Talk:Exploration

Leaving aside any discussion of alternative galaxy seeds for now (mainly because it causes the devs to blow their minds), as you say to perform meaningful "exploration" in Oolite requires two matters.

Ignorance about what one is exploring! Game modifications enhancing the act of exploration!

Although I'd express myself without the bangs!

Back in the olden days, we didn't have a method to conceal chart data. If Explorers' Club were being created now, it would look like Zero Maps or Here Be Dragons. There'd be an option (Murphy and I both liked adding more and more options to existing OXPs) when you first installed it, asking whether you'd prefer travelogue mode (what you're familiar with) or a harder exploration mode with the charts initially concealed. That would be a one-time choice, and you'd have to start over if you changed your mind.

As previously discussed, Explorers' Club is easily modifiable, so the question of how much work should a player be required to do to count a system as "visited" or "explored" is an open one: it can be made as easy as jumping in and out again, or as hard as any mission you could devise. Be wary though, that Oolite is a game, and we're supposed to be entertaining the player, not testing their patience. (Something the devs forgot with the loathsome Oolite 1.82.)

Getting away from Explorers' Club, exploration can be viewed at two levels: the chart level or the flying about, pew-pew, level. Flying about, the player needs more docks to visit, and more astrophysical things to see. Tianve and ringed planets are good(-ish). The criticism made by several people is that OXP creators make one of two errors: they "adopt" one home system and add as much embellishment to it as they can, ignoring that other players may only ever see all their effort once in passing; or at the other extreme, they feel a need to add their new space-dock design to almost every system, where it soon becomes boring. Relatively few seem to understand there's a huge range between 1/2048 and 1024+/2048.

I'm not much interested in the flying about level of Oolite, which I consider largely a lost cause. It needs a distinct vision of a particular look-and-feel to aim for, and a concerted effort to make existing and new OXPs consistent with that vision. It won't happen.

At the level of planning a route to travel across the galactic chart more challenging for the player, I see several possibilities...