Mark Abent · Lead Gameplay Programmer, LA Studio

So radar, ping, and scan are kind of bundled together, but they're kind of different concepts. We think of radar as what you currently see within your range. It's your passive contacts. You're flying around and you see a ship, or you're flying around and you see a station, and there's information you see appearing; you see the UI indicating that the thing's there. Whereas ping is more of: I can't see something, I'll ping out and maybe uncover stuff. Now, that could either be something's very, very far away or something's heavily influenced by an ambient signature, so you can't quite see it without a little bit of help. The only downside of doing that kind of burst to see more is you reveal that you have done it. So if I were to ping out and go find Sean, Sean would know that I pinged, but now I can maybe see Sean. And then scanning is more of: what information could I get about that contact? So a common flow is I could ping out, I find some little blobs, and maybe I could scan it and uncover that, oh, there's something interesting that I want to go into in that blob. So I get closer and it appears as a contact, and maybe multiple contacts, and I could scan those to get other information. So it's a way of expressing in the world what's happening and maybe show some interest that may want the player to go toward that direction or avoid that direction.