Exploration value formulae

[glaukos]

Correct. The old honk value of planets has been moved to the star in the payout screen, so there's not really any way to see star values separate from whole system honk values unless you find a star with no planets around it. The per-planet values in the payout screen are the "DSS" values (equivalent of old DSS, actually FSS now, but still labeled "DSS" in the payout screen) and the mapped values are also added to that if you mapped as well. Here's an example system where I honked and FSSed it, turned it in, then went back and mapped two of the high value planets one with and one without efficiency bonus so that I could turn that in separately and see the two values separately.

HIP 92262
Star/whole system honk value: 100,653

Per-planet FSS values (still labeled "DSS" in display):
1: 16,448
2: 169,682
3: 109,172
4: 507
5: 500

Mapped values:
2: 565,605 (without efficiency bonus)
3: 454,883 (with efficiency bonus)

 

[TheBaumLord]

More data required.

OK. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/144Q9Nu-EZALsapG7-nxXT3MlJ8KyfCUGzQpSQl-VNrs/edit?usp=sharing

Thats everything I scanned since Chapter Four hit. Body Names, Types, Masse straight from the logfile for that sweet 6d precision . This could have been so much easier if the log contained the precise payout data...
Every body that was mapped, is a first mapped with the effiency bonus.

I really like my EDD/EDSM Payout predictions and hopefully this gets us there, keep it up [up].

 

[Zathres]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mbwkThXaQEq362HVi4UIHNbBPi20kDYz/view?usp=sharing

Updated another trip and added some mass values before EDDiscovery crashed. Bookmarked my trip so ill go back along the smame route and do all my surface scans in the next few days or so to fill in the next collum and confirm my theory that surface scan is a constant multiplyer based on "bonus catagory"

Trends in FSS im seeing that maybe someone can confirm or deny

Terraformable WW do not seem to get a FSS increase over normal WW
Terraformable HMC do seem to get a massive FSS increase over normal HMC ~10x or so based on my numbers
Terraformable Rocky is ?!?!? 500 for normal FSS to 129k that seems a bit much.

 

[Zathres]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mbwkThXaQEq362HVi4UIHNbBPi20kDYz/view?usp=sharing

Updated another trip and added some mass values before EDDiscovery crashed. Bookmarked my trip so ill go back along the smame route and do all my surface scans in the next few days or so to fill in the next collum and confirm my theory that surface scan is a constant multiplyer based on "bonus catagory"

Trends in FSS im seeing that maybe someone can confirm or deny

Terraformable WW do not seem to get a FSS increase over normal WW
Terraformable HMC do seem to get a massive FSS increase over normal HMC ~10x or so based on my numbers
Terraformable Rocky is ?!?!? 500 for normal FSS to 129k that seems a bit much.

Was able to get my trip in... updated the google doc. Unless my testing methods were incorrect i can resonibly say the following:

All surface scans are a percentage of the FSS based upon the following bonus circumstances

3.3x (no discovery bonus, no mapped bonus, no Probe Bonus)
4.17x (no discovery bonus, no mapped bonus, yes Probe Bonus)
10x (no discovery bonus, yes mapped bonus, no Probe Bonus)
12.5x (no discovery bonus, yes mapped bonus, yes Probe Bonus)

I plugged in the formula into several planets I recieved FSS & DSS payouts all at once (areas highlighted in yellow). Data seems to align with planets I recieved individual FSS and DSS payouts.

Areas of Error or need more data:
-No data on discovery bonus
-One terraformable water world gives weird data all around and doesnt seem to fit the pattern

additional thoughts of my interpertation of the data would be helpful.

 

[glaukos]

I turned in 70m of exploration last night, and the first discovered bonus appeared to be a flat 1,000 cr per body. I.e. the congratulations first discovered screen listed each system, the number of bodies in the system, and a bonus that totaled 1,000 x the number of bodies in the system.

 

[CMDR CHIGGY VONRICTOFEN]

I turned in 70m of exploration last night, and the first discovered bonus appeared to be a flat 1,000 cr per body. I.e. the congratulations first discovered screen listed each system, the number of bodies in the system, and a bonus that totaled 1,000 x the number of bodies in the system.

That's the bonus for scanning all the bodies in a system I believe...not first discovered.

 

[_Flin_]

Thank you for your effort. Repped.

 

[osser]

So what happens if you sell a systems data (full scan) then go back and fully map the system. do you have to sell that data again?
assume so.
anybody tried it?

 

[glaukos]

So what happens if you sell a systems data (full scan) then go back and fully map the system. do you have to sell that data again?
assume so.
anybody tried it?

Yes, and yes.

 

[Irisa Nyira]

This formula also works for old scans and payouts if you multiply up by 2.4 - which correlates nicely to the +100% and +20% bonuses bodies have received since the early days.

That makes sense - it seems to me that the FSS is giving a payout equivalent to a Level 2 scan in the old system (i.e. identifying a body without a DSS fitted). Level 1 was the payout for a honk, and Level 3 was identifying a body with a DSS fitted. Level 2 was worth 3x Level 1, and Level 3 7.2x Level 1. Oh, and there was a minimum value of 500cr for anything that wasn't an asteroid cluster.

 

[Strangepork]

I like turtles.

Ninja'd

 

[Irisa Nyira]

I've started my own spreadsheet (based on BlackMirror's - thank you for the example) here. Currently it only contains a few mapping examples from agricultural systems within the bubble, but I'm off for a short trip now.

The numbers for ELWs are quite interesting - for example

Body	Mass	Payout-Map	Payout-Old
Ki 2	0.658462​	908719	660985
V771 Tauri 3 a	0.115226	693446	594380
Hoff 1	0.715200	913904	664756
Popontia 1	0.344948	1429859	633537
Popontia 2	0.168655	834535	607023

​

​

Popontia 1 is a massive outlier. The only thing I can see that's different is that it's not been terraformed, the others have.

 

[TR7]

Thanks for everyone for their efforts, they were really helpful.

I must say I have come back to playing Elite after the latest patch mainly because I wanted to test the new exploration system. After all, I was in the top 3500 commanders of the old first discoveries list that Frontier published in 2015 so this is my thing in the game

I like the system, the more I play the better it seems. As for the values, my first two trips were not as profitable as I expected having read some early information. But later, when I read more about how it works and concentrated my efforts on locating the most valuable targets, I earned a really nice sum of about 100M in a few days - I really don't have time to play that much and it was quite near the bubble so I think it's ok. I don't know - maybe spending the exact time in a RES would bring me more Cr, but I am satisfied with what I got.

The downside for me is that I will now just concentrate on specific targets and ignore (especially I will not map) bodies that are interesting from visual etc point of view but give less money - but that's normal, the game doesn't stop me from doing it, I just decide against as I want more money from the time spent exploring. But sometimes I still travel to have a closer look at an interesting less valuable planet with rings or land on a geological site etc.

To avoid making it too long, I will post my observations on rewards in the next post.

 

[TR7]

This will not be very scientific or precise, but may still be useful.

Personally, the biggest surprise for me was the value of HMCWs. I completely forgotten they can be terraformable, so on my first trips I didn't even bother checking that info on the system screen. Scanning them is a must, they sometimes give like 2M Cr!

Example: 0,6836 earth masses HMCW with carbon dioxide atm., pristine reserves, first discovery and mapped - 1960446 Cr. Of course there were lower rewards, but usually terraformable HMC world was way above 1M Cr.

Terraformability seems to be an important factor - even for water worlds, for example I got 1265714 Cr for a WW without terraformability. As an experiment, I didn't map almost identical WW that was in the same system - it got me only 286114, so it seems the mapping bonus actually is around 4x.

ELWs were obviously most profitable, The most I got for one was probably about 3.5M Cr (first discovery, mapped), but even for ELWs first mapped by me which had first discovery by someone else I was getting above 2M. So it seems sensible to always map ELWs and any terraformable bodies.

Gas giants were usually poorly paid for, especially the ones with water etc life. Only class II would bring something like 50K, which still is not much compared to any HMCW.

It would be interesting to know the bonuses for first discovery/first mapping, I was generally avoiding mapping planets that were marked with someone's FD, I wonder if it was sensible.

 

[MattG]

First off - thanks to all who contributed data. Particular tip of the hat to CMDR The BaumLord whose data was particularly useful.

I'm about 98% of the way there. As mentioned in an earlier post, the formula for planets looks to be:

MAX((k + (k * m^{[SIZE=1]0.2[/SIZE]} * q)), 500) * w

For stars, it remains

(k + (m * k / 66.25)) * w


k values for stars are:

	k
Star	1200
NS/BH	22628
WD	14057

k values for planets:

	k	terraformable k
MR	21790
AW	96932
GG1	1656
GG2 / HMC	9654	100677
WW / ELW	64831	116295
Everything else	300	93328

Terraformability works as before; on a scale, this figure will produce maximum terraformable bonus; I believe it can still be a bonus of 0.



My best estimate for q is 0.56591828


And w is any applicable multipliers. This is a quick lookup for them:

First Discoverer?	Mapped?	First Mapped?	Efficiency Bonus?	w
No	No	n/a	n/a	1
No	Yes	No	No	3.333333
No	Yes	No	Yes	4.166666
No	Yes	Yes	No	8.0952
No	Yes	Yes	Yes	10.119
Yes	No	n/a	n/a	2.6
Yes	Yes	Yes	No	9.6190496
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	12.023812

If anything needs tweaking, it's these w values. Of particular note, I do not see the 10.0 and 12.5 others have seen. Perhaps these were live briefly, and then tweaked ? Perhaps I've messed up massively (not gonna lie, my brain is mush at this point)?
Additionally, CMDR Marx's data has a number of oddities. I wonder if some of this is because it was early data, but I believe he was First Discoverer already on some of his mappings and there is (or was?) perhaps some intentional or unintentional bonus applied.


Oh, also, the main star also gets a bonus equivalent the the sum of all other bodies in the system with a w value of 0.333333. And fully FFSSing a system gives 10,000 bonus per body. I presume there's a similar bonus for fully mapping a system too.


If anyone wants to do further testing:
* Get First Discoverer on planet(s), sell data (and make a note of value), go back and map planet, then resell data noting new value.
* More data without mapping bonus (with/without First Disc and with/without First Mapped)
* I'd be interested in the data for the tiny handful of terraformable metal-rich bodies out there.


I won't update main post yet as this data all needs further verification.

Edit: forgot 500 minimum base value

 

[TR7]

I have just received 146848 Cr for a terraformable HMCW without mapping, without FD bonus. For a ter. HMCW in the same system I got 625156 Cr with mapping, also no FD and FM bonus. Basically I wanted to check for myself if it is still worth scanning and mapping already discovered and mapped planets like this, so I mapped one and didn't map the other.

The first mentioned planet is 0.0684 Earth masses and the other is 0.1040 Earth masses. Is there any other data on them that would be useful to you?

 

[iain666]

Just got back from a 400 system DW2 shakedown and about to start logging values for everything...

 

[MattG]

I have just received 146848 Cr for a terraformable HMCW without mapping, without FD bonus. For a ter. HMCW in the same system I got 625156 Cr with mapping, also no FD and FM bonus. Basically I wanted to check for myself if it is still worth scanning and mapping already discovered and mapped planets like this, so I mapped one and didn't map the other.

The first mentioned planet is 0.0684 Earth masses and the other is 0.1040 Earth masses. Is there any other data on them that would be useful to you?

So I've done a quick calc with these values, and I get the same answer within a couple of credits - meaning both these bodies got the full terraformable bonus (they don't all get it). I can also tell you got the efficiency bonus on the mapped one. As a comparison, if you'd got first discoverer and first mapped with efficiency on the second one it'd be worth around 1804018. If you hadn't bothered mapping it (and didn't get first disc), it'd be around 150037 - so mapping was worth some extra 475118 or so. For me, that's not enough to slow down and play shoot-a-planet - but YMMV. (I also wouldn't slow down to map it if I got First Disc/Mapped for 1.8m though).

 

[TR7]

Could you explain what it means some bodies don't get the full terraformable bonus? Is there any way to tell this before selling the data?

Also, why wouldn't you bother to go and map a body if you knew you'd get 1.5-1.9M for it instead of some 400K (FD)? I assume you calculated that jumping to another system and scanning similar bodies on your way is a more time effective way of making money, right? I don't argue with that, but mapping ELW can give something like 1-1.5M more, and sometimes you have 2-3 HMCWs quite near eachother which would almost mean mapping isn't sensible at all (also for some annoying reason they are often orbiting some C star, really far away from A star so it takes so much time to get to them). So for me HMCWs are the main source of exploration income now, but as I said earlier I don't go that far and don't play much so my trips are short and not far from bubble.

Yes, I became quite good at mapping so I always get the eff. bonus

 

[MattG]

Could you explain what it means some bodies don't get the full terraformable bonus? Is there any way to tell this before selling the data?

The short answer is we don't know why, and no, you can't know before you sell the data. The longer answer is: well, you can maybe kinda infer that a particular body won't get the full bonus some of the time, and with statistical analysis, you can probably make a semi accurate prediction - but I'm afraid that's going to require you to read the previous 20-odd pages in this thread. There have been extensive investigations, and while we can say that atmosphere and mass play a factor, we're not at the point we can tell you why or how much of an effect it'll have.

Also, why wouldn't you bother to go and map a body if you knew you'd get 1.5-1.9M for it instead of some 400K (FD)? I assume you calculated that jumping to another system and scanning similar bodies on your way is a more time effective way of making money, right? I don't argue with that, but mapping ELW can give something like 1-1.5M more, and sometimes you have 2-3 HMCWs quite near eachother which would almost mean mapping isn't sensible at all (also for some annoying reason they are often orbiting some C star, really far away from A star so it takes so much time to get to them).

I don't explore for money and HMCs are - with very few exceptions - not interesting to me. I'm only out looking for interesting things, and the FFSS has slowed me down enough that I'm certainly not going to waste time mapping a HMC. I do bother for ELWs because I'm a collector, but I rarely map even WWs now. Of course, the payouts are so ludicrous now it barely matters anyway - a decent expedition will still net 100s of millions.

So for me HMCWs are the main source of exploration income now, but as I said earlier I don't go that far and don't play much so my trips are short and not far from bubble.

If you're out exploring for money, then sure, this is a good method. FWIW, I generally wouldn't bother mapping 2 HMCs (or any 2 bodies) in the same system unless they're in a binary orbit - the gravity well effect makes traveling between bodies too slow to make it worthwhile IMO. Save yourself some time, map 1 terraformable (or 1 binary pair) and move on to the next system.