Exploration System Scanning Question?.

[Saltyseadog]

I bought a fleet carrier, took the last couple of weeks to get used to the new things and a couple of days ago I set off on what I intend to be a really long term exploration trip in which I would like to take as much time in a system as needed, mining for fuel and rare commodities as well as getting down on the ground in my SRV. I am not new to exploration I tried similar a few times over the last five years but always got bored and lonely in a single ship so the fact that I can take my whole fleet with me and being able to vary my game as well as store up to 25000 tons of cargo is very appealing and which will aleviate the boredom factor.

I set off outwards from my home base in the Artume system and the first couple of 4-500ly jumps were fine, lots of other systems around up to 20ly away and using the FC as a base I went off and scanned each of them and then jumped out again. Now my problem begins, It is very hard to find star systems to jump to and when I did there was only the star plus maybe one other planet but no other systems in the left side system screen. I can expand the Galaxy map and get stars all over the place at 20000+ly away but the closer to my position I get the less clickable star points I get.

I was in the Wredguia section of the Inner Orion ring and thinking that perhaps I had moved to far away from the bubble so after a lot of trouble with the Galaxy map I eventually found a jumpable system at 487ly in the Outpui section back towards the bubble so jumped, only to find a star and a single planet and again no other local systems to ship jump to. To clear my head I took a ship out anyway and did a honk which returned a scan saying 8 planets available so I opened up the FSS and sure enough there they were. I jumped another 480ly+ again in this same sector and got the same sort of result with again no local systems available. When I explored before I always got all the planets available in system on honking but to all intents and purposes if I hadn't decided to check the previous system I would have just moved on thinking it was empty. Is this normal now or is my Galaxy map broken?.

 

[Maymo]

If you've travelled above or below the galactic plane the stars will definitely begin to thin out, especially if you're taking 500ly jumps at a time...

When you begin to reach uncharted systems you'll need to use the FSS to discover all the planets in a system. A honk will just reveal how many bodies are there. With practice, a quick look at the small graph at the bottom of the FSS will let you know if you've found a rare system that's worth a full explore, or if it's just rubble...

Edit: just for clarity, the galaxy is this shape...

...if you go too far 'up' or 'down' you'll run out of stars.

I recently took a trip to Nebula View, 6000ly (just for the Palin unlock). But I made the mistake of just flying straight there from the bubble and that route is so well traveled by other CMDR's I only got a few first discoveries. If I'd remembered to jump a couple of hundred ly 'up' or 'down' at the start of my journey I'd have done much better.

 

[Para Handy]

.....there was only the star plus maybe one other planet but no other systems in the left side system screen. ...........

Just an FYI - the nav panel only shows systems within 20ly (plus your next plotted system) - in my opinion a stupid hangover from pre-engineering days.