Exploration does need some kind of negative space wedgie to spice it up though. I know real cartography consists almost entirely of taking elevation readings and doing trigonometry, but that isn't the kind of exploration a space game like Elite tries to capture.
What would Star Trek be without the episodes that start with "Captain, we've detected inverse positronic oscillations emanating from an antitetrionic vortex, it appears to be interfering with our warp core."?
It would be quite boring if all the scrambling to reverse the polarity of the subspace resonator and route it through the deflector dish was replaced with "Sector coordinates CO85-H23-G72-A5-JK42, system scanned and logged. Proceeding to next system as scheduled."
What would Star Trek be without the episodes that start with "Captain, we've detected inverse positronic oscillations emanating from an antitetrionic vortex, it appears to be interfering with our warp core."?
It would be quite boring if all the scrambling to reverse the polarity of the subspace resonator and route it through the deflector dish was replaced with "Sector coordinates CO85-H23-G72-A5-JK42, system scanned and logged. Proceeding to next system as scheduled."