Detector. This is something I want to discuss today. As we can see from the control panel, detector has: Max. range (m): 6000 RangeSpace: 24000 Reveals type of ore deposit when scanning nearby. Besides ore types it also reveals POI names. The "nearby" is a bit vague, in fact in space one has to be 3km close to an asteroid or POI to reveal it and around 700m when on planet or moon which takes up a lot of flying nearby to reveal everything. Later in the game one can get an upgrade kit and upgrade the detector to epic with the following: Max. range (m): 6000 RangeSpace: 100000 After and upgrade nothing is said about the type revealing range. But it gets boosted also. 100km is quite a lot, it basically detects everything within the playfield. Revealing a type works within 12km. Using some simple calc I conclude that "nearby" means exactly 12%. While it seems fine for an upgraded version, the bare detector is a bit of a hustle. I remember playing 2 years ago and if I'm not wrong, this number was a bit different and I could detect type in space within 5km range and around 1km on planets which was perfectly fine. To sum it up. I suggest you change the type detection range from 12% to 20% of the maximum detection range. Right now it takes a lot of time to survey planets and systems, 20% seems like a perfect number that will make it easier to survey systems early-mid game and give a huge bonus for surveying space with a booster, literally in one click. Epic detector misses the description about type revealing although it uses the same mechanic. Should be added, IMHO. Hover vessel gets an upgrade from 2.5km detector range to 10km detector range on planets. This makes it 1km (10km * 12%) type detection compared to 720m (6km * 12%) CV type detection range. That's not serious. Hover vessels are not that popular in this game and this detector upgrade could be a reason to use HV for planet surveying, but this just adds up to how useless they are. Making 20+km range for HV would make it interesting, especially with 20% type range.
There are other values need to consider for the detector feature no matter which block you use to detect stuff. Search for them in two different config files and you will understand what I mean. Hint, DiscoveryFac: xxx is in percentage of the range need the item to be within to be detected. Some POIS have also a value that is considered while the detection happens to give a result. Hint : some smuggler stashes Pirate from example can only be detected while the detector is positioned <100m range.
Thanks for the comment, but right now I'm a bit stuck on where to dig further. I did a search for DiscoveryFac with Notepad++ and did not happen to find anything in game files. I remember finding smuggler stashes and those were fine to detect as a question mark within maximum range and revealing their name within max range * 12%. May be that was a wrong stash Nothing really interesting there. Anyway, I think the type detection range could be more. I perfectly understand that part of the game is about discoveries and exploration, but it gets really long and boring to survey a large planet. Even a small starting moon takes around 5 minutes just flying around from one place to another getting as close as 1km.
I could not agree more. But remember Empyrion's true value is the fact that a considerable part of the game play can be altered by players to match their gamestyle. You need to look into devices.ecf to find the DiscoveryFac value definition. One more thing to mention here is that as a con, the developers did not provide a list with min-max values of everything included in edited files. The players have to waste time finding themselves.
