Driving and Exploration Rank, there is a link after all :)

Ziljan

Ziljan
I found a lovely high G almost "grass green" planet with multiple interesting colorations and decided to do 60km trek across the surface over the emerald foot hills to the base of a large white mountain, just to test my navigation skills when landmarks get occluded.

Anyway short story long, I went from 10% to 11% Explorer rank on my way to Elite. I'd been saving my Exploration rank gains for Horizons, so this was something of a vindication.

According to dev posts, the rate of rank gain increases the further you are from Earth. So at this rate I will most likely reach Elite halfway through the trip!! Which means that if I lose everything in an "accident" or meet some violent ETs, I will still be Elite when I respawn :D


UPDATE:

Confirmed. There is definitely a rank increase from driving and prospecting. I have not discovered a new element in over 400 km of driving, and I just went up from 11% to 12%. Notice how my exploration income has remained unchanged despite the 2% rank increase since the beginning of the DW. I am also currently about 8500LY from earth and have not sold any data since the launch of DW from Waypoint One. I have been prospecting, so not all of this rank increase is from driving.

At 10% right before launch 435 km:
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At 11% near Waypoint Two, 666 km:
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at 12% near Waypoint Five, 1100 km:
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mbar

mbar
I've raised a few percentages by just driving the SRV. As you said the further from Sol you are the faster the rank according to the wiki. I am wondering if the ranking up with SRV doesn't fall after the first few miles driven as I was about 6500ly out and wasn't seeing large increases.

I want to see if driving an SRV at Beagle Point increases rank so fast you become Elite in no time. :D

I was out in an Asp but went back for an Anaconda. I want to pick up some artifacts if I can. Call me weird, but I just want to save some of those poor souls in occupied pods.;)
 
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Ziljan

Ziljan
Rikk said:
Cool! Have we been to the same place?
Emerald green and 3.45g...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvECitfOcaU
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Mine was only 1.87g and far less atmo. Not quite as green either! But the g was low enough that I could do 30 in extremely rough terrain but gliding from peak to peak without blowing up my SRV. I'm on DW, so I can't be too reckless with my 2 buggies.

As for the diminishing returns for distance, I don't think so. This was the longest single drive outside the bubble and the only one I've noticed a % increase. So I'll thinking is a flat rate. As for diminishing returns on distance from the bubble, idk. That has yet to be measured.
 

Scal

Scal
I just went on a drive near thor's eye and got 1% increase at pathfinder rank. ~1hr driving and prospecting. No newly 'discovered' materials. I don't know if it was the driving or the prospecting, but my ranking definitely increased.
 

DMFW

D
Interesting. Really looing forward to getting back to the Bubble and kitting myself out for some driving. I may be the last Horizon's user not to have tried a landing!
 
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Crank Larson

Crank Larson
lol, I didn't even know that driving the SRV counted. That's excellent news. :D Especially as I had planned a long driving session this evening to try and find a few rare materials (I haven't found many yet, and none for the better FSD boosts).
 

Nagual

Nagual
I noticed this during beta, got a 1% increase but nothing else even after around 8 or 9 hours driving on different planets. Not noticed any increase as of yet in main game, but I'd say I've done less driving.
 

Darth Krayt

Darth Krayt
A recent post mentioned that people were seeing a rank increase from prospecting, but are you guys sure that just driving is adding anything?
 

Kalpa

Kalpa
So far I haven't had my rank rise from 29% Pioneer->Elite to 30% from driving around... SRV distance travelled 415km. However, I haven't been very far from the bubble yet, so the distance multiplier might be a huge factor overall.

EDIT: I should mention this 415km includes all of my post-Horizons activity, and I've done multiple short near-bubble expeditions and also sold data in-between. Now that I'm aware of the mechanic I will keep a close eye on the distance reading and rank progress bar. I'm currently on a (hopefully) long expedition, left the bubble just before Christmas last time, and am already a good 3000 light years away - which means I'm less suspectible returning to bubble in a random fit of homesickness.
 
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Ziljan

Ziljan
hst12 said:
A recent post mentioned that people were seeing a rank increase from prospecting, but are you guys sure that just driving is adding anything?
Click to expand...

Pretty sure. I checked my rank before my 60km trek, and it was 10%. Only mined one meteor the whole drive. But it could have been the feather that tipped the scales. Also, this driving/rank feature was announced in a mid Beta update. And confirmed as implemented by Devs, though I don't think it ever made the patch notes. The effect has yet to be measured though, and I am sure it is a smaller effect than element discoveries. Not sure about regular prospecting of known items. Prospecting obviously has a driving component involved, so the only way to measure any driving effect is to abstain from prospecting. You can't do the converse ;). Inverse? I get those 2 confused :)
 

Scal

Scal
Ziljan said:
Prospecting obviously has a driving component involved, so the only way to measure any driving effect is to abstain from prospecting. You can't do the converse ;). Inverse? I get those 2 confused :)
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Although of course you can only do so much driving without having to prospect for fuel, so I don't know if we will be able to easily separate the two activities.
 

domaq

domaq
This is a huge deal. Means we can gain some instant progress toward rank without driving all the way back. I'm at 57% and just saw it go to 58% as well. :)
 

Darth Krayt

Darth Krayt
Interesting. I'll keep an eye out for any change, but no change so far in about 1.6MM driving.
I'm 800ly from the Omega nebula and roughly following the initial DW waypoints although I'm not taking part in DW as such.
 

Kalpa

Kalpa
Well, now that I whined about it... explorer rank is suddenly 30% pioneer into elite, SRV distance travelled is up to 483km from 415km. However, I also did prospecting and looted tons of materials, and although I tried to keep track of the rank-up bar between looting and driving portions, of course I had forgotten all about it for the past few stretches. So I can't be sure whether driving or looting triggered the % increase.

Btw, Sifou BG-F D11-16 AB1, situated about 4600 light years from Sol can be prospected for vanadium, germanium and niobium. Unfortunately(?) the tier4 element there is technitium, not useful for jumponium.
 

Ziljan

Ziljan
Scal said:
Although of course you can only do so much driving without having to prospect for fuel, so I don't know if we will be able to easily separate the two activities.
Click to expand...

I have 26 refills and 30 repairs in the bank, and I'd be surprised if I needed them all to notice a 1% difference. Going to test it asap though. I'll have to cut short another critical mats frequency test, but I think the driving test will be a higher benefit to explorers. Especially ones with a one way ticket to Beagle Point. ;)
 
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