Exploration the Unexplored

[Rein Quest]

Having an astronomical body marked as "Unexplored" is not a good labeling. If someone has already been to a system and scanned something should change the status to "No Data" or something. When I chart a course I want to go where no one has been, not revisit systems that have been explored. I don't want to be the second, third, or the 100th visitor. There is so little reward in this game for doing anything I think the least you can do is somehow flag that people have been there before. It has to be visible on the galaxy map and not the system map.

I mean seriously if someone is out there and scans something then sells it at a station and you keep telling us that its unknown or unexplored Even though the data has been brought back to civilized space.

I keep trying to make up something to make the game rewarding to play and at every turn you kill the little things. So now I get to visit a system and hammer the ADS only to find out that someone has been there. If someone has been there already there is no personal reward to scan anything.

 

[Sysmon]

Bear in mind that while you are exploring, others may be selling data! I do agree that a "partially explored" or "exploration incomplete" label would be nice.

At the moment we are all rushing out to explore everything, which compared to historical exploration makes little sense. In the past, exploration happened as it became possible to go places. With the ability to jump many light-years in minutes in the game, a lot more of the local space should really be explored. However, that's an effect of the game being a few weeks old. In the nearby future, everything that most people can bother exploring will have been explored, and it is only up to the really keen (read, real explorers!) to slog through the 100s and 1000s of systems to go boldy to areas where no one indeed has gone before.

In a way, exploration has not found its equilibrium yet.

Patience. Enjoy the sights. Just because somebody else saw them (or at least passed through), doesn't mean it's not worth seeing. In RL, people still go to see Mt. Everest even if thousands have already done so.

S

 

[Rein Quest]

True. Though I don't know if you noticed but in one of the news things they sent out they said that statistically at the current discovery rate it was going to take over 150,000 years to explore the 400+ billion systems in ED. Its not like they will run out of systems unless game sales go through the roof suddenly.

 

[Chrisfs]

That would make for an awfully crowded galaxy map as practically everything within a few hundred light years of starting points like LHS3447 have been explored and the systems leading to the big nebulas.