No this isn't a complaint about not making enough money for once 
What I'd really like to suggest is a star system custom naming, journalling and categorisation system ala Noctis IV, particularly once planetary flight and landings come in, but whether that's going to happen is another story entirely.
As an acceptable substitute, would it not be possible to give players credit for discovering new systems and stellar bodies? A simple "Discovered by Cmdr Sadness" on the galactic map and maybe a little note as well for the stellar bodies one has found within that system.
One of the primary motivators for exploration is to leave your mark on the game but right now all you get is cartographic details added to the database when you sell the data. This kind of cheapens the experience for me, as fun as it was making a 1000ly round trip to the Coalsack and back (even with my rather cursory survey work I did get 300k out of it so I'm reasonably happy with that)...
If you're worried about people just skipping from system to system, an easy way to ensure at least some effort is made by the players would be to do something like the following:
To get credit for discovering the system, a detailed surface scan should be done on all solar masses such as stars - these show up straight away in the system map and even with a basic discovery scanner it's relatively simple to locate all the big bodies in a system, at least with a bit of luck and using your eyes to spot movement.
Then for each additional stellar body (planets and asteroid belts) a detailed surface scan would be required to gain credit for the local find.
I think it would be simple enough to add in as you already keep track of most exploration stats anyway, and I think it would give people just a little bit of extra motivation to make the long trips to the interesting regions of the galaxy...
What I'd really like to suggest is a star system custom naming, journalling and categorisation system ala Noctis IV, particularly once planetary flight and landings come in, but whether that's going to happen is another story entirely.
As an acceptable substitute, would it not be possible to give players credit for discovering new systems and stellar bodies? A simple "Discovered by Cmdr Sadness" on the galactic map and maybe a little note as well for the stellar bodies one has found within that system.
One of the primary motivators for exploration is to leave your mark on the game but right now all you get is cartographic details added to the database when you sell the data. This kind of cheapens the experience for me, as fun as it was making a 1000ly round trip to the Coalsack and back (even with my rather cursory survey work I did get 300k out of it so I'm reasonably happy with that)...
If you're worried about people just skipping from system to system, an easy way to ensure at least some effort is made by the players would be to do something like the following:
To get credit for discovering the system, a detailed surface scan should be done on all solar masses such as stars - these show up straight away in the system map and even with a basic discovery scanner it's relatively simple to locate all the big bodies in a system, at least with a bit of luck and using your eyes to spot movement.
Then for each additional stellar body (planets and asteroid belts) a detailed surface scan would be required to gain credit for the local find.
I think it would be simple enough to add in as you already keep track of most exploration stats anyway, and I think it would give people just a little bit of extra motivation to make the long trips to the interesting regions of the galaxy...
