This really needs to change...

This is no doubt old news, and has probably been posted about before. But here is my 10 pennith anyway.

I like the exploration changes and I like the Frontier Super Scanner (FSS). Bar one aspect then neither makes sense as gameplay or sense in the game itself.

It is the scanning of the planet from distance, shown here in Factabulous's current avatar:

image.php


I'll start with the in game reason this is silly. It take about 10-12 seconds, during which it is scanning down all the sources. And yet it has no idea where the sources are. You have to go to the planet to find that out. But then, how does it work out how many sources there are without doing some sort of triangulation to differentiate between the signals? It makes no sense. Instead you should just know the dominant signal type and nothing more. You should find out the number at the same time as you find out the locations e.g. during a surface scan.

Then we have the gameplay reason: this is totally dead time. 10-12 seconds may not sound long, but by moon 13 in a system it is teeth grindingly annoying. I get the idea that things should not just be instant, but for things like that you should be able to do something else at the same time. For example, in many games you craft things and it takes time. Or you have a crafting queue. Whilst this is going on you can go off and do something else, whist the thing is 'in the oven'. Here it is dead time. You simply have to sit and watch it.

Moreover the game clearly already knows what is there. A not too uncommon bug is the scan results showing up before the scan has finished as you can see in this screen shot:

oqaLQjb.jpg


So to my mind the solution should be this: Scanning from distance like this should take no more than 2 seconds. But you only know the strongest signal, or maybe a list of signal types, such as iron magma and Guardian Ruins. You know nothing else. You find the number of locations and their respective positions in the surface scan. This make more sense in game (No more knowing there are 24 locations from 35,000Ls but having no idea where), and it takes away dead time in the game.
 
Last edited:
But then, how does it work out how many sources there are without doing some sort of triangulation to differentiate between the signals?

Each source could have a different frequency.

So to my mind the solution should be this: Scanning from distance like this should take no more than 2 seconds. But you only know the strongest signal, or maybe a list of signal types, such as iron magma and Guardian Ruins. You know nothing else. You find the number of locations and their respective positions in the surface scan. This make more sense in game (No more knowing there are 24 locations from 35,000Ls but having no idea where), and it takes away dead time in the game.

I like this.
 
It's been raised as a bug, though whether it can be fixed (as it changes with screen refresh rate) is doubtful. I live in hope :)
 

Lestat

Banned
So to my mind the solution should be this: Scanning from distance like this should take no more than 2 seconds. But you only know the strongest signal, or maybe a list of signal types, such as iron magma and Guardian Ruins. You know nothing else. You find the number of locations and their respective positions in the surface scan. This make more sense in game (No more knowing there are 24 locations from 35,000Ls but having no idea where), and it takes away dead time in the game.
Here the thing. If the game adding info to Frontier servers. The 12 seconds might be required. I know it might suck. But it life. We also have to understand those servers could be underload adding new info each day for new systems.
 
As with route plotting, it is frame rate dependant. The higher the frame rate, the faster the associated CPU threads can run, the faster the calculation completes. Remove the frame rate cap in your graphics setting and you will see the difference - at 300fps it only takes a couple of seconds to complete the geological scan.

The same issue does not happen on bodies with only bio signal sources.

To be clear, the calculation is local.
 
This is no doubt old news, and has probably been posted about before. But here is my 10 pennith anyway.

I like the exploration changes and I like the Frontier Super Scanner (FSS). Bar one aspect then neither makes sense as gameplay or sense in the game itself.

It is the scanning of the planet from distance, shown here in Factabulous's current avatar:



I'll start with the in game reason this is silly. It take about 10-12 seconds, during which it is scanning down all the sources. And yet it has no idea where the sources are. You have to go to the planet to find that out. But then, how does it work out how many sources there are without doing some sort of triangulation to differentiate between the signals? It makes no sense. Instead you should just know the dominant signal type and nothing more. You should find out the number at the same time as you find out the locations e.g. during a surface scan.

Then we have the gameplay reason: this is totally dead time. 10-12 seconds may not sound long, but by moon 13 in a system it is teeth grindingly annoying. I get the idea that things should not just be instant, but for things like that you should be able to do something else at the same time. For example, in many games you craft things and it takes time. Or you have a crafting queue. Whilst this is going on you can go off and do something else, whist the thing is 'in the oven'. Here it is dead time. You simply have to sit and watch it.

Moreover the game clearly already knows what is there. A not too uncommon bug is the scan results showing up before the scan has finished as you can see in this screen shot:



So to my mind the solution should be this: Scanning from distance like this should take no more than 2 seconds. But you only know the strongest signal, or maybe a list of signal types, such as iron magma and Guardian Ruins. You know nothing else. You find the number of locations and their respective positions in the surface scan. This make more sense in game (No more knowing there are 24 locations from 35,000Ls but having no idea where), and it takes away dead time in the game.
Yeah it's been raised before. Indications are is that it's tied to the procgen of the planets (which is what determines the no and location of geological sites), and that when using the FSS this has to be done at point of zooming into a planet, which makes it very noticeable, as opposed to flying to a planet where it's not particularly noticeable.

As part of that it seems to be tied to framerate / GPU as well. (It takes forever on my HD 520 [haha][haha][haha])

Kzak has a Suggestion thread with a solution to the situation which is more or less the same solution - FSS scan just to identify type not number of POIs (though it potentially only really needs to be for Geological POIs, as the time issue generally isn't there for other types.):

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-generation-of-POIs-when-FSS-scanning-planets

I also suggested the same thing way back in the Beta, but for completely different reasons, as part of a suite of feedback and suggestions on the planetary stuff. Here if anyone wants to take a look at the rationale and/or rest of the suggestions.
 
Last edited:
It's been raised as a bug, though whether it can be fixed (as it changes with screen refresh rate) is doubtful. I live in hope :)
Not sure it can be fixed as such, but things could be changed to remove the issue. Absolute simplest would just be to pick up the vulcanism info from what was the L3 scan data as that's generated almost instantaneously, and front that rather than the POI numbers (i.e. just say Geological rather than Geological (x)). Mild issue with that is the rare bodies that have vulcanism but no geological POIs, but I'd argue that that's a comparatively tiny issue personally.
 
Just want to add my voice to the opinion that the location scan does take waaaay too long. I'd be happy with the compromise stated to speed up the FSS scan time (only know geological or biological type, # of locations is unknown until DSS).
 
As with route plotting, it is frame rate dependant. The higher the frame rate, the faster the associated CPU threads can run, the faster the calculation completes. Remove the frame rate cap in your graphics setting and you will see the difference - at 300fps it only takes a couple of seconds to complete the geological scan.

The same issue does not happen on bodies with only bio signal sources.

To be clear, the calculation is local.

Seriously?!? I'm about to test this as I had capped my FPS at 60 a loooong time ago.
 
I'll check this out but highly doubt that.



That's what I also do. It's preventing a lot of unnecessary heat.


Yea, so unlocking my framerate doesn't seem to change the location scan time. But I did find what seems to be another bug - raising the framerate seems to kill my mouse sensitivity in the FSS. I can confirm locking to 60fps I get much higher mouse sensitivity than unlocked (and at ~300fps) - unlocked even adjusting the sensitivity slider all the way to the right gives me too little movements. Like I'm having to pan the mouse top to bottom a few time just to move a few inches on the screen. Actually makes things literally unscanable as you can't move about really. Back to locked at 60fps and sensitivity is fine.
 
Yea, so unlocking my framerate doesn't seem to change the location scan time.

I am fairly convinced this isn't the solution also, however it may help some cmdrs in a minor way, the frame rate is determined buy the GPU not the CPU so may give some help if the PC performance is being throttled by one or the other, but it will be minor improvement at best and not a solution.
 
I am fairly convinced this isn't the solution also, however it may help some cmdrs in a minor way, the frame rate is determined buy the GPU not the CPU so may give some help if the PC performance is being throttled by one or the other, but it will be minor improvement at best and not a solution.

It isn't a solution, it's a workaround. It still needs to be fixed.
 
Back
Top Bottom