scanning, raiding, hiding your base

[Crazy D]

This patch has been the first patch to introduce a viable scanning mechanic since it was taken away many months ago in place of the new nav panel system. I believe in the 2.5 update somewhere in there. However, this mechanic works similar to what us Old School players remember using when the game was first released with alterations to it during subsequent patch releases. But then it was taken away and removed temporarily....until now. We all new it would one day return. Aside from the bugs and scanners in Arges and CM's not showing parts installed rendering them useless, what does work is working very well. I'm here to tell you why.

Currently I have played 3000+ hrs over the past 2 1/2 years. It is no secret that I am a Pirate, however some would call me by other more vulgar names. I've also participated in the testing squad for a good amount of time. I've seen everything in this game from it's release date and every patch thereafter. The good, the bad, and especially the ugly. Those of you coming in recently have absolutely no clue some of the horrors we've been through. Our journey through Hellion has been a perilous one. Only a few of you may remember the days of the "Random Spawn Point". A very hostile area where merely spawning in could get you killed by another.

Raiding bases has been and will always be a "thing". There is no doubt about it. Every time you enter the MP server, there is a very good chance you will be killed by another player. You are entering an arena where there is no law. There is no local authority to protect you. Everything around you has been destroyed and now it is up to you to try and survive this lawless, unforgiving universe. You need equipment, and resources to survive. It is up to you how you obtain them, and how you will protect them. With this I shall leave you a quote of the game's description:

"After a century in cryosleep you find yourself stranded amidst the ruins of mankind’s first interstellar colony. Explore derelict ships and stations and harvest raw resources in search of air, fuel and other equipment. Or loot and pillage what you need from other survivors. The choice is yours."

Hiding your base is crucial. It should be the most important objective you should achieve. It has always been that way. Even before this update, leaving your base at the starting area would ultimately result in it getting found, and it was much easier to find. We'll touch on this a bit more later.

For now, lets begin with a little history of the scanning mechanic and how it has evolved. In the very beginning, you had no upgrades. All ships had the same system. It worked similar to how it does now. The exception to this was that the scan burst was a 360 degree scan of the surrounding areas of your ship. Anything close enough would be picked up as a hard contact and be identifiable. Anything further out would appear as a cloud of dust particles. This gave you an indication that something was there, but you will need to move closer to find out what it was.

Later, patches updated this to change the dust particles into like a sonar ping and even the bubble, but the concept was the same. 360 degree scan that would reveal possible locations that you needed to get closer to identify. Finding player bases was very easy to do at this point. And then all of a sudden, a patch which updated the navigation screen remove this mechanic all together.

When ask why and when we might get a scanning mechanic update during a live stream Q/A we were informed that, yes they plan on addressing the scanning mechanic, but not until a balance could be found and that players had the necessary way to protect them from this.

So, as the game updates progressed things like security panels, locking doors, base defense turrets, and such began getting introduced into the game. The only problem was, there was no need for any of these defenses. No one would ever find your base because the scanning mechanic was only viable for searching the moons and close orbits of planets. Anything beyond that was invisible.

This created a very lonely universe. Even if your just trying to reach out to find other survivors or explore it would be days even weeks before you encountered another person. There was no risk what-so-ever. Your base would be full of defense gear, security, but there would never be a time where such equipment being installed would ever serve its purpose. It was so bad even that when building a base we left all doors open, no locks on anything, and never installed turrets, because.....well, there was no need for them. We were never found.

Today, we have the new scanning mechanic. A tool that can also be upgraded to make it even stronger. And it works nearly the same as when we were first introduced to it. Only now, it's not as easy to use as one might think. You don't have a 360 degree ping. You now have to point, aim and adjust in a single direction. It looks for signatures. The larger the signature the more likely it will detect it, however it must actually be pointing almost directly at you. But the balance is already there. You can hide from it. It's not overpowered. You can't sit in low orbit of bethyr, point into the sky and reach the SoI (sphere of influence). It cannot reach that far. In fact a T4 scanner being used from the fresh start belt can barely make anything out past everest stations orbit ring unless you happen to be blasting a signature out of your base like your broadcasting from an FM radio tower, and again, had to be pointing at you.

How to protect yourself:

I cannot give up trade secrets but I will leave you with this. With the new update, your base and ship now emit a signature. The size of your signature depends on many variables from how large the total station is and how much power is being supplied to it, and how much power you are using. If you build a base that has a signature the size of an asteroid your telling the world, "Here I am!". Don't do this, unless your trying to draw attention to yourself.

Use the fresh start orbit as a means to get started. Scan it immediately. If your on high pop servers there will be an lot of resources from abandoned bases that can quickly get you off your feet.

Blue print the warp cell as soon as you can. You will use a lot of it.

Get out of the fresh start orbit as quickly as you can. A new player starting out can easily scan with his new ship and immediately pick up nearby contacts. Even before this patch, this was prime raiding zone for resources cause everyone knows where it's at and on high population servers there is an abundance of abandoned fresh starts with unused and valuable resources. Especially for the player who is just starting out, but even the experienced player who may be in hard times. Nerfing that scanner will not prevent this and it was always happening since they merged all new players into the same orbit. Yes, there was a time where you fresh started and may end up in a different planet all together. This was changed because friends trying to start together would end up in two totally way out locations and not be able to connect to each other.

There are only two planets who have an SoI large enough to hide a decently sized base and not be discovered. Bethyr, and Askatar. Moving your base to any other planet could result in you being quickly discovered if your not careful about the size of your base's signature. If your just starting out fresh Bethyr is the safest place for you, but you cannot leave your base where you started at. Priority is to move out as soon as you are capable.

Don't build too big too fast when starting out. You will most likely not have the resources to sustain it and also, may not be able to move it out of scanning range. Your primary goal should be to get your spawn point as far away from the fresh area as you can as soon as you can. Once you are in a further orbit and stable then you can begin adding more.

Use your scanner. It will serve you well. Practice with it. As often as you can. Whenever your warping from place to place use the time to point and scan as much space as you can so that you can get an clearer understanding of it's range, effects, and capabilities. I cannot stress this enough. It's not an easy tool to use due to it's limited area of effect, range, direction and cooldown. In time it will be like second nature and you too can begin to find that hidden gem in the sky.

The scanner is not overpowered, does not need a nerf, and there is no reason to add more things to help you hide. This should not be just given to you. You are already in control of whether or not you are discovered and it is up to YOU the player to make this happen. I do not believe the developers should have to change the game the way they intended it to be played because the player didn't put forth the effort to use the tools they were provided already to accomplish this task.

I believe this has been the best patch applied to our scanner systems since the game was released and fully believe the developers did an awesome job with trying to provide a balance between detection and stealth.

[Alan Ford]

Good write up I agree. My tip is to use up the most of the starting cell to move your 3 modules as high as you can. Power down everything when logging off because turrets are actually irrelevant once you are found.

Module to the base solves those problems for pirates and if your base is glowing all gold like mine for example you’re just adding fuel to the fire because nobody will want to risk going against a horde of T4 turrets. They’ll just torpedo your base instead.

[CheeseJedi]

Nice write-up! :)

[2ugly]

+1. Wondered when D would comment, if he would. He knows what he's talking about.

That is the intrigue of MP, and why it's the main attraction. If you know what you are doing....you can be safe, or as safe as possible.

[Stelar Seven]

While I'm for the new scanner I support information being less hidden. The graphic bares only passing resemblance to the detection cone and range. While bases have a scan resolution that number lives largely in a vacuum. It is difficult to tell how easily or at what ranges any given target can be detected.

What this results in is a situation where defensive skill still trumps offense in most scenarios. That means that offensively minded players are primarily attacking ignorant defenders. New players. That is not ideal.

So while I love the current scanner and its ability to detect interesting locations and loot. It's not balanced for play.

This is also a gap and flaw in the current tutorial. To follow all the steps for a new player to check their modules and dock and recover all the components takes hours and that is time they don't have if an experienced player is hunting.

Having said that I like a lot of what was added, and how the proper warp drive quest limits the ability to spawn endless kamakazi ships, a little.

I would space out the tutorial. Have the player first emergency warp to the broken steropes recover the cell, the drive and an oxygen can or two.

Then send them to a higher orbit where the haven and fm, no airlock, can be recovered from a decaying orbit.

Then have them pack up and warp it all out past the orbit of Everest.

That should be their first stable orbit and it should come with a warning about desperate people becoming violent.

Then a Esc available help page or in world encyclopedia can provide a one page summary of scanning ranges warp footprints and such. Use a 5k or 10k sig radius target for a written example and a player can deduce the rest.

Then pvp can focus on advanced players finding and messing with each other. First by giving a decent balance to offense and defense, then by adding a useful mcguffin that advanced players can find or craft and add to their bases but with the caveat that owning the thing makes you detectable to a skilled scan tool user.

[Crazy D]

And that is where I disagree. The balance problem is not the scanner. It's how fresh starts are all combined into a single area. Nerfing this, only takes away your long range site, but fresh starts will still be detected by a scanner with no upgrade. It's always been a problem. Honestly, experienced players are NOT searching the newb belt. They are already detecting themselves. I do agree that the tutorial needs to be udpated, but believe the balance of signature vs scanning is already there

[Crazy D]

Here's a true test which we have already performed, but I welcome you to try. Move your base the edge of the SoI. Give an unauthorized friend your coordinates. Have him run scans from bethyr fresh start area while in slow warp. Use different part upgrades and use different power settings and then you will see what I'm talking about.

[Krougal]

Good write up bro (other than the warp det is what needs to be researched; you start with the cell)
@Alan Ford If you got T4 turrets all over then I know you're worth raiding. No way I am torpedoing that ♥♥♥♥♥.

[Crazy D]

Agreed. A base loaded with T4 turrets is what we call that " hidden gem ". I would definitely try and raid with minimal loss to precious loot.

"Hold fire boys, we're going in "

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Crazy D:

And that is where I disagree. The balance problem is not the scanner. It's how fresh starts are all combined into a single area. Nerfing this, only takes away your long range site, but fresh starts will still be detected by a scanner with no upgrade. It's always been a problem. Honestly, experienced players are NOT searching the newb belt. They are already detecting themselves. I do agree that the tutorial needs to be udpated, but believe the balance of signature vs scanning is already there

What is where you disagree? Literally no one suggested nerfing the scanner. In fact you seem to agree that n00bs are too exposed when they spawn which was my main point.

[Crazy D]

You said it's not balanced for play and this is where I disagree

[Zorz]

"This patch has been the first patch to introduce a viable scanning mechanic since it was taken away many months ago in place of the new nav panel system."

there was already patches in the past, but the scanning content got dropped because performance issues. now we have a scanning mechanic again and game again runs like near unplayable.
also that the most stuff is still clustered into one position makes the scanning mechanic obsolete. not enough possibilities to defend your base gives the new scanning mechanic the rest.
warp E was an interesting idea, but big gameplay fail, because people with enough time abuse warp E and warp E makes distress calls obsolete.

[Crazy D]

I addressed this in my post about scan patches under the history section. I stand by the statement that this patch offers detection vs stealth as a balance to previous scan patches

[Alan Ford]

I think I agree with D on the scanning/stealth balance. I’ve heard stories that higher tier scanners can reveal contacts on an interplanetary distance. Yeah maybe asteroids. Having tried a high tier scanner around Bethyr myself I am less concerned now.

[Alan Ford]

More precisely a T3 scanner doesn’t give me any purple spheres from even half of Beth’s SOI radius scanning towards the planet. At any magnification.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Crazy D:

You said it's not balanced for play and this is where I disagree

Try reading again for comprehension. You agreed with me that new players should not start in such predictable places. That is the only change I'm suggesting, not altering the scanner, moving the new players and adjusting their order of goal achievment.