What would make exploration process more fun?
- Thread starter Droid_orat
- Start date
Actual meaningful things to discover instead of an endless string of random generated stuff.
1: Flight planner - allow us to pick stars individually along a path. Even if it's only for 200 ly max, it would be great to plot a route.
2: Advanced scan of a system gives you some indication that a body might be worth a detailed scan and a detailed scan gives you an indication that you might want to look for POI's or at least give you the general area that there's something unnatural down there.
3: A variety of what you see in salvageable wreckage SS. Illegal data caches every time? And why are they illegal when cargo being protected by skimmers is not? I digress....
4: Anomalies. Natural or otherwise that makes you veer off your course to go investigate something.
btw - Am I only one that always flies around the darkside of undiscovered earth like worlds looking for lights?
2: Advanced scan of a system gives you some indication that a body might be worth a detailed scan and a detailed scan gives you an indication that you might want to look for POI's or at least give you the general area that there's something unnatural down there.
3: A variety of what you see in salvageable wreckage SS. Illegal data caches every time? And why are they illegal when cargo being protected by skimmers is not? I digress....
4: Anomalies. Natural or otherwise that makes you veer off your course to go investigate something.
btw - Am I only one that always flies around the darkside of undiscovered earth like worlds looking for lights?
And have those results published for every other player to be able to see. That way explorers become massively useful and there's an incentive other than cash to do it which I'd much prefer.
More danger.
I think you should have to scan asteroid belts otherwise they're not in your computer, so if you fly through them fast you make a little smear of plasma. I think if you get too close to a black hole or a neutron star (or white dwarf) you should die.
I can explore the galaxy and I feel as safe as if I am sitting on my couch. I mean, I am sitting on my couch. Therein is the rub.
Edit: equipment failures. Make it a very low probability thing. So people in the bubble would pretty much never experience a breakdown. But being out by Sag A* and having your life support start flickering... Now that'd be exciting.
I think you should have to scan asteroid belts otherwise they're not in your computer, so if you fly through them fast you make a little smear of plasma. I think if you get too close to a black hole or a neutron star (or white dwarf) you should die.
I can explore the galaxy and I feel as safe as if I am sitting on my couch. I mean, I am sitting on my couch. Therein is the rub.
Edit: equipment failures. Make it a very low probability thing. So people in the bubble would pretty much never experience a breakdown. But being out by Sag A* and having your life support start flickering... Now that'd be exciting.
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For me I just want the process of exploring a system to scale from large to small. I'll try to elaborate below.
You jump into a system and honk (we already do this).
You look at the system map for something that looks or sounds interesting (we do this too)
If you see a possible target for further investigation you go toward it and get a more detailed scan. (is it an earth-like, water world, ammonia, etc)?
If yes, go in closer and perform an orbital scan from orbital cruise mapping out the surface like a satellite does, but much faster. Get a polar orbit scan and an equatorial scan. (Gets you the axes of rotation, detailed surface maps, geology, and mineral deposits as well as signal sources.
Go land and follow the maps that YOU MADE to find cool, unique and interesting things.
I have other ideas, but this is what would make exploration much more involved and immersive for me. My 2cr. o7
You jump into a system and honk (we already do this).
You look at the system map for something that looks or sounds interesting (we do this too)
If you see a possible target for further investigation you go toward it and get a more detailed scan. (is it an earth-like, water world, ammonia, etc)?
If yes, go in closer and perform an orbital scan from orbital cruise mapping out the surface like a satellite does, but much faster. Get a polar orbit scan and an equatorial scan. (Gets you the axes of rotation, detailed surface maps, geology, and mineral deposits as well as signal sources.
Go land and follow the maps that YOU MADE to find cool, unique and interesting things.
I have other ideas, but this is what would make exploration much more involved and immersive for me. My 2cr. o7
But, but... people told me I needed to use my imagination to play this game....
Systems, I want to operate systems in my ship!. I don't want to explore using 1 button.
Probes, Scanners, Orrey map, Wormholes, Aliens, Comets, Clouds, Pulsars. You know like the nice things in the sci fi movies.
I want to do things with proper gameplay instead of watching a wallpaper like we have today.
Systems, I want to operate systems in my ship!. I don't want to explore using 1 button.
Probes, Scanners, Orrey map, Wormholes, Aliens, Comets, Clouds, Pulsars. You know like the nice things in the sci fi movies.
I want to do things with proper gameplay instead of watching a wallpaper like we have today.
When was the last time YOU had to figure out the math for something in a game, or actually DO some real experimentation, exploration, mapping, kick up the mass spec, and so on? I've seen it in a FEW games over the past 40 years, very rare, and in games that never did well because, well, realism doesn't sell in a video game, not the nuts and bolts of it. People want it to LOOK real, but they do not want to take days for various machines to finish analysis of parts of something just so they can take that data, analyze it themselves and try and figure out exactly what the rock was composed of. THAT isn't fun in a video game, no matter how much some people insist they'd love to do that, and it's why it's not done in video games.
Science isn't pushing a button and voila! That's movie/tv/video game science, and it's no more interesting and engaging than honk/scan/refuel/jump is right now.
Probes, cool, what do they DO? What functionality do they have? How much do they weigh? How many can I pack into a single ton of cargo space? What kind of specialized system do I need to launch them? What conditions will they operate in, what can they survive, what can destroy them?
Scanners, we got that covered I think, thinking probes would be the next step there.
Orrey maps are purely a convenience bit, you realize that right? We already know the orbital information for every planet, orrery maps just lays it out in a more easy to understand format, it actually doesn't DO anything to help scientifically speaking. I'd still like to see them, I'm used to them myself, but they aren't required for anything but convenience.
Wormholes, yeah, no. Aliens, already in the game universe, we just haven't found em yet. Comets, also in the game, not currently visible because they don't look good(which is hardly surprising, they will be little balls of ice, we'd not even see them until they started outgassing). Clouds, uhm, what exactly does THAT mean? I see nebulas all over the place, so...too much Star Trek maybe, confusing tv plot devices for actual reality? Pulsars, what, that's a neutron star that emits a beam at it's poles, what exactly are you expecting? Way too much Star Trek man, this IS a scifi based game, true enough, but David is really big on the actual science bit for the astronomical features, not made up , which I happen to agree with him on. I want that scifi stuff, I'll load up STO, it's got tons of totally wild eyed made up 'science'.
I agree. What I'd like is the ability to make much longer jumps with specific exploration vehicles. Currently you can do the safe-but-boring route of taking 35LY-ish hops and fuel scooping, which takes forever. Having a large exploration ship capable of plotting long jumps of 500LY or more with an element of risk (off target jumps dropping you close to a star, or in an unknown system), as well as adding random encounters and dangerous situations would make it much more exciting.
I love the idea of long jumps. I've thought of this idea for long distance jumping, like it takes longer then a normal jumps, letting you just chill in your ship while it jumps. Would be even cooler when we get the ability to walk around the ship, looking out the windows and seeing the effects of jumping.
A very strange thing about ED honk-and-scan "exploration" is that you rarely see a planet as more than a dot in the distance. (the system map does NOT count) It's barely visible as a slightly larger dot by the time your scan is done and you've turned away to approach and scan the next planet. This provides no actual feeling of "exploration" to me. Unfortunately it's prohibitively time consuming to cruise up close to each planet and do a full orbit to get a good satisfying look at it - this would cut your credit earnings down to just a fraction of the current rate.
I'd really prefer exploration to be more involved and detailed. You should have to at least do a full close orbit of the planet to properly scan it, drop probes (probe module), collect data, etc etc etc. And naturally, the payout model for exploration would need to be changed as needed so that simply honking from a distance is far less profitable, but detailed time-consuming orbital scanning yields at least the same rate of credits per hour of exploring effort that we get for simple honk-and-scan now.
And get rid of the signal sources full of generic ships and all the "salvagable wrecks" in systems far from the Bubble!
I'd really prefer exploration to be more involved and detailed. You should have to at least do a full close orbit of the planet to properly scan it, drop probes (probe module), collect data, etc etc etc. And naturally, the payout model for exploration would need to be changed as needed so that simply honking from a distance is far less profitable, but detailed time-consuming orbital scanning yields at least the same rate of credits per hour of exploring effort that we get for simple honk-and-scan now.
And get rid of the signal sources full of generic ships and all the "salvagable wrecks" in systems far from the Bubble!
Blackcompany
Banned
No. It wouldn't be.
I have spent a considerable amount of thought on some of the more typical emergency scenarios common to sci fi, and how they fit in Elite. These things sound fun, but in reality, it's just getting screwed over by a dice roll.
Think about it: days into an exploration run. One hundred percent hull. Healthy ship. But things start flickering because...RNG.
No. Thanks.
How is this fun or fair or reasonable? In a movie it's cool and dramatic; in a game it's just punishing you for playing.
Now, if system failures were tied to logical happening it might work. Say, for instance, that we know the life support systems are located just forward of engine rooms. And we have let the rear dorsal section take a beating recently. So now, we have some degradation there. That's logical; I can get behind that.
Likewise, several hard landings have damaged landing gear and ventral thrusters. Nothing catastrophic but some wear and tear. We are informed, and this is stuff we could have prevented so it's OK.
TL;Dr: ship degradation and possible glitches or system failures must be logically consistent and avoidable. Otherwise it's just unfair RNG that punishes you for playing.
White knights GIVE ME THE POWER!! yeah.... It feels good.