To quote Dr Emmett Brown, "forgive the crudity of this model.....". I basically just used basic GIMP2 to try to mock up a very rough idea of how I'd ultimately like to see scanning work, in relation to finding various PoI's & mission specific items.
In a nutshell, when you do an Active Scan (Honk) of a system (previously explored or not), you will be informed of the *presence* of any USS's or PoI's within a certain range of your ship (based on the quality of your Stellar Body Scanners). Landfall planets on which you have detected PoI's might be highlighted in some way in the Nav Panel and/or the System Map.
If you zoom in on a highlighted planet, you'll get an image similar to the one above. The shaded rectangle marks the location within with one or more PoI's are located (a "Search Zone", for want of a better word), and the dashed circle in the center marks the middle of that zone, & a point you can target from the System Map or Nav Panel. Your distance from the planet at time of scanning-& the quality of your scanner-would determine how many of these Search Zones pop up & how large each search zone is. Search Zones containing large man-made objects and/or significant amounts of volcanic activity would be the first to pop up, whereas those containing only small man-made objects (escape pods, cargo canisters etc) and/or material deposits would only turn up in a very short range scan (possibly from orbital cruise).
Follow up analysis of these search zones (of which there might well be many, forming a patchwork across the entire planet) might even be able to tell you how many PoI's lie within each zone, & such PoI's would remain persistent for the commander.....& anyone sharing their instance.....until they leave the system.
Anyway, as rough as guts as the image, & my description of the mechanic, is.....I do hope it helps explain how much more active a process I want exploration to be, & why I believe that this is a reasonable compromise between being forced to eye-ball an entire planet for worthwhile places to drop in on & an "X marks the spot" which would probably take all the fun out of exploration.
I'd be very interested to hear people's thoughts. Do you like the idea? Do you think it needs refining? How would you refine it.....that kind of thing.
CMDR Marc_Hicks.
In a nutshell, when you do an Active Scan (Honk) of a system (previously explored or not), you will be informed of the *presence* of any USS's or PoI's within a certain range of your ship (based on the quality of your Stellar Body Scanners). Landfall planets on which you have detected PoI's might be highlighted in some way in the Nav Panel and/or the System Map.
If you zoom in on a highlighted planet, you'll get an image similar to the one above. The shaded rectangle marks the location within with one or more PoI's are located (a "Search Zone", for want of a better word), and the dashed circle in the center marks the middle of that zone, & a point you can target from the System Map or Nav Panel. Your distance from the planet at time of scanning-& the quality of your scanner-would determine how many of these Search Zones pop up & how large each search zone is. Search Zones containing large man-made objects and/or significant amounts of volcanic activity would be the first to pop up, whereas those containing only small man-made objects (escape pods, cargo canisters etc) and/or material deposits would only turn up in a very short range scan (possibly from orbital cruise).
Follow up analysis of these search zones (of which there might well be many, forming a patchwork across the entire planet) might even be able to tell you how many PoI's lie within each zone, & such PoI's would remain persistent for the commander.....& anyone sharing their instance.....until they leave the system.
Anyway, as rough as guts as the image, & my description of the mechanic, is.....I do hope it helps explain how much more active a process I want exploration to be, & why I believe that this is a reasonable compromise between being forced to eye-ball an entire planet for worthwhile places to drop in on & an "X marks the spot" which would probably take all the fun out of exploration.
I'd be very interested to hear people's thoughts. Do you like the idea? Do you think it needs refining? How would you refine it.....that kind of thing.
CMDR Marc_Hicks.