The USS spawn design, I still think [utterly redacted]

[John Stoutbeard]

The RNG nature of the USS timer and waiting ... waiting and waiting for a specific type of USS to appear.
In this instance I'm talking about super-rare UP USS spawn of course. UA spawns is the other edge-case. Or AI relics .. or ...

It's still dreadful having to idle around doing absolutely nothing.
I hate this ... and still I have to go through with it to follow certain paths ingame.
I have no idea whether it's minutes, hours (effectively days) until I reach my target.

I do like dedicated role-play though, but I have no way of influencing progress or applying my own skills to speed up the progress.
There's no way ingame to gain more skills for said mechanics either, except patterns analytics of you care about it.

USS, What works:
- Direction based popup, having to navigate a tad to get it in front of you to scan it. Good. Active gameplay, still while not frustrating having to turn 180 deg. to scan something. Balanced.
- Distance based popup, depends on distance. Good, active mechanics. Player is in control of the distance they wish to work with. Balanced.
- Content information, USS type. It's ok, you do get some information about the type when you scan it and can start making decisions.
EDIT: - Audio Tick when discovering a new USS. Notification, it's ok although it's the same tick as any other notifications. Could improve.

USS, What's not working:
- Local Area-based popup. There's no way to tell whether you're in a sweet-spot or not. Luck-based, or forum-knowledge based. Bad, bad bad bad bad.
- Time-based popup. There's no way to tell whether you're scanning for a super-rare, medium or common type and how far between these are.
- System-based types of USS. Invisible mechanic, awful for new players. There's no clue ingame why and how this is working. Season players will have learned this over years of play though.
EDIT: - Private instance per player, no persistent sharing with other players. Prevents working together to improve the chances of discovery.

Repeat request:
- If we were to have a scanner or some sort of device to work 'actively' to narrow down where and when to search for a USS it would allow commanders to do something instead of just idling and guessing.
I would argue that we already have too many devices to choose from already when refitting a ship, more decisions and choices may not necessarily be a good design choice.

These mechanics have to be properly represented ingame so players can learn about their behaviour as well as gaining skills for improving their chances.
Aka not having to go to google / bing to seach for a forum post, to learn more about the mechanics, whether you're a seasoned or a new player.

What not do to;
- If we're going down the route of improved scanning devices for ships, make sure you don't create 8 scanner types where commanders have to fly around and shop these, for 'flair' or 'immersion'. Will cause frustration. This is such a core mechanic you need to make sure it doesn't turn into a frustration.
- Make missions to give us more consistent USS spawn. Bad, because you force a player to go to a station and idle / relog to find the correct mission causing the same effect as idling is space waiting for spawns.

Sorry for the rant folks, just venting after some hours (actually days) on station while waiting for yet another UP ... o7
Fly safe.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I agree with much of what you say
As it is now may be OK if you have no equipment however I think being able to source enhanced ear for this would be a good thing (which I guess is where I disagree with you). Other ways to remove the RNG could be building a reputation with contacts who give you coordinates where he has heard there is a crashed vessel carrying x y z ... But for me the biggest no brainer is a science officer NPC crew member who vastly increases the chances of detecting what you tell him you are looking for

 

[Traveller_GG]

Personally I think that's a dumb name for a ship.

 

[LukeMcJones]

Glad I came lurking today. Yes. I couldn't agree more and I've been saying this from the start. I thought this was what they were going to do when they allowed you to scan nav beacons, but alas I was disappointed.

 

[John Stoutbeard]

Personally I think that's a dumb name for a ship.

Lol, thanks, made me laugh.
Wish I had though about that

Spoiler

 

[John Stoutbeard]

I agree with much of what you say
As it is now may be OK if you have no equipment however I think being able to source enhanced ear for this would be a good thing (which I guess is where I disagree with you). Other ways to remove the RNG could be building a reputation with contacts who give you coordinates where he has heard there is a crashed vessel carrying x y z ... But for me the biggest no brainer is a science officer NPC crew member who vastly increases the chances of detecting what you tell him you are looking for

Source for ear is a neat idea indeed, I like it. I just wonder how they can solve it for folks who may have bad hearing or improper sound devices.
It have to be tied into a visual clue as well.
FD have been designing other mechanics such as the wave-scanner in such a way that you can choose whether to use visual or sound as source.
The only bad design with the SRV wave scanner is that it's always on unless you choose to turn it off. It's not a press to hold and use device.

Id like to have the choice when to use such a device or whether to have it always on and control the audio output from it without having to go through a full menu system to control the noise levels.

 

[babelfisch]

Good points, but if you want to see something that really sucks take a look at the blue POI system for planets.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Good points, but if you want to see something that really sucks take a look at the blue POI system for planets.

Yep, both POI and USS need some serious updating. With USS's, there doesn't seem to be a good reason why some of them are there. I would prefer it that when you make a scan/nav beacon scan of the system you get s fixed amount of USS's in the system, around 4 or 5 (they may have a timer and disappear after a while), make them really interesting and worth investigating.

You also get the odd random USS as well, but they should reasonably rare, but very worthwhile dropping into, i.e, lots of materials, bounties, etc

 

[Titus Balls]

I think they are missing a trick with the D-Scanner.

At the moment it's just used to passively scan nearby planetary objects and actively scan further ones.

Outside of pre-scanned systems, it's currently useless.

I'd love to see instead the D-Scanner become an integral part of game play for all ships in that when you drop into a system it triggers semi-persistant POIs for players (that is, they should persist while the user remains in the system even over session changes from dropping in and out of supercruise.

These POIs could be mission related, but also random and require you to fly closer to them to resolve their exact location and nature.


(p.s. Also I'm still waiting on mining POIs like interesting asteroid fields that are small but high concentrations of nice goodies - a mining Piñata)

 

[John Stoutbeard]

Good points, but if you want to see something that really sucks take a look at the blue POI system for planets.

I totally agree. Now since you've mentioned it:

What works:
- Basic discovery system, you can chose when to investigate or not.

What doesn't work:
- Idling. From high altitude / distance / orbit you have no way of making decision whether it's worth spending time at a location or not. You're forced to spend time idling hoping the right kind shows up.
- Lack of information. Mostly two types of POI may show up, large or tiny. Nothing can be learned from the information which is presented.
- Inconsistent POI. Works for certain content. Other things may not show up as POI.
- Forces you to switch to SRV to investigate, the time it takes to get down to ground, deploy SRV and drive around using Wave-scanner.
You may be able to fly low enough to trigger a pop-in, entirely meta-mechanics. Again design to 'encourage' SRV exploration, and discourage piloting skill-based exploration.

We're totally deprived of skilled choices and decisions until we enter the SRV, which also annoys me greatly. I do like flying, and rather chose to use the SRV when I have something specific to explore. I don't like the habit of having to enter the SRV just to be able to explore.

What else?

 

[Jezzah]

USS mechanic is my top irritation with this game hands down. Utterly soul destroying and feels placeholder in the extreme for me personally anyway.

 

[Kaltern]

I don't really understand why we can't have an SRV-style scanner for ships. Perhaps integrated into the discovery scanner, with a display similar to the SRV too, switchable from the main radar. Engineer mods would improve aspects such as sensitivity to certain materials, and it would detect unknown signals instead of random USS's popping up.

The BIG issue with this, is that in an ideal world, every location of anything important - like static POI's - that would ping on the scanner would need to be shared across the entire instance. I'm fairly sure that can be done.

Generation of random items should be would still be random, but - for example in the case of UA/UP's, there should ALWAYS be at least one generated if that system is supposed to have one - but it's still up to the player to find it using the scanner.

I would suggest it doesn't have an infinite range for identifying items, but perhaps like the SRV scanner, it shows faint signals, which can be zoned in on to get a better idea of what it is.

This would eliminate every problem we have, from random UP/UA generation to improving exploration a little bit.