Test Server Feedback

I don't understand why those of us who did the long train to use deep space probes can't be reimbursed in some form. Pilots who have done BC5 and destroyer 5, capital pilots, etc will reap the benefits and still be able to fly what they used to, but those of us who trained to be able to use one special probe have essentially wasted our time as they will be removed, these skills have no use elsewhere..

Good day!

I've been running a few sites in low sec minmatar space, this is the feedback I have so far:

• Although there was not a few explanation, I quickly understood the fact that I no longer need to use hotkeys to move all my probes around, it took 2 systems for me to figure that out but I quickly got use to it and I rather like that change. The changes in the scanner were also a bit confusing at first, but easy to adjust to.


• On that note, the new interface doesn't allow the modification of the size of category cells in the scanner. Since my screen is a bit small, everything is labelled "Cosmic" to me, unless I expand this window to nearly half my screen size. I would like to have the possibility to adjust the cell's size back.


• Auto formations worked great for me, releasing all 7 probes at once is great, but reduce the vulnerability time of covert scanning ships.


• The scanner doesn't save signatures previously locked at 100% strength like the old one. Again, not a big deal, I just "ignore" the signature after pinning it down and bookmarking it. However, it would be nice if those would still remain saved to 100% strength for as long as I'm in the system, like in the current TQ client.


• All the minmatar (angel cartel) hacking and archaeology sites that i've been to are currently not functioning properly in low sec. All the nodes are already unlocked when I get to them, analyzer modules didn't work (Error message, you cannot use data analyzer on Angel Hacking 1), and the loot is acquired by simply opening the inventory. Also, all the lootable cans are stacked on each others in every sites I've been so far, I'm not certain this is intended.


• Because of the above mentioned issue, no rats were spawned in the sites and the hacking minigame never prompted, so I don't have any feedback on this.


• The loot all button is missing from those anomaly site's cans (could be intended)


• New scanning modules were not seeded where I was, but I didn't have any problem scanning anything down without them in low sec. (I have what I consider to be average scanning skills points)


• Looted sites did not despawn after leaving them.


• Probably unrelated to exploring per say, but in combat sites, a few wrecks were randomly abandoned (turned blue) without any input from me. This happened seemingly randomly on frigate and destroyer rats. I wasn't using drones and I was the only player in the system. Happened in both Anoms and Signatures on one or 2 rats in every pockets. I didn't found anyway to recreate the bug myself.

This is all I have for now!

Cheers!

They definitely expire. Left a set out in space and closed the client, ran some errands IRL and couldn't reconnect to them when I returned ~2hrs later. Losing probes due to connection outages coupled with the inability to use anything *other* than 7 probes at a time will make getting stranded in w-space with 4-6 probes in your cargo/launcher a very real possibility.

My first impression is one of disappointment.


I've been exploring since you had to drop bookmarks and lay out your probe patterns for system coverage. I welcomed the scanning changes with Apocrypha and trained my skills so I could use 8 probes including Deeps. So imagine my surprise to find they're gone. I scan with 4 deeps and 4 combats. Works amazing for scanning out WH systems with lots of sigs.


I like the ability to drop all probes with one click in formation, but any decent scanner can drop their probes and have them setup in seconds so this isn't that big of a deal unless your aim is to remove pilot skill in scanning.


As noted by other posters, the 100% sig not staying at 100% is an annoyance.


Not sure what the hell the spread formation is. Is that your attempt to make up for the loss of deeps? If so, it fails.


I'll fiddle some more with the new setup but as it is now I don't see where actual skill will be needed. Drop 7 probes, hit scan, drag probes to center of sig, reduce au, scan, get bacon.

I also don't like that probes are recalled automatically. If I want to drop probes around and reconnect to them when I return to system what's wrong with that?

Yes this breaks 50% of pizza's gameplay (bombing).

All the other whining by wormhole residents is glorious. RIP carebears.

All of that work because I misinterpreted the OP's post :(

On that note, all I want are my DSP.

Hi log in to Singularity today and tried out your new scanning system.

The potential is there but at this moment, it is too cumbersome to use.

Problems

---

- Big annoyance for me is probe selection. Every time I press shift and select all probes, the moment I do something else all probes are deselected.
- Took awhile to figure out how to move all probes together.
- Ability to set my own formation.
- The UI sometimes does not update. For example, let say I select probe 1, and set the size to 4Au. The UI wont updated until I press scan.
- The UI seems a bit clunky, and lag is noticeable.
- No UI indication showing that by selecting the middle probe that the whole formation is selected.
- Sites no longer shows up 100% (*Not a major issue)
- Found a data site but was not able to access data cans even though I carried the right module. (Got an error stating that I cannot use data analyzer 1 with the hacking container, also tried using analyzer 1)

Suggestions

---

- All probes selected should remember their state, and remain selected until deselected.
- Quick and simple tutorial highlighting changes first time scanner is opened.
- Ability to launch one probe at a time and ability to set up your own formation.
- Highlight arrows when sites are 100%!
- Allow us to save location directly from scanner (* would be a great addition)
- Have UI immediately update!

Ideas

---

- Make probes destructible items in space
- If you are cloak, you ship systems scanner may not run (*just a thought)


Thank you for your time!

Here's some things you should look at (in order of flow through):

Scanning:

• Left clicking the "scanner button" in the HUD, produces a radial menu. Selecting the "System Scanner" from this menu does not automatically maximize the window if it has previously been opened and minimized.
• If I go through a stargate while in solar system map, my UI momentarily disappears and the map just suddenly switches from one system to the next. Shouldn't it "zoom out and back in" or something?
• As a side note, while in the "star gate jump tunnel" Mouse-over tool-tips such as from a "show info" window still pop-up as you move the mouse.
• It would be nice if your chat window stayed open while you're in the "star gate jump tunnel". Pretty though it may be, disappearing windows interferes with game play during a moment when you can't do much else. This is bad.
• The warning message for when you jump into a new system with your probes out is still displayed even though they will be returned to you.
• Now that we have a visual for the "system scanning sweep": Some sort of visual feedback should be added for D-Scan as well. An overlay should show us what angle our d-scanner is working at.
• Despite my "sweeping scanner" having detected all the cosmic anomalies/signatures upon jumping in to a system, they do not show up on the scanning window's list until the analyze button is used.
• It would be nice to be able to disable the "system sweep scanner" visual effect but still be able to see the signatures in space. Maybe if you only had it go around 1 or 2 times when you first warp in to a system? After that its a bit too gaudy.
• Unidentified sites are not listed in the scanner window, so you have to pan around trying to see them all. This is not ideal. Especially since they are automatically given to you when you enter the system.
• "Signal strength" values in the tool-tips are too truncated, you need to show precision out to at least 2 decimal places (the lowest being 1.25%). Also it should be called "Signature Strength". "Signal Strength" is what % your at while scanning.
• The sorting bar with the "type", "group", "id", ect... is missing from the scanner window. This is annoying especially in big systems with lots of sigs, where you want to be able to sort the list.
• The "type" field says "Cosmic" instead of "Cosmic Signature"; although, "Cosmic Anomaly" is still correct.
• Each line in the scanning window eats up WAY too much space, especially in crowded systems. There needs to be an option for the lines to be smaller.
• When first launching, the probes' "starting position" is where ever you place them in the system map rather than right next to your ship... This can make for rather long probe warp times in some instances.
• It would be nice if you could set up your probes for the next scan while your previous scan was underway. I've been tired of waiting for the scan to finish for years.
• It would be nice if double clicking on a red dot centered the camera... or better yet the probe constellation on the dot. (I know we're venturing in to "bottable" territory here, but it's annoying to have to pan your camera twice or more to center the dot)
• If you want a truly useful "history" then you should save all "spheres, circles, and dots" that have ever been made for a signature. Then, when selecting that signature, the user can visually eyeball where previous scan results overlap or cluster together in order to better guess where to scan (even if their last scan didn't include that signature). Especially since general direction and signal strength of all the sites are automatically given to you. you should just be able to pick one out from the list and see where all the previous scans of that sig intersect. This history should persist until the site has been 100%'d. Previous scans should be color coded, to indicate which scans have lower deviation, and thus, more fidelity in the signatures actual position.
• When you put it back in, the "scanning in progress" bar, should NOT overwrite the data field which shows all the signatures. For those of us that keep records, it's annoying as hell not to be able to jot this stuff down while we're waiting on the next scan.
• When you put in the "custom probe formations", please allow not only "position" but also "scan radius" to be preset. When using such custom probe formations, please maintain the difference in "scan radius" when probes have different radii. So, for example, if I have 4 probes at 8 AU and 3 (or 4?) probes at 2 AU, when I re-size, I should have 4 probes at 4 AU and 3 (or 4? please!) probes at 1 AU. This should persist all the way down to minimum size, whereupon it collapses, but is remembered by the system: such that, if I have 8 probes at .25 AU, and I re-size upward, I should have 4 probes at 1 AU and 4 probes at .25 AU. I hope that's clear, because it would be a god sent of a time saver.
• From a mathematical perspective, our ships "knowing" the position in the sky of a signature would allow us to pinpoint the position of a signature simply by warping from one side of the solar system to the other (using parallax). Even just dropping one probe and getting a "distance to target" would pinpoint the signature. The whole idea behind probes is that they use Trilateration which uses distance only. Once you have a pair of angles to go with a distance, pinpointing is very easy. Basically, you're breaking "Verisimilitude" by allowing us to see the sigs before we've pinpointed them, because no one in their right mind would use 7 probes do what 1 probe and a ship scanner can.

Question on the new modules: Do stacking penalties apply? My reason for asking is this: If there are no stacking penalties, shouldn't I stack multiple modules on my (free) ibis to make it equal or better at probing than a (not free) buzzard? In addition, shouldn't I choose to not spend a 4-week duration training skill prerequisites to competently fly covert ops ships and instead spend those 4-weeks training the astrometric skills which would apply to probing done by every ship I own?

In short, my worry is that this change could directly diminish the specialized probing advantage for covert ops ships, because many ships are now capable of probing just as well (via probing modules), with lower skill requirements, and lower cost. Sure, covert ops still warp cloaked, but there's plenty of other (more versatile) ships that can warp cloaked. I do like the new modules, I just worry that I'll have no reason to keep using buzzard.


Also, I really like the idea of making one module with multiple scripts instead of three modules. I would carry several stacks of scripts everywhere I go & change them immediately to suit my needs; but I highly doubt I would carry around 3 stacks of modules to adapt my ship to my scanning needs.

---

Also:
So long as you're improving the probing system, there's one "little things" inconsistency many pilots would appreciate resolving:

When improving a ship's probing ability, pilots decide whether to fit tech-1 or tech-2 gravity capacitor upgrade rigs. However, due to calibration requirements, ships can only have either two tech-1 gravity capcitor rigs or one tech-2 gravity capacitor rig. The result is that a probing ship rigged with two tech-1 rigs performs better than (and is cheaper than) a probing ship rigged with one tech-2 rig. So upgrading to tech-2 rigs results in a relative decrease in probing performance with the only benefit of freeing up 1 rig slot (which is not typically worth the expense). This decrease in performance when upgrading to tech-2 rigs is inconsistent; it would be great you could make a change to make tech-2 rigged probing ships perform better. Perhaps increasing the bonus provided by tech-2 rigging or decreasing rigging calibration costs would be enough?

1. Copy pasting sig ID's dont work (keep screwing with WH people and You will get another "small part of community" thread)


2. I guess that with the new scan overlay doing basically what deep space was doing before, all 100% sites should be visible on map, they dont until you run on-board scanner


3. on-board scanner dont show progress bar


4. pls seed new scanning modules


5. Spread fprmation is useless - pls dont put in game buttons to do useless stuff and teach new players wrong things


6. selected probes deselect after scan


7. DSP was very important for keeping track of new ships in space and also was much better for DSP pribing (looking for specifis signal streanght) then combat probes - give it back


8. I cant lunch probes when i have less than 7 - what if i lost some probes? its possible to scan with just 4, so why dont we are able to scan with 4?


9. Is the probe timer removed?


10. stuff scanned with overlay scanner whould show on list - its not showing untill you use probes/on-board scanner


11. scanning radial menu keeps forcing you to press buttns, when you move mouse away and click to close it keeps slicking on of the buttons in the direction you moved mouse away


12. there should be a sound indicator when scan overlay detects something after jumping into system - right now i have to frantically ship-spin in space to see if there is anything


13. green line warp indicators are gone


14. i can no longer center scaning UI around one of my probes using visual ui, i have to double click on list where you dontk know which probe globe" is which probe (edit: ok, i can double click on arrow cube)


15. things scanned to 100% dont stay scanned down

excluding those problems I see light at the end of the tunnel for this new feature. Keep working and DONT RELEASE AT THIS STATE