Exobiology: worth or plain waste of time ?

Ghillan72

G
Last week I spent 2 days focusing in exobiology, and after that i'm a bit puzled with the lot .

Suppose you are exploring out of the bubble, after surface mapping the worthy planets, you usually jump to the next system, but if insead you stay for exo hunting, i would expect some sort of reward for the time invested to do that. I spent 4-5 hours in a single system looking for bio stuff on 4 planets and after going back and selling the data i got a reward of .... around 3 milions ?!?

3 milions for 4 hours spent exo hunting? I could easilly get 20-30 times more if I just followed up the the next systems and mapped only worth planets... what's the point?

I'm missing something of this is just pure nonsense? I know that not everything must be "grind oriented", but exploration is already one of the "least grindy" activities we could possibly do ( excluding the search of raxxla ), and its not like there are not enough systems never scanned or mapped..

I'm missing something?
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
Yeah, the rewards aren't fantastic, considering the time it takes. But it does get easier after you learn what you're looking for. Even it'll slow down your earning rate as compared to just exploring in space. So I wouldn't do Exobio if the goal is to earn money. Instead, I think it's a nice diversion that encourages people to visit the planets and spend some time on the surface.

In short, exobio is worth it for enjoying the scenery and having fun looking for things. It's not great for money, as the money-per-time ratio is a bit low.
 

TiberiusDuval

T
Certain organisms seem to like pretty rough areas like this mountain pass:
Screenshot_0383.jpg


Found these kind of things there:
Screenshot_0390.jpg
 

Deleted member 38366

D
IMHO it's mostly for chasing a Codex 1st Discovery and building experience/skill in correlating where is what.

So in short, for "fame and glory" and a bit skill-building along the way to understand how things work.
(I managed to squeeze in quite a few by now - and at least for me that's still a nice Detail that puts a smile on my face, so it works for me)
 

Ghillan72

G
Don't get me wrong. I know not everything its for money grinding . In horizons i spent days in my rover chasing for jumponium , and i enjoy doing that, but at least those stuff have a reasoning behind ( chasing stuff i actually need).

I'm really wondering how many times it will be fun chasing the same fungoids i have already collected several times. 10? 20?
After a bit i'll just skip the plants i already know. Its not that i need them for something. So after the 'new feature' moment is vanished i'm quite sure i'll almost never land on foot for exploration reasons.

Maybe its just me, but having a real use for the samples would make it much more fun.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
This is a valid question and all alone, it likely won't suffice to provide long-term motivation for many guys.

Since we're still in Alpha, there's a (albeit very slim) chance we'll get more than those few copy&paste (x color variants of the exact same) dead and static plants that offer zero interaction.

However, if that was to remain it, we'd indeed gain very little compared to Horizons.
Right now, the absolutely only thing the new Bios have going for them is the Exobiology Rank. In terms of Gameplay, they have exceedingly little to offer indeed from my perspective.
(judging this is what >2 years of work supposedly added to the entire Exploration branch.... if that was all, it'd be quite disappointing indeed).

I'd have expected :
  • Comets
  • Exoplanets and rogue Objects within Systems
  • Asteroid showers (dynamic visuals and events on Planet surfaces)
  • Seismic activities on some very young or active Planets
  • anomalies, unknown artifacts in Asteroid Rings and alot more visual variation
  • Stellar Forge surprises (dangerous Systems, disaster remains, remains of unknown Conflicts predating mankind by eons of time, Bodies that got hit by cosmic disasters & collisions)
  • Supernovae and other Galactic events visible from very far away
  • accretion discs and completely reworked Black Holes
  • alpha rare odd/SciFi Bodies exhibiting unusual phenomena
 
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marx

marx
Well, as it turns out, even when you are doing a more optimised approach, exobiology still earns less credits over time than space exploration does. A week ago, I did a timed run for a friend, and on a fresh water atmosphere planet, it took me 36 minutes (first try video here) to go from orbit to enough samples gathered for a 5.7 million Cr payout. (That includes the bonus.)
Considering that you have to fly between planets and jump between systems, even if you have a route worked out in advance, you still can't do even ten million Cr / h, which is roughly the low end of space exploration.

So, what else you can get from it? Well, some suit cosmetics to go with the exobio rank, and perhaps some Codex tags. (If you happen to be in a good place for that.)

The thing is though, exobiology would be quite a good way for a new player to get credits. All you need to do is buy the suit for 150,000 Cr, and you're good to go: no need to even fly far from the bubble to get your stuff going. It would be a decent early activity, and something to do occasionally later - if not for the exobio career path and rank. You'll keep juicing the same few kinds of plants over and over and over if you want to get to Elite.
It probably would have been better not to have it as its own rank, but well, what's done is done.
 

askavir

askavir
Rewards are all plain pitiful across all of EDO new activities, it's somethig that will surely need a balance pass once the current bigger issues are handled.

Aside from that I'm quite enjoying exobiology. There's more variation in these new bios than all there was to discover before (on planets and in space) combined. It makes exploration finally feel IMO like a proper scientific expedition, and gives me reasons to stick around in planets for more than a few minutes (together with the fact planets are a lot more diverse across different regions now) which was IMO the biggest flaw exploration had up until now.

I also loved the change from "quest marker" POIs to the "heat map" (although I would have preferred they had kept the original heat map), stuff is spread around the planet in a much more natural way now, and I enjoy flying around to locate things, even if just for 20 / 30 seconds which is how long it usually takes to find something when you descend to a blue painted area. Even geo POIs are now much naturally distributed, placed naturally in volcanic regions matching the rest of the topography, instead of in a random handful of pockets.

The whole exploration loop feels richer, before it felt like there was too much about cartography but too little about discovery / investigation / "science". Not perfect, but definitively a step forwards.
 

Astaran

Astaran
I still haven't made up my mind completely. On the one hand, during the recent hunt for the last Hesperus chapter, I actually enjoyed spending time in a system, moving from planet to planet to scan different lifeforms. That's something I have rarely done before (only to complete Codex entries). On the other hand, I'm curious as to how this will play out once I'm out in the black properly again (for a months+). Will it still be fun after the 30th system or will I skip it just like I used to skip Geo and Bio POIs ("Meh, probably Bark Mounts again")?

I don't think of the reward in terms of Credits though. If I need Credits I hit some Platinum hotspot for an evening. I'm more interested in the cosmetic rank rewards. I haven't seen or earned any yet, so it might as well be just a giant waste of time anyway. I guess I'll see.

Last but not least, I am somewhat frustrated and disappointed that apparently picking flowers is everything there is for exploration in Odyssey. Not sure if the pre-Odyssey rumors about new Guardian and Thargoid locations/content were just or if they come later (depending on how certain GalNet plots advance or the console release later this year)
 

askavir

askavir
Astaran said:
Will it still be fun after the 30th system or will I skip it just like I used to skip Geo and Bio POIs ("Meh, probably Bark Mounts again")?
Click to expand...

I think that will depend on the available variety of plants / bacteria / etc. The number of different bio POIs in Horizons was miniscule so it got old very fast. The number of new bio pois in EDO is much, much larger than before. If it's large enough to sustain interest for thousands of planets I guess only time will tell, but IMO the much larger amount of different POIs (combined with the fact most planets now have several different POI types), plus the fact they're now spread all over the planet, together with the fact planets are now much more varied across different regions than before, makes it a much better planetary exploration experience for me.

I'm a bit partial to this so take it with a grain of salt, as I never had much interest in just cartography, and always felt the biggest flaw in ED's exploration was lack of reasons for landing on planets and sticking around for a while, and this update finally addresses this, even if not as extensively as I would wish.
 

photomankc

photomankc
I hope they add in more variety and tweak a few things but I like the basis of it. I like seeing if various atmo's generate different kinds and such. A few things that would make it more rewarding:

1.) Acquiring things from them that are useful beyond credits. Boost to med-packs, Boosts for stamina, increased heat/cold tolerance. Maybe something that mixes with raw mats to help syth something useful to deep space explo.

2.) Destructable. They should not be indestructible set dressing. They should be damaged by weapons and impacts. Perhaps even creating a hazardous condition when that happens.

3.) Stop having grass appear in tiny spots on the ground. It should appear in fields and would be even better if several variants were present.
 

nogears

nogears
~I am still puzzled trying to figure out out the top right corner info panel sign of biology found, vs finding the plants location on the planet I just surface scanned. Any pro tips?

#EDIT#
Actually managed to understand now. I forgot youtube exists.. :p
 
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