#Deep LIDAR Sweep Ability/Module to spawn events or set trajectory to flares on vis feed

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

zealous star
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A highlight of this game for me is hunting the very cool events, points of interest, and story moments that are scattered through the rings. However, events can be sparse due to their (presumably, percieved) random nature. Also there is not a strong reason for a player to push deep into the rings.

Hunting flares on the vis feed does not feel viable either, as they are often very far away, beyond the ability to fly to them manually.

A hardpoint mount that can be activated to perform a long range LIDAR scan to spawn an event would help event hunting. A different hardpoint mount (a telescope? a high gain antenna to talk to the telescopes on Enceladus better?) could be used to lock on to the engine flares in the rings and plot a trajectory like other contacts.

This could help form a natural progression path to pull players deeper into the rings. If you think this trivializes travelling further into the rings, event markers could be placed only slightly deeper into the rings, just a few 10's of kilometers.

I imagine that adding in events takes a lot of dev time and a concern could be exhausting event content with these kind of modules. Limitations could be placed on:

Reliability - the module returns a false contact, perhaps indicated by a crewmember commenting on the fact soon after arriving at the false contact location.

Wear - the module burns out quickly after a few sweeps, limiting event hopping per dive. This could be a tunable parameter: higher range/reliability on the module burns it out quicker.

Cost - low/mid/high cost modules of this type with low/mid/high range and reliability could provide natural progression to go deeper into the rings.

hearty wedge
hearty wedge
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This would actually work really well with the sensor upgrades. Either a separate sensor, or just add a generic "long range contacts" to sensors.

rapid bolt
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you know your suggestion is a hit when Koder is sounding pretty excited about it

zealous star
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Awesome glad it's interesting! I like the events in this game 🙂

hearty wedge
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How would we present "distant LIDAR hit out of the screen" on classical LIDAR displays?

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one thing that crossed my mind is to place a normal dot, just on the very edge of the display.

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another idea would be to implement actual maximum distance on this display, which would make it essentially circular, but that would reduce it's current function.

zealous star
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Normal dots on the longer range displays blend together quite a bit already (unless they're clearly grouped together, like from a moonlet or hab). What about a small arc (maybe colored distinctly), just outside the current LIDAR circle?

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Behold, art:

hearty wedge
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Most current lidars are rectangular through

zealous star
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What about simple long lines at a distinct color not present currently on the LIDAR?

Current.png
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Though I was more thinking this kind of feature would add contacts to the Astrogator list.

hearty wedge
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currently considering something like this

image.png
zealous star
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That's definitely readable! If tuning of any type is available to the player, I'd personally always try to push things so that only the "most significant" (closest and/or most reliable long range contacts) show up for me. Maybe many players feel differently and are okay with a lot of apparently spurious contacts.

Overall though if length on these long-range contact bars indicates signal strength, I think that's reasonable and readable.

hearty wedge
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that would pretty much display all the contacts that are out of the range, with their respective albedo response - so shiny things have pulsing signatures
would include long-range contacts. the way you could distinguish them is by seeing a consistent ping in the same-ish direction

zealous star
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I'm not sure how easy that would be for the player depending on how cluttered the contacts get, the size of the radar HUD, and all these other factors you could tweak, but if you implement it and "finding a long-range contact" with this interface is something you can do reliably, that would be awesome. 🙂

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This is certainly a feature creep suggestion, but this open up the possibility of a new HUD (or ship) with a long range scan focus, where the HUD just has a large amount of space dedicated to the LIDAR panel.

hearty wedge
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I think that's already on the backlog

quaint bridge
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You could have a highlighed segment of circle that shows general direction of distant contact within about 15 degrees due to signal scattering while going through ice. Mining ships would propably want to evade those areas while scavenger and research (easter egg hunters) crafts would go for em.

hearty wedge
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that would imply that there should be a distinction between a contact 8km away, and still in the sim range, and the one 20km away that you just get vague responses from. I'm not sure I like that.

quaint bridge
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not really... it would just show you general direction to head towards or evade

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due to it not being focused on single point the player would still have to search the final destination giving it some challange while also helping with not missing it completely

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This could be a special drone slot module that helps with navigation towards ring events and also allow player to lock onto locations in certaing range to perform fast automated burn towards it. Same as setting destination in astrogation menu. Could call it something like Expanded navigation array. Active perk allows player to perform fast jump towards unmarked locations for purposes of faster travel and chasing flares on visfeed and passive perk highlights lidar anomalies from longer range. If i understood the original idea right. Due to the singnal being scattered from passing through ice it would not tell player exact location or distance to the anomaly.

quaint bridge
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huh... just had an idea... why not make this a launcher for long range probes. Would make it less good but easier to ballanced by limiting the times it can be fired. It would scan area where it was fired and allow player to jump to it.

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it could tell you ice density, rought estimate of ore in the ice, what ships are in area (in case of pirates and derelicts there would be no afiliating mentioned) and if theres a lidar anomaly in the area.

rapid bolt
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Kind of like the THICC and the Companions and the claim beacon

quaint bridge
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those would only have one shot then you have to go retrieve it even if theres nothing there of interest. And the point im trying to preserve is speed and long range capability.

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if you lets say see a engine flare on vizfeed and wanna go check it out you launch a probe to it that gets there withing a minute or so and then if you like whats there you can jump to it.

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using drone would propably double the time before you get there

rapid bolt
quaint bridge
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it would be a rocket that goes above ring and scans the area of interest while passing by

rapid bolt
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having it act more like a THICC will allow it to dodge the asteroids

rapid bolt
quaint bridge
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but viizfeed only gives you visual look... not data

rapid bolt
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something is launched above the rings so we can see

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Gravimetric and microseismic has data

quaint bridge
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in area limited around ship

rapid bolt
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it’d just make more sense to add a telescope to the already launched sensor drone, wouldn’t it?

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give it better sensing equipment and the ability to highlight the rough direction of an event, sounds much more effective than bringing a second drone specifically for that purpose

quaint bridge
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a probe with its own lidar array and other reading tools flying close to area of interest can provide more in my opinion

rapid bolt
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maybe, maybe

quaint bridge
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and this might be a fun way to base exposive rockets later on. Some workshop on encl removes all the scan equipment and places a hesh charge on its nose. If you pick up a probe launcher you could even decide to take half of the launcher filled with probes and half of it filled with explosives