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Insights into the new exploration?
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Fa Xian
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2013-06-04 19:50:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Fa Xian
Well, stuck at the old salt mine as usual and no time yet to try out Odyssey. I've done a ton of video watching and reading, but I'd be interested in whether or not anyone has any practical experience with some basic questions;

1) Can you do anything to get more of the loot when it spews? Is it helpful to have modules affecting lock time? Faster ship to catch escaping cans? Is there any value in fitting a cargo scanner or will that waste too much time or not work at all?

2) Are there any modules to jack up virus coherence and/or strength? I understand certain ships get bonuses, but is there anything else you can do to beat up on the hacking game? Skill training helps too of course - but is that it? Ship bonus and skills? Wasn't there some promise of stuff that would improve your hacking game? Anyone seen any of that, maybe faction codebreakers or something?
Koldon Black
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2 - 2013-06-05 09:02:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Koldon Black
I love the preset probe setups very much, they remove a lot of the tediousness from scanning down sites. The sensor overlay isn't the most functional (for me, I'm not so good trying to mouse the camera around in space to try and find the sites without an indicator or something to show me which way to scroll) but damn does it look cool! It adds some much needed immersion and helps give a general idea of where things are around you.

I like the hacking mini-game, and the sense of risk that it can destroy the loot I think is fair (and not too frustrating because at least you had a shot and gave it your best). HOWEVER, I've found exploration to be very frustrating in the end.. Not because of the hacking part but because even if you do successfully hack it, all the loot shoots off into space and you can only gather about 50% of it (at the MOST) and you have no idea what containers hold what. Its timed so there only so much you can get, no matter what you do. I tried many different tactics and it all just seems to be the luck of the draw..

You can cargo scan them before hacking to know whats in it and which ones are worth hacking. But boy let me tell you, its REALLY frustrating when you scan something nice inside and hack it successfully only to have it not end up in your cargo cause if shot off into space somewhere and you missed it because you happened to miss the right can.. I lost the majority of the loot this way.

I really don't like mechanics that force you to have an alt or a friend around. not sure how an alt would work with this one as it happens rather fast, but I don't like the idea of having to rely on other people being on who I can trust and will actually help me any time i wanna do some exploration.. Even if I had someone helping me I'd still have to split the loot with them.

So if your by yourself, after scanning down the site you then have to hack it and even if you succeed and manage not to blow it up your still only gonna get 50% of the loot from it anyways, and its the luck of the draw what you do actually end up getting.



If you want to increase your stats for the hacking mini-game, you can use a bonused ship (like the covops ships with +10 virus strength), train hacking and archeology skills and/or use T2 modules. Also you could use the purloined sansha data analyzer for data sites. which is better than the T2 analyzer BUT you can only fit it on the Echelon which is just a specialized hacking ship so you'd need to switch ships out for the probing.




TL/DR: Love all the changes except one; the loot shooting off into space and only having a chance of getting it even after a successful hack... Frustrating as hell..