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Exploration tools


Dakanmer

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1600's: Galileo uses a telescope to observe celestial bodies

1700's: many improvements to telescopes; many discoveries about the solar system

1800's: larger telescope made

1900's: telescopes improved and launched into space

Early 2000's: more telescope improvements and more space telescopes, including one meant for deep space

Modern Era of the DU universes: ships that can travel at great speeds; the ability to magic ore from the ground into a Bag of Holding; wireless container connections that magic stuff between containers and wherever you want to put them; teleporters; anti-gravity generators; force fields; scanners that will tell you how much of what types of ore are in the immediate area (territory)...but the only way to explore the solar system and galaxy is to physically travel through it and see everything in person.

 

There should be an element, or series of elements, that can be used to detect celestial bodies in a radius or cone (or separate elements for short range radius and long range cone). If unknown planets exist, we should be able to find them without relying on luck or days/weeks/months of staring at a screen scanning space as you travel from corner to corner in parallel paths 2-300 SU apart in all axial directions. “Space [...] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." If we have rockets and ore scanners and the ability to travel between universes, we should at a bare minimum have tools for exploration that extend beyond just our own eyeballs. We have PvP radars, but no non-PvP (scriptable) radars. We have short-range telemeters, but nothing that could be used from kilometers away to get a LiDAR scan (like for night time travel). Exploration was one of the selling points of the game, yet it doesn't exist in a meaningful way.

 

We should have tools for exploration, and reasons to explore. Discovering new planets is great, but must that information be shared with the whole community once it is found? Maybe the discoverer wants to have their own corner of the universe for as long as possible, maybe to exploit resources before the rush begins. What about about exploring the planets? What about oceans? Beyond just finding ore deposits or caves that are mostly just neat aesthetics, exploration has no meaning in this game, and there are no tools beyond ore scanners to make exploration about more than just resource hunting. With space, telescopes or radar-like elements would fill that role, giving individuals/orgs the ability to explore, and either share their results or keep them secret. With oceans, sonar or some other device that gives you an image of what's around you. All of these exploration scans could be displayed on a screen/widget (or, better yet, a 3D holographic device), and be scriptable by providing raw data...because LUA is another selling point of the game that is being downplayed (rumor has it that people complain about it being OP...but so is anything else if you don't have the skills. Piloting is OP if you can't fly or have no interest; it's not fair that others can move planet to planet when you're stuck relying on their skills to get you places. Same illogic applies to scripting).

 

Maybe other players can suggest exploration options, but it's something that I found seriously lacking.

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It’s an interesting idea, some kind of exploration once they add more systems would be great instead of just handing us the new planets on a silver plater already mapped out. That was this disappointing thing about no mans ski to me. All those systems and they were all mapped and easy to jump to.

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I like. This idea has great potential.
There is a good example from the game "No Man's Sky". There is a portable flora scanner. Aim at a tree, bush, animal, bird - it scans, discovers a new species and adds it to the encyclopedia.
* - A second option will be needed for underwater scanning (sonar).
* - General planetary scanner. This is when the ship flies up to the orbit of the planet, and you can scan the planet as a whole, see the global deposits of resources (what ores are there and in what quantity, approximately), as well as what types of life there are. For this, there is a special large module installed on the ship, this module contains a dish antenna, as well as a trigger for the probe (the probe is fired at the planet and within 2-5 minutes sends data about it, as in the Mass effect). The planetary scanner must be installed on the ship. The antenna detects ores. The probe detects life forms. The module must be periodically filled with probes (like cartridges).
* - Detector of celestial bodies. Allows you to detect a star system. To do this, you need to probe the black void of space, meter by meter, until a "signal" appears as in a conventional detector. After the discovery of a star system or a smaller celestial body, they are entered into their own map.
* - Of course, the space map in the game must be made dynamic, active. Now it is just a static picture.

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On 9/22/2020 at 8:15 AM, dmitrynest said:

I like. This idea has great potential.
There is a good example from the game "No Man's Sky". There is a portable flora scanner. Aim at a tree, bush, animal, bird - it scans, discovers a new species and adds it to the encyclopedia.
* - A second option will be needed for underwater scanning (sonar).
* - General planetary scanner. This is when the ship flies up to the orbit of the planet, and you can scan the planet as a whole, see the global deposits of resources (what ores are there and in what quantity, approximately), as well as what types of life there are. For this, there is a special large module installed on the ship, this module contains a dish antenna, as well as a trigger for the probe (the probe is fired at the planet and within 2-5 minutes sends data about it, as in the Mass effect). The planetary scanner must be installed on the ship. The antenna detects ores. The probe detects life forms. The module must be periodically filled with probes (like cartridges).
* - Detector of celestial bodies. Allows you to detect a star system. To do this, you need to probe the black void of space, meter by meter, until a "signal" appears as in a conventional detector. After the discovery of a star system or a smaller celestial body, they are entered into their own map.
* - Of course, the space map in the game must be made dynamic, active. Now it is just a static picture.

Love the probe idea, to expand on it the 2-5 minutes would give you the general data but the longer you scan the more data you get and probes you have to use, such as scanning individual hexes to find a good place to mine or set down a base as well as possibly discover downed ships or abandoned bases.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/23/2020 at 9:41 AM, Aiwhisper said:

Love the probe idea, to expand on it the 2-5 minutes would give you the general data but the longer you scan the more data you get and probes you have to use, such as scanning individual hexes to find a good place to mine or set down a base as well as possibly discover downed ships or abandoned bases.

The probe for scanning the planet's general data would be fine, but using it to scan individual territories is probably taking it too far. They have territory scanners for that already, and while slow and heavy, make plenty of sense. A probe can get data about the planet's atmosphere, mass, radius, etc, and use some NQ galaxy magic to say what ores it contains, but you would need to go to the ground and use a form of "sonar" via the scanners to find out what each territory has. We already use a version of that IRL to get an idea of how our planet is layered, track earthquakes, and some other things I'm sure.

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