So, found a planet with one biological signal on it, a Bacterial Colony.
I don't know if you've ever tried to locate these things, but allow me to describe the last three days of my gameplay.
I was in orbit, and had scanned the planet. The whole thing lit up blue, but there were a few areas of darker blue, and a few areas of ever so slightly lighter blue... almost invisible, in fact. But, knowing what I'm looking for, I descended from orbit, aiming at the lighter area.
Now, it's not a flat, plain lighter area, it's tiny dots of lighter colour, mixed with the base blue, so it's difficult to know where to land, especially when the colour overlay DISAPPEARS as you get close to the ground (you know, where it would be of the most use). So, I get to about 100m above the ground, and start slowly flying around the area, at about 6-10m/s.
I'm looking for the bacterial colonies. Now, they don't appear as actual 3d objects, like the plants or geysers. No, these are just small differences in the textures, with no 3d effect. From a distance, they don't actually look like anything, because they just kind of blur, especially if they're the same colour as the ground. You have to be pretty much RIGHT on top of them. They also don't appear in large areas or groups, the way plants or geysers do. No, they appear as single tiny tiles, usually only one in the span of a hundred miles. With no sensor equipment in the game to allow us to detect them at any distance, you HAVE to spot them with your eyes only... which means you have to more or less stumble upon them by sheer luck.
So, I spent 15 hours the first day, just cruising around the area slowly. I disembarked a couple of times, fooled by the shadows of invisible objects that disappeared as I got closer to them, and my suit's genetic scanner's sensor pulse is so short range, that even wandering so far from my ship that it dismissed itself yielded no readings.
So, I went to bed, and logged back on the next day. I spent 12 hours the next day doing exactly the same thing. Slowly wandering around hoping to accidentally stumble on one of the signals. I never did, so I went to bed.
Today, I got up, and started my quest for a bacterial colony once again. It only took me 10 hours of the same thing, slowly wandering around in my ship, hoping to spot something, being misled by shadows of things that weren't actually there, or sudden shifts in the textures of the whole surface, to random changes in the lighting... until I finally spotted a blur off to one side. I landed, and approached to find the first of the three I would need to scan. I walked up, pulled out my sampler tool... and discovered I had ALREADY SCANNED THIS. Apparently, I'd already surveyed this planet.
There are three planets in this system with biological samples, you see. Before this latest odyssey, I had already spent days searching one of the other two. I thought I'd moved to the second before logging off, but apparently not. There's no way, you see, to know which planets you have already surveyed. No way to mark them or flag them or anything... no way to know.
So, I've now spent nearly 5 days in this one system scanning ONE PLANET (though I thought it was two).
Devs, this is not any fun. It just isn't. It's tedious and frustrating, and that's not good gameplay.
I don't know if you've ever tried to locate these things, but allow me to describe the last three days of my gameplay.
I was in orbit, and had scanned the planet. The whole thing lit up blue, but there were a few areas of darker blue, and a few areas of ever so slightly lighter blue... almost invisible, in fact. But, knowing what I'm looking for, I descended from orbit, aiming at the lighter area.
Now, it's not a flat, plain lighter area, it's tiny dots of lighter colour, mixed with the base blue, so it's difficult to know where to land, especially when the colour overlay DISAPPEARS as you get close to the ground (you know, where it would be of the most use). So, I get to about 100m above the ground, and start slowly flying around the area, at about 6-10m/s.
I'm looking for the bacterial colonies. Now, they don't appear as actual 3d objects, like the plants or geysers. No, these are just small differences in the textures, with no 3d effect. From a distance, they don't actually look like anything, because they just kind of blur, especially if they're the same colour as the ground. You have to be pretty much RIGHT on top of them. They also don't appear in large areas or groups, the way plants or geysers do. No, they appear as single tiny tiles, usually only one in the span of a hundred miles. With no sensor equipment in the game to allow us to detect them at any distance, you HAVE to spot them with your eyes only... which means you have to more or less stumble upon them by sheer luck.
So, I spent 15 hours the first day, just cruising around the area slowly. I disembarked a couple of times, fooled by the shadows of invisible objects that disappeared as I got closer to them, and my suit's genetic scanner's sensor pulse is so short range, that even wandering so far from my ship that it dismissed itself yielded no readings.
So, I went to bed, and logged back on the next day. I spent 12 hours the next day doing exactly the same thing. Slowly wandering around hoping to accidentally stumble on one of the signals. I never did, so I went to bed.
Today, I got up, and started my quest for a bacterial colony once again. It only took me 10 hours of the same thing, slowly wandering around in my ship, hoping to spot something, being misled by shadows of things that weren't actually there, or sudden shifts in the textures of the whole surface, to random changes in the lighting... until I finally spotted a blur off to one side. I landed, and approached to find the first of the three I would need to scan. I walked up, pulled out my sampler tool... and discovered I had ALREADY SCANNED THIS. Apparently, I'd already surveyed this planet.
There are three planets in this system with biological samples, you see. Before this latest odyssey, I had already spent days searching one of the other two. I thought I'd moved to the second before logging off, but apparently not. There's no way, you see, to know which planets you have already surveyed. No way to mark them or flag them or anything... no way to know.
So, I've now spent nearly 5 days in this one system scanning ONE PLANET (though I thought it was two).
Devs, this is not any fun. It just isn't. It's tedious and frustrating, and that's not good gameplay.
I have decided to buy a mamba just for that purpose (I believe thats the fastest ship in the game, please correct me if I am wrong).
