iain
The.Fallen
Unclaimed.
0
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Posted - 2013.05.10 03:40:00 -
[1] - Quote
I guess, as someone who just probes the odd anomoly or the odd ship, some of these changes are quite nice, the 8th probe is a bit of a pain tho, i like to leave one probe sitting on my fleet at min range/max strength to get a good 'lock' on my own people as they come in (to ignore).
Really tho, what I think gets me most is that this set of changes really undermines the new system - actually I'd go so far as to say the new system was always flawed but this improvement in the user interface really makes it more obvious.
Why not: Remove this whole 'multiple probe' thing entirely, make it a single spherical probe that just returns data (using deviation etc) for everything inside it.
It just simplifies the edges off the process thats already in place, the "trick" to scanning under the new system is just to keep your objective inside the central overlap area and narrow down, rather like the old (currently live) system but easier with the new formations and controls.... but basically that internal area where they overlap is the focus. why not just replace that with a single sphere rather than have all this irrelevant glitter and complexity.
Then, make it so two of these things can be launched at once with max skills, thats the 'win' move, replicating the old system of 'pairs of 4'.
Reducing the scan probe 'set' down to a single probe will significantly simplify the code for controlling the probes - lets face it, people are really going to want the '2 sets of 4' thing for multiprobing, but thats going to require multiple association sets of the probes and thats just tedious work. Replace instead with '2 sets of 1 probe' and there's no association or complexity to anything, code wise or interface wise. just a box with a sphere around it that people move and resize. like the formation system, except less cluttered.
This would simplify the 'scan' algorithm substantially, which will in future be spending 99% of its processing time running the same "relative positions" of the probes (i.e. the angles between their intersections and distance from the center relative to the area scanned are fairly constant if you stick to using formations, thats the point of the formation.) if you replace it with a single spherical scan, most of this maths goes down the drain, its either in the sphere, or it isn't. after that you just have to throw the deviation and scan strength algorithms through a few tweaks to work it under the new system.
I dunno, I always thought the current scanning system (the one on live at the moment) was pretty "cool", tho having used it, its pretty pointless scanning 'smart' ships (i.e. anyone who moves) and pretty tedious for scanning anything (half the reason i quit easy WH space, so bored of scanning), but still the "idea" was cool. But when I look at it from this perspective with the formations and the fact it might as well just be a scanning sphere, I'm forced to wonder if the system was ever actually all that great, it's just become really obvious how much of a mindless micromanagement chore it was, which the UI now simplifies, to the point where ... why not just finish what you started here.
And yes, for everyone with their probe tricks, I appreciate they continue to be broken under this system. The deep space probe trick was probably not intentional in the first place (or it would have been made clearer and simpler)...
I think however, regardless of what you do with your probes, be it simple 4-pyramid scanning of things or some weird combination of probe types and ranges, the present test server system is the worst of both worlds - either we revert back to what we had and its increased power at increased micromanagement/complexity, or it needs to evolve forwards, either to some very complicated "association sets" thing, or just to accept that ultimately this *is* a trivialisation of scanning micro and to just complete the job entirely. |