Exploration, how many hours to make 20 mill?

Ghosty · Jun 8, 2016

Colonel Kenney said:
Quick solution for the discrepancy in pay..

Make finding pristine rings worth A LOT of money.

I very much agree with this. Just like Earth - like planets, which are worth a lot of money, pristine rings are also extremely usefull for mankind since we use them to mine recourses. This should make them pretty valuable.

I sold my ASP Explorer (40 million) and a Viper MkIV (+/- 18 mil) to buy an 8A powerplant for my Corvette. I slightly regret this because, with the visual update, exploring has become so much less boring. The views we can get now are simply amazing. They already were, but they're even more amazing now

I was working on my combat rank 52% through Deadly, working towards Elite, but as soon as I have the money I'm buying an ASP again and go on a long and beautiful journey. This thread made me want to...

Thetele · Jun 8, 2016

I made trip to sag A year ago it took me 40-50 hours and i made about 35-40 mil. I didn't do neutron star farming and scanned all water earth like, ammonia worlds and all stars/gas giants in scan range from primary star. So i would say 20 mil would take about 15-20 h.

Roadblock · Jun 8, 2016

Bacalao said:
When I ran through the neutron fields it was nowhere near 2 mins per system more like 55-65 seconds per system.
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Procedure as follows: jump in with throttle at 0 (you'll only be ~0.22Ls from the star) and immediately target the neutron star, open gal map, wait ~5 seconds for the scan to finish (you'll get a feel for the timing after the first 100 or so), hit plot route, exit gal map, begin to turn away and charge your FSD, center on your next destination by the time your FSD is charged and you're off. If you're doing it right you'll hit around 85-95% heat (in an Asp, the DBX/S are kings of neutron farming because they run colder) by the time you start to cool down but you'll never actually overheat or take any module damage. The detailed scan finishes about the time your FSD cooldown is done so it's nearly as fast as just jumping system to system, but you are getting ~60k per jump.

I would also spend a bit of time looking at the system map while scanning the neutron star, to see if there were any other high value targets in the system worth scanning (and there sometime were). I used 2 minutes as a conservative estimate. I'm sure it could be done faster, but could it be done faster for a sustained period of time? It can be tough to maintain such a frantic pace for hours on end.

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Ghosty said:
I very much agree with this. Just like Earth - like planets, which are worth a lot of money, pristine rings are also extremely usefull for mankind since we use them to mine recourses. This should make them pretty valuable.

I sold my ASP Explorer (40 million) and a Viper MkIV (+/- 18 mil) to buy an 8A powerplant for my Corvette. I slightly regret this because, with the visual update, exploring has become so much less boring. The views we can get now are simply amazing. They already were, but they're even more amazing now

I was working on my combat rank 52% through Deadly, working towards Elite, but as soon as I have the money I'm buying an ASP again and go on a long and beautiful journey. This thread made me want to...

Can you elaborate on what's improved about the views? I haven't been out in many months, but maybe I should go out again

Commandr Sam · Jun 9, 2016

Thanks for all the advice to all that have replied.

An update and a further couple of questions.

After setting up my ship in Shinrarta Dehzran I set off directly down. I set a target 1000 LY away and went on my way, I found my old keybinds were wrong so changed all of those to speed things up, then tried getting EEDiscovery working, which I couldn't (any advice welcome), then stopping to take photos of a binary star system very close together I finally started to travel some distance, just scanning star and honking before moving on.

Even with all my faffing I came across my first undiscovered system within 19 minutes of leaving port (space really is big). I only had an hour to play so after heading down 1000ly I then started heading in towards the galactic centre staying parallel to the plain, stopping off to look at any interesting worlds I came across.

Now my questions, anyone know how to make EDDiscovery log my journey?
Is there a way without returning to port to check how many systems/bodies I have scanned?
How do you guys make any progress without having to stop off and take photos every 5 minutes?

sndle9 · Jun 9, 2016

Commandr Sam said:
Now my questions, anyone know how to make EDDiscovery log my journey?
Is there a way without returning to port to check how many systems/bodies I have scanned?
How do you guys make any progress without having to stop off and take photos every 5 minutes?

.
I think you need to enable extra debugging in a config file for EDDiscovery to monitor. I expect a search will provide more than this vague hint.
.
The number of systems visited is in the Right-hand panel > Status > Statistics > Exploration. At least you can keep count but it gives no clues on potential worth.
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Selfies are the main reason I went exploring

It does slow you down when you insist on driving around on every interesting rock you find.
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If you are just after the data for engineers and rank instead of visiting somewhere specific, make a beeline for the dense Neutron clusters most of the way to the core. The smaller clusters <10,000 LY away are pretty sparse and jumping between them can be tricky. so bite the bullet and head for the core.
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As you are travelling out, stay near the galactic plane until you are close to where you are heading. The stars are far denser there so travelling is easier.
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As others mentioned ZERO your throttle for neutron star systems, you do not want to get any closer than where you drop in.

Traveller_GG · Jun 9, 2016

Post your question regarding EDD here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=138155&page=119

The quick check is to make sure you've turned verbose logging on:

<Network
Port="0"
upnpenabled="1"
LogFile="netLog"
DatestampLog="1"
VerboseLogging="1"
>

For horizon its common in C:\USERS\username\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\elite-dangerous-64

Elite Dangerous 1.5 C:\Users\robert.wahlstrom\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1010

Search for AppConfig.xml or EliteDangerous32.exe to find the config file.

Remember to Add verbose logging after every Elite patch.

If you have Steam version check for it at this or similar place;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous
Horizons\Products\elite-dangerous-64\AppConfig.xml

To activate system logging add VerboseLogging="1" in the network section in AppConfig.xml

That's all pasted from the first post in the thread

Commandr Sam · Jun 9, 2016

Traveller_GG said:
Post your question regarding EDD here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=138155&page=119

The quick check is to make sure you've turned verbose logging on:

<Network
Port="0"
upnpenabled="1"
LogFile="netLog"
DatestampLog="1"
VerboseLogging="1"
>

For horizon its common in C:\USERS\username\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\elite-dangerous-64

Elite Dangerous 1.5 C:\Users\robert.wahlstrom\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1010

Search for AppConfig.xml or EliteDangerous32.exe to find the config file.

Remember to Add verbose logging after every Elite patch.

If you have Steam version check for it at this or similar place;
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous
Horizons\Products\elite-dangerous-64\AppConfig.xml

To activate system logging add VerboseLogging="1" in the network section in AppConfig.xml

That's all pasted from the first post in the thread

Thanks for the reply, I have tried that, but it was already there from an existing trade tool, I had used.

I am still not managing to get it to find my Commander or any details? I will try in the forum you linked as it looks to be a great tool.

Alex Brentnall · Jun 9, 2016

Racing towards Sag A* and back honking all the way generally makes about 30mil.

Alternatively if you filters stars for "non sequence" only and then go + or - 1000 to 2000 height you should find a number of neutron stars and black holes about 10,000Ly towards sag A*. Farm these for 40/50k a pop for a while, you'll need about 400 along with the data you gather enroute.

Personally I'd either do the above or just take the time out and do a proper trip. Hit up Mintaka, Betelgeuse, Barnards loop, Messier 78, etc etc.

geoffrey.hdt · Jun 9, 2016

- Rig a ship with 30-40 LY jump range and the biggest fuel scoop possible.

- Head to the neutron star field (around DRYAA FLYUAE LM-W E1-2252).

- Honk, scoop and charge FSD ASAP to jump to the next system.

- Once at the field, learn to locate black holes on the map (remove star names, grid and route marks, switch to realistic view, rotate to put the bright galaxy in background, then it's easy to spot these tiny black dots, generally 5-15 LY apart of each other).

- Surface-scan as much as you want (up to 75k credits if first discovered).

- And of course, listen Radio Sidewinder...

Definitely the most epic thing to do in ED, but it is surprisingly relaxing...as long as you have 15-20 hours to dedicate and enjoy listening music, reading stuff in the meantime (Alt+Tab is your friend)...

sp0q · Jun 9, 2016

Wasn't it stated somewhere that a trip to Sag A should net something between 20-30mln?

Commandr Sam · Jun 9, 2016

geoffrey.hdt said:
- Rig a ship with 30-40 LY jump range and the biggest fuel scoop possible.

- Head to the neutron star field (around DRYAA FLYUAE LM-W E1-2252).

- Honk, scoop and charge FSD ASAP to jump to the next system.

- Once at the field, learn to locate black holes on the map (remove star names, grid and route marks, switch to realistic view, rotate to put the bright galaxy in background, then it's easy to spot these tiny black dots, generally 5-15 LY apart of each other).

- Surface-scan as much as you want (up to 75k credits if first discovered).

- And of course, listen Radio Sidewinder...

Definitely the most epic thing to do in ED, but it is surprisingly relaxing...as long as you have 15-20 hours to dedicate and enjoy listening music, reading stuff in the meantime (Alt+Tab is your friend)...

Are the distortion effects still there for black holes? How close can I go?

geoffrey.hdt · Jun 9, 2016

Commandr Sam said:
Are the distortion effects still there for black holes? How close can I go?

Black holes are now harmless.
I went as close as 125 km from them. Once, I even almost heard it bounce against my hull while i wasn't paying attention after dropping to the system.

Unlike neutron stars, you can just scan them, throttle up and go...and they are worth more credits.

Flavourless · Jun 9, 2016

racer1 said:
Jonking averages just over 10k per system at 45 seconds per jump that is 800k cr / hour.

Neutron farming is more but it will take you a few hours to get there.

True.
But if you stop and scan the most valuable planets you will still make 6-7kCr/h and will see a lot more and the process will feel less false.
Got my Elite rating like that (only 3 NS were lone ones I found out by the rim). )

Whitmann · Jun 9, 2016

Andovar said:
BTW, i heard it only takes 5 mil to get to level 5 with the farseer.

It's around 5 million between Levels 4 and 5, so I heard. I handed in 3.6m of data and went from nothing to 19% Level 4 straight away.

bkrownd · Jun 9, 2016

Commandr Sam said:
If I were to head vertically down from the bubble into unchartered areas, roughly how long would it take me to scan enough systems to make the 20mil needed to get rank 5 with the engineers?

I spent a week of about 5 hours a day "down" below the Bubble during the launch week and got 23 million including lots of backtracking while trying to find routes through the sparse edge regions. I scan just about everything that isn't icy/rocky. DSS required! Just quickly serial jumping honk-scoop-jump probably earns faster, but that offends the Exploration Gods.

GTwannabe · Jun 9, 2016

My trip to Sag A only netted about 30 million, so... a while.

geoffrey.hdt · Jun 10, 2016

I have just dropped around 16-18 millions of exploration data to Felicity.
Grade 5

Commandr Sam · Jun 10, 2016

geoffrey.hdt said:
I have just dropped around 16-18 millions of exploration data to Felicity.
Grade 5

REally enjoying exploring at the moment and not focusing on the money too much at the moment currently about 5k out.

Final question, I promise which engineers can exploration be used to gain rep with, I remember there being 2?

geoffrey.hdt · Jun 10, 2016

Commandr Sam said:
REally enjoying exploring at the moment and not focusing on the money too much at the moment currently about 5k out.

Final question, I promise which engineers can exploration be used to gain rep with, I remember there being 2?

Felicity and Elvira.
i also confirm 16-18 millions are required for Elvira to give access to grade 5.

I did also enjoy exploring during my previous exploration trip 1-2 years ago...pity not much has changed since...