1.1 Exploration

[Xexexh]

With some trepidation I set off on a fairly long exploration round trip as soon as I had sold most of my weapons, downgraded power plant from C5 to D5, Shield from C6 to D6 and upgraded my FSD from B5 to A5.

As I was leaving inhabited space I encountered more NPC interdictions / attempts than I was expecting - maybe just RNG - they soon tailed off.

My route started at Lombi and went via waypoints of 34 Piscium - HIP 109546 - HIP 102038 - 1 Aquarii A and then back to Lombi. Took around 5 hours all told not including breaks.

Docked back at Lombi and was able to sell all of the data without problem by selecting the "Sell Page" option (had to do this 3 times and wait for it to finish the process each time). The process includes giving you notifications of each body that you were the first to scan plus notification of a "Bonus" amount for each. The bonus amounts look to be similar to what you would expect as a normal discovery payment (largest 1 noticed were three at around 21 - 22k which I think were earthlike worlds). Not sure if the Bonus payments double up your basic discovery payments - if so that's a nice way to make long distance exploration more profitable.

The end result? Around 1.7 million credits plus around 300 "first" discoveries. That's more fun (for me) than trading and probably a whole less risk.

No bug in selling the exploration data (at least for me - maybe I'm lucky?). And no explosions (although I had my heart in my mouth when a Type 7 shunted me in the posterior as I was coming through the letterbox into Xin hub - didn't touch the wall so maybe that's what saved me? Otherwise maybe my level 6 shields? Didn't take any damage)

I'm not trying to say that reported bugs don't exist but I didn't see any trace of them. Stealth fixed maybe? Or I just got lucky? I'll be making another run tomorrow to test it again

 

[elaverick]

1.7 is a good haul for that route. Did you scan every system or just the interesting ones? I'm trying to work out how much the discovery bonus is adding...

 

[Xexexh]

Scanned pretty much everything up to HIP 102038 (excluding some outlying planets I was pretty sure were Ice), much less from there to 1 Aquarii (most of that route was red dwarfs surrounded by ice planets) and then virtually nothing from there on as was on the home stretch and eager to finish it up

 

[Nutter]

1.7 is a good haul for that route. Did you scan every system or just the interesting ones? I'm trying to work out how much the discovery bonus is adding...

Discovery bonus is 50% of scan...

So a 1,000 first pays 500 bonus = Total 1,500

 

[Ulysses_W]

I can't wait to get back from the Heart nebula. I'll have scanned around 1,000 systems of varying types with a goodly number of terraformable planets by the time I return.

The thing is, although I might earn myself a few mil, I have a feeling that I'm just gonna turn around and go back out again.

 

[blacky75]

I can't wait to get back from the Heart nebula. I'll have scanned around 1,000 systems of varying types with a goodly number of terraformable planets by the time I return.

The thing is, although I might earn myself a few mil, I have a feeling that I'm just gonna turn around and go back out again.

..... you're not alone out there, wanting BE-FIRST scans ;-) Watch out and be fast back

 

[Hank]

a question to you long haul explorers:
.
How do you take care of your ships integrity when on these long trips?
.
Do you take a lot of wear and tear? Does it put you at risk of blowing up when you return to civilization? (I heard / read somewhere about ships w/low integrity getting blown up for what reason I'm not sure.)
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I'm not worried about fuel, I'm a scooping fool?
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Are there any outposts out there say ... 50 or more Ly's away?
.
I've looped out past Sunoma (?) and back and made some fairly good money on those small runs.

 

[Ulysses_W]

a question to you long haul explorers:
.
How do you take care of your ships integrity when on these long trips?
.
Do you take a lot of wear and tear? Does it put you at risk of blowing up when you return to civilization? (I heard / read somewhere about ships w/low integrity getting blown up for what reason I'm not sure.)
.
I'm not worried about fuel, I'm a scooping fool?
.
Are there any outposts out there say ... 50 or more Ly's away?
.
I've looped out past Sunoma (?) and back and made some fairly good money on those small runs.

I'm 7,000LY out at the moment. Ship integrity is 98% across all modules except for 100% ADS
Hull integrity is at 87% due to an unfortunate run in with a Black hole.

The only risk we have is getting interdicted when we get closer to home, especially if like me you're unarmed.

There are no outposts out here, nothing, nada.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

..... you're not alone out there, wanting BE-FIRST scans ;-) Watch out and be fast back

Excellent! I'm not sure yet how to return home... double back or head corewards first?
I want to get back, but at the same time there are so many other places to go.

I'll play it by ear.

 

[Allitnil]

You can't actually see what the ship integrity is without docking & going to the repair screen. But you can ignore it & assume it will be down to zero by the end of a long trip (10k+ LY). Not an issue as long as you play it safe on your return - all it means is that if the integrity is down to zero then any hull damage you take will be increased by 30%.

Actual hull damage (which is what you see in the cockpit UI) is going to happen if you take excess heat while scooping or are forced to make an emergency stop through getting too close to a star / planet. ALL of these are avoidable (and you should do your best to avoid them) with one exception - when you come out of hyperspace in the middle of a close binary system. So far I've managed to get out OK each time this has happened to me but I might just have been lucky enough not to encounter a no-win scenario. Either way, keep your wits about you when you jump - not a good time to go and make a cup of tea

No outposts but the just introduced travelling starport will go out of inhabited space, but not sure just how far. You'll stop seeing NPCs, USS, etc about 3-400 LY from inhabited space.

As for 'first discovered' my experience so far is that if you are 1k LY from Sol and not near an obvious place like a nebula then virtually every system is still unexplored. nb: that might also be the case for a lot closer to home, it's just that I am staying at around 1000 LY at present until I know it is safe to return!