Time to nerf exploration!!

[n13L5]

No one cares about credits. They're pretty much worthless in the game.

Totally agree - could you pass me 500 million of your worthless credits for reactive hull plating?

I don't feel like losing 5+ hours of my time for that, and I'm all out of self-running opportunities...

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

So far the nerf gun has been taken to cargo delivery, war massacres, pirate massacres, passenger missions and almost every other way to make a decent amount of credits.

It is now time to nerf exploration to fetch it more in line with the terrible rewards for everything else. Especially the Road to Riches, it's pretty stupid that humanity keeps paying for the same scans of the same systems, it makes no sense whatsoever.

I propose the value of every stellar body be brought to 25% of what it is currently, explorers have had it so easy lately it's almost an exploit.

Nerf the crap out of it i have 12 billion in the bank and methods to get billions and billions more muhahahahahahahahahah do your worse

 

[Bartizan]

Yes, after years of pushing for making exploration viable, let's now cut it off at the knees......great plan.

 

[sb413197]

I think that BUFFING payouts for new discoveries, while nerfing already-discovered systems, would make a lot of sense. Kill road to riches and make legit exploration even more rewarding.

 

[Ozric]

Still don't know what this Road to Riches everyone goes on about is (and I don't care).

There was a huge jump in rewards for terraformable planets with the release of 2.3 (make of that what you will...) which had a number of unforseen consequences. For actual explorers it frustrated the hell out of us because yet again Frontier showed that they didn't care about Exploration at all and the only solution to "make it better" was increase the rewards without adding any more gameplay mechanics.

Reduce the rewards if you want, actual explorers couldn't care less. We don't do it for the credits, if we did then Zulu Romeo wouldn't have set out for Sagittarius A* as soon as the game was released. Erimus wouldn't have headed for Beagle Point. And I wouldn't have headed straight to the Pleiades Cluster and then on to the Crab Nebula.

We did it because despite not having any decent mechanics at all exploration is still (for us) the best part of the game. Plus if you're out in the black you avoid all the constant "balancing" that your bickering brings upon us. If you're "Exploring" for credits, then you're not exploring!

 

[Sylveria]

I find it truly hilarious to see a thread about nerfing exploration when we see calls to remove the distance barriers in this game quite frequently.

Space is huge. Exploration of said space is extremely time consuming not only in-game but also IRL time frames. It takes months or even years for some to actually explore certain parts of just the Milky Way galaxy alone in the game, yet people want the little amount of credits that are awarded for turning in exploration data to be nerfed?

Just... no.

Although I do see where some are making the case for "original" data to be buffed and others reduced... my question is why should newer players be "penalized"? Exploration in general needs serious love as it stands, very little has been done to improve it since the release of this game (most of FD's time spent on catering to combat "balances" and so forth) so now we're going to turn people completely off to Exploration?

Sometimes I wonder if people really "play the tape to the end" before posting ideas and suggestions. Seriously, think of the ramifications not only to YOUR game play but also to others and how it affects others now and in the future.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

So far the nerf gun has been taken to cargo delivery, war massacres, pirate massacres, passenger missions and almost every other way to make a decent amount of credits.

It is now time to nerf exploration to fetch it more in line with the terrible rewards for everything else. Especially the Road to Riches, it's pretty stupid that humanity keeps paying for the same scans of the same systems, it makes no sense whatsoever.

I propose the value of every stellar body be brought to 25% of what it is currently, explorers have had it so easy lately it's almost an exploit.

Is anyone actually using exploration as a form of income? There is nothing to nerf. Credits are junk anyway.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I think that BUFFING payouts for new discoveries, while nerfing already-discovered systems, would make a lot of sense. Kill road to riches and make legit exploration even more rewarding.

'Legit exploration'?
ALL exploration is legitimate, whether it's jonking, cherry-picking or full system scanning.
I've got over 1,000 systems logged in Wregoe sector alone and that's less than 1,500LY from Sol at it's furthest point and that's as much exploration as taking a 70LY 'Conda to Beagle Point and back.

 

[n13L5]

Still don't know what this Road to Riches everyone goes on about is (and I don't care).

There was a huge jump in rewards for terraformable planets with the release of 2.3 (make of that what you will...) which had a number of unforseen consequences. For actual explorers it frustrated the hell out of us because yet again Frontier showed that they didn't care about Exploration at all and the only solution to "make it better" was increase the rewards without adding any more gameplay mechanics.

Reduce the rewards if you want, actual explorers couldn't care less. We don't do it for the credits, if we did then Zulu Romeo wouldn't have set out for Sagittarius A* as soon as the game was released. Erimus wouldn't have headed for Beagle Point. And I wouldn't have headed straight to the Pleiades Cluster and then on to the Crab Nebula.

We did it because despite not having any decent mechanics at all exploration is still (for us) the best part of the game. Plus if you're out in the black you avoid all the constant "balancing" that your bickering brings upon us. If you're "Exploring" for credits, then you're not exploring!

Good points all, and I love forums where moderators get in on discussions...

But I know of course, why you explorers are in a hurry, pay or no pay...

Because it'll become pointless after people consider the consequences of NASA's recent admission, that humanity is "still unable to fly beyond 'low orbit'."
The Astronots will be glad they can finally stop lying about cold-war hoaxes, but there's more trouble - because in that case, people must have been lying about Geo-stationary satellites too.
Maybe that's why flights are only tracked on land and not over the oceans - because maybe there are no satellites at all?

So we might, like some say, just be living in a simulation and there's no universe and no outer space... its all just nth dimensional wire-frames and stunningly nice textures.

 

[Cmdr-Wotherspoon]

I don't think the financial rewards are terribly important to explorers. It slightly saddens me when non-explorers use a crib sheet to go hunting for only the top-paying already-discovered planets, because that's taking away the only interesting part of the pursuit, which is finding new planets, but if that's what they want to do, it's not really any of my business.

What I would like to see would be for systems/bodies (which? that's a slight problem) that have been scanned (say) fifty times should become known systems, and no longer of interest to Universal Cartographics. This would mean that would-be explorers might need to travel as far as 200 LY outside the Bubble to find systems that hadn't been explored already, and help keep exploration at least a little more interesting.

And of course we have the Q4 exploration update coming in November!

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I don't think the financial rewards are terribly important to explorers. It slightly saddens me when non-explorers use a crib sheet to go hunting for only the top-paying already-discovered planets, because that's taking away the only interesting part of the pursuit, which is finding new planets, but if that's what they want to do, it's not really any of my business.

What I would like to see would be for systems/bodies (which? that's a slight problem) that have been scanned (say) fifty times should become known systems, and no longer of interest to Universal Cartographics. This would mean that would-be explorers might need to travel as far as 200 LY outside the Bubble to find systems that hadn't been explored already, and help keep exploration at least a little more interesting.

And of course we have the Q4 exploration update coming in November!

Whilst I generally agree, it doesn't seem fair to 'punish' new players by making them have to travel 500 LY before they can start gaining credits fron exploration.

 

[Sylveria]

And of course we have the Q4 exploration update coming in November!

IMO this is what will truly "make or break" this game for those of us who consider ourselves Explorers by profession in ED.

We've been patiently (well most of us, anyway) waiting for FD to improve the quality of game play for Exploration since release, only to see constant rubber-band balance changes for Combat and the like, and perhaps a few ship skins thrown in for good measure. With Horizons we got to land on planets. Oh and mine rocks. Yay.

OK, now what else can we do?

Exploration at present is not much more than go here, scan this, perhaps take a selfie and move on. I'd like to see MUCH more depth and improvement added, say to the extent that FD has given attention to COMBAT in this game.

 

[Sylveria]

Whilst I generally agree, it doesn't seem fair to 'punish' new players by making them have to travel 500 LY before they can start gaining credits fron exploration.

IMO I see a lot of this as the "I got mine!" mentality. Who cares if someone else is punished, because "I got mine!"?

Yeah, you did get yours- and were well compensated, too. So now it's time for others to "get theirs" as well.

We see a lot of this in around us in today's world... who cares if we keep creating deficits, spending money we don't have, stripping the Earth of its resources and value? Let future generations worry about it, right? For those who have this mentality and have children they profess to care about... shame on them.

 

[Rock Hunter]

I’m not here to argue, simply to ask as someone relatively new to the game and who enjoys exploration, what kind of things would you like to see? It sounds like you’ve been doing it for a while, whilst it’s all still pretty new to me and I’m constantly amazed by the ‘content’ explorers seem to create for themselves.

I’d love to see some very distant alien life/civilisation apart from the Thargoid threat but I imagine that throws up all sorts of issues

 

[Ozric]

We've been patiently (well most of us, anyway)

Hey I'm patient most of the time

I’m not here to argue, simply to ask as someone relatively new to the game and who enjoys exploration, what kind of things would you like to see? It sounds like you’ve been doing it for a while, whilst it’s all still pretty new to me and I’m constantly amazed by the ‘content’ explorers seem to create for themselves.

I’d love to see some very distant alien life/civilisation apart from the Thargoid threat but I imagine that throws up all sorts of issues

Visual representations of Comets!!!! I can't believe I'm still waiting to be honest, especially since we finally proved they existed last year when we dropped out of SC into the Sphere of Influence of one.

I have a list far too long for myself and there was a megathread in the exploration forum.

One of my personal requests (that I asked for over 3 years ago) would be different spectrum filters for the cockpit so that you could see things in X-Ray, Ultraviolet, Infra Red etc... Can you imagine looking at a Wolf Rayet star through an Ultraviolet filter

 

[Rock Hunter]

Ha! This is why I’m so impressed by exploration - people look for and find evidence for so much of what we know is out there and suspect is out there.

I enjoy some combat when I’m back in the bubble and trading to get some cash but exploration is just so intriguing.

Thanks for the link, I’ll go and have a look.

 

[Mengy]

I’m not here to argue, simply to ask as someone relatively new to the game and who enjoys exploration, what kind of things would you like to see?

See the link in my signature for my own personal suggestion list.

 

[Rock Hunter]

See the link in my signature for my own personal suggestion list.

I genuinely can’t Rep you enough for these ideas. What an amazing sense of exploration your ideas propose, giving a real sense of the history of exploration here on Earth whilst encompassing the ideas of danger, risk vs reward and the very human desire to search elsewhere of exploration as an activity of mankind. You’ve managed to sync those ideas into gameplay to draw players in so much more than is currently the case.

The idea of pushing players onto planet surfaces with core samples is one of my favourites as it links nicely within the framework of greater reward from more detailed and intensive levels of exploration but also simply gets us away from taking pretty pictures or collecting engineering materials that we can pick up just as easily in the bubble. Rogue planets fits very well within that structure too. Your thoughts on exploration missions is so simple but can provide a real reason for ‘non-explorers’ to give it a go with a clear mission target to focus on.

Just extremely well thought out and as such I really hope somewhere at FDev HQ there’s a wall with a printed copy of this that is being used as a basis for future changes...or at least for discussion as to viable proposals.

Thanks for such an interesting read, firing my imagination and hopefully sparking some internal debate with the games devs.