Forums » General
the advanced mineral scanner does not suck
I know it seems sucky. 750m instead of 500m.
But after scanning dozens of sectors, and doing a dozen group mining missions, I have come to appreciate it.
When you are asteroid scanning , you fly thru a bunch of asteroids, and as you turbo through, you turn your targeting reticle everywhich way and hit 'b' alot.
Thus, essentially, you are a 'flying tube' of 'detector'. Raising the range on the scanner from 500 to 750 increases the effective radius of your 'detector tube' from 1000m to 1500m. And since "Area = Pi * r squared", you have effectively increased the 'scan disk area' from roughly 3.1 million square meters to 7 million square meters. More than double.
So in a given group of asteroids, theoretically, you can scan them all in half the time. In practice it is not quite this fast but it is still much faster with an Advanced scanner than with a normal scanner.
In many asteroid fields, this makes quite a lot of difference. It greatly reduces the amount of 'backtracking' you have to do in order to scan all the asteroids.
And let me just say that in general while at first I have felt many things in vendetta were 'too subtle' of a change, I have grown to appreciate this subtlety over time. It is essential to balance that things change slowly, and not all at once. This is the only guarantee against the unforseen uses people will put things too.
If the advanced scanner had been introduced with a range of 2,000m then many of the ore fields would have been wiped out already, all wormhole and station asteroids would constantly be at 150 kelvins, and in general the game would have moved too fast.
Many already think that miners make too much money, too easily. If the advanced scanner had had very much increased range, imagine how much greater the income of miners would be.
Yes it is true that not many will get the advanced mineral scanner, but the ones that do get it will tell others the locations of ore they find with it, such as friends and guilds. Those people will write down the location of a few asteroids each, which they will try to return to over and over, stockpiling ore.. and maybe they tell a few friends... and it snowballs. So just a little change in a scanner range number can upset the financial balance of the whole game. It is good to only change it bit by bit.
Let me just say that while I would appreciate some longer range mineral scanners, (I wrote an thread about it,
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7788#95638) I by no means consider the 750m scanner to be 'useless'. In fact, on my maps, I have begun to mark which stations have the advanced mineral scanner and which don't. In some stations that don't have it I have even stockpiled advanced scanners.
Now the 'high density mining beam', that is another story. I have yet to find a use for it, other than grinding your mining levels. But then again, I once felt the same way about the advanced scanner and the Mining specific ships, so maybe it is good for something that we haven't thought of yet.
But after scanning dozens of sectors, and doing a dozen group mining missions, I have come to appreciate it.
When you are asteroid scanning , you fly thru a bunch of asteroids, and as you turbo through, you turn your targeting reticle everywhich way and hit 'b' alot.
Thus, essentially, you are a 'flying tube' of 'detector'. Raising the range on the scanner from 500 to 750 increases the effective radius of your 'detector tube' from 1000m to 1500m. And since "Area = Pi * r squared", you have effectively increased the 'scan disk area' from roughly 3.1 million square meters to 7 million square meters. More than double.
So in a given group of asteroids, theoretically, you can scan them all in half the time. In practice it is not quite this fast but it is still much faster with an Advanced scanner than with a normal scanner.
In many asteroid fields, this makes quite a lot of difference. It greatly reduces the amount of 'backtracking' you have to do in order to scan all the asteroids.
And let me just say that in general while at first I have felt many things in vendetta were 'too subtle' of a change, I have grown to appreciate this subtlety over time. It is essential to balance that things change slowly, and not all at once. This is the only guarantee against the unforseen uses people will put things too.
If the advanced scanner had been introduced with a range of 2,000m then many of the ore fields would have been wiped out already, all wormhole and station asteroids would constantly be at 150 kelvins, and in general the game would have moved too fast.
Many already think that miners make too much money, too easily. If the advanced scanner had had very much increased range, imagine how much greater the income of miners would be.
Yes it is true that not many will get the advanced mineral scanner, but the ones that do get it will tell others the locations of ore they find with it, such as friends and guilds. Those people will write down the location of a few asteroids each, which they will try to return to over and over, stockpiling ore.. and maybe they tell a few friends... and it snowballs. So just a little change in a scanner range number can upset the financial balance of the whole game. It is good to only change it bit by bit.
Let me just say that while I would appreciate some longer range mineral scanners, (I wrote an thread about it,
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7788#95638) I by no means consider the 750m scanner to be 'useless'. In fact, on my maps, I have begun to mark which stations have the advanced mineral scanner and which don't. In some stations that don't have it I have even stockpiled advanced scanners.
Now the 'high density mining beam', that is another story. I have yet to find a use for it, other than grinding your mining levels. But then again, I once felt the same way about the advanced scanner and the Mining specific ships, so maybe it is good for something that we haven't thought of yet.
> I know it seems sucky. 750m instead of 500m.
who says it suck? I love it...
who says it suck? I love it...
No one's ever mentioned it's sucky. But I've mentioned 120 prospecting missions is a lot of work for it.
Ouch. 120 of those friggin missions? It sounds like a great scanner beam to have on-hand, but there's no way that i'm going to finish all those prospecting missions. Ah well.
Edit: I have completed roughly 8.5 prospecting missions so far and, wow, they can get tedious. While I am ok w/some tedium to accomplish a longer-range objective, perhaps we can think of something to make these prospecting missions more interesting.
"NoAddedSugar" Yeah, I am in agreement with you that longer-range missions that perhaps further a storyline (that can be experienced by the entire playerbase) will be valuable to the success of VO.
Edit: I have completed roughly 8.5 prospecting missions so far and, wow, they can get tedious. While I am ok w/some tedium to accomplish a longer-range objective, perhaps we can think of something to make these prospecting missions more interesting.
"NoAddedSugar" Yeah, I am in agreement with you that longer-range missions that perhaps further a storyline (that can be experienced by the entire playerbase) will be valuable to the success of VO.
I like the prospection mission round. We need MORE of this long-time-missions :)