But if your goal is maximising credits/hour, exploration does not pay.
Am I doing it wrong or does it pay too little?
- Thread starter Ringslinger
- Start date
Well, I mean, I've been out here a year + in my little ASP Explorer. It's not as if I don't like it. I was just trying to figure out what was next for me and the thought of having a carrier..with an exploration ship and a mining ship didn't sound like a bad idea. Maybe bring a couple of friends along. But when I started to look at the economics of it all it was like whoa....I'm spending a lot of time (albeit having fun) and my reward is, in game terms, much less.
What was the original plan for exploration?
Sounds like you have the right incentive. You’ll do fine, credits are actually very easy to accumulate now in game. Stick at it.
The proposals, were far reaching. There are a few vids online. Essentially originally you would scan a sector some how, likely with a probe, to produce a heat map, this would enable you to secure a waypoint.
In the original proposals, such jumps between waypoints might fail, and you would fall into dark systems, effectively brown dwarfs and rouge planets as those would not have been shown in the galaxy map.
Finding dark systems would present mysteries, and aid in exploration as short cuts.
Additionally you would be able to trade exploration data between factions, and the data would be valuable in the sense of mining resources and power play tactics…enabling you to effectively barter and pit one faction against another.
But those were just proposals… DB seemed very keen on them and did seem to believe at the time they were to be built, but what we got at launch was very much, a work in progress, and 9 years later, they haven’t improved upon it.
The proposals, were far reaching. There are a few vids online. Essentially originally you would scan a sector some how, likely with a probe, to produce a heat map, this would enable you to secure a waypoint.
In the original proposals, such jumps between waypoints might fail, and you would fall into dark systems, effectively brown dwarfs and rouge planets as those would not have been shown in the galaxy map.
Finding dark systems would present mysteries, and aid in exploration as short cuts.
Additionally you would be able to trade exploration data between factions, and the data would be valuable in the sense of mining resources and power play tactics…enabling you to effectively barter and pit one faction against another.
But those were just proposals… DB seemed very keen on them and did seem to believe at the time they were to be built, but what we got at launch was very much, a work in progress, and 9 years later, they haven’t improved upon it.
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Well we got something doable, unlike ongoing dreams.txt of certain other space game. Mostly though minimum viable product sadly.
That is very different than what we have now.
Thx.
The plan now is to get to Colonia ( 300 jumps to go?) and try and catch a ride back to the bubble. Then run a Powerplay that's supposed to increase my data turn in value. I'm not sure what those are but I'll learn. Turn in and then see where I'm at. If I gotta go pew, pew shooty mcshooty for a few months then I'll do till I can get an FC then head out again.
One of the huge drawbacks about the deep exploring, for me, is that if I want to play with friends it's just impossible. Once you're out 30K from the bubble it's just too long to just hop back. Hopefully with an FC I can bring them along or at least make the trip back quicker.
Cheers.
Well good exploring ship can go through more space in real time than carrier. My Krait makes 60 ly jumps, with neutron highway way over 200. Carrier jumps 500 but needs a lot of time for each jump, and uses different fuel that has to mined.
I will say this though...on the mystery part of that proposal. Boy, would I like to see something like that.
Look, I really do love just flying around here and zipping by planets, catching the sunrise as you orbit a body, a ringed sky, landing on a moon of a moon! But would it not be something to land somewhere and see an ancient civilization or clue to one. A Dyson sphere or a ringworld. I don't know. A crazy alien carrier just flying by ignoring you. Who knows.
I mean I can come up with all the reasons why that would be a bad idea but feels like it needs something to break up the monotony of it some times.
Would have been really fine 
My Asp does 60 LY as well. I'm too chicken to do Neutron jumps, I've never tried them and I'm not about to blow up my this far out. If I put my head down, I can may be to 50 jumps in an hour, but that almost never happens. I end up scanning planets and it drops to like 20.
Neutron jumps are easy, white dwarves are what you need to avoid.
Basically see where exclusion zone is, with neutron stars it is pretty small zone around star. See where those gas flows are and nicely ease your ship into flow, keep it there untill it says FSD supercharged. Jump away.
White dwarves are bad, exlclusion zone is BIG and boost is negligible, better remove them from map plots.
I don't think I have them excluded from my plot but I haven't run into either for a every long time. Next interesting star is a Proto Star in about 30 jumps. The rest 90 % Class M.
You haven't got a proper system, sure some of those are valuable, but you are missing a lot probably, last trip I did out to Beagle and back I had 1.7b in scan data. Some HMC aren't worth mappong, some are, some rocky worlds that are otherwise not worth mapping are if they are terraformable and etc. If you map everything in all systems then you end up wasting a lot of time, you need a tool to target specific bodies. If you have a tool like Elite Observatory it would help, for instance here's two system data from Observatory;
First system, nothing here is worth mapping, if they were terraformable they may be worth over a million and you would map them, but you would spend hours mapping them all for a couple of million, skip them all unless they show other interesting traits, like thargoid or guardian, good bio etc;
The very next system was this system, you can see it's much more valuable, instead of spending an hour mapping many HMC worth 200k each I skip them and get 3 bodies in a system worth nearly 7m, basically don't map unless a body is worth around a million credits plus, you waste to much time on worthless systems.
If any of the HMC's in that first system were terraformable they would be worth mappingg, between 1m and 2m, but they weren't, you skip those systems and continue jumping, you will get a lot more in the same amount of time, typically in a short leg while chasing my FC, around 500ly, I get between 10m and 30m depending on what systems I find. So even with the low figure you should be getting 1b+ for a one way trip to BP from the bubble, the same returning, you should be getting over a billion fro a trip from Sag A* to BP and back.
If you are on PC download the Elite Observatory tool, it will be a great help.
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You haven't got a proper system, sure some of those are valuable, but you are missing a lot probably, last trip I did out to Beagle and back I had 1.7b in scan data. Some HMC aren't worth mappong, some are, some rocky worlds that are otherwise not worth mapping are if they are terraformable and etc. If you map everything in all systems then you end up wasting a lot of time, you need a tool to target specific bodies. If you have a tool like Elite Observatory it would help, for instance here's two system data from Observatory;
First system, nothing here is worth mapping, if they were terraformable they may be worth over a million and you would map them, but you would spend hours mapping them all for a couple of million, skip them all unless they show other interesting traits, like thargoid or guardian, good bio etc;
The very next system was this system, you can see it's much more valuable, instead of spending an hour mapping many HMC worth 200k each I skip them and get 3 bodies in a system worth nearly 7m, basically don't map unless a body is worth around a million credits plus, you waste to much time on worthless systems.
If any of the HMC's in that first system were terraformable they would be worth mappingg, between 1m and 2m, but they weren't, you skip those systems and continue jumping, you will get a lot more in the same amount of time, typically in a short leg while chasing my FC, around 500ly, I get between 10m and 30m depending on what systems I find. So even with the low figure you should be getting 1b+ for a one way trip to BP from the bubble, the same returning, you should be getting over a billion fro a trip from Sag A* to BP and back.
If you are on PC download the Elite Observatory tool, it will be a great help.
Yes!
Recently installed Elite Observatory and having the audible "High Value Target" in my ear when I FSS a system helps immensely. It doesn't give me a value like you have there, but helpful none the less. So my system, has improved in the last two weeks. I think I'm running ED Discovery, Icarus, Market Connector and Core right now. Learning the 3rd party stuff.
I 100% believe your math but according to EDSM and ED Discovery I have some where between 150M and 250M since my stop in Sag A. Pretty sure I sold off data there for fear that I would blow up on the way to Salome's Reach. Though, I was not reporting the whole time so the numbers may be off. I'm headed to Colonia now where I hope to get a better number. But I'm not going to turn in till I do the Li Yong Rui Powerplay. Someone told me that will increase my turn in value.
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I'm headed to Colonia now. So I hope to buy a suit and a scanner(?) there.
I filter out M class stars, as they're usually just boring rock and ice. If you're in it for the money, focus on ELW, WW, AW, HMC, and any terraforming candidates.
Systems with a higher mass code in the name tend to be more interesting and valuable. I found this D2EA video very informative.
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The Genetic Sampler is included with the Artemis Suit...
I'll try it out.
I'm 150 jumps from my next destination. I can stop and recalculate.
I'll filter out the M,T, Y and White Dwarf stars and see what happens.
thx.
Excellent. I honestly don't know much about the suits and FPS stuff in Odyssey at all.
Thx.