Scanner Room Rework
Shurlan
Join Date: 2018-02-28 Member: 238403Members
Join Date: 2018-02-28 Member: 238403Members
After 50 hours of enjoying the game I want to nag about the one thing that annoyed me: The Scanner Room.
More specifically: The selection of what to scan for.
First the changes I suggest and second why.
Make everything that has been scanned with the handheld scanner (not every everything, just what makes sense as a resource) available in the scanner room selection.
Make universal things always available (even without scanning them first) like heat sources. (This could be extended to fragments, wrecks and databoxes since the AI has prior knowledge of the aurora and human tech)
Maybe remove selections which were scanned for but did not yield a result. (Not so sure about this one since it's probably bug prone with range-up/down-grades, maybe marking them and moving them to the last page of the selection or similar)
Why?
Immersive reasons:
Currently scanning does not seem as rewarding as it could be. To be make something available for scanning I currently need to "find" it after constructing a new scanner room by swimming close enough.
Is my AI to stupid to copy the settings of the other scanner room? I don't even have to see it, just be close enough and somehow the scanner in range knows about the resource? It feels silly.
Gameplay reasons:
Scanners forget every time one loads the game every resource the had available for selection, therefore a save and load is not what it should be: A continuation of the last season.
For every scanner one needs to encounter the resource after building the room before knowing where to look. If I need to encounter it first whats the point of the room? I already found what I wanted the room to scan for. This gets super annoying with saving and loading!
My frustrating experience:
I was probably unlucky with my fragment distributions since all I was missing for a long time was the cyclops engine. From a previous playthrough I roughly knew where to look (the biome) but was unable to find the fragments. Well, let's build a scanner room in the middle of the biome and scan for fragments, that'll work right? There I was, outpost build and range upgrades installed: Let's scan!
Except fragments were not in the selection. Hmm, let's take a swim and stare at some fragments nearby. Thought and done. Still no fragments in the list. Maybe look at more fragments for longer? Nope. Since I only could find already scanned tech I could not scan for non scanned tech. And with that the room failed to serve what I assume is its supposed best purpose: Preventing people from being stuck on the few last techs they can't find. After that realisation I alt-F4ed because f**k you game wasting my time with a thing that should work but doesn't. (I later found the fragments and they were in range (I always put beacons directly above my scanner rooms))
More specifically: The selection of what to scan for.
First the changes I suggest and second why.
Make everything that has been scanned with the handheld scanner (not every everything, just what makes sense as a resource) available in the scanner room selection.
Make universal things always available (even without scanning them first) like heat sources. (This could be extended to fragments, wrecks and databoxes since the AI has prior knowledge of the aurora and human tech)
Maybe remove selections which were scanned for but did not yield a result. (Not so sure about this one since it's probably bug prone with range-up/down-grades, maybe marking them and moving them to the last page of the selection or similar)
Why?
Immersive reasons:
Currently scanning does not seem as rewarding as it could be. To be make something available for scanning I currently need to "find" it after constructing a new scanner room by swimming close enough.
Is my AI to stupid to copy the settings of the other scanner room? I don't even have to see it, just be close enough and somehow the scanner in range knows about the resource? It feels silly.
Gameplay reasons:
Scanners forget every time one loads the game every resource the had available for selection, therefore a save and load is not what it should be: A continuation of the last season.
For every scanner one needs to encounter the resource after building the room before knowing where to look. If I need to encounter it first whats the point of the room? I already found what I wanted the room to scan for. This gets super annoying with saving and loading!
My frustrating experience:
I was probably unlucky with my fragment distributions since all I was missing for a long time was the cyclops engine. From a previous playthrough I roughly knew where to look (the biome) but was unable to find the fragments. Well, let's build a scanner room in the middle of the biome and scan for fragments, that'll work right? There I was, outpost build and range upgrades installed: Let's scan!
Except fragments were not in the selection. Hmm, let's take a swim and stare at some fragments nearby. Thought and done. Still no fragments in the list. Maybe look at more fragments for longer? Nope. Since I only could find already scanned tech I could not scan for non scanned tech. And with that the room failed to serve what I assume is its supposed best purpose: Preventing people from being stuck on the few last techs they can't find. After that realisation I alt-F4ed because f**k you game wasting my time with a thing that should work but doesn't. (I later found the fragments and they were in range (I always put beacons directly above my scanner rooms))
Comments
I'm unsure whether you agree with me or not. Anyway it seems to me that I was not really specific.
I think that the scanner should highlight unresearched fragments over already completed tech. (Then again: The fragments category could be split up into two. One for finished tech and the other one for unfinished research, since it's a source of titanium which currently is not findiable through the use of the scanner room.)
I described the problem with the current scanner room, regarding finding fragments, in the last (rather wordy) part of my first post.