Are they still something on the roadmap? Last year there were rumors about military drives that had extended jump ranges? The Gas Giant thing has also been something sorely missing. You could mine for rare and exotic gasses this way. Could it possibly be included in the mining update?
What about Hyperspace misjumps and dark systems, rogue planets? Hyperspace jumps should have .01% or more of a misjump or some debris or unknown object kicking you out of witch space. Then you could find mysterious things and add new places on the map?
This would be a fun way of adding new systems inside the bubble in the black. Exploration should not only be OUTSIDE the bubble. There has to be all sorts of things to still find in habited space!
Ah yeah I was thinking this recently.
I'm sure you remember back in the old days gas-giant scooping was a thing. I actually thought it would be nice to have more fuel scoop models; In addition to the current ones there's a much less efficient version that can scoop from Gas Giants (in that, it takes a LOT longer to scoop them), that would be pretty interesting for explorers. You pick the star scoop, faster, but obviously there's some starts you can't scoop, or the Gas Giant scoop, much slower, but most systems have a gas giant, if you're willing to expend the time on it. Also back in the old days you could scoop to your cargo, so you could actually use it to make some money selling Hydrogen fuel you'd mined, as you said it could be part of the mining "profession".
I like the idea of dark systems, but I think we need to wait for the new exploration mechanics before we get anything like that or rogue planets because right now there's just no real mechanism to discover them, would be great though, especially if they stayed as just your discovery (unless other people found them). One of the things I like about other SF franchises is the idea of spacefarers having their own shortcuts or secret routes through places.
I do miss hyperdrive misjumps. in FE2 that's how I used to explore, trigger a misjump and sometimes you'd end up thousands of lightyears away (often with a broken drive lol). I've actually heard of the occasional misjump in ED, though I'm not sure it's true. I've seen at least one case reported where someone jumped almost 80ly on a non-engineered drive and not using neutron boosts, they said the ship reported the now familiar "hyperdrive conduit unstable" message, but this was long before Thargoid hyperdictions. I don't know if misjumps are actually in ED, they're just immensely rare? Either way, with a damaged drive or under certain other rare condition, yes a misjump would be great! We also know it's possible in Lore, since that's what happened to Jaques station.