So, what we used to have was a totally OP and pretty braindead honk that fully populated the Nav Panel with body distances and orbital hierarchies, and the System Map with orbital relationships and body images detailed enough to entirely give away the body type.
That was super dull, not very interesting and needed to go.
However, FD have gone too far in not populating the Maps or Nav Panel at all until you do an FSS body scan.
There is a middle ground, using only the information available from the new honk.
When you honk, the FSS scanner view is populated with the exact directions and distances of all the bodies.
However, that scanner view is the absolutely worst possible perspective from which to view that information.
Using only that direction and distance information, the honk can and should also populate the maps and the nav panel.
Important! Only the available information is used - there will be no body type information or orbital relationships known until after a body is scanned with the FSS scanner.
What that would look like:
Generic equally sized black bodies to indicate the position (direction + distance = position) of all the bodies in the system.
This is exactly the same information available in the FSS scanner view, but from a better vantage point.
Why does this matter?
The longevity of the FSS functionality depends on having enough information to decide whether you want to use it, and on which bodies.
The current implementation gives you a waveform telling you what bodies there are in the system and a less than optimal view of where they are.
In my opinion, that is not enough to decide whether a system is interesting or not and whether I want to scan bodies or whether I want to move on.
Being able to make that decision reasonably quickly is important when there are 400 Billion systems and many of them are fairly ordinary.
Feeling forced to use the FSS body scan pushes the functionality from fun new gameplay that I use when I see something 'interesting' that I want to investigate further towards being just a necessary grind that I need to do in order to find something interesting.
It is far better than what we've had for 4 years, but I do think that being forced into a single track discovery methodology will get old quite quickly.
Populating the Nav Panel is really important even without orbital hierarchies.
If the honk knows where it is, why isn't it selectable, so that I can choose to fly towards it and resolve it via proximity scan.
Before you shoot me down, think about this carefully.
If you explore, you'll be using this functionality a lot.
Based on using it in the Beta, do you feel happy to move on purely based on the waveform, or do you feel the need to scan the bodies?
Think about the impact of that choice:
- do you miss something unusual because you moved on?
- do you end up spending a lot more time in systems that are pretty ordinary because you need to scan before you can decide?
Populating the maps and nav panel with only the information available from the new honk provides a better means to assess the interest of a system.
- the waveform will tell you what bodies there are
- the maps will give you an overview of where the bodies are
- the nav panel will let you select and fly to a body
The FSS body scan would still be required to match up the type and location of a body.
The key to this proposal is just having a better view of the information available from the new honk to decide if you want to.
Sorry, long post with some repetition, but I think it's really important that FD get this right.
I think they've swung too far in the opposite direction and that there is a reasonable middle ground.
We don't want to wait another 4 years with an exploration mechanism that is still less than ideal.
That was super dull, not very interesting and needed to go.
However, FD have gone too far in not populating the Maps or Nav Panel at all until you do an FSS body scan.
There is a middle ground, using only the information available from the new honk.
When you honk, the FSS scanner view is populated with the exact directions and distances of all the bodies.
However, that scanner view is the absolutely worst possible perspective from which to view that information.
Using only that direction and distance information, the honk can and should also populate the maps and the nav panel.
Important! Only the available information is used - there will be no body type information or orbital relationships known until after a body is scanned with the FSS scanner.
What that would look like:
This is exactly the same information available in the FSS scanner view, but from a better vantage point.
Why does this matter?
The longevity of the FSS functionality depends on having enough information to decide whether you want to use it, and on which bodies.
The current implementation gives you a waveform telling you what bodies there are in the system and a less than optimal view of where they are.
In my opinion, that is not enough to decide whether a system is interesting or not and whether I want to scan bodies or whether I want to move on.
Being able to make that decision reasonably quickly is important when there are 400 Billion systems and many of them are fairly ordinary.
Feeling forced to use the FSS body scan pushes the functionality from fun new gameplay that I use when I see something 'interesting' that I want to investigate further towards being just a necessary grind that I need to do in order to find something interesting.
It is far better than what we've had for 4 years, but I do think that being forced into a single track discovery methodology will get old quite quickly.
Populating the Nav Panel is really important even without orbital hierarchies.
If the honk knows where it is, why isn't it selectable, so that I can choose to fly towards it and resolve it via proximity scan.
Before you shoot me down, think about this carefully.
If you explore, you'll be using this functionality a lot.
Based on using it in the Beta, do you feel happy to move on purely based on the waveform, or do you feel the need to scan the bodies?
Think about the impact of that choice:
- do you miss something unusual because you moved on?
- do you end up spending a lot more time in systems that are pretty ordinary because you need to scan before you can decide?
Populating the maps and nav panel with only the information available from the new honk provides a better means to assess the interest of a system.
- the waveform will tell you what bodies there are
- the maps will give you an overview of where the bodies are
- the nav panel will let you select and fly to a body
The FSS body scan would still be required to match up the type and location of a body.
The key to this proposal is just having a better view of the information available from the new honk to decide if you want to.
Sorry, long post with some repetition, but I think it's really important that FD get this right.
I think they've swung too far in the opposite direction and that there is a reasonable middle ground.
We don't want to wait another 4 years with an exploration mechanism that is still less than ideal.
