More exploring

[OddBob]

We have been thinking of ways on the IRC to encourage physical exploration and to make it more fun.

One thing that would help a lot is to have more things to find of course!

The first being trade opportunities and routes. Anything from a random price system to a full blown trade system with dynamically adjusted prices and good being manufactured and used would help.

The second being physical things - more things in the vein of the abandoned cargo containers and those weapon caches guarded by Ronins. Minefields (regular fields or even mazes), ejected pilots, abandoned ships, more interesting battle remnants perhaps with unexploded ordnances laying around (a whole raft of dormant tracking missiles which activate when you come close), booby traps and more pirate ambushes would be interesting to find around.

The basic idea that when you enter a system, only the star (and sometimes not even that) be visible on the system map. However, to counter this, you are given the ability to scan any part of the system and get a "snapshot" of it which shows you how it was at the time of scanning. A scan is performed by going to the map and dragging a box around the area you wish to scan. These scans will not show the nature of the objects detected - a fleet of pirates, a clump of asteroids, a friendly shop and a large station will all show up as one fuzzy clump. In addition, each scan has a resolution, determined in part by

A. The distance from your ship to the scanned object
B. The power of your sensors and any bonuses (some sensors might be good at wide scans or close up scans, etc)
C. The size of the area to be scanned.

So upon entering a system, generally the first thing a player will do is initiate a system-wide scan. Due to the very large size of this scan, the only thing likely to show up is anything close and planets (as they are basically large enough to be detected at any distance).
The player can then investigate anything interesting by performing a tighter scan on it (note that he will not know what the objects being scanned are - it could be anything, even a sensor glitch). He will still have to go up to it to find out what it is - this encourages exploration without all that wandering around aimlessly.

If the scans are still too powerful in revealing information to the player there are a few limitations one can put on them. One is facing. You might only be able to scan something if your ship is pointed at it. Another is a time to complete a scan, with high resolution, far away scans taking a while to complete, encouraging the player to explore manually in the meantime.

[Fossaman]

I like it. A few things I'd add to the idea:

Scanning gives away your position to enemy ships. (this is somewhat assuming a world in which they don't head straight for you from across the system anyway) Wandering ships would come and investigate the source of the scanning, so you'd best be stepping off sharpish if you're in ranx territory without a good shield. When you scan with a fine enough resolution to detect a station, your emissions are in turn counter-detected, and they send a patrol to find out what's going on. And of course, any random encounters coming through the stargate would be able to lock directly onto you.

This could be mitigated by using a weak, short range scanner. Or by using one that uses gravitons or something like that, and is only detected x% of the time. A 'burst' scanner could be interesting also; it's only active for a very short period at a time, giving you the opportunity to get away more quickly.

Now, I'm thinking that asteroid belts and nebulas should be rather difficult to scan inside. Those scans should come out blurry unless you use almost a 1:1 scan resolution (scanning an area only the size of your LRS or smaller).

I really like this idea, actually. Especially if it could be coupled with that exhaust
idea I proposed a while ago. Being able to detect battles in progress would be pretty dang fun too.

[Ttech]

We have been thinking of ways on the IRC to encourage physical exploration and to make it more fun.

One thing that would help a lot is to have more things to find of course!

The first being trade opportunities and routes. Anything from a random price system to a full blown trade system with dynamically adjusted prices and good being manufactured and used would help.

The second being physical things - more things in the vein of the abandoned cargo containers and those weapon caches guarded by Ronins. Minefields (regular fields or even mazes), ejected pilots, abandoned ships, more interesting battle remnants perhaps with unexploded ordnances laying around (a whole raft of dormant tracking missiles which activate when you come close), booby traps and more pirate ambushes would be interesting to find around.

The basic idea that when you enter a system, only the star (and sometimes not even that) be visible on the system map. However, to counter this, you are given the ability to scan any part of the system and get a "snapshot" of it which shows you how it was at the time of scanning. A scan is performed by going to the map and dragging a box around the area you wish to scan. These scans will not show the nature of the objects detected - a fleet of pirates, a clump of asteroids, a friendly shop and a large station will all show up as one fuzzy clump. In addition, each scan has a resolution, determined in part by

A. The distance from your ship to the scanned object
B. The power of your sensors and any bonuses (some sensors might be good at wide scans or close up scans, etc)
C. The size of the area to be scanned.

So upon entering a system, generally the first thing a player will do is initiate a system-wide scan. Due to the very large size of this scan, the only thing likely to show up is anything close and planets (as they are basically large enough to be detected at any distance).
The player can then investigate anything interesting by performing a tighter scan on it (note that he will not know what the objects being scanned are - it could be anything, even a sensor glitch). He will still have to go up to it to find out what it is - this encourages exploration without all that wandering around aimlessly.

If the scans are still too powerful in revealing information to the player there are a few limitations one can put on them. One is facing. You might only be able to scan something if your ship is pointed at it. Another is a time to complete a scan, with high resolution, far away scans taking a while to complete, encouraging the player to explore manually in the meantime.

That would be cool

[Aury]

i like this idea.

[Charon Mass of Goo]

Add more stations, ones that aren't near planets and stars. I hate the fact that it's so easy to find them. "Oh look, an asteroid field, there's probably a fuel station there." It's too easy to find stations.

[F50]

Ttech, please stop quoting all text immediately above yours and simply adding one sentence, it is *really* annoying.