Lets focus a thread and discuss current exploration elements in ES2.

For me, one of the key things I look at with 4x games is this: Will I still enjoy the mechanic 50 turns in? This will be a key factor into much of my feedback below.

Probe System

As the game currently invests a lot of time (in terms of modules and technologies) into probes, I think its important early on to decide what direction they should go in.

Right now, the probe system is neat once in a while, but I find that I tire of it very quickly (it fails my 50 turn test). The concept of exploring areas outside of the star lanes is a nice one, but I think this mechanic ultimately takes too much attention away from other core areas of the game.

That said, I like the fun reveals this system can provide, but I think it can be done in more streamlined ways. A few ideas:

1) A ship can go into "active scan mode". It consumes a turn (or multiple turns) but then new areas outside of the star lane within a certain distance can show up. This can be further enhanced by sensor modules the ship can pick up. You could even make it where a ship has to have special sensor modules to do these scans....which allows you to do exploration in tiers. As sensor technology improves, suddenly new things can be found in your old areas.

2) Passive Pings followed by Active Probes: Another option is that explore ships (again maybe it requires certain sensor modules) get pings out in space as they move around. Ultimately a probe must be sent to investigate (and some pings could even be false!). This makes exploration a bit more directed. You can still use auto explore to get a lot of "ooh something is out there" intel, and still have probes....but its no longer a blind spam of probes.

3) Use of special ships instead of probes. Taking option 1 to a more passive level, explore ships with special modules simply find things as they move around, no active work required. While you lose the active part of the exploration, you keep the nice factor that as your sensor technology improves, you can find new things in the same old areas....and have to run your sensor ships through those areas again.

Initial System Summary

When you find a new system and click on it, you get an interesting cinematic that goes through the planets for you.

This one also fails my 50 turn test. The first few times, I find it pretty and interesting. But it doesn't take long for this to go from interesting to grating. Worse for me is that I can't see the planets of a system until I click on it and get that summary, which I then immediately escape out of it. 

I am sure many people like this cinematic, so I think the only change here is to have an option to turn it off, and just show me the planets in the system as I explore.

Anomaly Scanning

I will start by saying that Planet Anomalies and features was one of the best parts of ES1. The combination of anomalies and special resources created some truly interesting systems. I am so thankful those are back (and even more plentiful).

Now we find anomalies gradually through the anomaly explore system. Once again, this one fails my 50 turn test. Having to:

1) Click my ship

2) Click the explore action

3) Click on the system

4) Click on the Unknown Feature I want to check

5) Wait for the little animation to finish

becomes tedious very quickly. 

I understand your desire to make exploration more engaging (it is one of the X's in 4x after all), but I would offer a counterpoint. Personally, I found ES1's system actually more interesting. When I got to a new system, I was like a kid at Christmas. I would open up the new system and start looking at all the new resources and anomalies, quickly doing some calculations about how good that system was. And the joy I experienced when I found a really good one was addicting, but that feeling came because I saw so much potential all at once, instead of in little doses.

The feeling returned whenever a tech revealed a new resource. Suddenly all of these gifts would just pop up on my systems, and the Christmas feeling returned as I went through my planets, thinking of their new potential with the new resource revealed. That was the fun of exploration for me.

Now all of that said, if you still feel this is the direction you wish to go, then my ask is simply to create an Auto System Explore function, that will have a ship go to an explored system and start exploring each unknown anamoly one by one, so its less tedious for players like me.

I hope this feedback was helpful, and I encourage other Early Adopters to share feedback (on exploration only) in this thread.

• Agree that there should be an option to skip the discover system cinematic.
• Undecided about the probes for discovering stuff outsides of lanes. But I like the idea of Passive Pings(from ships,planets, asteroids whatever) . The false pings could be stuff that adds flavour/live to the galaxy but has no ingame effect (beside giving out the ping) like comets or a big space monster or what have you.
• Like the one probe for one planet anomaly  system so far. But an auto launch probes on anomalies mode would probably be nice.

1) Click my ship

2) Click the explore action

3) Click on the system

4) Click on the Unknown Feature I want to check

5) Wait for the little animation to finish

Haven't you added in a step? I swear when I played earlier today that when I clicked the explore action I did not have to click on the system and it zoomed to the appropriate view.

N.N.Thoughts wrote:

At the moment, does anyone know what potentially is there to find outside of systems (by going off-piste with free ship travel, so to speak)?

In one of the games I was playing I found a lone 'constellation' that wasn't connected to any others that just had one system with asteroids and another star system. So, it does look like there are things out there to find.

• Probe System + Exploration:

I like 'pathfinding with probes' alot. It helps for the orientation and gathering information and to choose where to go for me. What I don't like to do with probes is to explore the anomalies. It doesn't give me the feeling of being engaged in exploration but is more a redundant action because by the time, you unlock all anomalies. But I can imagine a way, in which exploration with probes can be interesting:

Some planets have one or several slots to explore. Actually, the slots can all be explored by the time and doesn't give a hint what could be behind that. If you add consequences in exploring a planet, it would really feel engaging. 

1. There should be a hint, what is behind the door and additionaly. (What kind of loot, buff, etc.)

2. You CAN'T explore everything. For example, if there are three slots to explore by probes only two or one can be explored (randomly determined in galaxy generation). So you have to follow the hints and choose which slot you want to explore, the other remains a mystery which could be unlocket with techniques in later eras.

This is inspired by Dungeon of the Endless. Opening doors can be frightening and you really have to choose if you want to open a door and which. This descision making process in exploring a planet gives exploring by probes in it's current state more gameplay value in my opinion!

• Initial System Summary

Agreed in all points. At the beginning it's pretty neat, but by the time it's a bit of an annoyance. So it would be awesoem if we can toggle it off in general.