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[xenoargh]

The Neutrino Detector mechanic is not really Fun.

In theory, it's supposed to provide a way to explore systems and find distant pieces of interesting space-junk to loot.

The reality? Not so much. If you're efficiently canvassing a system to Survey the planets, you'll find pretty much everything. If you add in a cursory zip around asteroid belts, you've generally found everything worth finding. So, it slows you down, eats a resource you don't want to carry around that's quite expensive, and adds very little new Fun. Meanwhile, you're eating time spent playing on staring at a UI element, hoping that it's not just a pointless goose-chase.

A better mechanic:

Using the Neutrino Detector should eat X Volatiles, require the fleet to stay completely stationary for a full day. Once it's run, then the System overlay should now mark the locations and size of the sources, because the positions have been triangulated (see mockup illustration).



It won't tell the player whether the sources are false-positives, but it'll give the player something to steer towards and make using it less clunky.

In addition, this is an opportunity to create better tension and Adventure. Distant sources of neutrinos, outside the periphery of a System's planets, might be Something Very Interesting. Maybe it's a Pirate fleet, undergoing a stealthy rendezvous (and not thrilled that it's been noticed). Maybe it's a small group of "berserk" Domain vessels, lost in the void. Maybe it's someone who needs a rescue. Maybe it's just an interesting wreck. Maybe it's just some radioactive garbage from a long-ago space battle; junk, but interesting junk, because maybe it has a clue about where a nearby Pather base is located, or something. So running out into the deep black of a System to chase down one of these sources is potentially lucrative... and potentially perilous. That sounds like fun.

[Mortrag]

Sound definitely better than the current version.
Especially, if you know the number of volatiles you need beforehand and so can plan, with how many neutrino-scans you want to do and how many volatiles you need, so you're not forced to carry more than necessary and waste cargo space.

[xenoargh]

Yeah. This proposal gets rid of that and other hassles. It does have the slight disadvantage of being more like those "Open World" snoozefests where you're going to points on a map to collect things that aren't meaningful or interesting <stares meaningfully at Horizon Zero Dawn> but I think that could be mitigated through having opportunities to meet Something Really Scary once in a while, and treasures worth the potential risk. It'd certainly make Iron Mode risk-taking more interesting, if it represented a way to sometimes get way ahead... if you don't lose your fleet.

[Megas]

The only spikes I can see on the Neutrino Detector are either stuff I already know about or false positives.  I cannot remember a time since my first visit to Alpha Site when Neutrino Detector found something I did not already know about.  Nearly every spike that looked like a lead to a hidden item was a false positive.  Every time I gave Neutrino Detector another chance, I get tormented by false positives I cannot confirm false until I spend too much time watching the spikes... not move.

If I need to search for something, Sensor Burst spam has been more reliable, and does not consume an extra resource type.

[Wyvern]

Honestly, the neutrino detector would be fine if it actually came with the sort of computational support a real-world fleet would be able to provide - logging exact headings of traces, and where you were when those traces came in. With that, it'd be trivial to triangulate fixed targets (and rule out both fixed-heading false leads as well as moving targets i.e. other fleets in system - or even track fleets, if that's what you needed to do at the time.)

Since we're not here to play spreadsheets, though, perhaps the detector should have an extra mechanic where - regardless of whether or not you-the-player has worked out which traces are false positives - the longer you've run it in a given star system, the more it filters out known sources (false leads, stars, planets, etc.) and sharpens the response from unknown sources.

Xenoargh's suggestion isn't a bad one, either, I'll note.

[xenoargh]

That's an interesting suggestion. I was trying to come up w/ something simpler that achieved the goal of making exploration beyond the periphery reasonably profitable, dangerous and interesting, in the sense of, "I wonder what's out there this time".

The idea of sitting around burning an expensive resource to filter out false positives has some merits, if it's worth it more often than not. I just want a reason why I'd actually want to drag around Volatiles- it becomes what the mechanic intended then, where we can trade an optional resource for more Fun. On that note, if fighting Pirates or Indies, maybe Volatiles could drop sometimes, to give the player a potential source of resupply?

There may be better solutions. I don't know if there's any straightforward way to draw in that interface via a mod, or I'd probably just try setting it up to see how it feels.

[KDR_11k]

Anything's better than the current one. Though that alternative sounds like it's just a "scan entire map" function?

I've seen various detecting methods in various games. For example showing the distances of things so when you do another scan at some distance you can use the two distances and starting points to circle potential locations. Or get a heading vector for each detected thing and when you do more scans you can use those vectors to draw a line to the target. Having players use multiple scans to narrow it down could be interesting, provided of course there's anything to find out there in the first place.

To some degree I could even agree to the current scanner if the volatiles cost was removed, having both the volatiles cost AND the extreme unreliability just adds up to too much hassle, especially with how little you'll actually find with the scanner. I'm certainly not going to bring volatiles on my exploration trips when most of the time I don't see a need to use the scanner and I usually end up with an overflowing cargo hold that requires regularly dumping the least valuable bulk material.

[BaBosa]

The Neutrino Detector mechanic is not really Fun.

In theory, it's supposed to provide a way to explore systems and find distant pieces of interesting space-junk to loot.

The reality? Not so much. If you're efficiently canvassing a system to Survey the planets, you'll find pretty much everything. If you add in a cursory zip around asteroid belts, you've generally found everything worth finding. So, it slows you down, eats a resource you don't want to carry around that's quite expensive, and adds very little new Fun. Meanwhile, you're eating time spent playing on staring at a UI element, hoping that it's not just a pointless goose-chase.

A better mechanic:

Using the Neutrino Detector should eat X Volatiles, require the fleet to stay completely stationary for a full day. Once it's run, then the System overlay should now mark the locations and size of the sources, because the positions have been triangulated (see mockup illustration).

Spoiler

[close]

It won't tell the player whether the sources are false-positives, but it'll give the player something to steer towards and make using it less clunky.

In addition, this is an opportunity to create better tension and Adventure. Distant sources of neutrinos, outside the periphery of a System's planets, might be Something Very Interesting. Maybe it's a Pirate fleet, undergoing a stealthy rendezvous (and not thrilled that it's been noticed). Maybe it's a small group of "berserk" Domain vessels, lost in the void. Maybe it's someone who needs a rescue. Maybe it's just an interesting wreck. Maybe it's just some radioactive garbage from a long-ago space battle; junk, but interesting junk, because maybe it has a clue about where a nearby Pather base is located, or something. So running out into the deep black of a System to chase down one of these sources is potentially lucrative... and potentially perilous. That sounds like fun.

While the current system is problematic, I definitely wouldn't want it to just place marks on a map because then you'd just always use it and you'd lose the fun of exploring and just have frustration when you go to a far false positive. Making it draw some lines on the map though so you can look at it and try figure it out would be nice though rather than needing to remember which direction the blip last was.

[Gothars]

Using the Neutrino Detector should eat X Volatiles, require the fleet to stay completely stationary for a full day. Once it's run, then the System overlay should now mark the locations and size of the sources, because the positions have been triangulated

the longer you've run it in a given star system, the more it filters out known sources (false leads, stars, planets, etc.) and sharpens the response from unknown sources.

Those ideas could well be combined into one - use the detector while moving, as now, but the spikes of irrelevant sources get smaller over time, and dots are continuously added on the map. Once the whole system is neutrino mapped it should stop/minimize costing volatiles. That way you still had a predictable cost limit, but could also use the detector in small bursts.
Does the detector currently increase sensor profile? Maybe it should make you shine like a beacon to add some risk to using it.


Planets with unexplored ruins should count as a relevant source, btw.

[Megas]

While the current system is problematic, I definitely wouldn't want it to just place marks on a map because then you'd just always use it and you'd lose the fun of exploring and just have frustration when you go to a far false positive. Making it draw some lines on the map though so you can look at it and try figure it out would be nice though rather than needing to remember which direction the blip last was.

System exploration is tedious, especially when systems are big, almost as much as a drag as hyperspace travel.  The main problem with system exploration today is the fleet does not get +3 burn from topology, so player needs to bring lots of tugs with an otherwise slow fleet to keep burn up.  I guess player could build more nav beacons but that means hauling extra junk and maybe wasting time traveling to stable point.

Sometimes, I T-Jump into hyperspace then T-Jump over another cloud back into the system to go from planet to planet faster.

[Mortrag]

To some degree I could even agree to the current scanner if the volatiles cost was removed, having both the volatiles cost AND the extreme unreliability just adds up to too much hassle, especially with how little you'll actually find with the scanner. I'm certainly not going to bring volatiles on my exploration trips when most of the time I don't see a need to use the scanner and I usually end up with an overflowing cargo hold that requires regularly dumping the least valuable bulk material.

Agree.
There are two reasons why I haven't used the neutrino detector so far in any run:
1) Its ingame description doesn't really make clear what its benefits are.
2) I won't carry an extra stock of volatiles around and waste cargo space, if I don't know beforehand how many I need and so if they are actually useful.

xenoargh's suggestion would solve both problems: Simplifying the effect and easier calculation of the costs.
KDR_11k's suggestion would solve No. 2), and if it's used for free, then I can experiment with it and learn that way, how useful it actually is. I'm just not sure, if that would make the normal scan obsolete.

[KDR_11k]

I'm just not sure, if that would make the normal scan obsolete.

The scanner pulse and neutrino scanner work so differently that I doubt that's a real concern unless the neutrino was basically turned into a map hack.

[xenoargh]

Those ideas could well be combined into one - use the detector while moving, as now, but the spikes of irrelevant sources get smaller over time, and dots are continuously added on the map. Once the whole system is neutrino mapped it should stop/minimize costing volatiles. That way you still had a predictable cost limit, but could also use the detector in small bursts.

That might work; it means that if you want exact information, pay for it, but it gets rid of a lot of the things that make the mechanic less than fun. Then we're down to costs and whether there's anything interesting out there to actually find.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I tried using the Neutrino Detector this patch and I agree, it's pretty bad.

The worst thing about it is the false positives. I'm burning Volatiles to locate POIs and then it turns out most of them aren't even there. This is especially annoying since for many players the Neutrino Detector will be an ability of last resort - you went all around the system and you didn't find what you were looking for, so you use the ability and... good luck chasing ghost signals all over the system.

So I'd like to just remove the false positives from it completely. Random ideas for a tradeoff:
 - A lot higher Volatiles use(currently it's almost nothing)
 - It's not permanent but rather works for 5 seconds and then shuts down, on a cooldown(so you have to remember where the signatures were)
 - Planets/stars create much wider signatures(forces you to move around the system more to check if you didn't miss something hiding "behind" celestial bodies)
 - Double the current sensor profile penalty

[KDR_11k]

Dunno why you'd need another tradeoff, costing volatiles in addition to making you slowly fly across the system (which consumes supplies) seems expensive enough. It's not some cheat device that would break the game if left unchecked.