Exploration strategies

[Orvidius]

I usually have a destination in mind, and then just see what I stumble across along the way. So I'm usually going in pretty straight lines, or bouncing from one nebula to another. They make great waypoints.

Just to elaborate on this, a great example is my Beagle Point trip last week (visible in the map below). I bounced from one nebula to the next (exploring each briefly), as a set of waypoints out toward Beagle Point, and then made a straight shot to Colonia afterward. The portion in green was just a few hours in one evening, this past Friday. I only buckeyballed it for the final 3 kly back to Colonia. The rest of the time it was still a "let's see what we stumble into along the way", but otherwise Colonia was the waypoint. All of the squiggles, and other jagged loops, are all Nebula expeditions (plus the Zurara):

 

[Moadeeb]

After completing my first exploration. I am thinking of a few strategies right now.

1 - Use the star filter to try and find some white dwarves like the cloud near the starting spot of the game.
2 - Pick one of the outer arms of the galaxy and fly straight up one of them in criss-cross fashion
3 - Look for class "o" stars and hunt as many down as I can until bored or found all of them in the galaxy.

I am leaning on 2 or 3

 

[Straha Yeagar]

 

[LP Garnell]

EDSM Screenshots from my latest journey. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Overall view of last trip.

Two closely spaced boxels where I scanned just about every D-Mass star system within each boxel.

 

[Col Frost]

here's what it looks like when you've visited all 10,000 stars in an 80 ly cube of D mass stars near the core

 

[osser]

I have a 348 item bucket list I work on. I got about half of it done on my 1st long trip.
I will be heading out again 2 weeks from today. So looking forward to it.

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

Second account. When you get bored stupid exploring spend a few days on your second account. No more than a few days mind. Then return to exploring. Breaks up the monotony perfectly.

 

[iain666]

When you get bored stupid exploring

Does not compute...

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

Ok not "bored stupid". Maybe replace with "need a change of scenery".

 

[Henkka77]

Second account. When you get bored stupid exploring spend a few days on your second account. No more than a few days mind. Then return to exploring. Breaks up the monotony perfectly.

What if the second account is also out there exploring like i have..?

 

[disorganise]

here's what it looks like when you've visited all 10,000 stars in an 80 ly cube of D mass stars near the core
https://i.imgur.com/2dM3Ytg.png

That.is.magnificient. o7

 

[Whiterose]

I print off the galaxy map. Then I draw shapes (currently the shape is the Empire symbol) and then make waypoints and then follow the yellow brick road.

 

[Randalph Roddleton]

I started off by wanting to have plenty of unique discoveries to my name. To do this, I picked an area of the galaxy where very few people were likely to naturally visit, and then found a black hole system to book mark. I then took a trip to Colonia, and on to SagA. From there, I've been making my way to my initial book mark via a series of intermediate stepping points. As it stands, I'm now over 40kly away from Sol with probably another 20kly to go...

Initially I started to speed jump to the next waypoint, doing only a simple honk at each system. After finding a twin terraformable HMC world bonus, I've now got the bug for high-return systems. If I see some interesting candidates for a surface scan, then I may make a small detour.

My plan for when I get to my ultimate destination is to get out in the SRV and start getting me some nice screenshots. Once I get bored of that, I'll head off back to the nearest habitable system and sell my exploration data, hopefully raising enough funds for an Anaconda...

 

[osser]

I'm also at the point where I don't really care much about 1st discoveries, I've got my name on enough stuff out there. Some very good ones too. I have over 2 billion credits now so it's not a money thing either.
Now that I have a srv equipped I plan on just going out to find shiny's and just have fun working the bucket list.

 

[khaos526]

I just use EDDiscovery and look for pockets in the galaxy that don't have any commander data and go travel through those. I don't normally have a plan at all actually or if I have a destination, I always end up going off course for the hell of it anyways...

 

[Shinji Ikari]

here's what it looks like when you've visited all 10,000 stars in an 80 ly cube of D mass stars near the core
https://i.imgur.com/2dM3Ytg.png

That looks painful.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

One of the things I've done in the past is roll a dice.

It works like this....
1= North (towards BP)
2= East
3= South
4= West
5= Up
6= Down

Roll the dice and head out of the bubble in that direction for about 3k (ignore up/down for this bit).

Once you get out there, roll again, and head in the new direction for 500ly, detouring to look at shinies on the way

Rinse and repeat.

Nice to see someone for a change who prefers to have even more RNG*.

*For the record, I have no issues with it.

 

[duckofdeath]

here's what it looks like when you've visited all 10,000 stars in an 80 ly cube of D mass stars near the core
https://i.imgur.com/2dM3Ytg.png

Noice work! Now you need to do another one, for reference.

 

[Col Frost]

Noice work! Now you need to do another one, for reference.

challenge accepted, I started another cube near Colonia, maybe I'll finish it!

That is generally how I do my exploring, from a small Sub Sector of 10 D mass stars, to one with 10,000, with trips to other shinies inbetween

 

[Col Frost]

That looks painful.

tbh it was great fun. I did the majority of it in a wing with Chiggy and we had a scream! I recommend this method of exploring, it took a while though ( a month or two (or 3)