I am not saying the journey itself was not fun, but in terms of sense of achievement it feels very hollow. I could have easily made same amount of credits by just doing bounties for 30 minutes.
Unfortunately I must agree to some extent. I really want to explore and make a profit while doing so, but it's simply so much faster (and sometimes more fun) to make a profit hunting wanted npc's in the same system over and over. Exploration is simply not as rewarding as I had hoped, and I really want to be an explorer. I've been trying to exclusively explore for the past few days (and yes, I am scanning every system and using a detailed surface scanner), but the reality is it's a bit of a pain to explore. In anarchy systems for example, you get no profit when an unwanted ship interdicts you and you kill them. That's pure loss if you use up ammo or take hull damage. I use a good fuel scoop, but would be nice if you got something for killing npc's that attack you first in these systems. Aside from that, there is considerable time spent managing the acceleration\deceleration in super cruise in order to scan. It just seems odd how it does not slow down fast enough or speed up fast enough when you need it to. And since all your scanning and exploring is pretty much done in super cruise, I often feel I am spending for too much energy fighting the controls instead of admiring the views.
There are two suggestions I have that I think would make exploration more exciting and rewarding. Both hopefully without too much impact or significant changes:
1. Variety
At the moment most of the systems (particularly anarchy ones) are dwarf stars and (if lucky) some icy planets or asteroids orbiting them. I understand yellow stars and habitable planets should be rare, but I would love to have more things to scan in these remote systems. Maybe some comets or planets that are still in the forming stage (molten, half blown apart, etc). The system creation algorithm would have to change to include these, but hopefully it was designed to be able to quickly add new object types (at least I hope so). Also, why are all the systems so devoid of color? Would love to see some colored gases in a system or at least have the background stars be obscured by colored gases once in a while. At the moment systems are starting to feel a little cookie cutter and empty. Don't get me wrong, what's there is pretty brilliant, but I think it just needs a bit more variety and color to make exploration more enjoyable.
2. Higher pay for closer proximity
At the moment I can scan planets\moons without even being in visual range. I have very little motivation to actually get up close to them because the profit appears the same if I scan it at 46Ls or 1Ls. And having to take time to decelerate slow enough in super cruise to properly admire the objects eats into my time to turn around and scan the next unexplored body. However, if you properly reward players for taking the time to actually getting in close and looking at them, it will be worth it. I'd suggest significantly increasing the profit of the detailed surface scanner (perhaps by 3x times), but make it so it will only function if you are
very close to the target in order to activate, and you must be moving at a very slow super cruise speed (maybe the base 30km).
