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I would like to see some kind of long range scanning module added into the game. Basically you could navigate to a system and then go to your scanner module and have it scan the system. The higher mk the scanner the faster the scan is completed. It wouldn't give you the same detailed information you would get from manually moving to each planet/moon/asteroid field it would just give you some basic information. Things like number of slots on the planet, if there are any modules/ships/stations in the system and the total amount of minerals and gas that a planet has (not the specific types but rather a total amount for each planetary body). That would allow many of us to see if there is anything of interest in the system and if there is then we could manually poke around and get the details, if not we could move on. These types of scans would be one time things, not something that would go into your database to look at whenever you wanted, you would still have to manually explore each planet to get that. Of course any ships in the safe zone of a system would be exempt from these scans since you couldn't attack it or even hail it in the first place anyway.
There would be a sister module as well called the scanner jamming module, as you might suspect it would serve to jam a scanning module so that your planetary forces (if deployed on a planet), your ship or your station would remain invisible to a scan as long as your jamming device was the same level or higher than the scanning module being used.
Very nice idea. The goal is to reduce the clickfest as a player gains power, and I think your idea does that. But keep in mind this too could become a problem someday. The difference is instead of individual planets being a clickfest, it'd be individual stars. It's imaginable if a player has enough ships and there're enough stars.
I'll add I think the scanner should show what types of minerals/gases the planets have, but only a rough guess of the amount.
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It actually gives me an idea as well, I would kind of like to have multiple options for what to use when making a module. For example if a module needs Iron-nickel, why couldn't I substitute Iron instead? Or perhaps just Nickel? Maybe even Aluminum since that is another metal used for construction. Obviously it wouldn't be the same amounts because those resources have different prices but it could adjust accordingly. Idk I have a lot of different ideas floating around in my head after reading some of the posts here. I might just make another thread for that though, it's a bit off the exploring star systems topic lol.
I like that idea, but you recall hte post I made in the suggestions forum about wanting to be able to mark minerals/gases or to preorder them on the manufacturing screen? The more ways there're to make modules or the more modules there're the worse the problem I brought up will be. With all of these ingredients for "recipes," we need a (better) interface for it.