As of now, the best method to finding exobiology targets is to hover the surface with your ship until you see something. Then you land as close as you can to save time as opposed to walking around for 10 minutes in three different directions while futilely spamming the 20 meter exobiology ping tool. Even the SRVs are slow compared to just using a ship to hover, spot, land, disembark, scan target, board ship, and repeat for your remaining two samples per type found on that planet.
A cave system would be perfect for on foot gameplay. It would force commanders out of their ships and SRVS to experience a true on-foot exobiology hunt. The different color variants of the plants could leave eerie colored glows on the caves as opposed to the flat color changes on the entire model as it is now. The pinging tool could map out some of the cave. The suit flashlights would make cave exploration spooky. Maybe the flashlight could even force certain plants to close which may require night vision or some other low level lighting tool to successfully scan.
There are hundreds of gameplay mechanics that could be implemented in on foot exobiology hunting rather than just a flat surface with the occasional plant springing out. I hope in the future we see more depth to the skill.
