Exploration - is scanning time, not travel time, biggest time sink?

[jacozilla]

Beginner explorer and I like exploration so this is not complaint about time to explore, as much as seeing if I can optimize time spent.

so far on first big trip outside PP bubble, it seems my travel time is fairly trivial - the time i spend to view, plot routes, hyper jump, and manage entry - avoid star crash - scoop fuel - and exit to new hyper jump.

scanning the primary star and even just a very few most worthy-to-be-scanned planets in each system (metal rich, earth like and terraformable) seems to be the huge proportion of time spent

a) since scan time is so long (including SC time to reach scan distance), do vet explorers skip scanning totally to just hyper - refuel - adv discovery scanner only - jump to new system?

b) dont really need exploration money as i make trade income just fine - but as i understand it, exploration data money = exploration rank, so i do need enough exploration data "credits" to rank up at non-glacial pace.

does travel with advanced discovery scanner only and jump out again, hence getting most distance travelled per hour, net enough credits to rank up well?

 

[PCJimmmy]

Jacozilla

My experience - made Elite at 185 million and around 10000 systems scanned. I have heard 160 million as the magic number but I had a large payday for my last run when I hit Elite. I traveled a ton of different ways and styles. I also use the log files (Verbose turned on) to extract timing data. These are my numbers:

Running in economy class - no need to gas up at each system than a decent Asp can do a advanced scan, take a quick peak at the local map and quick peak at the galaxy map every 45 to 50 seconds. With my PC and internet connection I was in hyper around 12 seconds on average. Seemed to me that on average a whole bunch of honk only systems might get you around 10,000 credits per system.

Running in fast lane - jumping around 30 ly per system than you need gas. Lots of methods but for all of them I tried I could make a honk every 60 seconds (on average).

So for the above when getting to Elite rank is your only goal than my suggestion would be to do a run every night in economy. Do the math to see how many hours it will take at 45 secs per system netting 10K to make 160 million.

If you want to get Elite but also travel long distances - than run on fastest and use 60 secs netting 10K to make 160 million. Both of these are pure grinds with no time to smell the roses.

If you decide to do detailed surface scan on the nice ones - my results suggest that each detail scan of a valuable planet is not much different credit wise that just honk and run. That is, doing a detailed surface scan on the sun and two plants nets the same credits per hour rate. Assuming you get some decent skill at doing the detail scans in time sensitive fashion - for example getting 10 ls from every body is not time sensitive. So if your very effective you can use any of the above to grind to Elite. Detail scans of the not so valuable stuff not recommended for a grinder. You must do a detailed scan to get your name on the sun/planets, etc. If your just in race to Elite there should be no detailed surface scans!

Grinding thru the neutron star fields generates the greatest grind per buck with any of the above methods. While I think I have answered your question - in case you missed it, you can put the time sink where you want it.

BUT - None of the above is exploring - its just grind to get Elite - IMO the easiest of the three to just grind. But man if all you do is the above and don't stop to smell the roses along the way it will be one huge boring event. Most who respond will likely not read this last paragraph where I beg you to find other values in exploring.

 

[jacozilla]

Jacozilla

My experience - made Elite at 185 million and around 10000 systems scanned. I have heard 160 million as the magic number but I had a large payday for my last run when I hit Elite. I traveled a ton of different ways and styles. I also use the log files (Verbose turned on) to extract timing data. These are my numbers:

Running in economy class - no need to gas up at each system than a decent Asp can do a advanced scan, take a quick peak at the local map and quick peak at the galaxy map every 45 to 50 seconds. With my PC and internet connection I was in hyper around 12 seconds on average. Seemed to me that on average a whole bunch of honk only systems might get you around 10,000 credits per system.

Running in fast lane - jumping around 30 ly per system than you need gas. Lots of methods but for all of them I tried I could make a honk every 60 seconds (on average).

So for the above when getting to Elite rank is your only goal than my suggestion would be to do a run every night in economy. Do the math to see how many hours it will take at 45 secs per system netting 10K to make 160 million.

If you want to get Elite but also travel long distances - than run on fastest and use 60 secs netting 10K to make 160 million. Both of these are pure grinds with no time to smell the roses.

If you decide to do detailed surface scan on the nice ones - my results suggest that each detail scan of a valuable planet is not much different credit wise that just honk and run. That is, doing a detailed surface scan on the sun and two plants nets the same credits per hour rate. Assuming you get some decent skill at doing the detail scans in time sensitive fashion - for example getting 10 ls from every body is not time sensitive. So if your very effective you can use any of the above to grind to Elite. Detail scans of the not so valuable stuff not recommended for a grinder. You must do a detailed scan to get your name on the sun/planets, etc. If your just in race to Elite there should be no detailed surface scans!

Grinding thru the neutron star fields generates the greatest grind per buck with any of the above methods. While I think I have answered your question - in case you missed it, you can put the time sink where you want it.

BUT - None of the above is exploring - its just grind to get Elite - IMO the easiest of the three to just grind. But man if all you do is the above and don't stop to smell the roses along the way it will be one huge boring event. Most who respond will likely not read this last paragraph where I beg you to find other values in exploring.

Well i read it all, like exploring and only race i was in was to get some decent ships so i'm set there.

i will go the slow way of honk and scan what looks good then, i'm more interested in finding earth like planets as a personal challenge. I was just hoping there was a better way to scale detailed surface scans similar to how adv discovery scanner vs basic does.

i'm against grind as a reason to play any game - if and when i ever feel its just a gring, thats when i look for new game. But i do enjoy the challenge of always trying to optimize, which is why i guess some find endless trade routes boring but i find it quite fun - not only optimizing profits but little things like shaving 10 CR fuel costs by flying more efficiently.

just trying to find similar ways to optimize exploring while still enjoying exploring

 

[rhanor]

Hi jazozilla,

As a trader/smuggler turned explorer, I don't really care about grinding. I know I am not a very good example of a "optimized explorer", instead my style is more like "smelling the roses and all the other flowers along the way" as PCJimmy mentioned. . But I think that is the "fun" way of exploring. As you said, finding an earth-like or water world or even a candidate makes me smile every time. Terraform candidates are easier to find, and sometimes it's possible to find 3 or more in a single system.

I am a near distance explorer, to this day I haven't gone more than 1500 lys away from the human core (maybe I will begin a galactic journey in the near future ). I usually prefer F,G and K stars as to find the earth likes and the candidates etc. And sometimes I travel thousands of ls's to a gas giant just to look at it and find out whether it has life (water or ammonia based life).

Lastly I came to a nebula just for the experience (western veil), but it seems most (if not all) of the nebulae are already explored. I try to stay away from the main exploration paths, so I can easliy find undiscovered stars and planets.

Nowadays trying to discover the candidates is the most rewarding pastime to me in ED. I have devised my methods in finding them(and I know it's not genuine). I first look at the main star's specs, try to find a rough "Goldilocks" zone based on the star's numbers, and check if any of the planets are in that zone. With this method, I discovered many candidates as well as some earth likes and water worlds .

With this tempo, I know I have a very long way to "Elite", but who cares?

Ps: For avoiding star crash after jump, my method is this: I exit FSD to conventional thruster mode, disable cruise drive (or whatever it is called, my key is "Z"), enter FSD again. When I hyperjump with cruise disabled, the ship doesn't accerelate! Then if I want to go near the star and scoop fuel, I manually do it.

 

[PCJimmmy]

Well i read it all, like exploring and only race i was in was to get some decent ships so i'm set there.

i will go the slow way of honk and scan what looks good then, i'm more interested in finding earth like planets as a personal challenge. I was just hoping there was a better way to scale detailed surface scans similar to how adv discovery scanner vs basic does.

i'm against grind as a reason to play any game - if and when i ever feel its just a gring, thats when i look for new game. But i do enjoy the challenge of always trying to optimize, which is why i guess some find endless trade routes boring but i find it quite fun - not only optimizing profits but little things like shaving 10 CR fuel costs by flying more efficiently.

just trying to find similar ways to optimize exploring while still enjoying exploring

I ended up with my default explorer style to be one where I went to points of interest using all of the methods I mentioned in my post. I do always plot an L shaped path to get there as I do like to stick my name on systems on occasion and get the 50% discover bonus. The bonus would fall in the category of "optimize".

I did try putting multiple detail scanners on my ship - did one run where I had 4 on an Asp. Did not speed up detail scanning. The only optimize is to not get too close to the object if your doing more next in that system. The time sink comes from the very slow speed as you move away. Does seem like stopping too far away does slow down time to run the scan. Stay about 25 ls from the object is about the optimum I felt was right.

My time sinks - #1 time sink was coming to this forum each day and reading posts. As 68 year old my days of 8+ hours in the gaming chair are long gone - so lots of one hour sessions in the game but almost always 2 hours in the forums reading. So to optimize don't get hooked on the forum.
#2 time sink was probably taking selfies. Find a nice earth like - cruise real close and pose various debug camera shots. Nice to have the images - but who's going to watch the slideshow?
#3 was trying to find paths across gaps or into points of interest. Seems like a pretty good number of nebulas are real hard to reach with 30ly jump capability. When I go out on explore run now this is the one time sink I have optimized. Will wait for 50ly ships before I try to get inside nebulas.

I have reached the point where full time explorer is not working for me. So working on being a Elite trader. I did give up of devs ever give us more slots and recently bought another copy of the game where I am building up another CMDR for the explore occupation. That way I can make long journeys of exploration balanced by attempts to optimize trading.

Have fun

 

[PCJimmmy]

Forgot another major time sink. Writing a Visual Basic program to use the net log data to build framework for my version of a commanders log. Like you I love to optimize - as an analytical type person you can't optimize without good data. So for most of my journey to Elite I had lots of hours in Visual Studio writing my program and fixing my bugs. Would love to share the program with you but my coding is not user friendly

 

[Jezzah]

The numbness of the exploration mechanic as it currently stands is what put me off doing much of it at all. It's just point and click and wait and wait and wait for the ticker to tick round. There's no analysis to perform, no skill to learn, no engagement to the mechanic. So as it stands for me there's no point.

I don't mind a time sink aspect to anything that FD produce to the game as long as it's engaging, interesting, with a skill to learn and worth putting in the effort in terms of payout.

 

[jacozilla]

The numbness of the exploration mechanic as it currently stands is what put me off doing much of it at all. It's just point and click and wait and wait and wait for the ticker to tick round. There's no analysis to perform, no skill to learn, no engagement to the mechanic. So as it stands for me there's no point.

I don't mind a time sink aspect to anything that FD produce to the game as long as it's engaging, interesting, with a skill to learn and worth putting in the effort in terms of payout.

Completely agree. I enjoy exploration, don't get me wrong. But then, I only just started to prob haven't run into the repetitive wall grind - but I do agree and would really like some ability to scale player SKILL into exploration - not just how many hours can you do the same thing.

Yes, to some extent, trade could be partially said to be the same- do same thing over and over- but it does take mental acumen, skill - for what routes to run, what items to trade, etc. Basically, your skill does directly impact how much, how fast, and what reward you get.

In exploration, the only skill I see - one that i am admittedly a noob at - is good route planning. I think that takes some skill, and knowledge. But other than that - it lacks even the basic moment to moment decision making we are constantly making whenever engaged in a dog fight. I think that's why combat will never get boring because I am engaging my brain at all times.

You brought a good point here and I would reiterate that it would be really nice if in exploration mechanics we could have player skill influence how fast, or how well, or whatever yield we got from exploration data.

Right now, obviously in one of the Elite paths - combat - the result Player A has vs Player B in going up against the same scenario can be drastically different
Same for Trade.

But for Exploration, you can be a mental giant - or a pigmy - and both will get the exact same Exploration credits as long as they understand point and click.

I don't have any useful ideas how to implement skilled exploration decisions into the credits process but I'd welcome any new updates that steer towards that area - beyond just simple things like 'go scan neutron fields = more money'

Hell, I'd even take a skyrim system right now - scan more earth like planets = your scan time gets faster for earth like planets
Scan F class starts - F class scanning gets faster
etc