If only ~1% of the galaxy is explored....
- Thread starter Mrat13
- Start date
This is a case of, Figures never lie but liars figure, no offense intended to @Mrat13. Anything that only values by percentages ignores the actual numbers involved.
400,000,000,000 star systems, an unspecified number of explorers, and "only ~1%" of the galaxy touched; but that number would be ~4,000,000,000 in six years if it is accurate.
Given a current absolute of ~12,000,000 players, of which only a portion are exploring, I think that is a statistically impressive accomplishment, especially since the ~12 million value only dates back to the Epic give away.
400,000,000,000 star systems, an unspecified number of explorers, and "only ~1%" of the galaxy touched; but that number would be ~4,000,000,000 in six years if it is accurate.
Given a current absolute of ~12,000,000 players, of which only a portion are exploring, I think that is a statistically impressive accomplishment, especially since the ~12 million value only dates back to the Epic give away.
In B4 obligatory poster moaning about travel times!
Sorry OP.
Sorry OP.
How about if one of the filters in the Galmap giving us the option to hide visited systems.
I’d prefer better incentives for the masses like truly one off ship parts that get salvaged from lost and crashed ships that once looted and repaired on ship are usable without the need to return to civilisation
I’d prefer better incentives for the masses like truly one off ship parts that get salvaged from lost and crashed ships that once looted and repaired on ship are usable without the need to return to civilisation
I have 1294 first discovery systems from my bubble-Colonia-sagittarius A-bubble trip. Did that with g5'd explo Python, 55ly jump. Lots of jumps and scans/mapping. Really, a lot of that...
At one point I was contemplating rebuy screen as a valid option, couldn't take it any more...
So exploring in Elite, not easy gameplay and not for everybody's taste.
Btw, what's my share in numbers?
Edit :
Just remembered, recently I went out in the black with my alt cmdr in 74ly jump dbx, went in "NE" general direction from Bubble.
Some 5,5k ly away, around 25-30 gameplay hours, i decided to go back, nice discoveries made, screenshoots taken, all that. Few jumps later, on my way back found nice moon with good selenium. Collecting mats and taking screenshoots, I'm looking on planet which moon is orbiting, blue with red canyons, landable...
Yes, you're right, you guys know what happened
I'm like I will be careful, and then shields 50%,hull 37%, rebuy...
Back in my home station, like my supposed to be 11k ly round trip never happened.
So exploring, yeah, good times
At one point I was contemplating rebuy screen as a valid option, couldn't take it any more...
So exploring in Elite, not easy gameplay and not for everybody's taste.
Btw, what's my share in numbers?
Edit :
Just remembered, recently I went out in the black with my alt cmdr in 74ly jump dbx, went in "NE" general direction from Bubble.
Some 5,5k ly away, around 25-30 gameplay hours, i decided to go back, nice discoveries made, screenshoots taken, all that. Few jumps later, on my way back found nice moon with good selenium. Collecting mats and taking screenshoots, I'm looking on planet which moon is orbiting, blue with red canyons, landable...
Yes, you're right, you guys know what happened
I'm like I will be careful, and then shields 50%,hull 37%, rebuy...
Back in my home station, like my supposed to be 11k ly round trip never happened.
So exploring, yeah, good times
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Also, doesn't that 1% figure come from third-party tools that only a portion of explorers use? Has FDev ever said how many stars have been visited?
BTW, edastro has a saturation map made from third-party data: https://edastro.com/galmap/
The edges of the galaxy are mostly explored. If you head out to Aquila's Halo (I was there just a few weeks ago), you will find that 2/3rds of the systems have been tagged. Fewer have been mapped, obviously, but most have been tagged. Xibalba is similar.
Also, every planetary nebula has been visited, tagged, and any planets have been mapped. 100% of them (this is because the full galaxy map is stored on your computer so it was possible for people to extract that data). Every regular nebula has been mostly fully explored too.
I'd call that significant progress.
Nice to see someone actually answer the question....
Edit : hmm, cant post screenshot, but there's "interesting" region there which some cmdr marked
Not done yet either, very much still a WIP.
(It's not me, I'm 10s of kylies from there, but the last time it was mentioned only the 'S' and the first 'N' of 'SEND NUD' was visible - I guess there's an 'ES' still to come)
Deleted member 38366
D
FDev finally giving us useful Filters and Filter Combinations would go a long way to avoid wasted time and unorganized efforts.
One of my most-wanted Galaxy Map Filters would also be :
UC - has no data on this System
UC - has partial (incomplete) data on this System
UC - has complete data on this System
Then you could avoid wandering around Systems, only to discover (pun) that... they're already discovered
(just imagine how frustrating it must be for brand new Explorers to head into Deep Space and seemingly run into nothing but fully explored Systems for quite a long time... not exactly a motivating experience to carry on I'd bet)
One of my most-wanted Galaxy Map Filters would also be :
UC - has no data on this System
UC - has partial (incomplete) data on this System
UC - has complete data on this System
Then you could avoid wandering around Systems, only to discover (pun) that... they're already discovered
(just imagine how frustrating it must be for brand new Explorers to head into Deep Space and seemingly run into nothing but fully explored Systems for quite a long time... not exactly a motivating experience to carry on I'd bet)
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1% of the galaxy explored? Hehe, you wish. Back in February, the latest figure given by Frontier was 201 million systems, meaning that 0.05% of the galaxy has been explored. Whoops.
(Earlier numbers, and other stuff, can be found here.)
However, that is not to say that next to nothing has been explored. Like the real Milky Way, the galaxy here is mostly made up of dwarf stars (M and below), and the vast majority of them are inside the galactic core. So yeah, even if every single system outside the core would be explored, you could still say that most of the galaxy is unexplored.
To better illustrate stuff, EDAstro's saturation map has already been linked above, I'm just adding this as a +1 to that.
Anyway, to the OP's question: yes, we can.
Of course, after having had to do so many shots over the years, I'm a fake explorer.
For visited systems, I believe that Frontier doesn't want to do that because of systems which people just honked and flew through. Perhaps they've missed stuff that was there, or perhaps an update since has added new stuff there. (See: Odyssey.) Marking on the galaxy map every system as visited / partially scanned / etc systems also sounds easy in theory, but the devil is in the details... and I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort.
It's not like the majority of players ever go exploring, after all.
(Earlier numbers, and other stuff, can be found here.)
However, that is not to say that next to nothing has been explored. Like the real Milky Way, the galaxy here is mostly made up of dwarf stars (M and below), and the vast majority of them are inside the galactic core. So yeah, even if every single system outside the core would be explored, you could still say that most of the galaxy is unexplored.
To better illustrate stuff, EDAstro's saturation map has already been linked above, I'm just adding this as a +1 to that.
Anyway, to the OP's question: yes, we can.
Of course, after having had to do so many shots over the years, I'm a fake explorer.
For visited systems, I believe that Frontier doesn't want to do that because of systems which people just honked and flew through. Perhaps they've missed stuff that was there, or perhaps an update since has added new stuff there. (See: Odyssey.) Marking on the galaxy map every system as visited / partially scanned / etc systems also sounds easy in theory, but the devil is in the details... and I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort.
It's not like the majority of players ever go exploring, after all.
So, how do you get those people to explore?
Well, let's see... The most common complaint about exploration can be summed up as "JJJJJJJJJJJ": how boring and monotonous interstellar travel is.
So yeah, if I wanted to make exploration more attractive to more players, that would be the first thing I'd address. The game could sorely use an alternative method of travel, something more active and involved than "point at destination, press button, twiddle your thumbs for half a minute, and repeat this hundreds of times".
Moving on from that: more reasons to explore, better gameplay and also content.
What you are describing is the travel to destinations. You have to fly all the way over to unexplored space, explore, then fly all the way back. If getting to the destination was easier, people could then do the 'fun' part of exploring. FCs alleviate this a little (jump while asleep, nearby base to drop off UC date instead of flying back), but probably aren't perfect (if they were, we'd see more explorers already).
It doesn't have to be easier, it has to be more fun. There's a crucial difference there.
For example, suppose if you could buy another drive, and you could use that to pick a destination farther out, then have to actually fly your ship there yourself. Think canyon racing, if you will, and if you fail, then you end up somewhere else, damaged. Would it be easier than the current hands-off method we have? Of course not. Would it be more fun? For quite many players, I expect it would be.
But such changes always have to be added as alternatives, not as replacements. (cough FSS cough)
Well, it also doesn't help that having one's own fleet carrier is far out of reach of players just starting out. Also, there aren't that many carriers leaving the bubble for exploration at any given time, and they might also not be going to wherever the new explorer would like to be going.
I suppose the best option for a new player would be to hop on a carrier going to Colonia (there's regular traffic there), and explore from then on.
Technically, anywhere you, yourself, have never been before is exploring!
I could explore Sol - just because other people have been there it doesn't stop it being new to me!
I could explore Sol - just because other people have been there it doesn't stop it being new to me!
Outside of reworking the entire game, I don't think you can make the travel itself more fun.
However, they could introduce a new, cheaper carrier (with less amenities, of course)....
Looks like you just bought a flat rate to the drinking game
*cheersLet it be 1% or just 0.05%, I think the true* explorers did a very good job in exploring gameplay loop wise, as also in analyzing and illustrating our given galaxy.
With its chosen scale it wasn't expectable that more than 0.5,1 or 2 percent of it would have been explored at all, was it?
*just for another one, all of course
It does make me wonder why universal cartographics doesn't make it easier for us to find systems they have no data about (the galmap already shows all systems, so it ends up being a comparison of which they do not have any FSS data), or systems in which they do not have full data about (missing DSS planets is an easy deduction for them on systems they already have FSS data).
However, we don't really need that to get working on a more efficient exploration model.
Going for 100% exploration is a lot different than the usual exploration pattern. An efficient explorer initiative for this purpose would involve something like big groups choosing a 10000x0x10000 area of space (this is the biggest square that can be viewed on the galmap grid, though a smaller group could instead go for a 1k square), dividing it in 10x0x10 portions (this is second smallest square on the galmap grid) and then giving these smaller 10 ly squares to individuals (to avoid overlaps). The player would then check every system along the Y axis of it (up and down on the galmap). This gives something like 100-200 systems. For regions extremely dense like the galactic core region there would need to be further splits for individuals by the Y axis - the density there is insane. If it were up to me, this would also involve DSS'ing the planets, but that would make the work multiple times slower (just FSS'ing a system takes minutes while DSS'ing a mostly unexplored systems can take hours and it pays ridiculously little for planets that aren't the juicy types). I don't think the numbers being given to us by Frontier include the DSS percentage.
This would make serious progress on exploration as it makes the best coordinated use with current tools, and it would be especially noticeable on the astrometrics maps. It won't explore the whole milky way in a year (we're still taking hundreds of billions of systems that need to be explored), but you'd at least be able to say which squares on galmap are fully explored, or on the way to be fully explored. Folks not necessarily interested in joining the initiative could at the very least know which areas to avoid (instead of the current generic directions such as moving at least 1k ly away from Sol or avoiding nebulas).
However, we don't really need that to get working on a more efficient exploration model.
Going for 100% exploration is a lot different than the usual exploration pattern. An efficient explorer initiative for this purpose would involve something like big groups choosing a 10000x0x10000 area of space (this is the biggest square that can be viewed on the galmap grid, though a smaller group could instead go for a 1k square), dividing it in 10x0x10 portions (this is second smallest square on the galmap grid) and then giving these smaller 10 ly squares to individuals (to avoid overlaps). The player would then check every system along the Y axis of it (up and down on the galmap). This gives something like 100-200 systems. For regions extremely dense like the galactic core region there would need to be further splits for individuals by the Y axis - the density there is insane. If it were up to me, this would also involve DSS'ing the planets, but that would make the work multiple times slower (just FSS'ing a system takes minutes while DSS'ing a mostly unexplored systems can take hours and it pays ridiculously little for planets that aren't the juicy types). I don't think the numbers being given to us by Frontier include the DSS percentage.
This would make serious progress on exploration as it makes the best coordinated use with current tools, and it would be especially noticeable on the astrometrics maps. It won't explore the whole milky way in a year (we're still taking hundreds of billions of systems that need to be explored), but you'd at least be able to say which squares on galmap are fully explored, or on the way to be fully explored. Folks not necessarily interested in joining the initiative could at the very least know which areas to avoid (instead of the current generic directions such as moving at least 1k ly away from Sol or avoiding nebulas).
Wall of text....Wall of text.
Now I really like the canyon racing idea.
How about using a gizmo (Could need a part of a Thargoid Drive that you might have to supply) from one of the Engineers that’s associated with exploring that allows you to interfere with the FSD Jump during the last few seconds when your flight controls are locked, which if I recall is hardwired in for our own protection and keeps us out of WitchSpace.
I would imagine the gameplay being something like you popping down to a contact at the cartographer’s, you know, the one that owes you a favour seeing as the last time you saw them you cashed in a huge amount of data and let him/her/neutral/plus/minus, what yeah that’s right the one with the Lime coloured nails, pocket 10%...oh c’mon it’s got to be worth their while.
Anyhoo they ask what region/sector you’re interested in and they then give you coordinates for that area that they lack the data for.
Armed with this Info you visit the engineer. You receive a gizmo ( It could take up a slot or a couple of utility mounts one being for each direction of travel and the ammo/charge is only available from Palin etc.) from the Engineer that’s calibrated with your desired coordinates and head to Jackson’s Lighthouse (or the nearest Blackhole, I prefer the Lighthouse option).
At Jackson’s Lighthouse open up the right hand panel, go to module tab, activate Disco GizmoTM. Once that’s warmed up it opens up the GalMap, you input the destination and when the map locks in on it you target that system.
Use the Lighthouse to supercharge your F.S.D and jump as normal. When the countdown hits 3 start rotating your ship to enter the WildCat Jump mini game. Now depending on how well you played the mini relates to how close to your destination you end up and how much if any damage there is to the ship.
Oh advanced apologies for the mats griud I have a feeling it might be quicker to travel to your destination by mule.
07 Commander’s
Now I really like the canyon racing idea.
How about using a gizmo (Could need a part of a Thargoid Drive that you might have to supply) from one of the Engineers that’s associated with exploring that allows you to interfere with the FSD Jump during the last few seconds when your flight controls are locked, which if I recall is hardwired in for our own protection and keeps us out of WitchSpace.
I would imagine the gameplay being something like you popping down to a contact at the cartographer’s, you know, the one that owes you a favour seeing as the last time you saw them you cashed in a huge amount of data and let him/her/neutral/plus/minus, what yeah that’s right the one with the Lime coloured nails, pocket 10%...oh c’mon it’s got to be worth their while.
Anyhoo they ask what region/sector you’re interested in and they then give you coordinates for that area that they lack the data for.
Armed with this Info you visit the engineer. You receive a gizmo ( It could take up a slot or a couple of utility mounts one being for each direction of travel and the ammo/charge is only available from Palin etc.) from the Engineer that’s calibrated with your desired coordinates and head to Jackson’s Lighthouse (or the nearest Blackhole, I prefer the Lighthouse option).
At Jackson’s Lighthouse open up the right hand panel, go to module tab, activate Disco GizmoTM. Once that’s warmed up it opens up the GalMap, you input the destination and when the map locks in on it you target that system.
Use the Lighthouse to supercharge your F.S.D and jump as normal. When the countdown hits 3 start rotating your ship to enter the WildCat Jump mini game. Now depending on how well you played the mini relates to how close to your destination you end up and how much if any damage there is to the ship.
Oh advanced apologies for the mats griud I have a feeling it might be quicker to travel to your destination by mule.
07 Commander’s