Does Frontier intend players to get Elite exploration within a week?

Should players be able to rank up to Elite in exploration within a week using the new passenger miss

  • Yes

    Votes: 61 22.8%
  • No

    Votes: 207 77.2%

  • Total voters
    268
  • Poll closed .
This is bad? There are things that are more badly broken in the game atm, such as the fact you can go from a sidewinder to a cutter within a week relatively risk free.
 
Have you done the math to back that up? Something tells me it's the same ratio, it's just that Exploration Rank has a lower cap for Elite.

Isn't it 160m vs 1b and change for Explorer vs Trader?

What's the difference? Sorry if I'm being pragmatic, but they both affect the ratio.

Ziljan has some suggestions earlier in the thread to help bring the numbers and thresholds in line.
 

Lestat

Banned
I think Exploration should rank should be done by how many Planet and Star scanned. Not how many system visited and basic scan.
 
What's the difference? Sorry if I'm being pragmatic, but they both affect the ratio.

Ziljan has some suggestions earlier in the thread to help bring the numbers and thresholds in line.

Eh, idk, I might be bsing myself into a corner, it's getting late now and I've been around all day.
 
I think Exploration should rank should be done by how many Planet and Star scanned. Not how many system visited and basic scan.

Your suggestion would not reward rarity of the bodies scanned. A black hole would be worth the same as a brown dwarf. I believe the existing mechanism (based on cartographic data sold) is fine, it just doesn't need to include any mission profits, which is the contentious change.
 
I do not think passenger missions should affect Exploration rank. You're hauling a passenger and going to the destination of their choice, then (sometimes) bringing them back home.

That's not trailblazing and discovering "new" things. (I use air quotes because I also don't think it makes sense how we can "discover" systems & planets that are already discovered by other CMDRs....)
 
I do not think passenger missions should affect Exploration rank. You're hauling a passenger and going to the destination of their choice, then (sometimes) bringing them back home.

That's not trailblazing and discovering "new" things. (I use air quotes because I also don't think it makes sense how we can "discover" systems & planets that are already discovered by other CMDRs....)

What I like about the missions is the motivation they provide to get out there & learn the mechanics of exploration (KGB FOAM etc). I don't mind discovering already discovered bodies but once in the system concerned it'd be nice to differentiate between 'unexplored' and 'unscanned' (ie never scanned by anyone vs not yet in your personal database).

Increasing the extra reward for first discoveries at this late stage in the game where much of the nearby systems have been tagged could be a positive step.
 
I suppose a possible problem is that the progression badges give players something to measure their progress in the game by. If you get flipped "from zero to hero" in a couple of days, it means you don't see any further progress, and although Elite: Dangerous doesn't have a win state, some people may feel they have completed the game too quickly when this happens.

Arguably, passenger missions are more about trading than exploration.

And yes, it's just a meaningless badge, but Elite pilots are supposed to be rare in the lore. And I'm a bit sad that my progression in Exploration has stopped, because there are no more ranks. Possibly more ranks could be added above Elite, with a logarithmic scale of difficulty (Elite, Very Elite, Hugely Elite, You Won't Believe How Amazingly Mind-Bogglingly Elite) to extend the progression measure.

I'm an explorer because I enjoy it though, so no more rank-ups doesn't affect how I play the game.
 
I've not done actual math, but I've ran a lot of passenger ferry missions (I'm still Entrepreneur in trade rank) and my rank might go up a percentage point or two at most with each mission. Every example of the sightseeing missions posted by others I've seen has been greatly more than that, much much more. I've been Elite in exploration for over a year now, so I can't test it personally.

It would take me a very long time indeed to make Elite in trading running just pax ferry missions. People are making Elite in exploration in a matter of days with sightseeing missions. It's not the same ratio, not even close.

At least for tourist missions when you're at Ranger level it's 1% for every million earned. At Pioneer it's 1% for every 2 million earned.
So to go from Pioneer to Elite doing tourist missions, you have to do around 197 million credits worth of tourist missions.

You get better paying missions the higher rank you are. Pioneer level missions can pay out 8 million or so for 30-40 minutes of work and Elite missions(which pop now and again at Ranger and Pioneer) paying out 18 million for about the same work.

I dont see the issue. Its not like you get +100 superduper skills when you get Elite ranking.
You get a decal, system pass, and permanent boost to smugness.
 

The data scan passenger mission I did was at least roughly a 1:1 in Pioneer. It was around a 22M payout in credits and 68% Pioneer to 90% Pioneer, not including the data honks and scans I did along the way which brought me up to 97% Pioneer. I haven't done any passenger missions since then and I'm currently ranked Elite, so I can't really do any more testing myself now.

Keep in mind that my test also didn't including passenger mission stacking.

...

For me, finding this ringed ELW in my Tacky Test Taxi that two other Commanders that have tags in the system had overlooked was the best part of these shenanigans. Personally, I'll consider myself to be Elite exploration ranked once I reach 156,500,000 "profits from exploration," assuming the weight of this metric doesn't change in the meantime, regardless of the apparent worth or lack thereof of the rank itself. The latter is mostly irrelevant to the point of this thread, in my opinion at least.

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A trip to jaques with scanning on way yielded me less then 40mil exploration profits, thats 20% in pioneer rank toward elite. Sorry but no.
 
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