Surveying Guardian Ruins

Whilst a little out dated, see SrvSurvey in action with this video.

SrvSurvey adds a number of overlays to help navigate and survey Guardian Ruins and Structures:

The goal for surveying Guardian Ruins is to measure site and Relic Tower headings, plus record which specific Items and Relic Towers are present or missing. SrvSurvey triggers from in-game actions to capture survey data so you do not need to put down your game controller, hotas, etc. This works by toggling cockpit mode or switching between fire-groups.

IMPORTANT: It is necessary that you have 3 fire-groups defined for your Ship or SRV. It does not matter what devices they control, simply that they exist.

WARNING: It is highly recommended to keep the landing gear down whilst surveying. Accidentally hitting boost so close the ground is usually a terminal and expensive mistake.

Measuring Site headings:

If not already known the heading of a Guardian ruins can be measured by aligning your ship with the specific buttress shown per site:

To help align your ship with precision SrvSurvey will overlay an aiming grid in the center of your screen. Align the inner vertical bars with the back of the buttress and the outer bars with the front of the buttress, using parallax check the left and right sides are equally spaced. You may need to shift your ship left or right a little to make them line up evenly.

Once in position toggle cockpit mode twice, one second apart, and SrvSurvey will record the current heading and remove the aiming grid.

Surveying which Items are present or missing:

To record which Items or Relic towers are present or missing move your ship or SRV (always the green circle in the center of the map) close to each blue icon, getting close enough for a blue circle to appear around it. The expected type and name will be shown at the bottom of the map. Some items are quite close together requiring care to ensure you're recording the right one.

SrvSurvey knows the location from journal files only as fast as Elite Dangerous updates them, which can be slow according to documentation ...

The latitude or longitude need to change by 0.02 degrees to trigger an update when flying, or by 0.0005 degrees when in the SRV

... which is unfortunate when surveying. Toggling ship functions like ship lights or night vision will force Elite Dangerous to update those files and SrvSurvey will then update accordingly.

Switch fire-group depending on if the Relic Tower or Item is present, missing or empty and toggle cockpit mode twice, one second apart. The exact timing depends on how quickly Elite Dangerous updates journal files, so the text (toggle cockpit mode once to set) will turn blue when the first toggle is detected and orange again after 2 seconds.

Change the fire-group as follows.

• Fire-group A : Item or Relic Tower is present at this Ruins.
• Fire-group B : Item or Relic Tower is missing at this Ruins.
• Fire-group C : Choose this if the Item is missing but there is a glowing "puddle" on the ground where it would have been. (This is not a valid option for Relic Towers)

When choosing fire-group C it is highly recommended to relog at that location to confirm the Item really is missing. Empty puddles are uncommon and it is common for the item in question simply to roll off before you arrive. If there is no Item immediately visible after logging back in - the puddle really is empty.

The map icons change color based on their status. Relic Towers icons are larger, Items smaller.

• Solid orange : Item or Relic Tower is present.
• Solid red : Item or Relic Tower is missing.
• Solid yellow : Empty puddle with missing Item.
• Dotted/broken blue : status unknown.

The top of the map shows the count of how many Relic Towers and Item locations still need to be surveyed, which will change to orange when the survey is complete.

As the game allows us to scan Relic Towers with a Composition Scanner, a Relic Tower will be marked as present if scanned this way.

You can load past surveys in the Ruins map off of the main window.

Measuring Relic Tower headings:

The heading of a Relic Tower is the direction both double large triangle sides are pointing, hence we can measure that heading by directly facing the side with a single large left facing triangle:

SrvSurvey will show an aiming assistance overlay if you switch to the Profile Analyzer.

• Use the short horizontal bars near the Ancient Relic, lining them up equally with the vertical grooves. You will need to move left or right and re-aim to make them equally spaced:

• Use the long vertical bars against the vertical grooves to gauge if the Relic Tower is leaning, which would be an inaccurate measurement. If in doubt, aiming where these rocks join is equivalent to the Relic Tower center and does not change when they lean. It is important not to move your feet whilst changing your aim.

When you are satisfied you are aiming correctly - toggle suit shields twice, one second apart, to record your current heading as the Relic Tower heading. Your current heading will be visible this whole time in the top overlay and the recorded heading will be shown once it is known:

Finding Ruins and Structures

From the button All Guardian Sites you can see a table of known Guardian Ruins, Structures and Beacons, sorted by distance from your current location or any other known star system.

The table can be sorted by clicking column headers, and filtered by arbitrary text, site types or which sites you have visited:

Right click a row for more options, such as copying the system name/co-ordinates, to view the survey map for that specific site, or open the folder with screenshots for that body (requires SrvSurvey to be processing screenshots, see more details here).

Reviewing Surveys

From the main window Survey Maps button you can view any of your previous surveys, or see the template of all items for each type of ruins. Use the top drop-downs to select specific site types, then specific sites you have visited.