Did Road to Riches but...

You could just set your galaxy map to show only unvisited stars and apply that filter to route plotting, then carry on with normal mission running etc. The exploration payouts would add up to 22M in a few weeks as a byproduct of other activities.
 
You're not earning 22+mil in that short of time randomly scanning things.



Do NOT do passenger missions. There is something wrong with them right now, you can get a criminal on your manifest without knowing it, which will get your ship destroyed in some places. Not worth the risk.


Not everyone is a masochist. You might like to torture yourself like that, but the rest of us don't.


As for OP, there's plenty of bubble road to riches, here's my loop: http://edtools.ddns.net/expl.php?s=unktock&d=400&n=700
If you do the whole loop, it's about 700 million credits.

22m from scanning things is easy, any 2000ly trip towards nothing in particular will net that, and without scanning moons.

Passenger (sightseeing) missions ARE the best way to get exploration elite (the millions you are paid for the mission counts as money made from discoveries for some reason).

Do you have a link to the bug report where FD acknowledged there is an issue with getting illegal passengers without being notified (every single case of this I've seen has been user error)?
 
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Selling updated data isn't the same as a 'finders fee'.
I'm pretty sure people survey rivers and stuff these days, as things change.

That would be equivalent to selling system data for an uninhabited (but already discovered) system - or perhaps surface scanning a far-orbit world in an inhabited system...
Scanning a well-populated system and selling the data would be like me getting paid for having the GPS on whilst I drive around central London...
All these inhabited systems are going to be absolutely crammed with GPS/Comms/Imaging/weather/traffic control satellites aren't they...are you suggesting a player is going to provide data they can't ???
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
Ok, so I had to restart my progress do to a bug and decided to do road to riches to get myself started BUT I have an issue now, I’m trying to get elite rank in exploration and in 22.5 mil short, does anyone have advice on where I can go to get this cash? If so I’d like to hear it but I don’t want to go back to colonia, I much rather stay near the bubble if you have advice

My advice: go exploring.
 
Made Ranger rank in exploration grinding the Road to Riches for credits. Both the Palin run and sightseeing missions are on my to-do list, but I kind of feel that I'd like to make Explorer Elite by, you know, going outside the bubble and looking at things.

Not saying that's how you should play the game. But for me that feels the right way to do it.
 
When you say you had to re-start your progress does that mean you did a "clear save" and started over?

If that is the case, run the Professor Palin access mission and simply fly 5000 LY away from your point of in-game origin. Pick the direction that takes you straight past Maia and on the way back you can stop off at a Barnacle Forest, shoot down a few Scavengers from your SRV and collect 25 units of Thargoid Sensor to "unlock" the professor and get your Thrusters modified. The G5 Dirty Drive modifications are worth the effort and this trip also gains you access to Elvira Martuuk.

I did exactly this in an A-rated, modified DBX. Fitted with an AFMU (and SRV), taking advantage of the neutron superhighway this trip took only 4 to 5 hours round-trip. o7

Did they change the Engineer hierarchy recently?

Last time I checked Elvira was a public knowledge engineer. You had to work through her to get access to Nemo and Quent. Then after you worked through Quent he would tell you about Palin and you would get Palin's invite.

They way your post is worded it could lead someone to believe that a newbie to engineering could get to Palin straight away. Sure, you could have the 5000Ly requirement done any old time but you still need the invite to go knocking on the door.

https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineers/
 
22.5 million is only about 20 decent systems on current payouts, so it doesn't matter where you go.

Head out of the bubble. No need to go far, just enough to get into uninhabited systems.
Look for A-, F- and G- class stars
When you find a system with a lot of high-metal-content/water worlds, scan them all. The terraformable ones are where you get the main payout, but the non-terraformables will add up. If you happen to find an ELW, or there's a neutron star nearby, scan that too, of course.

Repeat until you've scanned about 20 of them, then head back. That plus the honks of systems you don't go for will get you 22.5 million easily.
 
22m from scanning things is easy, any 2000ly trip towards nothing in particular will net that, and without scanning moons.

What? No. I've made the trip to/from Colonia a bunch of times and it consistently brought about 5-10mil. And that's a 22,000ly trip. More than 10 times the distance you're proposing. What am I doing wrong?
 
What? No. I've made the trip to/from Colonia a bunch of times and it consistently brought about 5-10mil. And that's a 22,000ly trip. More than 10 times the distance you're proposing. What am I doing wrong?

You aren't scanning stuff and you are on a well traveled route, I would guess? I got 50m (which I understand is pittance compared to the potential of my trip, I am told) from my 5000ly trip (10,000+ly round trip) to the Rosette nebula, via witchhead and flame, scanning anything that wasn't a moon (and some moons, I scanned most stuff in systems I discovered first) that was within 5000ls of the drop in point, or more if it was something super interesting. Abnd I was in a 55ly year ship (minimising the number of systems I would visit compared to a ship with a shorter range) just trying to get the ly done, I wasn't even out thwre to do proper exploring.

Anyway, first discoveries start coming thick and fast at 2000ly out, even on my route, which is also relatively well travelled (though nothing like as well traveled as the colonia route I would warrant, even with the headstart the nebulae had up to now), so if you were to head in a totally random direction toward nothing in particular, you'd start making first discoveries as little as 1000ly out, maybe even less if you get a lucky direction that few chose before.

It was worth it I'd say, got some nice shots. :)

NOM NOM NOM...

FxO6S3D.jpg
 
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That would be equivalent to selling system data for an uninhabited (but already discovered) system - or perhaps surface scanning a far-orbit world in an inhabited system...
Scanning a well-populated system and selling the data would be like me getting paid for having the GPS on whilst I drive around central London...
All these inhabited systems are going to be absolutely crammed with GPS/Comms/Imaging/weather/traffic control satellites aren't they...are you suggesting a player is going to provide data they can't ???

Yeah it's kinda like driving around London with a Google Street view camera sticking out of the top of your car. This data is always valuable. Also the analogy only goes so far. We're not talking about cities or continents we're talking about entire *Star Systems* here. The distances, sizes, practicalities, and motivations behind these types of undertakings is probably totally different. Finally remember you're not selling your data to all of humanity; you're selling it to a particular faction in a particular space station orbiting a particular planet in a particular star system. All data is not accessible to everyone everywhere all the time. There's no intergalactic wifi uniting everybody. Spaceships travel faster than light; i.e. faster than any signal transmission.
 
You aren't scanning stuff and you are on a well traveled route, I would guess? I got 50m (which I understand is pittance compared to the potential of my trip, I am told) from my 5000ly trip (10,000+ly round trip) to the Rosette nebula, via witchhead and flame, scanning anything that wasn't a moon (and some moons, I scanned most stuff in systems I discovered first) that was within 5000ls of the drop in point, or more if it was something super interesting. Abnd I was in a 55ly year ship (minimising the number of systems I would visit compared to a ship with a shorter range) just trying to get the ly done, I wasn't even out thwre to do proper exploring.

Anyway, first discoveries start coming thick and fast at 2000ly out, even on my route, which is also relatively well travelled (though nothing like as well traveled as the colonia route I would warrant, even with the headstart the nebulae had up to now), so if you were to head in a totally random direction toward nothing in particular, you'd start making first discoveries as little as 1000ly out, maybe even less if you get a lucky direction that few chose before.

It was worth it I'd say, got some nice shots. :)

NOM NOM NOM...

https://i.imgur.com/FxO6S3D.jpg
Interesting. Will have to give that a try. I am desperately in need of funds, too.
 
plenty of good "unexplored" systems in the bubble with terraformable, waterworlds and earth like worlds you can scan, I've made lots of money just scanning systems when i have to travel around the bubble.
otherwise stick to K,G and F stars and find terraformables lots of easy money there
 
Do passenger sightseeing missions. You'll also earn a little extra on the side. Oh, and you can pick the missions to stay in the bubble.
 
Ok, so I had to restart my progress do to a bug and decided to do road to riches to get myself started BUT I have an issue now, I’m trying to get elite rank in exploration and in 22.5 mil short, does anyone have advice on where I can go to get this cash? If so I’d like to hear it but I don’t want to go back to colonia, I much rather stay near the bubble if you have advice

3rd star on the left and forward until dawn.

Nope, really, that's about all there is for it - just explore more, and you'll get it.
 
You're misinformed. The only thing wrong with passenger missions is bad UI/UX which makes it non-obvious which missions have criminal passengers.

If you want to avoid criminal passengers, there are two places to look: (1) At the top of the mission description, there is sometimes (but not always) a message which says "passenger may be wanted in multiple systems." Don't take these missions. (2) Near the bottom of the mission description (the blue text), it will sometimes (but not always) say "Criminal. yadda-yadda-yadda-some-flavor-text-here." Don't take these missions either.

The last thing is, after you've loaded up on passengers and are about to depart the station, take a look at your ship's HUD on the lower right, and see if there's a red "Wanted Passengers" message down there. IF that's the case, look through your missions on the left hand panel, figure out which one of your passengers is a criminal, and cancel that mission. You'll know you succeeded because you won't see a "wanted passengers" message anymore.

Not a big deal.

You are the one that's misinformed: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...arked-Illegal-only-*after*-I-take-the-mission
 
If you wish to earn "exploration credits" without leaving the Bubble, check out the Bubble Explorer thread for tips. My tip there is the same here: try visiting the Terraforming systems; you're 100% guaranteed to find at least one of either an ELW or a terraformable world in those.

Another tip for near-Bubble exploring: if you've never been out to Sothis, why not take the Sothis Spur route? Visit the terraformables that Sirius Corp founded along the route at places like Takarua, and end up at Ceos and Sothis. Sothis has a binary ELW you can scan; this system was worth 300,000 credits under the old income regime, it's probably worth several million now. This also has the advantage of being able to stop along the way and sell what you've already scanned.
 
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