Exploration Data Confusion

[Auditore]

First of all I'm sorry for bringing up something I'm sure has been discussed before but reading through older threads I'm still not quite sure how exactly exploration works in this game. Hopefully someone can clear a few things up for me:

1. I understand that when you die you lose all exploration data that you haven't sold yet (makes sense) but does selling the data make those discoveries permanent on my galaxy map or do I have to re-explore or buy the data for the systems again if I get destroyed? Is there any way I can store my data somewhere to keep them safe without selling them?

2. Is the data available at stations the sum of all data sold by players? I mean if player A sells incomplete info about a system and player B sells all the missing pieces of that same system, will the complete data always be available for anyone who wants to buy it?

3. If I sell data at a federation controlled station, will that data be available for purchase at every federation outpost or is it only available to the minor faction controlling it? I can't imagine it is station specific...

4. If a system is fully explored and its data sold to a major faction station, are we still able to sell the same data to the same faction even though they already have all the details?

5. Is there an easy way to tell which systems I have already visited and/or explored and which systems have been explored by others (if they have sold the relevant data of course)? I find it really difficult (if not impossible) to keep track of where I've already been and where I could go to discover truly unexplored systems...

 

[kastia]

1. Once you've sold the data, that's it. But the data is permanent in your galaxy map as soon as you discover something
2. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but currently everyone gets the same amount for each celestial body discovered/scanned. I think there's a tweak coming in 1.1 that gives the first discoverer/scanner a bonus
3. You've sold it to Universal Cartographics, a faction agnostic organisation.
4. You can only sell the data once, see 3.
5. Not really... whilst you're docked you can see which systems have cartographic data available in the galaxy map filter but that's about it, AFAIK

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

1. Yes. Once you have sold them they are permanent for you, but not for everyone else.
2. No. I have not seen any systems change from unexplored to explored. Perhaps that will happen if enough people go there, but 'enough' is certainly a fairly large number. Whilst that may make little 'real life' sense, it sort of makes sense when you think about the game being around for years. It would be very unfair on new explorers in a years time if they had to go out several thousand LY to find their first unexplored system.
3. Don't know. I have never bought exploration data, so do not know what is supplied.
4. Yes. And at the moment, you still get the same money, I believe.
5. If you can see the white icon for the system view for the system on the galaxy map, then either it started the game fully explored, or you have explored it. I know of no way to just find the ones where you have been. At the moment there is no way to find truly unexplored systems that I know of.

 

[Auditore]

Thanks for the answers!

It's a bit of a shame though that selling exploration data doesn't really contribute to the overall knowledge available for purchase from Universal Cartographics. Sure new players down the line would have to venture further out to find completely new systems but considering the sheer amount of stars in the galaxy there will always be something to find. Not to mention that planetary exploration in the future would make new discoveries even in core systems practically endless. I don't think anyone would consider 'exploring' a busy system in the heart of federation space to be all that fulfilling. Maybe they could add a need to keep the data up to date so that it can still be sold by other players. Or they could introduce data loss (corruption/hacking/whatever) to explain why some systems need to be re-explored.

 

[CMDR Kiyoshii]

1. Once you've sold the data, that's it. But the data is permanent in your galaxy map as soon as you discover something

The key thing is the selling of the data. If you discover something, and then die before you've cashed it in you lose the exploration data therefore everything is 'undiscovered' again in the galaxy map. It's only permanent when you've sold the data.