samples you've taken. 0 is no lights, 1 is 3 lit up, 2 is 6 and 3 is 9 though you then go into a clear the tool animation.

Posing with 2 samples taken

20210522211230_1-copy.jpg
 

Flimley

Flimley
The game play is as follows....
1. begin in srv, find a thing jump out and scan it. ..jump back in srv
2. Drive over there somewhere, get out of srv and scan the thing again. ("genetic diversity")
3. Repeat for a third time.
4. Goto 1 (except find a different thing)

The singular nature of this activity will drive one to insanity after a while. I so hope improvements will be made at some point. in the short term perhaps something like...
• More varieties of species (added on a regular basis)
• Maybe the addition of another tool to drill for 'soil', 'rock' samples for analysis?
• And revisiting the dyson scanner game play that has never been updated?

Flimley
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Flimley said:
The game play is as follows....
1. begin in srv, find a thing jump out and scan it. ..jump back in srv
2. Drive over there somewhere, get out of srv and scan the thing again. ("genetic diversity")
3. Repeat for a third time.
4. Goto 1 (except find a different thing)

The singular nature of this activity will drive one to insanity after a while. I so hope improvements will be made at some point. in the short term perhaps something like...
• More varieties of species (added on a regular basis)
• Maybe the addition of another tool to drill for 'soil', 'rock' samples for analysis?
• And revisiting the dyson scanner game play that has never been updated?

Flimley
Click to expand...
I think part of the problem is the limited environments we have to search for life. I imagine real life biology would be pretty bad if all you had to search were deserts (that didn't even have life). Now, if you had to fight off giant anacondas, climb mountains, swim waterfalls, keep poisonous insects at bay and chop your way through a rainforest to find a orchid (yes, I just gave the outline for a really bad film)....
 

myothershipisacobraiv

myothershipisacobraiv
I think that the ExoBio system works the way it does because it's a kludge so they could ship something. The whole right-click pinging stuff doesn't really make a lot of sense because genetically diverse samples are so far apart that it strongly encourages SRV use and in this case there is no ambiguity once you've driven for like, a minute.

I think, originally, you were supposed to ping larger fields of stuff and different things would ping as different colours and you were supposed to pick and choose somehow, which would then lead into the secondary part where you would combine things in some fashion.

What they should have done, back when the QTE still existed, was have plants give you a random QTE. Some easy, some hard, and you do this 3 times and each goes into a slot. If you get a really bad one, then you can shop it out for a new one but then that slot spins faster. You can purge and start over. You can only sample each specimen once. So now you're balancing the plants as a resource, the speed of your pieces, and their complexity.

But yeah, I think as originally designed, it was supoosed to be wildly different from what we know.
 

TrollhunterX

TrollhunterX
Jack Winter said:
You have to scan each thing 3 times and it has to be a certain distance away.. And you can't change sample while scanning, which means that if you find 2 species growing in the same places, you'll have to find the first set of 3 far enough from each other, and then you have to run a similar circuit once more?? 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...

It took me a while, including a couple of visits to Genomics, where I was told I had nothing to sell, to realise that the kerfuffle of sample containers being changed was actually me scrapping a previous sample for a different one, which I would then scrap for something else.

Some kind of warning, as when switching modifications in engineering, would have been nice...
 

BDelacroix

BDelacroix
metatheurgist said:
I think part of the problem is the limited environments we have to search for life. I imagine real life biology would be pretty bad if all you had to search were deserts (that didn't even have life). Now, if you had to fight off giant anacondas, climb mountains, swim waterfalls, keep poisonous insects at bay and chop your way through a rainforest to find a orchid (yes, I just gave the outline for a really bad film)....
Click to expand...
In ED all that would net you 30 credits. Thank you for your contribution.
 

Daniel Cloudsifter

Daniel Cloudsifter
DYSEQTA said:
The multiple samples over a distance for genetic diversity in specimens concept I get. However, I must admit I am not sure what FDev thought was good about the idea of limiting sampling to one species at a time.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Exobiology would be much improved if we could sample more than one thing at a time. I guess they thought it would be too hard to code a method for someone to keep track of their various sample status... you know, like the multiple bins on a Refinery. Hmm... wait, I guess they could've done it after all.
metatheurgist said:
Whoever designs gameplay in FD is a sadist, that's all. ;)
Click to expand...

Yes. There is fun grind and then there is just grind. They often seem to go all-in on the latter...
Flimley said:
The game play is as follows....
1. begin in srv, find a thing jump out and scan it. ..jump back in srv
2. Drive over there somewhere, get out of srv and scan the thing again. ("genetic diversity")
3. Repeat for a third time.
4. Goto 1 (except find a different thing)

The singular nature of this activity will drive one to insanity after a while. I so hope improvements will be made at some point. in the short term perhaps something like...
• More varieties of species (added on a regular basis)
• Maybe the addition of another tool to drill for 'soil', 'rock' samples for analysis?
• And revisiting the dyson scanner game play that has never been updated?

Flimley
Click to expand...

Yep, definitely use an SRV to help you get around between patches. Always staying on foot is just a pain.

I also would like to know why they didn't bother to either enhance the Scarab SRV or release a modified version whose scanner could switch from mineral/energy scans to bio-scans. And in case anyone would argue such a scanner is silly on SRV - you can literally pulse-scan with the exobiology tool on foot. So why can't the SRV do better.

I also wish the DSS "heatmaps" were a little more descriptive of what you might find where.

As someone who absolutely can't resist scanning everything on a planet in No Man's Sky, even the rocks (and if you play that game, you know how pointless that can be) I find Elite's Exobiology to be a neat concept with an absolutely horrid execution. Why they wasted time on that mini-game, which they then pulled because everyone wasn't interested in that extra grind, instead of adding these other features to make it easier and more fun... I just don't know.
 

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
Thanks everyone for the replies... So I guess they are expecting me to keep looking either on the same planet (or perhaps a different one?) for three instances of the same thing, and since the bacterium thing I found was a different hue it didn't count.

Ah well, was really just a side effect of me getting a first footfall, so not a big deal. I shall remain directionless until further notice - or the end of time, whichever comes first. :)
 

Mr T

Mr T
Tip: use the secondary scan button (right mouse button for me) to quickly tell what you need to be scanning. Blue will show if you're too close to your previous scan. Purple if it's a different species. Green if it's good to scan.
 
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