Increase small ship ore detector range, add long-range "imprecise" detection to large detectors.

Auhrii shared this feedback 5 years ago
Submitted

Hello! After spending in excess of five hours searching for Uranium-bearing asteroids, I have come to two conclusions:

  1. Small ship ore detectors are useless now that asteroids are so much larger, and any useful ore is buried deeper within them.
  2. It would be great to know an asteroid's general composition from a considerable distance away.

The first can be solved by simply increasing the small ship ore detector's maximum range to 250m. However, that leaves a balance issue between small and large grid detectors: You're using 25x more detector components in a large block for no gain whatsoever. That's where the second idea - and point - comes in.

Keep the current precise detection capped at 250m, but anything beyond that switches to an "imprecise" detection system - instead of scanning individual voxels or small groups of voxels, it performs a quick check on the asteroid (or planetary chunk) and displays the composition (maybe approximate composition or with varying certainty) in a marker positioned at the centre of the asteroid or planetary chunk.

Assuming a list is kept for the composition of a given asteroid or chunk, this shouldn't introduce any noticeable overhead.

Replies (5)

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At least have a block or antenna you could build to increase detection range. Also a mesh grid, drones being sent out to detect ore between them in a certain distance (scanning an asteroid).

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A kind of "long range scanner" that just gave you the approximate location of resources would be cool. I think it would be fair for this to be a separate block that has a cooldown/power up similar to the Jump drive and that then has to be triggered by the player. Another possibility would be to make it only usable outside of gravity and only when not moving. (As I understand it ore scanning is a somewhat intensive process. Requiring the player to stay put should help _reduce_ that I would think. At least not make it worse.)

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The Rebel server has a mod for a larger 3x3x3 ore detector with bettar range. Think that concept works pretty good. I use the normal ore detector on my small mining ship and the larger one on a special scouting ship

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Would it be possible to add a Uni-Directional Ore Detector? It could scan an area (/volume) similar in shape to the beam from a spotlight, thus significantly reducing the directions for recasting, and therefore allow for a significantly longer scanning range. (Such as pointing at a whole asteroid from some distance away) - If this still proves to be too CPU intensive then perhaps it could run once with a 'Scan Now' trigger, and then require a 'cool down' period as @PriorUniform721 has suggested?

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Hi,


I thought about that too. My idea would be some kind of connection/collaboration of the ore detector with an antenna and/or programmable block or turret controller that would lead to a 100% increase of the detection range. That seems to be a fair in-game solution to boost ore detection. It would make antennas or antenna dishes also more useful. (The antenna function itself would be deactivated that way.)


What do you think?

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