60,000 light years, 500 Neutron Stars, 70 Black holes, 1 Supermassive and 22mil Profit!

[_Dastardly_]

My latest exploration trip was only going to be 8000 light years but I ended up on a huge trip to Sag A* and I figured out how to make exploration pay (not as good as trading but an actual decent amount).

First the pretty pictures...

Some random shots from near occupied space...



Imagine the night sky on this planet near the core


Looks hot


Some complicated orbits here


Sag A*

Spoiler

Triple star and Ammonia World




Of the 22 million earned in this trip the VAST majority was from one small section.

Here:

This is one section about 17,000 light years from Sol, note that ONLY Non Sequence Stars are selected (Neutron Stars and Black holes).



There are millions of them, if you add in white dwarfs as well then this probably triples the number.

Each one is worth 20k + Exploration bonus of 10k and you can do about 1 per minute. Just jump in, scan star, jump to next one, and because they are really close together you can scan loads before you have to fuel scoop.



That's from one page that took around 20 minutes to complete, + 50% discovery bonus = around 1.5 to 1.7mil per hour. And really it's not that amount because you have to spend 12-18 hours of just jumping just GETTING to that area.

 

[Spiridon]

+1

You're opening a new field, "industrial exploration".

Bravo!

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[omega_prime]

Thanks for spilling the secret - doing this for days now (already 1200 neutron stars and black holes) and plan to come back when i have enough to get my Elite in Exploration
Only downside: It makes Exploration also a kind of grinding ....
Also: Trading is still payed way better ...

 

[_Dastardly_]

It's quite ironic that not Discovering but rather shotgunning (only Detail-scan what is within immediate range, then jump right off) is the most profitable and fastest way indeed...

Only moving around for Earth-likes or Terraforming candidates then, leaving 99% of these Systems unexplored since it simply consumes way too much time and is highly unprofitable at the same time.

It only works well with Neutron stars and black holes because they are worth more. Even stopping to scan earthlikes is going to cut into your profit because if it takes more than a minute to get there... it's not worth it.

 

[figola]

Congratz. Impressive cmdr.

 

[Ravenov]

Hmm, my last trip was only about 10k ly over a few weeks and i made close to 10 million. I scanned most systems that weren't just ice planets, i think the most profitable were the ones that had a mix of meta rich and high metal contents that were also terraforming

 

[scorpyon]

Thats pretty damn sweet work out there, Commander!
Have some repz!

 

[glunark]

Congratulations, what was your setup for the journey?

 

[_Dastardly_]

Congratulations, what was your setup for the journey?

This was what I used. No weapons, just some heat sinks for when I was not paying enough attention.

 

[Remo]

+rep my friend.

Seeing these posts has made me want to do some exploring so i'm saving up some cash and going exploring my self soon.

Great pic's btw

 

[carlisle]

It's quite ironic that not Discovering but rather shotgunning (only Detail-scan what is within immediate range, then jump right off) is the most profitable and fastest way indeed...

Only moving around for Earth-likes or Terraforming candidates then, leaving 99% of these Systems unexplored since it simply consumes way too much time and is highly unprofitable at the same time.

I don't really see any problem with this. Surely part of exploring is deciding what is worth exploring, makes it more of a game rather than a grind if you have to make more decisions about your activities. I haven't tried exploring yet (saving for scanners) but after reading this thread I wonder if part of the reason so many people say exploring is so ridiculously unprofitable is that so many people are hung up on scanning every single object. I've read a few threads from people complaining that barren rocks don't pay much for the amount of time it take to fly to them and scan them... but perhaps that's the point, it's down to you, the explorer to choose what to explore, rather than just exploring everything.

Hopefully planetary landings will add some more variety, giving you more things to focus your attention to different types of planet so that rocks for example, aren't much of a muchness; things such as anomalies which you can detect using the discovery scanner and which require you to fly down to the surface, and could be evidence of an ancient alien civilisation, or an unusually rich vein of metal.

 

[Allitnil]

Hmm, my last trip was only about 10k ly over a few weeks and i made close to 10 million. I scanned most systems that weren't just ice planets, i think the most profitable were the ones that had a mix of meta rich and high metal contents that were also terraforming

Similarly, my last trip was about 7.5m credits from 7k LY. No good reason to head out as far as the off-sequence star belts if you want to make credits. Metal rich / high metal content / terraformable worlds / water worlds & earth likes (and even gas giants if you don't have to SC far) pay more than well enough to be worth scanning them.

The only forms of exploring that don't really pay are visiting the most popular locations (you want the first discovery bonus) and long range journeys where scanning is incidental and would just make the journey far too time consuming.

 

[_Dastardly_]

I think even normal methods where you only scan worthwhile targets (gas giants, earthlikes etc) your income in very low, 200-300k per hour at most probabily, scanning everything takes it well below that.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[FatCat]

To me exploring is not about making money, it's about finding cool stuff and cataloging. Maybe its the CDO (like OCD except the letters are in the right order) in me but I have to scan everything so my maps complete. Rushing around, as fast as posable doesn't sound fun to me.

 

[th03bgt]

That a damn good chunk of change.

Doing the same myself. Heading off to the centre, completed 10,000lys so far just jumping from one non-sequence system to the next. On my return, I will go at a more sedate pace using the economy setting and scanning everything in sight.

So many Black holes with no name against them... Found a fair few double and triple ones too.

 

[Ben_BigBen]

I think there's still enough to go around even if all of us went out and did this - I might join in the party

 

[_Dastardly_]

To me exploring is not about making money, it's about finding cool stuff and cataloging. Maybe its the CDO (like OCD except the letters are in the right order) in me but I have to scan everything so my maps complete. Rushing around, as fast as posable doesn't sound fun to me.

As you can see from my pictures I like exploring for the sake of exploring too, out of the whole 2 week trip I spent probabily 10 days travelling and scanning and looking for 'cool stuff' and 2 days doing the neutron star dance. But that two days probably made 60% of my income. It's nice to have some credits for shiny new toys as well.

 

[shadragon]

Lewis and Clark didn't make a huge series of discoveries as they walked through the western US, but they did get a lot of credit for it.

I personally like to explore systems. You see a lot more and while you may not make as many credits, it isn't the paycheck, it's the journey.