Intel is the key to the victory, be it in saving your small gas-huffing Venture in a Wormhole or in giant null-sec fights over untold riches. Probeing and D-scanning have come a long way from their first iterations, not only did they go through minor tweaks, like better UI, but major ones as well, like increased probe numbers and added formation options. This led to better gameplay overall. It saves time on mindless mechanical tasks by allowing us to use clever shortcuts and more intuitive ways of gathering intel.
In their ongoing quest to improve this aspect of the game, CCP has decided to push another pack of tweaks and visualizations. That may not change how things are done, but will make less taxing. The planned improvments are:
– The new scanning interference could be accesed by ctrl-cliking probe scanner button.
– Adding D-scan visualization on a map in 3D (contrary to the current strategic map 2D)
– Added commands for Refresh Probe Scan, Refresh Directional Scan, Increase/Decrease Scan Range.
– Hiding formation move-control while scanning
– Adding Group name in result list
– Hooking up MouseWheel for probe scan range and formation spread
Hopefully, these changes will be on the test server soon (planned date is 9th of October), and after bringing them to perfection, on Tranquality.
And here is the full dev post about it (CCP Goliath):
And we’re back! Put on your reading pants.
Hi Scanning Fans,
Goliath and Psycho Sisters here, blasting out of our pizza comas with another wave of updates to our new scanning tool. After some technical rejiggering, we’ve moved the latest version of the interface into the Brain in a Box sandbox, which is currently on Singularity. Although we still plan on releasing the interface when we deem it ready, the test server needs of BIAB meant we had no other way to get you our latest work without joining up with them, so don’t assume our release plans have changed. The system is isolated enough to test without impacting BIAB, so we don’t have a ton of concerns there.
So, what’s new? Well, before we get into the new, let’s do a quick round of catch-up for people that might be hearing about this for the first time.
So, first off, the new scanning interface can be accessed by Ctrl-Clicking the Probe Scanner button. This will pop up the new probe scanner window. To access the now decoupled Solar System map, simply click on the Solar System Map button in the new probe scanner window. Note that this is not the final implementation of how you will access these features, just the hacky way we have implemented right now so we can test the systems side by side.
These annotated pictures will give you an idea of where certain buttons and commands are in the new system: http://imgur.com/a/dzvji
Our goals for this feature are very simple:
– Don’t wreck existing functionality
– Make the scanning interface look and feel better than it currently does
– Make quality of life improvements to scanning in general, within the boundaries of UI/UXWe’ve had plenty of feedback from you in the form of posts in various places, surveys, EVEmails, CSM-relayed info and chats on the test server. We still aren’t done talking to you though! With each wave of changes, new dynamics enter play and new priorities take hold as we see how you react, so even if you were happy with the changes before and have nothing more to say on the matter – please keep trying it and telling us! Similarly, if you had issues with the current system, the beta map scanner interface, or this new interface in whatever iteration you tested, please come to us with your concerns in a balanced, constructive manner and they will be heard and addressed.
We’ve also made some changes to the Directional Scanner. As you can see in the album, we have moved some stuff around, and added a button to bring up the new solar system map. We also, as Seagull discussed last week, made the D-scan visually represented in the Solar System map. This was some functionality that had partially existed in the F11 map, but since it was only in 2D it didn’t really tick all the boxes. The most major change that you may not know about is that you can now, via the radial menu in the solar system map, focus on a target to D-Scan, such as a celestial you think your target might be hiding near. Unfortunately, as a consequence of doing this, we broke D-scan a little bit, so while it follows your in-space camera as it always did, it doesn’t work properly in the solar system map at the moment… Our bad! That’s what test servers are for. We hope that D-scanning will be fully functional in one of our updates early next week.
Changes in this iteration: (for past changes, please see my post here
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6042856#post6042856)– Changed markers so they are more in line with inflight brackets
– Enabled radial menu on markers
– Changed marker overlap menu so it’s more in line with inflight bracket menu
– Created a Solar System map window that will serve probes and D-scan and possibly other use cases in the future. This View is dockable like the beta map
– Making the result list fill available space in the window instead of being resizeable
– Linking range circle to tactical overlay state
– Moved Recover button to main button row
– Changed probes and result menus to be expanded by default
– Adding drop-down on Ignored Result listing individual entry
– Changed copy data on result entries as it is in old probe window (for pasting into Siggy and such)
– Created new D-Scan window using standalone solar system view (currently only supporting target based D-scan through radial menu, this is a known issue). Accessible via Ctrl-Clicking D-scan button.
– Added radial menu functionality to D-scan celestials/targets from solar system map.Coming (hopefully) tomorrow (9th October):
– Hiding formation move-control while scanning
– Adding Group name in result list
– Hooking up MouseWheel for probe scan range and formation spread (Ctrl/Alt key modifiers)
– Added commands for Refresh Probe Scan, Refresh Directional Scan, In/Decrease Scan Range (No default mapping yet)If you’re reading the last one thinking “does he mean that there will be a d-scan hotkey?”, then the answer is yes. We will be adding a mappable hotkey that, when pressed, should bring up the Dscan window if it isn’t open, and scan with it if it is open. The scanning frequency time has not changed – the 2sec window still applies, but hopefully this will mitigate some of the relentless precise clicking that players, particularly wormhole dwellers like myself, have had to endure to be safe.
You can find this post, along with the discussion about it:
