Proposed New Survey Mechanics

[TheKusari]

'Sup everyone.

Guess the cat is out of the bag - no more jump co-ords with this upcoming patch. A new system will be introduced for jump drives. Don't ask me for the details, I know nothing more than that.

What I do have though is an idea to add into the Survey Modules we all use to currently gain jump co-ords. As these will be bricked, awaiting a new system to make them useful, I thought "let's brainstorm something and see if it sticks?"

Let's go over my idea here:

Basically, the Survey Modules act as a third way to obtain Mineable items. We currently have Mining Zones for ores, Anomalies for Scientific Data. This proposed system will have a new set of designated areas to mine in. Though, this one is more passive than active as you kinda just... sit there and do nothing. I'll explain.

So let's say you have a Bustard with a survey MK2 and 600 H-Fuel, fly into one of these areas. I'm thinking it's an area with an effect playing, something akin to the lightening we see in the storms, but localized to the area to survey in.

First I want to go through a new element to this, a list of commodities. These are ones that already exist, or new ones only obtainable from surveying. Some are very common to obtain, others are very rare, valuable and four of these super rare items are schematics - more on this later.

Let's run through the meat of this new system. You type /survey into chat, and it begins.

You sit still, and let the survey go. After about 20-30 seconds, you would have used 150 units of H-fuel or so, essentially "freeing" up that space. After this happens, at that first "time checkpoint" a random commodity will be available to tractor in, or it would be dropped directly in your inventory. This commodity is based on chance from that list I mentioned earlier. Most common or uncommon, fewer rare and fewer again - ancient.

Now, after the full survey is done, you'd go through three checkpoints, meaning every survey gives you three items from this list.

I understand this effectively is a slot machine, a gamble. You can sit there for ever and roll the dice until you get something nice. My thinking on this is that we introduce a cooldown of say... 8 hours. 12 hours for the Survey MK3. This means you can't sit there in this area with a Barge endlessly supplying you with fuel while you keep rolling the click-clacks until you get double nat 20's.

Now, onto the MK3 surveys. Using this means the percentages of the rarer items would increase, making them easier to obtain, though the survey scan takes longer to complete and you still get three chances. Was thinking four, but unsure how that'll work with the balance of 12 hour cooldown and such.

Lastly, I wanted to bring up the "schematics" - these are analogous to the scientific data in a way. In my mind, I see four of them. "Ancient Schematic A" all the way to "D", so there'd be four of them. You'd constantly survey every chance you get after the cooldowns until you manage to obtain all four different ones.

What happens with this? I dunno. Player Request with some cool reward? Trade to a single station in Sirius who gives you a ton of money in return? Have a player base factory make something that only uses all four schematics to create (something uber powerful) ?

In all honestly, the idea here is about the survey idea being a gambling machine, not about the schematics. Feel free to chime in with adjustments, alterations, suggestions or suggest a completely new system here so we don't all end up having equipment we can't use.

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