That’s not right, in overview, only dockable structures, stargates, beacons, and celestials are visible beyond grid range (and far more than 32 AU). And this grid range is merely some 1’000 km.
In a radius of 32 AU, objects can be probed, but then you need probes of course.
In DScan you see objects within a radius of 14,3 AU if set to max, but only their existence, not their position, with the exception of undockable structures and towers which can be warped to when on DScan. In this case combat probes can help to locate ships, drones, and containers like MTUs.
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Your warp drive requires certain details about the destination to create the calculations that are used to initiate warp to a specific destination. Certain overview objects (such as Gates, Stations, and Asteroid Belts) have ‘beacons’ that broadcast the necessary details for your warp drive to make a successful destination calculation. By the same token, mission deadspace pockets have beacons that the mission agent keys to your ship, broadcasting the navigation details to you. Without a beacon, navigation requires another way to obtain the warp destibation data. For example, players can record details of their surroundings and provide that data on their fleet network (enabling ‘warp to fleet member’ capabilities), or ‘bookmark’ navigation details in space and share those details with each other.
Scan probes can develop this information for locations that do not have a beacon or a bookmark, but have an object in space creating sufficient ‘data’ for use as a navigational destination (such as another ship, a structure - be it PC or NPC - or an asteroid/ice/gas field. The probes must return a minimum threshold of data to have a ‘solid’ calculation for the warp drive, which is what the green status represents.
Does this help?
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Yes. Thanks
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The lore reasons have been explained, for example by Mkikaden above. There is also a game balance reason:
Both finding someone to shoot, and escaping someone hunting you require a bit of effort in this game.
One method people use to escape someone hunting them is to warp to a safe spot, a bookmark made mid-warp. A quickly made “safe” spot, i.e. a bookmark made while warping from gate A to gate B can fairly easily be located, as a 5-degree d-scan will get you the direction, and playing with the range will get you the distance. At this point you either drop combat probes on that location (if you have combats) or simply warp from A to B and attempt to drop a bookmark in the exact same spot.
This means that if someone wants to be safer (perfectly safe is impossible), they need to drop a bookmark between two previously made bookmarks, as then it becomes quite hard for someone to exactly replicate the series of steps needed to land on that spot. (combat probes are of course still possible, but will usually require 1 or 2 more scans, since an exact localisation through d-scan is no longer easy. At which point most people, especially those who think they’re being hunted, will notice the probes on d-scan.)
Your suggestion to be able to warp anywhere on the map would break this balance. People would be able to immediately warp to random spots on the map, making it a lot harder to hunt them down.
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i personally enjoy the challenge of scanning down stuff, it’s part of the fun for me.
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