Some feedback on being an Exobiologist

[Ozric]

Now I have spent a few days playing the game and going through the exobiology gameplay flow, I thought that I would give some feedback on the things that I have noticed so far.

Starting off with the things I find most confusing or frustrating.

Why is there not an entry in the Codex for distance travelled on foot? There's one for distance traveled in Ly between systems, there's one for distance travelled in the SRV, so it makes sense to me that there should be one for distance travelled on foot.

In fact following on from that, there is nothing at all in the Codex to do with Exobiology. Nothing about the amount of sample collected, or sold. Nothing about the amount of species discovered, or how many regions you have discovered them in. Or your most valuable sample. There doesn't seem to be anything for the new Mercenary ranks either. It seems very strange to me that there are two new professions, and a Codex to store Cmdr data in, but the thought was never made to link the new game with the current game, again.

There is no way of telling what samples you have already collected and are waiting to sell. I must have collected about 10 samples, and yet nowhere under the Nav Panel, the Systems panel, or the Codex is any information displayed.


Finding the new biological life can be very frustrating. The DSS is often very confusing for most people to read. I think I have now worked it out and, if it's not bugged as it is different from the Alpha, then I assume that the Blue areas are where you can look for various types of biology/geology but once you get down to the planet then you are completely on your own. For most things the blue areas cover almost the entire planet and so it's just a case of wandering around randomly until you happen to stumble upon something. There are no scanners in your ship, your SRV, or on foot that can help you determine which direction or area you should look in.
I'm not saying I want something that immediately pinpoints the exact location of things, but I perhaps naively thought that the SRV wave scanner might have been updated to help with the search. Or the Blue PoIs that you used to see on the Ship's radar (which have disappeared in Odyssey). Bacterium is ridiculously hard to spot for example, and I know from speaking to a few people about it that they find it very frustrating indeed.

I think that part of the issue with it comes from the teething problems with the planetary tech. I took to flying about 500m above the surface of planets looking for life, but couldn't see any. So I dropped down to ~100m so I was basically skimming the ground, but I still couldn't see any. So I decided to land and get out in my SRV. Once I landed the landscape popped into existence a bit more, and then when I deployed the SRV suddenly I was surrounded by Tussocks. Once I had driven around and collected the samples and boarded my ship again, I could still see them.


On to the more positive side


So far for the species I have discovered I am absolutely loving the art design that has gone into them. The luminous Yellow fungi I found yesterday though were so bright I couldn't even really take a screenshot But he variety is nice and the attention to the small details is, as always, great.

I was personally disappointed that the mini game was removed from the sampling, but I think the compromise that has been done is really good. Keeping the animation there helps it a lot, and the added touch of the first sample being 1 ring, the second 2 and the third 3 rings is really nice.

I like the flow of the gameplay too, I can understand that some might find a bit frustrating not knowing how far you have to travel to get the sample, or if you're doing one of the ones that is over 500m between colonies, but it makes sense. I think the only thing is though that if you don't have an SRV it can take a long time to get three Tussock sample.
That said though I had an amazing experience as I was sampling Tussocks. I was wandering around and over the space of about half hour the sun went down. The sky had been getting steadily darker, and the stars started to come out and get brighter over the time. Just after the sun set all that was left was a very dim glow around the edge of the horizon, and finally I was left with just an inky black sky above me.

Experiencing the change from Day to Night on an atmospheric planet (especially as I hadn't planned it) was far more amazing that I ever thought it would be.


Thanks for reading. Overall I am liking the new Exobiology, there's a few bugs I've raised that will make things better once squished and some tweaks that can be made, but it's a good foundation. Just please sort out the stats section of the Codex

 

[Zac Cocken]

Thanks for the clear feedback!

 

[Pigletslastand]

*Hands Zac a Flak jacket, Body armour and a stiff drink.. Your probably gonna need these today buddy!

 

[Drazkul]

I really enjoy the bio hunting, I agree however that the SRV could really do with something - ideally the pulse scan thats on the exo-biology tool that can be fired manually (and yeah Bacteria is THE worst for finding)

 

[Queex]

To round up some of the other exobiology comments in other threads:

The DSS overlay needs to be available, and the filter able to be changed, in all movement modes and at any altitude. Currently you have to launch and get up to a certain height before you can even change the filter.

There needs to be some intermediate guidance between the overlay and the pulse on foot. I think what's happened is that the alpha heatmap identified areas where the life was more likely to appear, and the change to an overlay removed that information but didn't change the actual distribution, so some areas currently blue are extremely 'cold' but you have no way of knowing that.

I've started to think that using the SRV wave scanner is not necessarily the best way; unless the intention is for an SRV to be essential exobiology kit. If the intention is that it can be done just with a ship and an Artemis suit then putting the intermediate level detection on the SRV wouldn't work.

I'm a fan of expanding on the tool pulse, letting it search out to a huge range and putting pins on your HUD. The further away, the less precise the pin. Then you can have a loop of pulsing, riding the SRV towards it, then getting out for another reading to refine your direction. That seems like it would be quite fun. Plus, you could do it purely on foot if you wanted to.

 

[alexzk]

....and 1 more problem to light - carriers do not accept bio data to sell there. So, if I used to have my carrier with me to be safe, does it mean I can't die again out there?

 

[Winterwalker]

For info I've been using the SRV composition scanner while auto driving with the top down (turret view).

Beep .. and you can disembark and use the hand held unit to zero in. o7

 

[Northpin]

I spent an hour or so gathering some bio samples yesterday.
Using the SRV to jump up, take some height can really help spot certain types of plants.

Sure, improved detection would be nice to have, but my only grief with the current system is the fact that we can only scan a single bio type and if you dont finish that scan (3 samples) you cannot scan anything else without erasing previous scans...
I mean, seriously?

I could easily tolerate a "just a sec to change the container" *() if the system would be able to allow me to scan 3-5 different types of plants before erasing my previous scans


*(or whatever that might be)

 

[alexzk]

I spent an hour or so gathering some bio samples yesterday.
Using the SRV to jump up, take some height can really help spot certain types of plants.

Sure, improved detection would be nice to have, but my only grief with the current system is the fact that we can only scan a single bio type and if you dont finish that scan (3 samples) you cannot scan anything else without erasing previous scans...
I mean, seriously?

I could easily tolerate a "just a sec to change the container" *() if the system would be able to allow me to scan 3-5 different types of plants before erasing my previous scans


*(or whatever that might be)

DId you try to use 2-3-4 separated suits? Maybe you can just change suit?

 

[Northpin]

DId you try to use 2-3-4 separated suits? Maybe you can just change suit?

Joking, right?

 

[alexzk]

Joking, right?

No, I would try actually I will do If I land on some OK planet for that. I have 2x suits

 

[Ozric]

Just to stick in my preferred scouting method of choice. It's the Free Camera, up as high as you can go and you have yourself a little camera drone that can take in a wide area*

*texture loading dependent.

To round up some of the other exobiology comments in other threads:

The DSS overlay needs to be available, and the filter able to be changed, in all movement modes and at any altitude. Currently you have to launch and get up to a certain height before you can even change the filter.

There needs to be some intermediate guidance between the overlay and the pulse on foot. I think what's happened is that the alpha heatmap identified areas where the life was more likely to appear, and the change to an overlay removed that information but didn't change the actual distribution, so some areas currently blue are extremely 'cold' but you have no way of knowing that.

I've started to think that using the SRV wave scanner is not necessarily the best way; unless the intention is for an SRV to be essential exobiology kit. If the intention is that it can be done just with a ship and an Artemis suit then putting the intermediate level detection on the SRV wouldn't work.

I'm a fan of expanding on the tool pulse, letting it search out to a huge range and putting pins on your HUD. The further away, the less precise the pin. Then you can have a loop of pulsing, riding the SRV towards it, then getting out for another reading to refine your direction. That seems like it would be quite fun. Plus, you could do it purely on foot if you wanted to.

I do think there are some issues with the DSS results as it stands at the moment, the Alpha did seem to give us more indication of the viability of an area, just with an unfortunately Lime Green background to the whole thing. I understand what you're saying about the SRV, which is partly why I suggested expanding/refining the abilities of the ship and SRV.

I like the idea of pins on the HUD. You could have a range limit on them of maybe 2Km, so under 1Km you get an exact location, 1-2Km you get a rough area that will need to be narrowed down. The only trouble is that some places I've been to have a high concentration of life around and three difference varieties. That could get quite confusing with lots of pins on the compass bar.

....and 1 more problem to light - carriers do not accept bio data to sell there.

I personally don't think that's an issue, and I hope they don't get a Vista Geonomics either. But then I didn't think that carriers should have UC either as it kind of defeats that danger/immediacy side of Exploration, and gives a huge advantage to carrier owners in terms of getting rewarded for first discoveries/mapping.

Sure, improved detection would be nice to have, but my only grief with the current system is the fact that we can only scan a single bio type and if you dont finish that scan (3 samples) you cannot scan anything else without erasing previous scans...
I mean, seriously?

I could easily tolerate a "just a sec to change the container" *() if the system would be able to allow me to scan 3-5 different types of plants before erasing my previous scans


*(or whatever that might be)

It's certainly not the first time I've heard people say this. I'm actually OK with it, it's not the easiest at all, but it makes sense (assuming you only have one container).

It's definitely one of those mechanics that I can see being made easier over time, like material gathering has become.

 

[Diwrnach]

What would be useful is the ability to mark a location on the map so you can return to it later. I spent half an hour searching for my 3rd concha sample yesterday and found 3 bacteria which I couldn't log, or find again later after I found my last Concha sample. A map marker in the 31st century doesn't seem outside the realms of technical possibility, even a flag on a stick would be better than what we have.

 

[alexzk]

What would be useful is the ability to mark a location on the map so you can return to it later. I spent half an hour searching for my 3rd concha sample yesterday and found 3 bacteria which I couldn't log, or find again later after I found my last Concha sample. A map marker in the 31st century doesn't seem outside the realms of technical possibility, even a flag on a stick would be better than what we have.

write down coordinates. EDMC has LS-37 plugin, one of its functions - show u a vector where to go to recorded coordinates.

 

[Angus]

Thanks for the clear feedback!

Player agency, player agemcy, player agency.


XXX ;-)

 

[Pigletslastand]

Could even turn that into an item that you retrieve from your SRV and plug into the ground with an animation. Would be immersive and fun, make it limited in number per commander to reduce spamming or make them decay after a week or something, but the idea is there.

 

[SpaceGibbon]

I think like a lot of the game, the exobiologist stuff needs fleshing out a lot. I hope the devs start focusing on things like that after this dlc / update has been fixed and tuned. The framework is there now but the gameplay needs to be much more interesting and complex. There's generally a lot of 'go here, get the thing and bring back for credits' and there's only so much interest with that. Same with the missions.

 

[Pigletslastand]

This release for all it's faults feels like the keel laying of a ship, it's an important first step and backbone for what's to come i believe. But it's in need of some major work first.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think I'd agree with Ozric's comments there - the now-binary heat map seems to just say "it can be found in this broad terrain type" without giving much indication of how likely it is at any particular spot.

For me I think the main problem with the new exobiology career is that it's really not clear to me what the "on foot" bit is adding to it. I had a good time yesterday on a planet with four life types (plus the bacteria which I didn't find in the end), two of which were mountain-dwellers and two of which were plains-dwellers.

So:
- drop out of supercruise over the mountains, discover that there's nowhere suitable to land my ship. Okay, move to the foothills where I can land, and get out the SRV to look for plains life.
- drive up to the plains life, get out, sample it, get back in, drive a kilometre or so to get some diversity, repeat, do the same loop again for the other type
- then back to the ship and hover over the nearby mountains a bit looking to see if they have life, spot a few interesting spots not too far out. Head back to the foothills, land, get the SRV out and drive up into the mountains. Obviously get lost and can't find those specific spots I saw from the air, but after about five kilometres of heading in and out of valleys, I've got the samples I was after
- drive back out of the mountains again, recall the ship, and head for a station

The only times I got out of the SRV were right next to a plant to use the scanner, then hop back in again. I don't feel I was really getting anything out of that which I wouldn't have got by being able to use the SRV (or even ship!) composition scanners to take the DNA scans - which do of course work for Codex collection.

I could have walked between plant sites ... but 800m in the SRV is about a minute even allowing for terrain, whereas on foot it's a lot more plus you have to get back again. Walking the whole thing - this was a fairly cold planet! - would have taken all my energy cells and then some, especially since each scan takes about 10% energy, so it's not as if you can go that far from your SRV/ship when doing exobiology anyway.
(And in deep space, you can't get more energy cells, and those 100 you buy to start with won't last long if you actually play in a way which uses them, so you're definitely sticking to your SRV there)

Possibly at some point we'll get environments where the SRV can't go either?

 

[Florenus]

I actually enjoy the fact that now you have to look for things on the surface - whether flying over it, or driving. Having plants concentrated in POIs always felt weird.

I was hoping for more dense plant covering at least once in a while - walking through forests of alien plants could've been fun.