Ship and SRV Based Scientific Research Tools

[CMDRGURU951]

A few months back I discovered that there is a method to discovering volcanic and organic POI. Ever since that day this game has become so much more than what it was before for me as an explorer, which is my primary focus.

1. To aid in research it would be nice to have a little extra light for a brief period of time being that many of these are located in dark canyons.
I feel that Illumination Flares would be useful. We currently use these in modern day military operations where they launch them via mortar. We could launch them via SRV via Illumination Limpets.

2. A Research Limpet, Ship Based Scanner or Scanner Capability that could tell me the height of a mountain peak, the depth of a canyon, or the radius of a crater.
This would open up possibilities for new records to be discovered, it would also cause many explorers to go in for that extra in-depth look at a system. Who knows what may be found!

3. Currently there is no reason do go into a ring in deep space besides a photo op or a rare need to mine some mats. It would be nice to give us some purpose here. I personally do not know what to suggest but feel that there is something missing in this part of exploration.

4. As a Geologist, Landable Moons in excess of 3000k radius are near impossible to survey efficiently or effectively. It would be nice to have a limpet or a ship based scanner that could give me a rough estimate of a search area. I'm not saying it should pin point anything, just asking to help narrow things down.

5. Thermal Imaging or FLIR Camera, like modern day helicopters have. I imagine our ships cockpits are using a technology that darkens the glass as needed, why not make that cockpit transition to thermal when needed? Or even smaller, give us a monitor that displays it. When I'm cruising over the surface of a landable on the search, many of the volcanic sites have high rising gaseous vapors and this would make it much easier to identify their location with a tool such as this.

6. Setting Waypoints. I cannot explain how useful this would be, especially if they displayed on our HUD once set.

7. Currently when on the surface of a landable and viewing the surface map the player icon is a blue vertical diamond. It would be far more useful to display the icon in a way that shows which direction the nose of the ship is facing.

8. Multi-Crew Features. A few.
MC Role: Scienitifc Research.
Co-Pilot having an altimeter would be useful, mostly for use while giving instruction on how to search for POI to the visitors in my ship.
Co-Pilot being able to set a marker in the Galaxy Map or in the System Map that the primary pilot can see.
Co-Pilot Can see orbit lines.

Last One...
9. The Bookmark System. Currently there is one bookmark that can be used. It would be more useful to have several color coded bookmarks and a certain number of each that the player can edit the names of. After a couple of years of bookmarking, I'm beginning to run out, and have a hard time identifying what each one is.

Thanks for your time.
o7

 

[EWanderer]

+1, to all of these. For the Limpets I would suggest working like long range contacts(to measure distances) and if data-link scanned to give out all the other details, like depth and stuff. They would not be persistent(read get destroyed if the instance is closed), but it could be used for a lot of other purposes(the obvious one would setup racing tracks).

3 <- For Rings I agree it would be nice to have something there, beside giving you an opportunity to regain some materials if you brougth a mining laser. Or just give us more stuff to do with Materials, like crafting those beacons and other tools proposed.

4 <- For searching POI easier, the usage of survey satellits would be cool. you had to get the mats from Space Rocks(giving us even more reason to exist), take a few hours or even days, and they would post any "anomoly" in a notification, you could write down and had to check out later to see what exactly it was.

8 <- Yeah we really need to customize Bookmarks, just in general for every activity.

6 <- Yes I would love to create those and then even make them bookmark available. Using the CANONN Bearin Tool is just cumbersome and should not be necessary.

5 <- That would look so cool I guess and could be a nice idea besides survey helper. Maybe allow the current little Targeting Circle besides your radar, to be replaced with different functionalities(like heatmap, material radar and whatnot).

 

[J-Dog]

I agree with and would particularly like to see points 1, 6 and 7.

 

[Daynen]

Forget the rest of the list; #3 covers the entire problem. There is no PURPOSE to exploration other than to name your own planet/star. Many of the OP's requests are interesting in and of themselves, but without any need or reason to use them, they'll fall by the wayside quickly. Setting records and finding miscellaneous data for funsies only stays fun for so long. We need situations that need resolving, mysteries that bear investigating and most importantly, CHANGES that call for new scan data. "Hmm...I don't recall seeing that massive crater on that planet before...did a comet come through here recently?" "GAH! meteor shower! Pull up, pull up! Phew. Where are all those rocks headed and where the HELL did they originate?" "Wow...there must be...dozens of shipwrecks here. What HAPPENED to them?" "Felicia Winters is looking for a good part of space for a remote colony and wants viable systems, huh? She's offering a reward for the best system data? Hmmm...lemme go see what I can find..."

You know, burning questions like the ones we have about our own universe IRL. Motivations based on what the galactic powers are trying to actually DO. Things that make us WANT to go explore.

 

[CMDRGURU951]

3 <- For Rings I agree it would be nice to have something there, beside giving you an opportunity to regain some materials if you brougth a mining laser. Or just give us more stuff to do with Materials, like crafting those beacons and other tools proposed.

Crafting beacons would be sweeeet.

I agree with and would particularly like to see points 1, 6 and 7.

Those are some of my favorites too. A nice camera reconnaissance limpet with a decent range could be useful too. No weapons on it, skimmers will kill it and it'll crash if taken too far.

 

[CMDRGURU951]

Forget the rest of the list; #3 covers the entire problem. There is no PURPOSE to exploration other than to name your own planet/star.

People are to this day finding new Guardian Ruins and Structures purely through exploration, a little skill and a lot of luck. Not to mention the newest Thargoid Surface Site that was recently discovered due to the Eagle Eye Operations going on. I gotta say, I disagree with you on saying that exploration is empty. We have only seen less than 1% of the map. There's just no way we have nothing left to find, including things we do not even know exist.

Finding volcanic and organic sites has been an amazing experience. I finally learned to find something more special than an average star or body and that brought this game to life for me, it also increased my desire to keep up with what's going on in the galaxy in the realm of discovery and I gotta say, it seems quite alive and leaves me with a lot of hope of eventually finding something significant to the game and story.

 

[Daynen]

People are to this day finding new Guardian Ruins and Structures purely through exploration, a little skill and a lot of luck. Not to mention the newest Thargoid Surface Site that was recently discovered due to the Eagle Eye Operations going on. I gotta say, I disagree with you on saying that exploration is empty. We have only seen less than 1% of the map. There's just no way we have nothing left to find, including things we do not even know exist.

Finding volcanic and organic sites has been an amazing experience. I finally learned to find something more special than an average star or body and that brought this game to life for me, it also increased my desire to keep up with what's going on in the galaxy in the realm of discovery and I gotta say, it seems quite alive and leaves me with a lot of hope of eventually finding something significant to the game and story.

Well this would be the first time I've seen or heard mention of any of those things; good to know. However, an important question is thus raised: what did you DO when you found those things? What was there to DO at those sites, other than smile, take a screenshot and leave? Furthermore, you're also right that it's very little skill and very much a lot of luck. Mind you, Beyond is still underway and there ARE big things coming; I do hold out at least some cautious optimism that we'll finally start getting new ways to interact with the galaxy(along with new ways the galaxy interacts with US--lightning storms anyone?) and respond to the things we eventually do find. As of right now, however, even on the off chance that we find something new or interesting, all we can really do is tell people about it.