What do you think could make Exploration more interesting/entertaining or improve it?

[Tom2]

I think exploration could be more interesting with different kinds of deep space anomalies like Roque planets*, comets, improved degraded emmision USS's that tell a little story about the explorer who -most likely- died (could be generated from different presets),
different kinds of spatial anomalies* like 'a crack in space' where witchspace 'leaks' into our space, random groups or lone asteroids different kinds like ice, rock, with crystal structures* etc.
All of these things could be scanned and therefore give the player the opportunity to read something interesting in the comms panel.

Or in other words: Exploration could be more fun if there would be more to discover along the way.


What do you think could make Exploration more interesting/entertaining or improve it?




*Roque planets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet
*Spatial anomalies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_regions_of_space#Spatial_anomaly
*crytal structures from space: http://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-how-these-mysterious-ultra-rare-crystal-1781821181

 

[Iskariot]

There are sooooooooo many threads about this already.

Of course exploration would become more interesting when there is more to discover.

A fundamental thing that would change exploration forever is the implementation of access to atmospheric planets with flora and fauna of all kinds, weather systems, volcanic mechanisms etc. etc.
This would be a game changer of course, but it is a huge amount of work and I think it might take a few years still before we get this.

It would also be awesome if we got access to the upper layers of gas giants. There could be a whole new world of gameplay in there, including strange floating alien life, gas mining stations, alien bases etc. etc. .

Other stuff FD might add even now or soon:

- huge and strange ancient alien relics floating in space that we might land on, or perhaps we might even fly inside huge dungeon like corridors with our ships.
- there might be areas where non sentient lifeforms live in space.
- there might be ruins of alien cities and bases on planets (different from and more expansive and interesting than the guardian ruins.)
- caves on planets, caves can be extraordinary beautiful with huge crystals in them for example.
- access to volcanic planets without atmosphere


The above is about stuff to discover.
But just as important is a better way to interact with this stuff:

- More interesting scanning mechanisms for example ( I wrote a large proposal about that elsewhere.) I would like to see the introduction of system exploration probes for example.
- Orrery map. This will give us a better understanding of the layout of a system. And it is necessary prerequisite for adding cool new exploration mechanics (I also discussed this elsewhere in more detail).
- We should be able to scan individual lifeforms and earn money that way.
- We need a better way to navigate on planets.
- We need a more interesting way to scan and discover stuff on planets. For example a planetary scan from space might reveal general areas where there are mineable materials, alien lifeforms, bases etc. We will then go down to that area and use our SRV to home in and pinpoint the exact place to find stuff.
Also ships should get better surface radar. It is a bit too primitive and limited now.

 

[PotterOneHalf]

It would be nice if there was some radio or something to listen to. Like podcasts in the game universe.

 

[fruitbat]

There are sooooooooo many threads about this already.

Of course exploration would become more interesting when there is more to discover.

A fundamental thing that would change exploration forever is the implementation of access to atmospheric planets with flora and fauna of all kinds, weather systems, volcanic mechanisms etc. etc.
This would be a game changer of course, but it is a huge amount of work and I think it might take a few years still before we get this.

It would also be awesome if we got access to the upper layers of gas giants. There could be a whole new world of gameplay in there, including strange floating alien life, gas mining stations, alien bases etc. etc. .

Other stuff FD might add even now or soon:

- huge and strange ancient alien relics floating in space that we might land on, or perhaps we might even fly inside huge dungeon like corridors with our ships.
- there might be areas where non sentient lifeforms live in space.
- there might be ruins of alien cities and bases on planets (different from and more expansive and interesting than the guardian ruins.)
- caves on planets, caves can be extraordinary beautiful with huge crystals in them for example.
- access to volcanic planets without atmosphere


The above is about stuff to discover.
But just as important is a better way to interact with this stuff:

- More interesting scanning mechanisms for example ( I wrote a large proposal about that elsewhere.) I would like to see the introduction of system exploration probes for example.
- Orrery map. This will give us a better understanding of the layout of a system. And it is necessary prerequisite for adding cool new exploration mechanics (I also discussed this elsewhere in more detail).
- We should be able to scan individual lifeforms and earn money that way.
- We need a better way to navigate on planets.
- We need a more interesting way to scan and discover stuff on planets. For example a planetary scan from space might reveal general areas where there are mineable materials, alien lifeforms, bases etc. We will then go down to that area and use our SRV to home in and pinpoint the exact place to find stuff.
Also ships should get better surface radar. It is a bit too primitive and limited now.

All of this plus loads of the stuff mentioned in many of the other threads.

I personally would also love particularly a 'ship launched ship'. A stripped out sidewinder with no hyperspace capability, but with supercruise ability, along with the capability to carry an SRV.

Would love that.

 

[CMDR Rhatigan]

I would love random (small percent chance) hazards that drop you OUT of a Frameshift Jump. For example, into some radioactive gas cloud, a rogue asteroid, some other crazy space dangers??? Just to spice up jumping like 30 times in a row with ONE possible "OH SH*T" moment lol

 

[zorbaq]

Make it so that whenever you turn in exploration data, there is a small chance of a special anomaly spawning in one of the systems you surveyed, requiring you to either travel back to investigate or sell the 'bookmark' for a fee depending on class and distance to the anomaly.

 

[Lightspeed]

A ship-launched drone (SLD) that explores the planet for minerals and other interesting anomalies, and plots them on a map/chart/spherical image of the planet

 

[zorbaq]

Also SRV skimmers - fast, lightweight, hovering, no cargo hold, no weapons, increased wave scanner range and resolution.

 

[MAUXUS]

How i imagine it:

Jump into a system
Adv scanner gives you percentage potential to find (in system) organic material, man made (or other entity) construction, relicts, etc.
Planets with higher potential are listed first
Detailed scanning each planet will help you further determining origins of the finds and general location on planet (general location, not specific)
Deploy shuttle from orbit and descend to lower height towards planet
shuttle has additional scanning tools that guide you towards a specific quadrant of the planet
shuttle is fast (ie 1500m/s) so that covering a large quadrant in a reasonable amount of time is not impossible. it also has same defense capabilities as srv.
once within 50km from the find, additional tools kick in to guide you towards it
load whatever you can onto shuttle (with the SRV it can carry), bring back to ship, or take pics and video and go back
location is recorded in your system so that you can easily find it again when you want to revisit

Just wrote something down quickly. One can always dream

 

[Thetele]

Exploration need other mechanics than honking and staring at the object you want to scan of x amount of time. There needs to be player involment and way for player to get better at it (because he learn to play better, not because he has better scanner etc. on board).

And then now there is not much navigation in elite, in most areas you of galaxy you can just plot 1000 ly routs and get to the target location. Its little late but from start frontier should have designed the galaxy better, place more areas were navigation would be much harder, much less stars for refueling etc. now navigation is almost non existing as there is often no need to map rout manually.

Then There would need to be some kind of dangerous things. Like asteroid belts were we may crash while in sc if not careful as those aren't mapped in unscanned systems, black holes should be deadly if you don't know what you are doing, maybe areas were fsd functionality malfunction for way or other (maybe some nebulas?). Our ships should be in danger when we are thousands of lys away from station. Also there should be game play around fixing and keeping your ship in one piece (something much more complicated than synthesis). Maybe We could launch craft-able limpets that we can control (fly) that we can use to fix holes in our ship, and fix stuff outside our ships.

Then more stuff to find and see, I mean 2.4 is coming but we probably need 10x what is in game to find far away after 2.4 hits. Currently the galaxy as hole and the bubble feels too much like they just copy pasted couple systems to make the galaxy (i know its procedural generated but it feels like every system look same), same pois, similar looking systems/planets etc. There needs to be more variation.

 

[Aasgard]

add Exploration Data tab, like cargo inventory so you can easily log and review the data captured before selling it.
that might be a good place to put anomalies.

 

[Enderby]

Coloured balls is what we got.

A lot of the ones you can land on are all the same beige colour.

The whole galaxy they created and they give us this?

Why did they bother?

One of the three - and there's only three (sorry but cqc is not a thing) - ranked professions is explorer.

Someone forgot to upload something.

 

[Iskariot]

Coloured balls is what we got.

A lot of the ones you can land on are all the same beige colour.

The whole galaxy they created and they give us this?

Why did they bother?

One of the three - and there's only three (sorry but cqc is not a thing) - ranked professions is explorer.

Someone forgot to upload something.

This kind of endlessly repetitive negativity is so pointless and it poisons the well and the forums.
Criticizing is fine, I do it all the time, but only works if you do it in a constructive manner.
This is a huge project under development and it takes to time, a lot of time to develop it. If you can't deal with that, stop playing.
It is easy to bash development progress from your armchair, but it doesn't help anybody, not us, not the forums and not the devs.

We already know that FD will address the beige colour.
They said it was an unforeseen side effect of a new material system they introduced a while ago.

Access to atmospheric planets, volcanic planets, gas giants etc. etc is being worked on.

I do agree very much (if that is what you meant to say) that it would be cool to have separate (sub)ranks for bounty hunting, mining and piracy.
I also agree that CQC is not really a thing in the Elite universe. It is very, very fringe. I have not engaged in it even once. For me it has nothing to do with the way I play Elite.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

A dedicated explorer HUD (also ones for other activities) that shows information useful to explorers.
Including access to all the information in the system map about a body - perhaps in a tab in the the LH panel i.e. change the sub-system tab to a target body tab.
Have a planetary co-ordinates grid overlay that can be applied to system bodies.

 

[Tunksy]

A surface navigation system that ties into flight navigation would be nice.

For example; input poi co-ordinates to provide a HUD course marker for ship landing and SRV, ie. waypoints.

Very useful for base camps and racing. Could even lead to long range surface expeditions, poi safaris... endurance race around mt Nerverest

Would feel like actual navigation instead of 'making the numbers match'

 

[Henri]

mineable resource rich deposits on planet surfaces which you pick up on a scan then have to fly down to in order to narrow down the general area and then mark them with a beacon which you deploy with the srv. This then earns you cash when you deliver your data.

 

[Franc Kaos]

Involve the community to create stuff Out There for CMDRs to discover. Star Trek Online is still going strong because players can create more content in a month than the devs can in a year (altho the devs do do a good job of adding in more story lines at a pretty fast pace in STO), and ok, the Trek generated player stuff is in its own instance and never affects the main game and is of extremely variable quality - but so is every system in this game so it could totally work.

Get more landable planet types (urgently) and an orrery that populates the planets with more info the more time you investigate them (which would also increase how much you got paid), and allow us to hand in that data remotely now that telepresence is a thing - create some different mission seed types and bring stations to life with animated cranes and NPCs - the game feels like that fly stuck in amber, the only movement is other ships (nothing to do with exploration I guess but sorely needed).

 

[Valorin]

I also vote for more science. Like deploying probes around planets for data collection (which doesn't even need to be there when we come looking next time), perhaps collecting samples from the surface (dust perhaps, which wouldn't even need an object to collect, but could be collecting automatically), record emission and radiation data from stars. Stuff like that. Also more missions based on exploration, or even better, standing mechanisms, because those aren't time critical. What about a long term CG about collecting data from Earthlikes, or finding new Earthlikes? Of course diversity never hurts, and apart from atmospheric landings I'd love to see a comet some time, or other things like that.

In the end, we need reasons not to just jump into systems, scan bodies from afar and jump on. When discovering an earthlike, I always go close to enjoy the sight, but wouldn't it be great if I had a scientific reason to orbit it? Like dropping off that beforementioned probe?

 

[DragonsClaw]

Probably has been suggested somewhere/time already...

Geological Samples occur (rare/very rare) in outcrops instead of/alongside materials. They give 1 unit of cargo 'geological samples' priced high -> very high in high-tech -> industrial -> refinery -> extraction economies. The description could provide a table of minerals/metals/materials occuring at that particular coordinates, which could lateron be re-used for 'planetary mining'...

 

[babelfisch]

I believe some good old PvP would make exploration more interesting! [yesnod]