Secret FSS Frequency Decoding

[Camisade]

I'm a huge admirer of much of the FDev Elite Dangerous game design. In many ways, I think they don't get anywhere enough credit.

I'm hoping the FSS is as thoughtfully designed as a few of the other UI's in the game.

Has any of you brainiacs decoded the pattern of frequency spikes near the low end of the frequency spectrum? There seem to be about 5-8 different patterns of those spikes (I believe the technical term for them is "squiggles"). There seems to be some correlation to the number and variety of signal sources in the system.

In a brilliant piece of design thoughtfulness and creativity, there would be some visual way to look at those squiggles and ascertain whether there was an HGE in the system, before having to go through the tiresome, repetitive, skill-less, assinnine process of zooming in and out of each junk USS to find the possible one or two signal sources worth flying toward? (Please hold your comments about using the Nav Beacon for this process -- they're not relevant).

I mean, since FDev went out of their way to change Combat Aftermath into just another worthless piece of USS garbage to be ignored (right up there with the Degraded Signal Sources, Convoys, and the Distress Calls and, arguably, the Emissions ones), you'd like to think they'd have the design thoughtfulness and interest to actually give players a way to see immediately if further investigation with the FSS was worth the effort, right?

Surely we must just have to figure this out?

I mean, NOBODY worthy of the title "Game Designer" could believe that painstakingly zooming into every signal source -- when MOST of them aren't worth the 10 minutes it must have taken some intern to half-heartedly add to the game -- could possibly be a proud piece of game design, could they? Ergo, there MUST be some way to look at that telltale and come to a conclusion?

Because that FSS UI design detail would be worthy of admiration.

Let's figure this out!

 

[Riverside]

If there is any subtlety and depth to the FSS Scanner Screen it is lost because the meta is to burn though the signals as fast as possible outside the bubble, or to scan the nav beacon in populated systems. Once the player has learned how it works there is no skill advantage, it's just busy-work for the sake of it as far as I can tell.

 

[60mm]

I mean, NOBODY worthy of the title "Game Designer" could believe that painstakingly zooming into every signal source -- when MOST of them aren't worth the 10 minutes it must have taken some intern to half-heartedly add to the game -- could possibly be a proud piece of game design, could they? Ergo, there MUST be some way to look at that telltale and come to a conclusion?

Loooooooooooooooooooool. Have you played ED?

 

[Camisade]

Okay, that's two votes for "Nope, we haven't figured out those squiggles yet, either." :-D

 

[Garand1987]

Idk if I’d say there has to be something deeper. In games generally there’s a lot of things that are designed specifically to be time sucks to elongate the experience and add the illusion of content to simple systems. In ED we have long SC trips, long planetary landing times, the pads on outposts face away from the station making you dock awkwardly around the station instead of having a straight shot, Coriolis and Orbis stations have slots that face the planets (as if that makes sense since nearly all traffic will be comeing from space and not the planet surface) so make you curve inward toward the G well and slow you down while also having to line up a shot ao you don’t have to boost around the station to get to the enterence etc etc.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

AFAIK the spike intensity i.e. of Low Frequency Transient Signals merely indicates their total number. The exact same can be observed with specific Planet types.

Getting a resolution on a few also visibly reduces that local intensity spike as their unresolved number is reduced, all the way to a tiny one remaining when there's only a single of the type left.

So in a nutshell :
- bigger spikes = higher number if same-type Signals in the System
- no difference between a Degraded Emissions, Encoded or HGE, as they're all the same type

If there's a signal frequency spread for the Low Freq USS, it's so tiny that it gets buried in the Transient Signal Source band. IMHO no way to work it out visually that way.
Play the Minigame and yes - in Systems with several dozens of Sources it'll get tedious.

PS.
Haven't tried it, but the Audio might be a giveaway. At least Encoded, Degraded and Convoys have very distinct Audio patterns when centered.
Worth a shot listening to them. But in a sense, in most Systems doing a turbo-zoom-in-zoom-out is likely still quicker.

 

[kpmop]

What FalconFly said.

There is a bit of a spread down at the low end - convoys, distress signals, combat aftermath (I think) and USSsssss are separate (a few pixels left/right of each other at least!), but there doesn't appear to be a way of differentiating between USSs. In defence of the new mechanic though, it's a damn sight quicker to find HGEs than it used to be - just a shame they (still) seem to be broken at the moment...

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

If there is any subtlety and depth to the FSS Scanner Screen it is lost because the meta is to burn though the signals as fast as possible outside the bubble, or to scan the nav beacon in populated systems.

Surely that depends on the user and how they do it. I they speed through it as quickly as possible, then I imagine it to be very boring, but that is down to each person to use it as they want to. But I wouldn't call it a meta as they are not getting an advantage over anyone else, they are just ruining the experience for themselves.

Once the player has learned how it works there is no skill advantage, it's just busy-work for the sake of it as far as I can tell.

Why does there have to be a skill advantage. As to busy-work, look up what it means.

Busy work: "work that keeps a person busy but has little value in itself"

That is entirely dependent on the individual. Value can mean a great many things, but I would say at least the information you get from the FSS is vital to explore a system so is of great value to any explorer.

Just looks like to me people use the words busy-work to portray gameplay they don't like or don't want to do.

 

[Watcher]

PS.
Haven't tried it, but the Audio might be a giveaway. At least Encoded, Degraded and Convoys have very distinct Audio patterns when centered.
Worth a shot listening to them. But in a sense, in most Systems doing a turbo-zoom-in-zoom-out is likely still quicker.

Interested about this in general - I'm pretty sure you can do things like distinguish geological and biological signals on planets from the audio before you zoom and have them resolve (which tends to take a while). Someone with a better ear, more experience and great patience in comparing things than me will hopefully be able to chime in. I'm curious to know just how much you can get from the audio if you listen carefully.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think at the USS level, the various types of signal source overlap too closely - and any system likely to be generating HGEs will have way a lot of others as well - that you're unlikely to be able to see if a HGE is present without resolving at least some of the others. The resolution of the bar is just too low for that.

If you drop into a system with lots of ice-balls - planets, moons, moons of moons, some with rings - then the icy section of the scan starts out as a fairly indistinct maximum-amplitude wave. As you resolve some of them out of it and allow the remaining signals to separate, you certainly can start to make a good guess at what types of objects remain, whether you've got all the independent ice planets yet, etc. But to start with? No - there's too many competing signals - and the iceball spectrum range is a fair bit broader than the USS range to start with.

You might well be able to use this to determine if HGEs are about without having to first resolve *every* USS, though.

 

[Riverside]

Surely that depends on the user and how they do it. I they speed through it as quickly as possible, then I imagine it to be very boring, but that is down to each person to use it as they want to. But I wouldn't call it a meta as they are not getting an advantage over anyone else, they are just ruining the experience for themselves.


Why does there have to be a skill advantage. As to busy-work, look up what it means.

Busy work: "work that keeps a person busy but has little value in itself"

That is entirely dependent on the individual. Value can mean a great many things, but I would say at least the information you get from the FSS is vital to explore a system so is of great value to any explorer.

Just looks like to me people use the words busy-work to portray gameplay they don't like or don't want to do.

meta = most effective tactic available Max, it is not dependant on player style, it is dependant on the rules of the game. What players actually do is up to the individual and will vary from system to system but there is no motivation to investigate any subtlety other than as a purely academic exercise as far as I can see. The most effective way to find the thing you want is to reveal everything & just select the one you want from the list of resolved objects.

Can you offer some insight to the contrary?

 

[Camisade]

I'm beginning to think there needs to be an engineer that can work some magic on the FSS ...perhaps a "Low End Amplification" mod for mat-hungry engineering fanatics (like me), which trades off the high-frequency ability of the FSS for (much) higher resolution at the low end of the spectrum.

Conversely, a "High End Amplification" mod (for Explorers) would trade away the ability to even sense signal sources at the low end for greater ability to break out similar types of stellar bodies more quickly.

Anything to cut the tedium would be welcomed by me.

 

[BL1P]

I just drop in the nav beacon.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I'm beginning to think there needs to be an engineer that can work some magic on the FSS ...perhaps a "Low End Amplification" mod for mat-hungry engineering fanatics (like me), which trades off the high-frequency ability of the FSS for (much) higher resolution at the low end of the spectrum.

Conversely, a "High End Amplification" mod (for Explorers) would trade away the ability to even sense signal sources at the low end for greater ability to break out similar types of stellar bodies more quickly.

Anything to cut the tedium would be welcomed by me.

What would work better is to be able to zoom the tuner bar to only show what you're looking for, and expand those results in to more detail.
There's plenty of spare bindings available on my gamepad, so it can't be an issue that way.

 

[Riverside]

I'm beginning to think there needs to be an engineer that can work some magic on the FSS ...perhaps a "Low End Amplification" mod for mat-hungry engineering fanatics (like me), which trades off the high-frequency ability of the FSS for (much) higher resolution at the low end of the spectrum.

Conversely, a "High End Amplification" mod (for Explorers) would trade away the ability to even sense signal sources at the low end for greater ability to break out similar types of stellar bodies more quickly.

Anything to cut the tedium would be welcomed by me.

I wouldn't object to engineering to optimise for the USS band but I think there is enough room on the spectrum that they could be more spread out - there is no particular reason why the frequency scale needs to be evenly distributed by frequency at the low end.

I think we are looking at a basic design concept that still needs a lot of work to mitigate some pretty fundamental flaws and the frequency distribution is probably quite far down the priority list of things to improve.

 

[Aashenfox]

I think I'd be happy enough if when you enter a system that has no HGEs, Nelson Muntz materialises in your cockpit, points at you and exclaims 'Haha!'

At least then I could move on without going to the nav, then back to SC.

 

[Camisade]

I think I'd be happy enough if when you enter a system that has no HGEs, Nelson Muntz materialises in your cockpit, points at you and exclaims 'Haha!'

The Frontier version of that, of course, is that Nelson only materializes* right as you scan that last USS in a system that has spawned no HGE's (out of 37 signal sources you've just painstakingly scanned)...





* Note correct (American) spelling, which preserves "s" characters for more important uses (and helps those speaking English as a second language (and the less literate (probably Americans)) pronounce the word correctly). Also, our spelling helps you score higher in Scrabble. ;-)