Why I percieve the "new" scan as broken

[Stigbob]

Is there any other choice?

None that make any sense.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Vash627, thank you for the polite reply. Repped for being civil.

Braandlin, thank you for giving me something to laugh at. People that are that hypocritical always amuse me, at least when they aren't in the White House. Doing EVERYTHING you accuse me of in the same sentance you accuse in is... impressive.

the100thmonkey, I couldn't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not; either way, you need to work on the delivery.

As to the various, "you are wrong" elements, I notice that you talk about the new mechanics without addressing my points or proving me wrong in a specific fashion.

Am I wrong that you'll have to point the ship at each object to see the analysis of that object? That is the core of my objection, after all because THAT will take more time than the system map TO REACH THE DECISION POINT of the system's worth in terms of further exploration. I don't want to waste the time looking at potatoes, even if it is only TO DETERMINE that they are potatoes not worth my time in the first place. With the current system, I have visual queues IN AN AGGREGATED image of the bodies, even if I don't have specifics.

Yes you are wrong. You do not need to point your ship at anything. You do point the scanner at stuff though.

 

[gooddoc]

OP you are wrong.

It's different!

Why do you think that something that's different is broken?

It'll be fair to say it's broken when you try it in Beta, press the button to initiate the scan.....& nothing happens.

Then you can say it's broken.

 

[Quantis Trap]

I have a feeling it won't be broken and will be well received, but I'll wait and see too.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

None that make any sense.

Aha, well then I thank you for beeing redundant & telling me what I knew already.

 

[Stigbob]

Aha, well then I thank you for beeing redundant & telling me what I knew already.

Your speculative moaning about people moaning there was insufficient speculative moaning about the theorycrafted issues with the thing we have no direct experience of is truly an example to us all.

I think I'll wait and see though.

 

[BradHann]

From what they showed on the livestream, yes, you can determine what planet types are in the system from the signals displayed on the filtration bar. It's very similar to the SRV wave scanner.

But can you tell if that gas giant is one of those super-rare one-in-a-billion flourescent green ones? Or if that barren rock is one of the comparatively rare 9G+ ones? How much information does this new wave scanner give you, assuming you're skilled enough to interpret it correctly?

 

[Phazon Xenomorph]

They say: "You can't please them all"

4 years of nagging the Devs because exploration isn't engaging and this is what comes up when they finally deliver something different?
I'm gobsmacked, really.

Because, to be blunt, it looks half-butted (cause yay forum censorship!). Take what we're used to for quickly deciding if a system is even worth anything (god help you with any systems with something 500k ls away that has like a long travel time) and replace it with what's basically garbage I'd expect from a 90s game to be capable of.

 

[Stigbob]

Because, to be blunt, it looks half-butted (cause yay forum censorship!). Take what we're used to for quickly deciding if a system is even worth anything (god help you with any systems with something 500k ls away that has like a long travel time) and replace it with what's basically garbage I'd expect from a 90s game to be capable of.

Like vampires in sunlight the forum undead cannot tolerate positivity.

 

[Saool]

OP, try it first before passing judgement. And mean 20 - 30 systems, so you get used to it and understand it. If you still don't like it then, fill your boots and make suggestions for changes.

But, I have say it sounds like another 'I want to explore without exploring' thread.

 

[gooddoc]

Because, to be blunt, it looks half-butted (cause yay forum censorship!). Take what we're used to for quickly deciding if a system is even worth anything (god help you with any systems with something 500k ls away that has like a long travel time) and replace it with what's basically garbage I'd expect from a 90s game to be capable of.

It's different!

While it looks OK for a single Star - 11 bodied system, I'd still want to see how good it works in a 4/5 Starred 70/80 bodied system where 2 of those Stars are 500LS's from the main Star.

Then I'll make my judgement!

 

[CaptainKremmen]

Personally, I'm happy they are replacing a "nothing mechanic" that showed you everything... with something far less mickey mouse.

I'm not surprised, however, that some players will miss the old system, precisely because it triggered a complete system reveal, with infinite range, in 4 seconds, with zero effort, in parallel to a drive charge.


I may not be the average punter, though. I'd be happy to see FD tear down every single hyperspace "quick route plot" to systems no player has ever visited... and replace the jump preparation with a system that requires a detailed interstellar analysis action, eg. similar to the newly developed UI. Such a move would likely make many players' heads explode with uncontrolled rage. Given my insane preferences, a little thing like a frequency-style analysis for system review isn't going to bother me, lol.

 

[Kzak]

With a little experience, you can tell by the scan lines if there's an earth-like world etc. in the system, and you will be able to make a judgement call whether or not you can start scanning the worlds individually. Not much different from today's honk.

 

[dognosh]

On the SRV scanner I can tell what type of ore I am approaching, long before I see it. I guess this will be the same.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

They say: "You can't please them all"

4 years of nagging the Devs because exploration isn't engaging and this is what comes up when they finally deliver something different?
I'm gobsmacked, really.

I'm not. It's four years *too late*.

 

[Noctover]

Or, maybe they are shifting the reason for exploration, not how we actually do it.

Currently the "excitement" comes from opening the system map and seeing that you are in a system worth exploring, now they are moving the excitement over to checking to see if the system actually IS worth exploring.

Columbus didn't land on the shores of America and take a quick scan to decide if it was worth his time, he actually had to explore to it.

TLDR; you now have to explore what you have, to see if its worth further exploring. Thats the point of exploration.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

But can you tell if that gas giant is one of those super-rare one-in-a-billion flourescent green ones? Or if that barren rock is one of the comparatively rare 9G+ ones? How much information does this new wave scanner give you, assuming you're skilled enough to interpret it correctly?

Well that is why it is exploration I guess. Currently in elite one could argue there is no exploration.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

It's different!

While it looks OK for a single Star - 11 bodied system, I'd still want to see how good it works in a 4/5 Starred 70/80 bodied system where 2 of those Stars are 500LS's from the main Star.

Then I'll make my judgement!

These are going to take time to fully map out and explore .. but they would have took a huge amount of time now. I agree those who just cherry pick the "good stuff" may find progress slowed somewhat in these systems. The new system encourages FULL exploration however and this may be good for 2 reasons
1) the only planets we can land on now are the "boring " ones so that is actually where the interesting stuff is gonna be for now
2) for an in game POV arguably UC would not be really so interested in giving explorer s and elite rating for just doing half ar..d jobs, they would probably want full system scans, potatoes and asteroids the lot .

 

[JesusRocks1988]

The current system goes like this:

1. Jump into the system
2. Hold down your keybind to start the scan/maneuver for fueling if you are going to
3. Scan completed, pull up the system map
4. Make a decision on whether or not to invest more time on the system
5. Take other actions in system or plot course and jump out

The new system, if I understand it correctly, works like this:

1. Jump into the system
2. Hold down your keybind to start the scan/maneuver for fueling if you are going to
3. Scan completed, you now know more about the primary star
4. Activate the analysis system, manually maneuver your forward only facing sensor onto each body individually, performing a full scan on it to determine what it is
5. Make a decision on whether or not to invest more time on the system
6. Take other actions in system or plot course and jump out

While the write up of the two sequences is almost identical, the new system requires that you scan EVERY body in the system BEFORE you can make an informed decision on whether the system is even worth additional activity.

In effect, Frontier has removed the ability to make a quick decision and replaced it with what is going to be another round of repetitive, boring game play. I say this because, once you master the technique, it will become cumbersome. While you are learning it, it may or may not be entertaining, but doing it over and over again is not going to provide excitement for most people after the first hundred times.

Worse than that, statistically, the majority of that scan time is going to be used to look at objects that are not worth the time because you will still need to scan bodies which are not landable to determine that they are not landable.

No matter how impressive a skill set you develop in reading the scanner, this is not going to be a faster process for making a decision on whether the system is worth further investigation. Consider a system with multiple stars with subsystems of small, non-landable moons and planetoids. You could spend a lot of time on that system only to conclude that it was an exercise in futility.

Added to that is the idiotic notion that I need to point the nose at everything as if I am using a FLIR instead of a sensor suite that can scan in all directions when it is dealing with starships but cannot see system bodies unless they are directly in front of it. Oh, wait, it can see them persistently once you have scanned them, which means the internal logic isn't consistent.

In summary, while the mechanics for in depth MAPPING seem to be worthwhile, I feel the value of the new scanning system is going to be negative because it takes choice away from the player and puts in an procedural/RNG mechanic.

Your opening lists are wrong. Well, the current mechanics are right but you have misunderstood the new mechanics. Which are:

1. Jump into system
2. Scan and get info on the primary star
3. Enter analysis mode, honk again and instantly tell from the spectral analysis (after learning what the spikes mean) whether you want to spend more time in the system.

Once you've got used to what the signals mean, it'll be just as quick as trying to guess whether that vaguely blue planet is a water world/earth like or just a deceptive high metal content world.

 

[Kaltern]

Or, maybe they are shifting the reason for exploration, not how we actually do it.

Currently the "excitement" comes from opening the system map and seeing that you are in a system worth exploring, now they are moving the excitement over to checking to see if the system actually IS worth exploring.

Columbus didn't land on the shores of America and take a quick scan to decide if it was worth his time, he actually had to explore to it.

TLDR; you now have to explore what you have, to see if its worth further exploring. Thats the point of exploration.

Bingo!

Exploration currently is a joke. Flying to a system , scanning it by holding a button, looking at the semi-filled system map, not seeing anything of value, shrugging and moving to the next system - this always has been a broken mechanic, clearly not designed to be the full method of exploration, but unfortunately overlooked for updating due to 'priorities'. The interesting thing of course, is that when you do it this way, you have absolutely no idea if you just missed a completely new 'interesting thing' because you never had the option to do a more thorough scan.

In the new suite of scanning tools, however, you do. You enter the system, flip to explorer mode, scan, look at the scan results, see what type of planets exist, and how many. If it's likely to be gas giants and asteroids, then it's probably not going to have much of interest, and you can move on, safe in the knowledge you still earned the same credits as you would have in the old scan system...

.. however, you see some signals in the mid-range of the scan and that makes you wonder if there's anything interesting there. So you scan deeper, detect the planets, and scan them - which takes no more than what, 1-2 seconds per planets once you're proficient with the tools? And at each scan, it will reveal if there's anything interesting on the planet other than minerals... so now you already know MUCH more than you ever did previously, and all for what, a few seconds extra work?

Depending on the size of the system - let's say 20 bodies - you could easily scan the entire system in less than 100 seconds I imagine, given how quickly it was done in the live stream. Compare this to the time it currently takes to scan every single body in a system today, which is more like 2-5 minutes PER body, depending on where they actually are, to get the exact same information...

Oh and don't forget, of course, every scan you make reveals the planet's looks too. So you SEE the planet you scanned, rather than a POSSIBLE icon you currently see in the system map. And then to be absolutely sure, you can then use the new orrery to literally zoom right up to the planet and take a look at its location, size, moons...

People who are complaining about the new system clearly don't know how it really works. The livestream video clearly showed how it really works.