Why the FSS is better than the previous system.

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

The FSS is better than the previous system?

Not for me - the old system never gave me migraines...

Frontier have said that they've not forgotten those of us who are victims of crippling migraines after using the new FSS, but so far, the current live build is unchanged from the version that caused ice picks in the head for me and my fellow suffering CMDRs.

Bottom line is, I'm not going to even activate the FSS in the update until I read in patch notes that they've either removed the offending visuals or given us a toggle to turn them off. So from my personal perspective, the FSS in its current form is exactly 100% worse than the previous sytem, because at least I could use the old one without getting ill!

Hey you don't need to in the bubble at least. The system map is always populated, and signal sources still appear as they always did so you should be alright. I've only been playing in the bubble since patch and haven't turned it on for a functional need yet.

Also thanks for your elite content, and when you're on those youtuber podcasts, i always find your commentary the most rational out of the bunch.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Hmm. There is a posting 'Play the ball, not the player.' here. With such a posting at hand, this is hard to do, but I really try: the ADS is five seconds of pressing a button. So seriously, what you say is that the FSS is pressing a button for less than three seconds and you are done.

Based on this i have to say: come back in a year. When you actually have tried it. Or get your statements straight. Thank you.

I think you've lost track of the conversation I was having - since I've got no idea what you think I was saying. I certainly made no judgement about the relative speeds of the ADS and FSS.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

I think you've lost track of the conversation I was having - since I've got no idea what you think I was saying. I certainly made no judgement about the relative speeds of the ADS and FSS.

Thing is, the FSS is basically the old ADS and DSS combined - once you've pointed and zoomed in the FSS scanner on a body, not only have you registered that body old-ADS-style, you've also registered said body old-DSS-style. Bewm! - it's now in your 'discovered database' and ready to sell to UC once you return to some suitable starport.

The story doesn't end there though - as I pointed out in an earlier post, if that body you just FSS scanned is Hutton Orbital LS away, you just saved yourself about 90 minutes+ of supercruise time that you would have spent by way of using the old DSS system. Or perhaps you might have said "Nah, too far away!" and jumped on to the next star system. In the past, I've been in and seen star systems which have an ELW but said ELW was so far away that the CMDR who was there before me obviously said "Nah, too far away!" and left said ELW unscanned - and I did the same. With the FSS system, you don't have to spend 90 minutes travel time just to scan it.

That's the thing I'm trying to point out to people - and I feel this is an important point which some appear to be missing - the FSS method is saving you more time per system on aggregate than the old ADS/DSS system.

Not only that, it is actually giving you more freedom of choice in what you want to do with that system. By that I mean you now have garnered enough information about the system that you can decide if you want to go visit that moonlet, or take the time to go visit that ELW/AW/Terraformable HMC/Icy Moonlet with volcanism etc. and Probe Map it. That kind of thing. I've found that the FSS opens up more possibilities in terms of being an Explorer, compared to the old ADS/DSS method.

Rgds. o7

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Thing is, the FSS is basically the old ADS and DSS combined - once you've pointed and zoomed in the FSS scanner on a body, not only have you registered that body old-ADS-style, you've also registered said body old-DSS-style. Bewm! - it's now in your 'discovered database' and ready to sell to UC once you return to some suitable starport.

The story doesn't end there though - as I pointed out in an earlier post, if that body you just FSS scanned is Hutton Orbital LS away, you just saved yourself about 90 minutes+ of supercruise time that you would have spent by way of using the old DSS system. Or perhaps you might have said "Nah, too far away!" and jumped on to the next star system. In the past, I've been in and seen star systems which have an ELW but said ELW was so far away that the CMDR who was there before me obviously said "Nah, too far away!" and left said ELW unscanned - and I did the same. With the FSS system, you don't have to spend 90 minutes travel time just to scan it.

That's the thing I'm trying to point out to people - and I feel this is an important point which some appear to be missing - the FSS method is saving you more time per system on aggregate than the old ADS/DSS system.

Not only that, it is actually giving you more freedom of choice in what you want to do with that system. By that I mean you now have garnered enough information about the system that you can decide if you want to go visit that moonlet, or take the time to go visit that ELW/AW/Terraformable HMC/Icy Moonlet with volcanism etc. and Probe Map it. That kind of thing. I've found that the FSS opens up more possibilities in terms of being an Explorer, compared to the old ADS/DSS method.

Rgds. o7

Why do people keep talking to me about how fast the FSS is?
I don't care about speed when I'm exploring, I care about the experience. I don't even care too much about FINDING anything, as long as the process is enjoyable.

Playing minigames and being spoonfed information isn't my idea of fun exploration gameplay - it's exactly the opposite.
I'd rather be challenged by the process, even if the challenge is as banal as sitting in supercruise for 20 minutes, at least I get a sense of achievement from it.

If you want me to use the FSS, don't tell me how quick and simple it is, tell me how it makes me WORK to get results - otherwise I'm going back to parallax exploration (or X4).

 

[Scubadog]

I dont see how anyone could think the new mechanics are bad.
If you wanna jump honk jump, do it.
If you wanna cherry pick, do it. The added mechanic for this part takes 3 seconds.
If you wanna completely map systems, your gonna love it.

After trying to work with this for three hours, I can say that I don't care for it. I spend entirely too much time in this "mini game" instead of flying, which is part of why I explore. I find the effort to try to locate all the different signal sources takes entirely too long, and I invariably can't find some just because the stupid tuner isn't on the right "station". It's more satisfying to me to actually FLY my ship (which is why I HAVE one) to a place and scan it that way. So, yes, count me in that minority that doesn't care for the new system EXCEPT for the fact that it doesn't take up a slot.

 

[Scubadog]

But you have to FIND all the bodies. They are not immediately revealed and you have to drag your stupid reticule all over the screen HOPING you'll find something. If you don't have it tuned JUST RIGHT, you'll miss a lot of bodies. There's nothing to even indicate your in the right area unless you're tuned right AND to get close enough for the stupid waveform arrows to pop up. This seriously needs work.

 

[Scubadog]

They did change it. They lowered the degree to which the blue gravity signals pulse. They are now significantly dimmer. I find the change makes it harder to see tbh. Luckily the FSS doesn't bother my migraines one bit.

Not every change makes the patch notes. In fact some of the most significant changes never do.

What "blue gravity signals pulse"? I see absolutely nothing "pulsing" in the FSS. All I see is the space background and a superimposed orbit of the system with whatever bodies I happened to have picked up with the FSS. I have to spend and hour dragging the reticule all over the screen hoping something pops up...and that's only IF I have the scanner tuned just right.

 

[Burke]

What "blue gravity signals pulse"? I see absolutely nothing "pulsing" in the FSS. All I see is the space background and a superimposed orbit of the system with whatever bodies I happened to have picked up with the FSS. I have to spend and hour dragging the reticule all over the screen hoping something pops up...and that's only IF I have the scanner tuned just right.

There used to be all kinds of flashing lights and digital waterfalls. Now i think about it they do seem to be missing

 

[h347h]

Was the old method more enjoyable? Being forced to travel to each cluster, rock, ice world etc just to complete the surface scans?

This is precisely why I'm emphasising the new method including this functionality and being very quick for everybody to accomplish in a simple and engaging enough way.

The probes are entirely new, so a person can opt in or out of completing the surface mapping from them. A true explorer will be able to enjoy doing all of it since they would have travelled to each site before anyway! Only this time they are rewarded more by doing it.

So win win, no?

Some people liked doing the travel though. I'm one of the people who don't really like the changes.

It went from explorers to bleh.

 

[WR3ND]

There used to be all kinds of flashing lights and digital waterfalls. Now i think about it they do seem to be missing

There's still a scan line sort of illuminating wave across the screen in the FSS view that highlights the signal sours balls, blobs, or whatever you want to call them.

 

[Miko]

But you have to FIND all the bodies. They are not immediately revealed and you have to drag your stupid reticule all over the screen HOPING you'll find something. If you don't have it tuned JUST RIGHT, you'll miss a lot of bodies. There's nothing to even indicate your in the right area unless you're tuned right AND to get close enough for the stupid waveform arrows to pop up. This seriously needs work.

The blue outlines will still show regardless of the fine tuning. So you can't miss them if you pay attention to the scanning being done by the FSS which will create the outlines regardless.

 

[Miko]

Some people liked doing the travel though. I'm one of the people who don't really like the changes.

It went from explorers to bleh.

I don't understand this argument. You can still do the travelling, only now with more information so you do not waste your time on anything less valuable. It's called Probing.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

im still out there now. i sold a bunch of data at Gagarin Gate and made elite (was pioneer).
i like it because i dont have to fly out to blue dots on system map that are around another star x hundred thousand ls away to find it was just a blue coloured high metal and not even terraformable. NOW the questions is 'yes its an ELW/water... do i feel up to flying out there and mapping it?'

naturally if its not too far i will. but if 500000 ls away AND it hasnt been first discovered, then i leave it for someone else to get a first mapped on.

the new system saves me time, meaning i can get more done more quickly. the most common comments i see are usually from those who dont use the system at all and therefore have a mistaken idea.

first and most common 'you have to go FSS to discovery scan': NO YOU DONT. i have my disco bound to a firegroup. im in analysis mode and firing it while scooping. then im still scooping usually so i glance in the FSS to see if there are any ELW, ammonias or water worlds. if so i may begin scanning the system, or i may leave the line on the ELW or whatever and just hunt for that one world. and i DONT have to fly out to it and waste lots of time in SC where nothign happens PLUS i KNOW what it is. i only need to go there if i want to map for extra credits.

second one is that 'you dont have to fly out in these beautiful systems anymore.' NO you dont. BUT if you want to, then mapping is your excuse now, and doesnt have the frustration and annoyance of flying to an unknown only to find its a worthless (relatively) high metal with atmosphere and not an ELW or terraformable water world. no more time wasting in SC. no need to travel 500000 ls to see if something is worth travelling 500000 ls.

third one is 'you get less money now/to get same money you have to fly out and spend more time mapping with probes than you used to spend just using DSS.' NOPE. mapping is ON TOP. using the FSS to identify the planets IS THE SAME AS FLYING OUT TO DSS UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM. it just wastes less time. you can be selective more easily, rather than having to fly to something and finding it wasnt worth the time you had to spend getting there. and if you like the systems sights then MAP THE PLANETS. its a better excuse to go see, because you get closer than using the old DSS system PLUS its extra money.

i do have a gripe with mapping. once the thing is fully mapped i shouldnt have to leave analysis mode to make the blue grid vanish. it should stop being displayed after a while. but thats minor.

 

[Turjan]

They did change it. They lowered the degree to which the blue gravity signals pulse. They are now significantly dimmer. I find the change makes it harder to see tbh. Luckily the FSS doesn't bother my migraines one bit.

Not every change makes the patch notes. In fact some of the most significant changes never do.

They've lowered the default, background intensity of the grid effect, true - but as soon as you actually start to use the scanner, the pulses themselves are just as bad as ever. And it's still completely unbearable in VR of course because the perceived scale is so much larger.

I really don't want them to remove the visuals for everyone - a lot of folk seem to like them, and as Ziljan says here, turning down the shimmer actually makes it harder for some folk to see. What I'd prefer is a toggle option to disable the effect entirely so non-migraine folk are happy, and poor afflicted sufferers like me and the rest of the migraine gang can simply shut the wretched thing off.

I suggested an alternative to FDev already, where the shimmer/pulse could be replaced instead with a simple twinkling star effect wherever a detected signal was, but as yet I've heard nothing back from them at all.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

would callapsing circle graphics be workable? just a nod to the old vector graphics days , all it would be is a circle which starts big then collapses down, no blue pulsing blobs. i dotn have migraine so im not entirely sure what the issue is or even if im talking about the same thing tbh just trying to be helpful.

 

[Ziljan]

I really don't want them to remove the visuals for everyone - a lot of folk seem to like them, and as Ziljan says here, turning down the shimmer actually makes it harder for some folk to see. What I'd prefer is a toggle option to disable the effect entirely so non-migraine folk are happy, and poor afflicted sufferers like me and the rest of the migraine gang can simply shut the wretched thing off.

That sounds entirely reasonable. Did you post this in the suggestion forum yet?

 

[Virandar]

@OP

The FSS provides you with ALL the system information from the blue blobs minigame.
That's great if you want to be efficient, but it requires no skill, knowledge or experience to use. Everything is handed to you on a plate.
That, to me, is the complete opposite of exploration.
For all its faults, the old ADS did at least require you to make decisions about how much exploration you wanted to do in a system - and I personally enjoyed flying around in my spaceship doing that.

Now you argue that one can still fly around to probe planets, but that process is just another skill-, knowledge- and experience-free minigame that's impossible to lose.
The result of that mini-game is, once again, having all the information provided to you on a plate - every POI is precisely mapped, leaving no actual exploration to be done.

In short, the new mechanism is even more 'godly' than the ADS and I get no joy from it.

Exploration in RL sort of hands you everything over on the plate. Providing you have the tools and either point them in the right direction (Hubble, Keppler space telescopes) or "tune" them up to the signal (LISA, radiotelescopes on Earth) or send a probe towards an object in space (New Horizons, Rosetta, Parker Solar Probe, all of the Moon / Mars / Venus probes). Of course, having the right tools and being able to use them is not easy, which is why it's done by research agencies with significant budgets, but it doesn't require any minigames. With the right technology (which I assume should be available in 3000, providing humanity still exists then and keeps the pace of technological progress we've seen in the past few hundred years) we should be able to perform such tasks reliably and repeatedly.
To me, the main problem with exploration was (and still is) shortage of unique content to discover. Because after a while of jumping around and checking stuff out, you realise that you've seen it all. Because of the nature of ED and procedural generation. Which is not a problem, but it would be nice to have some rare phenomena and events incorporated into the system. Imagine for example discovering a cluster with stars with Dyson spheres. Or alien space stations. Or alien ruins at the other edge of the galaxy. Not every other system you jump to, but every few thousand.
But yeah, the new system seems to be a bit more involved. I'm also glad to see we get the ability to send probes and I would like this part of gameplay to be expanded a bit more. For example through giving the player a possibility to build some autonomous research infrastructure that would collect the data. But that's for a completely different thread.

Anyhow, if this new system is "skill-, knowledge- and experience-free minigame" so definitely was the previous one. As for POI being mapped, thanks heaven, especially on the planetary surfaces, the old navigation system was unacceptable in this regard.
I'm not saying I love the new system, I don't know it well enough yet, so I reserve my judgement for when I get to use it a bit more. Especially reading about issues with getting to the signal sources. But it seems a step in the right direction.

 

[Lobstris]

Why do people keep talking to me about how fast the FSS is?
I don't care about speed when I'm exploring, I care about the experience. I don't even care too much about FINDING anything, as long as the process is enjoyable.

Playing minigames and being spoonfed information isn't my idea of fun exploration gameplay - it's exactly the opposite.
I'd rather be challenged by the process, even if the challenge is as banal as sitting in supercruise for 20 minutes, at least I get a sense of achievement from it.

If you want me to use the FSS, don't tell me how quick and simple it is, tell me how it makes me WORK to get results - otherwise I'm going back to parallax exploration (or X4).

I've read everything you've written in this thread Drew, and decided you're the anti-me™. Every argument you've made has had me sitting here with an astonished expression on my face thinking, "huh? Lol! what?". The previous system instantly "spoonfed" you way too much information about a system as a whole, yet also didn't provide any tools for surface exploration. The new system actually feels like operating a telescope on a spaceship, and gives you the tools to decide whether you want to explore/map further or not. It feels infinitely more like exploration to me - but, to each, their own.

[That aside, and on a slightly different topic, I suspect the technical argument as to why you can't 'park up' in real space to use the FSS is that the data driving the system isn't available outside of the supercruise instance.]

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I've read everything you've written in this thread Drew, and decided you're the anti-me™. Every argument you've made has had me sitting here with an astonished expression on my face thinking, "huh? Lol! what?". The previous system instantly "spoonfed" you way too much information about a system as a whole, yet also didn't provide any tools for surface exploration. The new system actually feels like operating a telescope on a spaceship, and gives you the tools to decide whether you want to explore/map further or not. It feels infinitely more like exploration to me - but, to each, their own.

[That aside, and on a slightly different topic, I suspect the technical argument as to why you can't 'park up' in real space to use the FSS is that the data driving the system isn't available outside of the supercruise instance.]

You're assuming, I think, that I found the ADS to be the pinnacle of exploration gameplay. I didn't, but I found ways to play the game that worked for me - the ADS acted as a steppingstone for my gameplay, it wasn't the gameplay itself (that would be ridiculous).

So, copied and pasted from another thread is how I wanted exploration to be:

I want the results of my initial stellar survey to produce breadcrumbs that give me a reason to fly my spaceship around the system. Then when I find a body I'm interested in, I want the planetary survey to produce breadcrumbs that give me a reason to land on the planet and drive my SRV around.

Tools aren't exploration gameplay, finding things in my ship/SRV is exploration gameplay.

Isn't this game supposed to be a sandbox? The FSS is an overly complicated bucket and spade that gets in the way of me building sandcastles.

Subnote
The old ADS and DSS worked perfectly well in normal space, so the information is there.

 

[Virandar]

a) not requiring modules is great for non-explorers as you wrote, it is completely pointless for explorers. As you wrote, now even a fully combat optimized ship can be used for basic exploration, removing the consequence of having to use an exploration ship. This makes the game more shallow.

Which makes "hey, I wonder what's around the corner" kind of gameplay much easier and thus the game better. It's easier to switch between activities and break the monotony of say, mining or trading with some light exploration. Or stop mining in one system and go somewhere else. Or fly a combat ship to a previously unknown system to engage in a community goal. At the same time, full time explorers are not loosing that functionality, but getting an option to make more money through surface scans, planet mapping etc. Best thing Frontier did in a very long time.

b) no skill is required for the FSS and the decision to map a planet has nothing to do with skill, the results of the FSS shows the non-explorer what planet has an increased credit value for mapping. the old system required a little bit of skill to identify some of the planets based on the look and the sound of it (some metal worlds could look very similar to earth likes), now the FSS just tells the player that information.

It would make sense to get the scanner information more in line with what we get when in SRV. It would also make sense to have both interfaces look and function in a similar way. But as for the skill required for identifying planets by their looks in the system map and the way their signal sounded, you exaggerate a bit here. There are just a few types of planets and it doesn't take that long to figure out differences in their sounds. It's mostly getting used to, which, admittedly, takes some time, but not that long if you're interested in doing that. The difference now is that you're getting visual clues as well. Which probably is better for the players who have impaired hearing. And doesn't require silencing other game sounds.

c) explorers will now have to take much more time to map the system as they not only have to fly to the objects, but spend some time shooting probes at it.

And in the bubble the player will get constantly interdicted by NPCs. Interrupting the scanning/mapping process for absolutely no gameplay gain.

But I understand the new FSS and mapping probes system is much more casual friendly than the old system.

I like the fact that we have some probes, but they are implemented in a strange way. Firstly, having to be very close to launch them is a bit of a contradiction to the rest of the FSS mode. Secondly, you launch them pretty much at random. It doesn't make much sense when it comes to mapping the surface (which is easier to do from the orbit / space anyway). It would make sense when it comes to looking for resources, life etc. So generally things you can find on the surface. Perhaps normal scan should give you a list of resources, using probes would give you detailed data about the planet's composition (percentages). But I can see various uses for ship-launched probes, I wouldn't scrap them (just change their purpose).

Can't argue with the interdictions. But they are generally a nuisance I don't see a point of. I usually just submit and kill or submit and run (depending on what I'm flying).