Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Exploration is what I enjoy most because you never know what you will get, and the rewards can be big. There are several different aspects to scanning that I have learned. Most of these are through YouTube videos, others on accident. When scanning the part that takes most the time that I feel can be simplified/eliminated is the process of separating the drones for scanning.

Here is my proposal:
Allow the ALT-Mouse movement action to work while drones are at their initial point. so that they will spread apart equal distant from each other leaving one drone in the center (unless 2 or under drones are used for early scanning)

With this innovation dropping scanning drones then spreading for scanning will bypass a lot of the meaningless labor currently present.

2nd Proposal:
Allow the Probe Launcher to launch drones continuously till either empty or max deploy-able is reached.

These must have been brought up in the past and with the integration it would greatly improve the tediousness of drone deployment.. click.. click.. click......... click.


I hope these two options, specifically the first one, are taken seriously and implemented in future patching this year. Exploration is endlessly rewarding and I can thank Sir Livingston for his YouTube videos. I am interested to hear other exploration pilots feedback and other ideas.

Keep it clean, keep it constructive.
-Reyisa

Meaningless labor is what MMO is all about.

I had thoughts of having pictures of specific drone layouts based on available drones and ability to deploy. Select drone deployment configuration. And deploy all drones. Sure make it take 20-30 seconds to process to make up for the time it would take to deploy drones one by one.

Deploy Drones - > Select Pattern

....
I don't like the "slippery slope" feel of making probe scanning half-automated. It seems like it could only lead to super-cheese-easy exploration, which takes the accomplishment/prestige out of being good at it.

(edited, my first post was far too knee-jerk)[/quote]

I agree, we do not want to WOW it up. It is really fine how it is. mass/continuous drone deploy would be nice. it is strange it it only does one a time as it is a "launcher".

Wrong forum. Try Features & Ideas Discussion.

To your idea...

1) It won't work. Or how do you expect your probes to know which axis to take unless you have given them an initial position, which sets them apart? If your intention then is to use a fixed pattern then you ruin exploration. Exploration is all about spatial awareness and players learn through using it.

2) I never needed auto-repeat, because I do not always drop all probes. I launch one probe, activate scanning, then launch more probes and once I have launched all do I already know if there is anything to scan or if the system is empty. I would not want to give up this routine for an auto-repeat. You might want to try it.

This too. What sounds simple on a forum is usually far from it in terms of implementation. I also never launch all probes as soon as I enter a system, and most systems are small enough to check with a single probe before moving on.

Moving this from General Discussion to Features and Ideas.

If you do want to make scanners a favour force that damn onboard pc to remember best known position of any signature. And mark it grey if it was not improved by the last cycle. The reason for that improvement is the fact that it is too difficult to remember a 3d postion of 10 signatures by only having a 2d picture at each moment of time.

Sometimes in MMOs its the things that are more difficult to do that makes them worthwhile.

If you over simplify something, then everyone will start to do it. Then you are no longer special because you are good at that thing.

Plus, as was stated above, scanning down a ship quicky is currenlty a skill, that sets some players apart from others.

1. Its the only part that consumes time now, the rest is waiting for the scan complete chime.
I also enjoy probing for the same reasons, and I have seen space go from encountering 1 other prober a night if I was lucky, to having to race other people to the site and encountering other probers every 5 systems or so.
If anything, make it harder again, there used to be a style to probing fast, now its easy and fast.
remove the rulers for overlap, remove alt drag to rescale even, make it harder.
There are just not enough sites to go around now (in highsec at least), CCP should add more...

2. Supported, why a probe launcher cant auto launch, its frustrating waiting to press the button again and with lag, it adds seconds to launching all the probes.