What can the devs do to improve exploration?

[mossfoot]

Well, we've got an exploration focused section, let's use it! What updates can be made to make exploration more interesting?

Obviously planetary landings, so let's not go there - it'll come eventually. Same goes for Thargoids.


Let's focus on in-game stuff.


Should we have some unique and rare USSs appearing around?

Ancient broadcasts that could be picked up?

More dynamic computer models (ie maybe showing geysers on certain icy moons like we've seen in our own solar system?).

Accretion discs for certain black holes?

 

[Fen Harel]

Not the most pressing issue, I admit, but I'd be delighted if asteroids were given a different icon on the nav panel.

Otherwise, I have always been in favor of Random Exploration Anomalies, little details, perhaps not more than a changed line of text in the description, which hint at the possibility of something very strange. Curious life forms where one would not expect them, odd shapes on icy moons, things of that sort.

 

[Vdiff]

I have been thinking about this too,

Comets or other points of interest within systems

Alien Artifacts that can be found and sold either to art collectors on stations or the black market, or to the faction your aligned to which increases your rep and gives you rewards at the stations

Another Module to tie in with the surface scanner or an "Advanced Detailed Surface Scanner" to cut down the time your scanning astral bodies.

Think this one has been done but Extra Fuel Tank.

In system Jump/Star Drive with a maximum jump distance of 250,000Ls jump range make it fun though with the pilot having to put an estimated time the drive should fire for and gravity in the system will also affect the distance jumped

these are just some ideas

 

[Archvillain]

What is missing for me is a reason to come back to a system I've scanned. I am searching for a lovely system that I would really like to be, but... then what?

Some ideas to give reason to return to a system or hang out there:

• Make Painite reserves mostly-depleted in human space - the best way to trade in it is to take a mining rig back out to pristine reserves that you discovered in deep space. (It has to be painite or something similarly valuable otherwise you're losing money and time by not mining platinum right next to the place you're selling it). Have those reserves deplete with mining activity as well.
• Allow players to purchase and deploy a semi-permanent canister or drone in a system, which becomes part of that system for up to a month (a Weak Signal Source) so other players can interact with it (and/or destroy it). Types of drone/cannister could include:
  • Refueling drone - Players can choose to either refuel their ships from it (if it still has fuel), or refuel the drone from their ships.
  • Geo-cache - Players can take an item of cargo from the box, and/or leave an item of cargo in the box. (The "box" is really a beacon-location where the game knows to make a jettisoned cargo container persist for the next visitor.)
  • Visitor's Log nav-beacon - like the station traffic report, but for the system. The log can be read by all, same as station traffic, but the log-beacon allows this to exist for a while in a system with no stations.
  • For the cost of a $1,500,000 credits, a player can buy a Universal Cartographics relay-station with a one-month battery life and a 150LY transmission range, packed into a cargo cannister. Exploration data can be sold at the relay-station if it is within range of another relay-station and so on all the way back to human space. Explorers would collaborate to build and maintain a network of useful length. Data sold there suffers a 10% fee (UC pays less for it) as a premium rates-gouging because UC knows the lowered risk (of not having to fly to a station to sell) is valuable.
  • Visitor's Notes beacon - as above, but players can enter a message via the existing comms interface, or read messages left by others.
• "Fuel-scooping" gas-giants can acquire valuable samples when done on gas giants discovered to have life.
• A way to formally invite Jaques Station (or a capital ship or some other feature) to visit a particular system for a period. (Causing curious players and traders visiting the station if it comes).

Basically, as well as traders, explorers, fighters, etc, let us be gardeners too

Bug-fixes and tweaks:

• Galaxy-map destination and plotted-route needs to stop getting wiped every time the server connection struggles and every time we save and exit the game.
• Debug/drone cameras want a longer tether. Photography of our journey is one of the few things we get to do out there, and the tether really cramps the shots. There has been no abuse of debug-cam, so the tether can be extended.

 

[Nilt]

Ancient broadcasts that could be picked up?

This would be awesome. Terrestrial radio signals would still be conceivably picked up a thousand LY out or so. Finding those of other races might be interesting, too.

Not the most pressing issue, I admit, but I'd be delighted if asteroids were given a different icon on the nav panel.

Agreed. There's no reason the icons shouldn't be there. Heck, we get a basic image on the HUD, so why not just add it to the darned list?! Honestly, I think we should also have labels in there too for which planet is which. I mean, we have the orbits on record after a scan, so why not tell us which is which?! That seems downright dumb, to me.

 

[Surly_Badger]

Orrery view would be nice.

Also more stellar effects. I get bummed when I see a planet 3ls from its sun, and it's not casting a trail into space as it vaporizes. Accretion disks would be nice, of course.

I'd like there to be appropriate insta-kills for explorers, too. Seriously, we ought to be on our toes not to fly near the wrong end of a pulsar. Exploring feels, frankly, too safe. About all we risk is running out of gas; I do think the universe is a bit more hostile than that!

It would be nice if there were special things to discover but I think that'd run the risk of being improbably cheesy or worse. There aren't going to be great big unknowns out there unless they're alien unknowns and even that would likely show up in radioastronomy. It's not like we'd find lost generation ships locked on their way to someplace because - like the Voyager probes - NASA'd know exactly where they were.

I think a few interesting destinations would be realistic and interesting. What about the wreckage of that capital ship that was lost in the battle at (location) way out past the edge of human space? And there was the orbital that those crazies from the religious cult tried to build - nobody ever found out what killed them - but the orbital is still mostly there. A gigantic debris-field from a space battle would be interesting to look at. I think it'd be quite unrealistic that nobody'd know where they were - things tend to be pretty findable in space once they've been found once - but they'd make cool destinations.

I don't believe that space around Sagittarius A* is probably traversable - wouldn't it be pretty much radiation hell? So maybe the abandoned shell of the restaurant that crazy entrepreneur was trying to build; the one who thought he was invulnerable to radiation sickness? Poor crazy guy, and his wife and kids, too.


Earth-bound explorers like doing things like diving on wrecks of seagoing ships; I think space near human areas would probably have some pretty interesting wreckage. There would have been some interesting failures, when humans first started building massive ships. You know, like that early attempt at an orbital move that went horribly wrong and only half the orbital moved? Thank goodness the thing was tested with a skeleton crew!

 

[Archvillain]

Orrery view would be nice.

I felt that way for a while, but I've recently noticed that I find it rewarding when I correctly deduce unknown entities from the limited information, with the reward being that my route efficiency bets pay off.

Figuring out the systems is a kind of logic and spatial puzzle, a game in its own right. Take that away and there's not really all that much thinking left in exploring. You meantion that "exploring feels, frankly, too safe", and I agree, but I would add that mental challenge is part of it, and removing mental challenge is not going to make exploration feel deeper or more challenging. :-/

The orrery view is gorgeous, but I kinda hope it gets canned.

 

[Virgil Kyle]

I'm reposting this from a thread I started waaay back in September of last year. I think it's time




TITLE: The chance to find some REALLY crazy stuff out in the galaxy!


BODY: By crazy, I was thinking of immense constructs that scientists have only theorized about, such as:
-Dyson spheres/swarms/bubbles/rings/etc.

-Ringworlds, or Niven rings, if you will (like in Halo, to use a probably-not-at-all-scientific example, but that doesn't mean it'd be impossible to make one for some species or group of species, be they extinct or extant, high up on the Kardashev scale)

-Artificial stellar bodies (the Death Star comes to mind as an example, but the purpose and size don't need to match those of the Death Star)

-matrioshka or Jupiter brains

-space fountains and elevators

-Launch loops...

The list could go on for a while. Basically, it's anything described on this wikipedia page (and probably more!): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megastructure

The great thing is, the species that created something like one of these things wouldn't necessarily need to still be around. They could have died off, transcended corporeal form, what have you. But something like one of these insanely massive, complex structures could still live on. Or, maybe it's falling apart, but there's still enough intact to figure out what it once was. Or maybe we can't figure it out! Indiana Jones, eat your heart out

Now, before everyone starts with the harumphs, I understand the odds of finding something like one of these is (probably) insanely, ridiculously small. Perhaps they don't exist, at least not in our galaxy. Still.. maybe throw one of each into the game, somewhere, for us to find.

Maybe one of us, one day, will find one And in game terms, it'd be like winning the biggest lottery you could ever dream of. The factions would offer you the moon and stars for information about such a wonder (or maybe just a moon, a small one... ). I know the prospect of something like that being out there would be tremendously appealing and compelling, regardless of the (actually!) astronomical odds of actually finding something.

 

[Varrag]

What we miss:

• Massive protoplanetary discs stretching hundreds of AUs across the newborn solar systems, with protoplanets/planetesimals enveloped in gas and dust;
• Accretion discs;
• Interacting contact binaries;
• Cataclysmic variable stars (refs: contact binaries, acc. disc);
• Very short time variable stars like for example Delta Scuti, SX Phoenicis, and roAp types;
• Feeding black holes (ref: accretion disc);
• Pulsars;
• Fast spinning stars flattened by centrifugal force into an oblate shape, with plasma released along the equatorial line;
• Quark stars, MECOs (magnetospheric eternally collapsing objects) - hypothetical types of exotic stars; they are theoretically possible, so... why not?
• Comets;
• Rogue planets;

What should be good to get:

• More variety in alien biochemistry: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=128328
• Top of the line exploration ship: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=131882

 

[Skye]

Make things look more interesting. As it is, planets are very boring and repetitive. I'm snapped out of the immersion of the game when things look fake, or it's the same planet 300 times in a row.

 

[Whiterose]

Agree with most of what has been said. Asteroids need a different marker, Orrery view would be nice, Route planning by way point, i.e clicking you way to your destination to avoid the Y's and T's, a bit more variation in planets, more astronomical items such as comets, the odd supernova.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[Kyokushin]

- wormholes
- aliens
- visible belt clusters from supercruise
- planetary landings and walking
- fuel scooping on gas giants
- random strange objects

 

[Mazuo]

Like a lot of the ideas already presented.

For my own, probe drones that would be somewhat expensive, thus you wouldn't want to use them on every ice ball out there. After launching it would take real-time hours or days for it to gather detailed information of its environs and either ping your ship to come back to the system to be radioed the bulk data or a timer on launch would tell you when it would be done. This information depending on what was found could help trigger inhabited space to take a trip out there and do further study or even establish fledgling stations if an especially valuable or anomalous area was found. Otherwise it would compensate you appropriately, at the low end not even paying for the drone to prevent just launching them at everything.

The weight of the drones would also be a balancing act on how many you'd want to carry and limit your jump range.

 

[PsychoFish]

There are some excellent mentiones in the above posts. I'd like more variety and accuracy to known facts a lot more than the whole planetary landing stuff.

Addittionally what we need is our own exploration menu with tons of statistics!!

 

[Hellhawk666]

SYSTEM VIEW
One thing I would very much like to see, and I believe Michael has confirmed that it will be introduced, is the ability to choose a destination target from the System View as well as the left panel listing. It would make finding/exploring much more precise.

The system view is - functional. That's about the best I can say, but to be honest it's pretty much what I thought we would get. The originally proposed orrery view would be cool, but would have to be very well optimised so as not to take forever to render procedurally.

MAJOR CHANGES TO MECHANICS
Unfortunately I think we are too far into the game now for major changes to the discovery mechanics, or the travel mechanics. I do think it was a mistake to not make the maximum distance we could travel between maintenance considerably shorter, but oh well.

ENHANCED LEVELS OF EXPLORATION
I think most of the future enhancement will probably have to wait until planetary landings, at which time I'd really like to see detailed orbital and surface scans introduced as new level 4 & 5 type surveys. This would instantly revive the exploration potential of every system by enhancing all the objects that are now "discovered by" with "surveyed by" and "explored by" tags, thus giving all the new players a chance to claim things near to inhabited space, and more established players a reason to go back to previously surveyed systems.

What is needed, I feel, and what would be great fun, is a system that encourages a player or group of players to really get stuck into examining every detail of a single system in exchange for big payoffs.If these higher level surveys took considerable time (say 5 minutes for an orbital scan, done as a mini-game ; landings required at multiple points on a planet for surface exploration) it would reduce the speed of expansion and make skip-jumping (scanning just the star and moving on) less appealing.

If there was a balance to exploration rewards by giving really high payments in return for thorough exploration it would mean a player (or a wing) could spend several hours - an entire gaming session - exploring just one system, uncovering detailed information regarding mineral deposits or plant & animal life, and receiving a highly lucrative reward once they cashed in. REAL exploration.

ALIENS
The occasional subtle hint of ancient civilizations would be cool

... and Thargoids

 

[Varrag]

^^ ah, yes... learning that L2 & L3 scans were just bugged stats for what we already had was a moderate disappointment for me: I was hoping that it was a placeholder for new type of scans which will appear soon. I imagined that level 2 scan might be related to mapping of planetary mineral deposits (returning some sort of the heatmap), including deep penetration scans reaching below the icy crust, and level 3 - closer investigation of the biosphere (more detailed informations about the indigenous life forms).

Which, of course, doesn't mean that we won't get something like that in the future.

 

[puca]

(a) Selecting targets from system map.

(b) Multi-way point route plotting.

(c) Improvements to the route calculator in in the core.

(d) Giving explorers a reason to have cargo room (interesting objects in deep space).

(e) Planetary landing stuff, obviously, but that's a new expansion.

(f) Module and ship modularity (allow us to strip ships of hardpoints for more weight savings, etc).

(g) More explorer-specific utility slots (sensor arrays for boosting detailed scan range and detailed scan speed).

 

[EdzUp]

Wormholes, nothing is best for exploration than wormholes

 

[Fen Harel]

^^ ah, yes... learning that L2 & L3 scans were just bugged stats for what we already had was a moderate disappointment for me: I was hoping that it was a placeholder for new type of scans which will appear soon. I imagined that level 2 scan might be related to mapping of planetary mineral deposits (returning some sort of the heatmap), including deep penetration scans reaching below the icy crust, and level 3 - closer investigation of the biosphere (more detailed informations about the indigenous life forms).

Which, of course, doesn't mean that we won't get something like that in the future.

Yeah I agree. I was guessing Lvl 2 and Lvl 3 was some sort of superclose atomospheric sample and planetary sample. It's not very exciting as it is now, even when they do fix it.