Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello dear players,

I have been thinking about a little tool lately, here's my idea.

Exploration is fun but placing probes is a pain, especially when you scan entire regions. My idea consists of placing a little button that would SAVE the pattern of the probes you choose so you could load that pattern when moving to a different system. Here's how it would work: Deploy your 7 (or less, choice is yours) probes, place them around to your liking, press save, scan, move to a different system, drop your 7 probes, press load and voila, your probes are in the pattern you saved earlier. Please note I am not talking about alt and shift, this is different.

Nikki Narel has had a VERY interesting idea about this:
''Totally new direction.
Have the probe launcher able to process scripts, like how the hictor's bubble can in order to single target something.
For the probe launcher, a script would launch a cluster of probes into a specific pattern that could not be changed, but would scale to the wishes of the pilot. (They can set the radius for scanning separately, so you could have massive scan overlap if you wanted)
No script, manual probe control.
Multiple script types, changing would require the probes to be all recalled first, or abandoned. Using a new script requires the involved probes to be launched in a cluster from the launcher with the script loaded.''

Problem pointed out: ''Bookmarks use the system's grid to save the point in space, this would transfer from system to system making the same code impossible to use.''
Possible solution: After all probes are in space, clicking on ''load pattern X'', the probes warp to the sun and from there get in position, THEN you can move them around freely.

This idea would make us explorers save hours in the long run (scan 25 systems a night, 1-2 minutes placing my probes, its 25 minutes per day I save, you can extrapolate to weeks and months).

Thank you for reading, please tell me what you think of this.

Make the described penalty something that can be reduced by a skill, something like Advanced Probing.
You can retain a unique grid pattern with preset distances and relative positions for each level.

And no, this would not include scaling based on scan radius. Each duplicate pattern scaled up or down to use different scan ranges would be a separate pattern.

Keep in mind, you are perfectly free to move your probes around as a static cluster, and sweep in that method.

Yes, with a 10-15% time reduction from a 40 seconds base would be sweet. However it would require the addition of a new skill tree branch.

You could see this as a UI option, like the green-yellow-red buttons we have now.


And Bunyip, I am aware you cannot, as a CCP GM, officially endorse this kind of thread, there would be no end to ''officially supported threads'' :p I do appreciate the word in though!

Just like to say I support this idea.

I stopped doing 3d patterns for that very reason.

You still have to deploy all probes one by one and it still takes time for the pattern to get in position. They will have way enough time to move.

Erm, Not really lol. This will cut down the time by a good 50% and wont make me want to destroy my monitor after having to place my probes evenly and all after 5 systems lol.

Right, but I am slow at arranging. This will save me 5-10seconds. Since I am usually about 5seconds too late to make the catch, this means an increase in the number caught!

It's for both precision and speed. Would save us time and frustration.

So I was wondering, how does any one think this would be implemented? Bookmarks use the system's grid to save the point in space, this would transfer from system to system making the same code impossible to use.