I'm sorry I fail to see it.. I actually like the latter visually. I'm not above admitting that it looks great!
Some feedback on being an Exobiologist
- Thread starter Ozric
- Start date
When you scan something does it get added to a personal codex with information on the species that's get more fleshed out as you scan?
Exobiology now feels as bare-bones as the initial implementation of asteroid mining where you just shot chunks off a rock and had to manually hoover them into your cargo scoop. Fingers crossed that they add some more thought out tools as time goes by. Nothing is less fun than driving around for half an hour trying to find small round beige circles on beige ground from a shallow angle in the SRV only to get out and scan it with the collector.
That brings up another point, if there's biological life on a planet you can't get out and walk around on bcause of temperature, I guess there's no point going there? I suppose you could composition scan them if you can find them but that's only half the exobiology gig now.
That brings up another point, if there's biological life on a planet you can't get out and walk around on bcause of temperature, I guess there's no point going there? I suppose you could composition scan them if you can find them but that's only half the exobiology gig now.
Just a small point - The Exobiology - including items discovered on planet are in the Codex in the same section as the original biology.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 screenshotBut 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
A lot is missing from the Codex though - there should be counts at least of first Footfall, first Discovered, first Mapped, and for first discovered plants per region etc - Just for 'bragging rights' if nothing else.
Currently all of that data is in the data base and hidden.
4 interactions - I make it two: (assuming you have the correct loadout equiped) :
1) Disembark SRV - one iteraction on the SRV menu.
2) Equip Suit Tool - one key/button press assuming it is bound.
I find Bacterial life forms to be the worst to locate. They are often just a minute fraction of a shade darker than the surrounding landscape, yet they are classified by colour. Why not make them stand out by actually making them the colour they are called. Yesterday I was literally 5 feet away from a colony and could not see it until I stepped on it. I know I could have pinged it but even so. Also is it just me or do the fungoids look bugged. They glow because they are bioluminescent so shouldn't they glow in the dark? If you park your ship over them and they are shaded then they don't glow and look normal. Surely this is the wrong way around? Bacterial colonies don't show up in night vision just so you know. Also fully agree we should have at least two canisters. This is a game to be enjoyed and fun to play not a chore lol
![[VR] Deggial](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/47/47252.jpg?1553527110){kind=avatar}
This could very well be an effect of the messed-up HDR path in the image rendering process.
I want the heat map. From my experience it is essential for finding those rare plants you have little chance finding just by eyeballing the surface in the general blue area. You absolutely need the heat map to figure out what area will give you the highest chance of finding those and you probably still need luck for it. One planet was so dearth of life, I didn't find a single plant at all despite spending a lot of time in the blue zone.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
Wow that's awesome!
Sorry I'm not really sure what you're saying here. First of all what you have selected in the last picture is a Geological feature. Geology has now been changed so that it covers the majority of a planets surface in varying degrees of density, which is why I think the heatmaps aren't working correctly because there's no varying levels of heat.
If you go and find a Biological feature then the vast majority are restricted in the way that the first image shows. With some features being extremely localised.
Yes the Discoveries section of the Codex does fill up with information about the species, and it is mostly working too. It is the stats area of the Codex that has nothing relating to Exobiology. Or on foot at all to be fair, which I find very strange.
I agree, but I think rather than making them all day-glo colours, it would be better if we just had better tools to find them.
For example, I think it would be good if we could tune the SRV wave scanner to the various geo and bio signatures and use that to home in on distant signals beyond the range of the hand scanner.
That is actually a really good idea. It would give the SRV some purpose back. At the moment you're about as effective from a ship as you are from the SRV. A large bioscanner would be real nifty. And, really, you could make a new SRV for that. And in later iterations it could have a stun gun on top, you know, for collecting life specimen of animals. Then we have about all the content Star Flight had for planets.
Starflight
Fond memories of chasing electric balloons around and getting duffed up by earthquakes.
I sure hope so, because it looks like they just removed any shading whatsoever from the "heat map" and made it a single colour overlay, which looks utterly terrible.
I am 100% sure this did not go past the art directors eyes before being changed, and I hope they see it, because they will explode with rage.
Wow that's awesome!
Sorry I'm not really sure what you're saying here. First of all what you have selected in the last picture is a Geological feature. Geology has now been changed so that it covers the majority of a planets surface in varying degrees of density, which is why I think the heatmaps aren't working correctly because there's no varying levels of heat.
If you go and find a Biological feature then the vast majority are restricted in the way that the first image shows. With some features being extremely localised.
Yes the Discoveries section of the Codex does fill up with information about the species, and it is mostly working too. It is the stats area of the Codex that has nothing relating to Exobiology. Or on foot at all to be fair, which I find very strange.
What I am saying is, the first image from the video, actually looks really cool and well made, and looks like someone with visual design and and artist eye actually looked at it.
The second image looks like an engineer just said "that'll do"
One has tone, shading, and looks really nice, the other is a single flat colour overlayed with not even a jot of smoothing along the edge, or even some kind of defining line or, something, to make it not look utterly terrible.
You have to have your head on a swivel...
This sounds like a great solution.
Personally, I enjoy wandering planets and looking for stuff. The plants are easy enough to spot, but after my second bacteria hunt I think I am done with this at the moment, it's too cumbersome to search these spots with my not-so-good-anymore eyes.
I would not want to overhaul the current method completely, but some assistance to get a rough idea of direction and distance to the next biological area would be nice, especially from inside the SRV. I don't want to leave & enter SRV constantly to check some markers.
I am absolutely no fan of those modern games quest markers, which makes things too trivial, but some minor assistance in finding a rough direction to the next sample would be cool. It's a game, after all, not real life science which requires a life of full-time dedication.
Having visited just over half a dozen planets now (I know, I'm slow) I have yet to have a problem finding what I'm looking for. The blue marking is a helper.
I remember the days of Horizons before they put Geo features on POIs, it was nuts... It is very easy now in comparison. Does it have to be dumbed down any further?
I remember the days of Horizons before they put Geo features on POIs, it was nuts... It is very easy now in comparison. Does it have to be dumbed down any further?
Nah, I don't think it needs to be dumbed down, and I agree with everything else you said.
But I have definitely already spent a few hours hunting around for a few elusive life types that spawn in exceedingly low numbers even inside their blue zones. I like hunting around, but I feel sometimes, especially with bacteria, it's still just going a little beyond rewarding challenge at times. Just sometimes, for specific lifeforms. But it's in the right ballpark.
If, for example, they added a wave scanner solution (essentially just an additional scale of tool between huge scale DSS and short range eyeball/hand scanner), it should be easy to balance that so that it doesn't direct you right to the item, maybe it doesn't narrow right in like with meteorites, but gives give you a broad hint of the right area to look, so you at least know you're not completely wasting your time in a particular place.
It's also a reuse of existing assets so would hopefully be quite a time-efficient addition to make. But I guess who knows.
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