An Analysis of current Exploration Payouts

Redfox · Jun 13, 2017

As we all know, exploration payouts were increased considerably in 2.3. As I was neither satisfied nor convinced by the payout-figures thrown around here on the forums I started a little project - which turned out to be a little more challenging than expected, but had a pleasing output (see graphs below).

Summary of the underlying data for the analysis: A short exploration trip (4 weeks), about 1.7k jumps, about 1.7k DSScans, with a target of at least 25 data points per body-type. So, without further ado, here we go with the payout-graphs per group of bodies - some of which I personally found quite interesting.

Planets, without Giants (i.e. ELW, AW, WW, HMCW, Rocky, Rocky Ice, Icy, Metal-rich):

Planets, only Giants (i.e. Class I-V GG, GG with ABL, GG with WBL, Helium-rich GG, Water Giants):

Stars, Main Sequence:

Stars, Carbon (i.e. C*, MS, S):

Stars, Compact (i.e. Black Holes, Neutron Stars):

Stars, other (i.e. L, T, Y, Herbig AEBE, TTS, Wolf-Rayets, White Dwarfs):

osser · Jun 13, 2017

Nice work. Have a +rep

iain666 · Jun 13, 2017

I don't suppose you fancy plotting the line from Matt's formulae on those graphs to see if any differences jump out?

LP Garnell · Jun 14, 2017

iain666 said:
I don't suppose you fancy plotting the line from Matt's formulae on those graphs to see if any differences jump out?

Terraformables have a wackiness factor to them

For HMC, usually get the terra bonus.

For Waterworlds, it seems to be a crapshoot. You will either get the full bonus, or about a third. Puzzling, cause we couldn't nail down any consistent correlations between planet characteristics driving the prices.

-VR- pipestein · Jun 14, 2017

What in the heck, what can I say to this. I really love the explorer community here.

Sonof Hibachi · Jun 14, 2017

Have rep, just for being the most wonderful geek I have ever shared a galaxy with!

Redfox · Jun 14, 2017

iain666 said:
I don't suppose you fancy plotting the line from Matt's formulae on those graphs to see if any differences jump out?

I checked the charts with MattG before posting and provided him the relevant data, which might help him figure out some of the odd-ones-out (for which I tripple-checked the data, as they really stand out).

Btw, the App you ~~helped me build~~ built for me *really* helped automate large parts of the data-verification and consolidation. +10 for you if I could.

LP Garnell said:
Terraformables have a wackiness factor to them

For HMC, usually get the terra bonus.

For Waterworlds, it seems to be a crapshoot. You will either get the full bonus, or about a third. Puzzling, cause we couldn't nail down any consistent correlations between planet characteristics driving the prices.

Yes, the WW chart made made seriously doubt my data, as it was the first one I plotted. I really hope this data helps resolve/understadn this.

pipestein said:
What in the heck, what can I say to this. I really love the explorer community here.

Sonof Hibachi said:
Have rep, just for being the most wonderful geek I have ever shared a galaxy with!

Awww... I love you guys too

MattG · Jun 14, 2017

LP Garnell said:
Terraformables have a wackiness factor to them

For HMC, usually get the terra bonus.

For Waterworlds, it seems to be a crapshoot. You will either get the full bonus, or about a third. Puzzling, cause we couldn't nail down any consistent correlations between planet characteristics driving the prices.

Wackiness factor, I like that. Oddly apt.

There is a whole scale across the terraforming bonus, from 0% to 100% across about 30 steps. Thankfully, Redfox's data might've pointed out a starting place - there are 2 ELWs that are below the expected line and these both have Argon in the atmosphere which matches another example I have of an ELW not getting the full bonus, so perhaps Argon being present is the first of many reasons that a planet doesn't get the full TC bonus. Lots more work to do on this, but it's a start.

Heavy Johnson · Jun 15, 2017

Nice work!

It still bothers me that some of the more rare objects in the game (C/S/MS stars, helium-rich gas giants, water giants) are not worth more. Also the larger payout for class-II gas giants makes little sense to me, at least in terms of rarity.

marx · Jun 15, 2017

Heavy Johnson said:
It still bothers me that some of the more rare objects in the game (C/S/MS stars, helium-rich gas giants, water giants) are not worth more. Also the larger payout for class-II gas giants makes little sense to me, at least in terms of rarity.

From a gameplay perspective, it makes sense that stars wouldn't be worth as much as other bodies would, since you can see them on the galaxy map. However, for the rare giants you mentioned, the low price still makes no sense.

Also, about the "wackiness factor" (good choice) and terraforming: it would be helpful if the planet descriptions included information about how good a candidate for terraforming a given planet is. It wouldn't have to be a numerical score like "this is a 72% quality candidate for terraforming", but some ranges noted via text (for example, "this planet is an excellent candidate for terraforming") would still be useful and of interest to everyone. Given that the game does (sort of) track the candidate quality of the bodies, why not make this visible to players?

Redfox · Jun 15, 2017

iain666 said:
I don't suppose you fancy plotting the line from Matt's formulae on those graphs to see if any differences jump out?

Nearly overlooked your actual suggestion there! Comparison done for a few planet types, results see below.

Summary: I've never had a glove that fit as nicely as MattG's formula fits the actual payouts. Great work there, MattG!

A few insights I gained while doing this:

Identified a few erroneous HMC-payouts coming from OCR misreading leading "3"s as "8"s, thus resulting in them having 50k too much payout-value -> corrected
Identified 1 new k-value for ELW: 425857 -> work needed to identify the cause(s), current speculation pointing to Argon
Identified 5 new k-values for HMC: 256671, 248609, 170565, 40177, 28658 -> work needed to identify the cause(s), current speculation pointing to Nitrogen and Water. Might be hard, as in some cases there are only 1-2 bodies showing this behaviour
Still unclear why certain TC WW will drift from the formula-curve -> work needed to identify the cause(s)

Macklin_Fox · Jun 15, 2017

Always enjoy what you come with Redfox

CMDR MERANGO · Jun 16, 2017

Cmdr Mernago's exploration rank pre and post 2.3, based on payouts as is necessary for ranking:

Pre: Ranger 45%

Post: after a 150+ Ly expedition, acquiring dozens of first discovered terraformables, rank increased to Pioneer 5%

Post: 5 mission stack taxi jaunt to Colonia, rank Elite!

The mind boggles.

Great data OP, thanks for sharing.

CMIV

Whiterose · Jun 16, 2017

Sweet. Nice job.

marx · Jun 16, 2017

@ Redfox: regarding those HMCs with nitrogen and water: I remember there being some talk earlier that HMCs with nitrogen would give different prices, both if they were CFTs and if they weren't. I think Captain's Log even had different payout values for these? Might be something worth looking into, but unfortunately, I don't have recent payout data on these.

CMDR MERANGOIV said:
Post: after a 150+ Ly expedition, acquiring dozens of first discovered terraformables, rank increased to Pioneer 5%

Post: 5 mission stack taxi jaunt to Colonia, rank Elite!

The mind boggles.

Could you tell us how many credits those five missions gave you in total? If memory serves, the journal files should have that data, so you could use EDDiscovery to look them up if you can't remember.
I'm asking because that sounds suspiciously like the missions still give you 1:1 ranking, which would be a severe bug. They shouldn't contribute much exploration rank - unless you got several hundreds of millions credits from them.

Alex Brentnall · Jun 16, 2017

I love this subform. I always learn things either about the game or real life.

+1

LP Garnell · Jun 17, 2017

marx said:
@ Redfox: regarding those HMCs with nitrogen and water: I remember there being some talk earlier that HMCs with nitrogen would give different prices, both if they were CFTs and if they weren't. I think Captain's Log even had different payout values for these? Might be something worth looking into, but unfortunately, I don't have recent payout data on these.

Could you tell us how many credits those five missions gave you in total? If memory serves, the journal files should have that data, so you could use EDDiscovery to look them up if you can't remember.
I'm asking because that sounds suspiciously like the missions still give you 1:1 ranking, which would be a severe bug. They shouldn't contribute much exploration rank - unless you got several hundreds of millions credits from them.

Passenger payouts are 5:1 and cartographic (exploration) are 2:1 for exploration score. For pioneer, that equates to (about) 5m and 2m per each percentage point.

If he purely did it by passenger cr alone, he'd have to have 475m, but suspect he did some explo along the way. I myself did a 12000 ly jaunt just after 2.3 and netted 198m, enough to chew through 75% of pioneer (and then some)

Based the above ratios on some extensive back analysis on 30 transactions as ranger/pioneer with passenger missions and 10 transactions (198M) in cartographic payouts as pioneer (that took me to Elite).

CMDR MERANGO · Jun 17, 2017

marx said:
@ Redfox: regarding those HMCs with nitrogen and water: I remember there being some talk earlier that HMCs with nitrogen would give different prices, both if they were CFTs and if they weren't. I think Captain's Log even had different payout values for these? Might be something worth looking into, but unfortunately, I don't have recent payout data on these.

Could you tell us how many credits those five missions gave you in total? If memory serves, the journal files should have that data, so you could use EDDiscovery to look them up if you can't remember.
I'm asking because that sounds suspiciously like the missions still give you 1:1 ranking, which would be a severe bug. They shouldn't contribute much exploration rank - unless you got several hundreds of millions credits from them.

135 mil hence why I took them. I was allied with the factions. Not my idea of exploration, however, I lost heart after that huge journey with very little in return.

CMIV

Krunchie · Jun 17, 2017

If you have crew on your ship, they will take up to 12% of all earnings, on my mini expedition I earned 583 mil. credits, my crew member took 70 mil. for herself and she did nothing, lazy cow.

marx · Jun 17, 2017

CMDR MERANGOIV said:
135 mil hence why I took them. I was allied with the factions. Not my idea of exploration, however, I lost heart after that huge journey with very little in return.

Cool, thanks. I forgot to ask how much you made from scans on your way though. Those missions would have given you 27% rank progression, and since you made 95%, you'd need to have gotten at least 136 million credits from scans. Does that sound about right, did you get at least that many? Also, did you have any crew members hired? After all...

Krunchie said:
If you have crew on your ship, they will take up to 12% of all earnings, on my mini expedition I earned 583 mil. credits, my crew member took 70 mil. for herself and she did nothing, lazy cow.

To be precise, 12% if you have one Expert ranked crew member. More if you have higher ranked crew and/or more than one crew member, less if you have less. Even inactive crew get the payouts, so three Experts who did nothing but just sit in storage would help themselves to 36% of your earnings, and that's before rank progression, but not after.
Of course, you can always just fire any crew you had before you turn in your data.