Need better navigation on planets

[c_tomczyk]

Ok been around since launch. Left for a long while due to various issues and trying again. Like the stuff and bases but THERE NEEDS to be a way to set way points or such on planets to navigate. I mean we can warp time to jump to hyperspace but cannot have any mapping system to find locations we want to return to like a settlement, outpost, or drop pod?? Come on Devs. Living ships are great but if I cannot return to a drop pod because I did not have the items needed, or want to role play a bit being on a planet and going shopping at a local settlement where is reason for sticking around and building a base. I know this has been touched on before but really. I love the concept but you need to flush out current systems before launching extra content.

PLEASE PLEASE get some some type of way point save mechanic. Even if we can just revisit waypoint locations already on the map. I am not going to put up 40 bases on a single planet just to navigate where I have been. Give a map feature or something to assist.

[iambear.]

You can set a custom waypoint but pressing "E" when you're in visor mod.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by bear.:

You can set a custom waypoint but pressing "E" when you're in visor mod.

Yeah, but you can't mark all the things you've encountered. You get one waypoint and that's it. We definitely need some sort of map feature. I'm surprised there isn't one, given that exploration is a core component of the game.

[Shame]

I guess it would be good to have a waypoint list for every system you go to that shows up on your inventory menu or something. Then you can either "remove signal" or "hide signal" so you can focus on the stuff you want to get to.

[Tom]

For this living ship quest line, I'd like to have a dialog where I could enter the coordinates and have the game place an icon at that location on the planet. Then I could just fly directly to it. Probably not much chance of that happening, since this is the first time in the game's history that we've had a task like that to accomplish, and the game designers are purposefully making it somewhat difficult, but I can dream.

[ihleslie]

Originally posted by Tom:

For this living ship quest line, I'd like to have a dialog where I could enter the coordinates and have the game place an icon at that location on the planet. Then I could just fly directly to it. Probably not much chance of that happening, since this is the first time in the game's history that we've had a task like that to accomplish, and the game designers are purposefully making it somewhat difficult, but I can dream.

What is wrong with difficult?

[Dirak2012]

That's why we have this wonderful things called beacons.

[Chro]

I use beacons in different colors, for example purple for portals, red for abandoned structures and green for trading posts

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Dirak2012:

That's why we have this wonderful things called beacons.

Originally posted by Chro:

I use beacons in different colors, for example purple for portals, red for abandoned structures and green for trading posts

Interesting to note, but it doesn't mean the map feature shouldn't be added regardless.

[SteelFire]

Beacons are the feature. You can build as many as you want and drop them. You can color code them based on the available color schemes. You can see them from space, so you can use them as pulse jump targets.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by SteelFire:

Beacons are the feature. You can build as many as you want and drop them. You can color code them based on the available color schemes. You can see them from space, so you can use them as pulse jump targets.

Beacons aren't the same thing as a map. That's the feature I was talking about. I'll edit the comment to make it clearer.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

If they did provide a "map", there become a lot of problematic things to address.

How long should it be maintained?
Should maps for every world you have explored be maintained?
How detailed should the map be? Just icons of sites already discovered that you can click on for direction similar to Fallout or does it actually show the world in detail that you have traveled over. This would be the style where areas become visible showing all known buildings as you travel.

It becomes a real issue for managing your save file size and your processor usage. It would likely increase load times substantially, especially if users want them stored forever or want the full monty type maps.

I am guessing they would have to set a limit on how many "maps" were stored.

Been playing over 2000 hours and never needed a map. I am not sure there is a true game play improvement if this is implemented. I guess it does dumb things down which appears to be the trend for game updates since NEXT.

[SteelFire]

What do you need a map for? It would be redundant.

I'm at a point on a planet that I want to be able to come back to. Open map, tell it to set a waypoint at my current location. Close map. Great. So, does this map just magically produce a waypoint icon that's visible in the physical world so you can find your way back, without the aid of some piece of technology?

Also, mapping an entire planet surface would chew up a lot more processing power. Would you magically get a complete map of every planet when you enter a system? If so, why wouldn't it have all the important places already marked? What about uninhabited systems? What about caves?

Or, ya know, since we already have that technology. I'm at a point on a planet that I want to be able to come back to. I open my build menu, select tech, select the beacon, select the color, and place the beacon. Now I have a device placed that emits a signal indicating a waypoint. I can also pick that device back up and reuse it if I don't need to find that place any more.

[Tom]

@ihleslie, there's absolutely nothing wrong with difficult. Personally, I didn't have any particular problem finding the graves, but it was clear that the devs wanted us to work for them a bit, given the blinding storms and the terrestrial coordinate system that NMS gave us for navigation. From the posts here it's clear that a lot of people have had and continue to have quite a bit of difficulty managing that part of the problem, so they might have an opinion different from yours and mine about 'what's wrong with difficult.'

The coordinates, of course, correspond to our own latitude (distance north and south of the equator) and longitude (distance east and west of the prime meridian at Greenwich, England), and they even go in the same direction as ours. For instance, the US west coast's time zone is at minus eight hours (west), and NMS's coordinate system goes negative toward the west as well.

[UnwieldyRex]

It would be useful to be able to input coords. and get a marker, but in my opinion the only real necessity as of right now is an East and West marker. I can fly pin-pointed towards North and South, but I have to guess on East and West. It's a suck-tastic "compass" when it comes to exploration/navigation to coords. Much QoL can come from a simple "E" and "W" on the compass, and they literally half-assed the compass since only two of the 4 main directions are present. Or even give a heading via degrees (360/0 = N, 90 = E, 180 = S, 270 = W). This game is NOT set up for coordinate based exploration AT ALL as of right now so it was terrible for them to implement coordinate-finding missions to begin with.

[SteelFire]

Originally posted by UnwieldyRex:

It would be useful to be able to input coords. and get a marker, but in my opinion the only real necessity as of right now is an East and West marker. I can fly pin-pointed towards North and South, but I have to guess on East and West. It's a suck-tastic "compass" when it comes to exploration/navigation to coords. Much QoL can come from a simple "E" and "W" on the compass, and they literally half-assed the compass since only two of the 4 main directions are present. Or even give a heading via degrees (360/0 = N, 90 = E, 180 = S, 270 = W). This game is NOT set up for coordinate based exploration AT ALL as of right now so it was terrible for them to implement coordinate-finding missions to begin with.

This I can get behind. Having the HUD compass be an actual compass with hash marks and some level of degree callouts.

That wouldn't help a lot of people understand the coordinate system and might confuse some even more. Short of an autopilot function though, I don't think anything is going to help some portion of the player base figure it out.