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Survey Scanners

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Korrimal Ohmiras
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#1 - 2013-05-18 20:40:11 UTC  |  Edited by: Korrimal Ohmiras
Recommendation for some changes to the Survey Scan Results

Four new columns

1) Lock Indicator - Indicates which asteroids you have self-locked similar to what is in the first column in the overview. This would only show self-locked objects.

2) System Lock Indicator - Indicates if someone else in the same belt has an asteroid locked. Again this would show up similar to the first column in the overview using the same color indicator (this is for fleet ops when you have 20 miners trying to find an asteroid that doesn't have a mining laser on it already).

3) Tag Indicator - similar to in the Overview where you can show the tag associated with an object when doing fleet ops

4) Currently Mined Quantity - For any asteroids that are currently self-locked - would give a more accurate measure of the quantity mined with that laser. So for example if you are mining veldspar at 1600m2 per 180s, then it would tell you the exact quantity mined if you are say 57% of the way through the cycle.

As a 'stretch' objective to #4 - if there is an Orca within survey range that is managing fleet ops, it would be beneficial that the Orca pilot should be able to see the currently mined quantities for each asteroid for any members that are in the same fleet. This would obviously be an ability that would only be available as a role bonus type thing. I realize this extra feature however may not be possible based on the way I think the code is structured. But if it is a possibility this would be a huge bonus to fleet ops.

Not expecting that any of this information would update automatically - just as the survey scanner is activated.
Gliese Casserres
Confused Bunnies Inc
#2 - 2013-05-27 02:01:18 UTC
Every day I mine I see these same needs for upgraded survey scanner functionality.

These upgrades would make mining management less tedious to track.



Bumped and signed
CCP Fear
C C P
C C P Alliance
#3 - 2013-05-28 15:44:39 UTC
BUMP!

I'm very interested in this topic. I would love to hear some ideas on how the survey scanner could be improved, what could be added to make the experience better and how it could be leveraged in a more co-operative or simple mulitplayer setting.

Would also like to hear just how it's being used. Any 3rd party tools that are being used to compliment it.

Basically, what does it need to do better to make it more interesting.
Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#4 - 2013-05-28 16:27:48 UTC
Two things:

First, one use of the survey scanner is to time the miners. That is to mine just enough of each roid to deplete it without wasting time.

A painful thing to do if you are multi-boxing. Why? You got say 2 hulks, 6 strips. Each one now has a different stop time depending on what roid its mining. "Does strip #3 on hulk #2 stop at 60% cycle this cycle or next cycle? Or was that strip #1???"

Suggestion: If I'm using the survey scanner and activate a strip it automatically starts part way through the cycle. For example if my strip mines 1000 cu m per cycle and the scan result showed the riod has 1300 cu m the strip will start at 70% of a cycle. 1.3 cycles later it finishes and the roid pops. I think this can all be handled client side. The sever would not need anything new. All that's happening is the client is being clever as to when to cycle the strip. In the above example the sever would see a message saying "Strip activated on the roid". Then 30% of a cycle later the server would see "Strip completed cycle on roid" at which time the server would deliver 30% of a cycles worth of ore, just as if the player had turned the strip off and quickly back on after 30% of a cycle.

When to start is based on the last survey scan and on the assumption that only one strip is being used on the roid. This is just to keep the calls to the server data base down.

Second: When I go looking for ore: I jump into a system with 12 belts. Which one has the ore I want? Now I got to warp to each one and take a look. Ive spent literally hours going system to system, warping to belts (a slow process with an exhumer) looking for the ore I want, only to find the belt has already been stripped by others.

Suggestion: Have a long range mode on the survey scanner. It tells me what is in each belt. Even a very approximate number would be helpful.

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Vesan Terakol
Trollgrin Sadface
Dark Taboo
#5 - 2013-05-28 17:22:18 UTC
Maybe it would be good to be able to transmit the data from survey scanners on Orca/Rorqual to members of your fleet, like an unique ability for industrial command ships. Could be a shared spreadsheet for the entire fleet or as an overlay of the asteroids - when a fleet member locks one, he gets the amount next to the targeting reticle or in place of the HP bars in the locked targets list.
Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#6 - 2013-05-28 17:36:16 UTC
The Orca/Rorqual should be able to scan the entire system for even just an asteroid comp for each field so they can actually manage where the fleet needs to move to. Currently the survey scanner bonus that those ships get is mostly worthless unless you have that odd roid that is 50km off the rest of the belt. Either the bonus needs to goto system wide like I suggest, or that the data from the survey scan needs to get pushed to the fleet so the exhumers don't need to carry their personal scanner.

But having more details as in how many strip miners are currently active on a given roid you are in the belt with would make things easier as well instead of having to check to see the numbers, locate where it is in the belt and look to see if a laser is currently on it. Also being able to let it constantly cycle automatically would be helpful for those who want the latest information the entire time they are in the belt.

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Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#7 - 2013-05-28 17:45:23 UTC

I think faction (Ore) Survey scanners should be added, with an extended scan range (35 km's), so people can bling up their ships to see the contents of all ores their fleet-bonused harvesters can mine.

Maximus Aerelius
PROPHET OF ENIGMA
#8 - 2013-05-30 23:49:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Maximus Aerelius
OK, OK, I like the ideas in here so here's mine: < see what I did there Blink

* Knowing What's Being Mined *

When someone activates an offensive module on you e.g. Warp Scram, Web, TP etc you get that little icon next to there entry on your Overview. Add that to the Overview for Mining Lasers\Strip Miners. You'll see which roids are not being mined.
This should be easy'ish as this functionality is already used for the stuff mentioned above.

* Constant Ore Retrieval *

How about instead of waiting for the cycle to end the ore is put in your hold every 10 seconds of activation instead of at the end of a cycle. Cycles can still be used for Cap Consumption but you could manage cargohold space more efficiently as well as Cap Consumption and T1 and T2 Strip Miner Crystal use by not overusing necessarily.

I like all the ideas above and my second one is an alternative to auto-shut off when roid pops as I find this a bit too "Automated" but that being said guns stop firing at targets when they're dead...

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Kardaval Scheinder
Curtana Joyeuse and Durendal Security
#9 - 2013-05-31 00:00:09 UTC
i would also recomend a setting to display units as either units, or volume, just to simplify the process and remove the match equation
CCP Fear
C C P
C C P Alliance
#10 - 2013-05-31 11:02:28 UTC
Very great ideas here!

It definitely resonates with what I had already been thinking about such as;


  • Better display of results (I would like it to be more visual and on the asteroids)
  • Continuous cycles, for those that want to keep constant track
  • Tie to Orca/Rorqual for better overview, tagging, etc.


But I'm also very interested in just how mining is as an experience and what happens before you actually go and mine. My experience has just been to undock, warp to a random belt and start mining.

Having some sort of a system scan of what roids are in the belts could be great, but as the roids are fairly similar in types in each system it would better to show some indication of "how much remains", so you can quickly go to a belt that is full rather than an empty one.

Something to think about at least. Keep the ideas coming!
locait
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#11 - 2013-05-31 14:14:02 UTC
@ CCP Fear

As a person who spent over 2 years in a WH and doing mining in said WH I would like to see the survey scanner be more useful when i am mapping out a grav belt to mine while waiting for the sleepers to spawn.



  • Survey scanners keep track of all the asteroids i scan even when they are out of range and only updating the ones in scan range.

  • The Continuous cycles because i want to know when i can leave as soon as possible.

  • Having Orca/Rorqual in fleet will allow miners share a fleet scan of the belt. Were the miners can send their scans to the Orca/Rorqual.

  • Show which asteroids are being mined and by who.



As for how i mined in a wh it would be like this.
Scan -> map roids -> Kill sleepers -> warp in with barge -> start jet can mining -> pray to not have a cloaky fleet to kill me
-> get annoyed that everyone was mining the same roid and only 1 person got the last bit making us waste time in belt.
It is not uncommon for the miners, in corp, to have strips spread out to 3 different roids to reduce the lost mining time of the last cycle with all strips on 1 roid.
CCP Fear
C C P
C C P Alliance
#12 - 2013-05-31 14:21:22 UTC
I had been thinking of how it could be made into a better collaboration tool, so having the scan results shared in a fleet would be something to consider.

@locait;
Would you then use the survey scanner in-side the Grav belt? (just making sure I understand the sequence of events right)
Abrazzar
Vardaugas Family
#13 - 2013-05-31 16:29:12 UTC
As mentioned adding a volume column would be of great convenience.

Also check the link in my signature for mining mechanics, it uses the survey scanner in a new way.

Sovereignty and Population

New Mining Mechanics
Hopelesshobo
Hoboland
#14 - 2013-05-31 17:57:37 UTC
CCP Fear wrote:
I had been thinking of how it could be made into a better collaboration tool, so having the scan results shared in a fleet would be something to consider.

@locait;
Would you then use the survey scanner in-side the Grav belt? (just making sure I understand the sequence of events right)


When I would do my mining I would basically be spamming the survey scanner when a roid would get low, I would keep track of how much my strips could pull in, and I would shut off my strips when I felt that I was far enough into the current cycle to pop the roid to maximize profit.

From there it is common in fleets that people end up shooting the same roid when there are untapped roids in the belt, which usually ends up in someone having a wasted cycle because there is no indication on who is mining what other then to move your camera around and visually look to see who is shooting what.

Instead of sharing the survey scan results with everyone in fleet, I would suggest only sharing with the people who have a survey scanner equipped and on grid. I would also add the little icon of who is shooting what into the survey scan results instead of the overview, otherwise you will be swapping back and forth between your overview, and trying to match up what you are reading in your overview with your survey results.

This is getting a little bit off topic, but would it be hard to reduce the cycle times of miners to be in the realm of 15-30 seconds and reduce the cap need of each cycle accordingly? Or make it so when a roid gets tapped out, the server sends a signal to the client saying that the roid is tapped and shuts down the strip miner, causing your ore to go into your hold. Although that last option would be tricky if multiple people were shooting the same roid.

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Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#15 - 2013-05-31 18:06:03 UTC
My typical high sec mining op:

I got 3 accounts. They fly 2 Hulks and an Orca. I mine for minerals for use in manufacturing.

I log in all 3 accounts, form a fleet. Then I make sure the hulks both got the crystals for what I intend to mine. Typically this is one of the 4 ore types in Gallente space (which means I carry 4 or each crystal, including those loaded in the strips) or I need Pyrox so I insure I got those crystals.

Then we all undock and go to the target system. I normally go at least one jump as my home system gets stripped with great regularity. If I'm after pyrox I got to go at least 3 jumps. Once I get there I got to find a viable belt. I send each Hulk pilot to a different belt to find one that has ores of interest. For the 4 ores in Gallente space I typically have the two hulks mine different ore so I never have to worry about them mining the same roid. (Its really hard to see if this is happening. Some roids are quite small and very close to each other.) Once I find a belt with a good supply of the two ores of interest I warp in the rest of the fleet and off we go.

The main issue here is finding a belt that still has ore, just like you said. I generally go by roid count, how full the overview is with roids. But it sure would be nice to have a single summary number for what remains in each belt.

For the Pyrox it can become very frustrating. I can go to a system, warp to each and every one of its 12 belts just to find them all stripped of Pyrox. Then off to the next system just to find the exact same thing. I have spent hours trying to find a system that's not stripped, simply because checking out each belt is so time consuming. Again it sure would be nice if I had a scanner that told me what was left in each belt.

BTW, did you understand what I was saying about having the survey scan results set the timing of the strips, or are you just not interested?

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Infinite Force
#16 - 2013-05-31 18:53:13 UTC
locait wrote:
@ CCP Fear

As a person who spent over 2 years in a WH and doing mining in said WH I would like to see the survey scanner be more useful when i am mapping out a grav belt to mine while waiting for the sleepers to spawn.

  • Survey scanners keep track of all the asteroids i scan even when they are out of range and only updating the ones in scan range.

  • The Continuous cycles because i want to know when i can leave as soon as possible.

  • Having Orca/Rorqual in fleet will allow miners share a fleet scan of the belt. Were the miners can send their scans to the Orca/Rorqual.

  • Show which asteroids are being mined and by who.

As for how i mined in a wh it would be like this.
Scan -> map roids -> Kill sleepers -> warp in with barge -> start jet can mining -> pray to not have a cloaky fleet to kill me
-> get annoyed that everyone was mining the same roid and only 1 person got the last bit making us waste time in belt.
It is not uncommon for the miners, in corp, to have strips spread out to 3 different roids to reduce the lost mining time of the last cycle with all strips on 1 roid.

@ CCP Fear,

Having done my fair share of WH mining over the past year+, I'll echo locait's comments and add a few of my own.

As I see it, Survey scanners really need their ranges increased and what information is returned.

1. A no-implant, maxed out hulk pilot w/ t2 strips & max Rorqual boosted is going to reach out to ~29.5 km. The t2 survey scanner currently only reaches 22km. Not any real difference from the t1 scanner.

2. ORE Faction survey scanners reaching farther than 30 km would be a nice add. IIRC, ORE strips & maxed rorqual boosts will get you near 39km's. I don't have Tau's post on this handy.

3. Scanner results really don't need to be shared - this is nice and I wouldn't argue it being added, but not necessary. What's more important is having enough range and information returned so that you know when to cycle your strips -- e.g. how many m3 or how many "time ticks" are left before a given asteroid is depleted. It is IMPOSSIBLE for an Orca/Rorqual booster to micro-manage a true mining op of 5, 10, 20, 50 hulks (I've been both the miner and the booster in both of those maxed situations).

4. Outside of High-sec, NO ONE parks their Orca in a belt. The Rorqual will always be inside POS shields. It is suicide, plain and simple to put a Rorqual in a belt / Grav site in Low / Null / WHs. I understand the original intent, but it does not work that way in reality.

5. If you have any sway, WH (& Low & Null) Grav sites need to be left as scannable sites, not on d-scans.

6. Continous cycles would be nice. Currently, they cycle in 3 seconds. This is fine for a single shot (and work great for 16 second rorqual boosted venture gas cloud harvestor II cycles btw) ... Change the scanner cycle times to 5 or 10 seconds and allow the module a no-repeat, 3 second, option.

I look forward to more good suggestions -- that are listened to -- on this.

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criativa
Zugleich Techniken
#17 - 2013-05-31 19:19:23 UTC
First: thank you very much for this! I'm really looking forward to this kind of "little things" that miners would love to have!

My ideas:


  1. Update the TAG system:
    2. Make it so we can have at least 36 unique tags. Also, instead of a long list with all tags, create range groups for tags:

    Right-click > Apply tag >
    [0-9] >
    0
    1
    2
    ...
    [A-M] >
    A
    B
    C
    ...
    [N-Z] >
    N
    O
    P
    ...

    Motivation: see 4.

  2. Export results!
    3. I can't say how much this would help us creating 3rd party tools to analyse the belt composition and calculate if it is worth mining or not. Could be "copy to clipboard" and/or export to csv, xml, etc.

    Motivation: self-explanatory.

  3. Group results by major type
    4. Currently you have a group for "Concentrated Veldspar" and another for "Dense Veldspar". Being able to filter by major group "Veldspar", with a column (or info after group name) indicating total m^3 inside that group, would be priceless.

    Motivation: being able to have a better way to quickly identify if a belt contains enough quantity of the ore type you are looking for.

  4. Mass tag asteroids
    5. Example: right-click the "Condensed Scordite" group and select "Apply tags". That would create a tag (increasing number) for each asteroid within that group, respecting the listed order.

    Motivation: when I scan the belt I order by quantity (decreasing) and apply tags (increasing) so I know that "[TAG 1] Kernite" has more ore in it than "[TAG 2] Kernite". This way I can cherry-pick the roids that will optimize my laser cycles.

  5. More columns
    6. Yes, please. Everybody wants them:
    Volume (m^3, would also apply to major groups and subgroups)
    Depleting (boolean: true if someone is mining it)
    Harvester (array: names of who is mining it)
    Closest Harvester [in your fleet] (seriously, this would be awesome)

    Motivation: more information, please!
locait
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#18 - 2013-06-01 06:51:20 UTC  |  Edited by: locait
CCP Fear wrote:
I had been thinking of how it could be made into a better collaboration tool, so having the scan results shared in a fleet would be something to consider.

@locait;
Would you then use the survey scanner in-side the Grav belt? (just making sure I understand the sequence of events right)



Yes i would more than i am now.

Having the barges share the scanner information will effectively increase their range. i will explain in a later post when im not brain dead.

Edit: Ok If 2 barges are separated by a decent distance but can still mine in either ones scanner range. So they can still manually turn off the strips mining a roid not in their scanner range but they still are in the "fleet's" effective scan range. Plus it makes sense to then to not be on top of each other to find the same information of the same roids.
End of Edit

also having scanners work in ticks would be really nice.
like the roids you are mining updated every 5 ticks roids u r not mining every 10 ticks. but use cap in cycles

PS:
it would also be nice to have miner mine in ticks but use cap in cycles
Janton Raudhir
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#19 - 2013-06-01 17:38:59 UTC
I very much like this idea! Countless times when I'm running a mining fleet in E-UNI do I have to ask Miners to quite doubling-up on Asteroids.

Something like this would make my life a whole lot easier.
Korrimal Ohmiras
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#20 - 2013-06-01 18:00:42 UTC
Infinite Force wrote:
[quote=locait]@ CCP Fear

4. Outside of High-sec, NO ONE parks their Orca in a belt. The Rorqual will always be inside POS shields. It is suicide, plain and simple to put a Rorqual in a belt / Grav site in Low / Null / WHs. I understand the original intent, but it does not work that way in reality.



Quite often for mining ops in high-sec having the orca on site is of benefit because you don't have to get someone else with a tractor beam equipped to pull the ore to a freighter. (would be nice if a freighter could get one high-slot for this purpose btw). Having said that - I would agree that in low-sec or when war dec'd its foolish to have an ocra on-grid.

One of the other points raised earlier thou - the ability to see everyone's cycle times should probably depend on two factors. 1) are you on-grid, and 2) only applicable within your current scan range.

The amount of programming required to pull off this function shouldn't break code that has already been developed to support the d-scan function. I would consider whatever scanning features are available as part of the d-scan would represent the outer limit of possible functionality to maximize code reuse as part of the request.

I would love to have the ability to scan a complete system so that I'm not wasting time jumping to belts that have already been mined out. The system I was in last night I ended up wasting almost an hour trying to find a belt that wasn't depleted. But I would suggest that this function be either a new d-scan feature or maybe what might be more appropriate is to have a new probe type that you could send to belts and grav sites to relay information on the total mineable units.

There is nothing worse than scanning down a grav site, warping to it and finding out its been mined out already. At least this way an Orca / Rorqual can fit a prob launcher and sit behind the POS shields providing useful information for the fleet without breaking too many existing mechanics.
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