Exploration: What are we paid for?

i have no problem with a planet being worth only 600cr to scan, even more so if there are about 5 next to each other and I only had to spend about 5 mins looking.

Not sure why people want the 'I win now' button on every game and confused when it doesnt exist

It has nothing to do with wanting an 'I win now' button or anything like it. It has to do with 600 cr being worthless in this game's economy when shooting down one wanted ship at a nav beacon or mining one asteroid of platinum or hauling one ton of onionhead even in an Eagle can be worth 20 times as much in far, far less time. The time spent vs. reward is unbalanced. I don't know why exploration of distant systems isn't worth more. If you took the risk to travel 200+ ly out, shouldn't those be worth more than some 10 ly away from the start areas? From my trip out to Polaris, that was obviously not the case. The most any system was worth was 77,000 cr and after two days scanning and bringing them back the total I earned was about 910,000 cr (or less than a one hour run of 60t of rares)
 
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Is there some sort of price list available somewhere?

Yes.

The value of celestial bodies depends on two things:

1) The type of body.
2) Its mass.

Without going into too much detail, here's what you're looking at for detailed scans:

Gas Giants
...with Ammonia Based Life: ~500 to 1000
...Helium Rich: ~500 to 1000
...Class I: ~1000 to 2000
...Class II: ~5000 to 6000
...Class III: ~700 to 1200
...Class IV: ~700 to 1200
...with Water Based Life: ~500 to 1000

Water Giants
...I don't yet know, but I suspect about the same as a gas giant.

Small Planets
...High Metal Content: ~2000 to 4000
...Icy: ~300 to 800
...Metal Rich: ~4100 to 6000
...Rocky Ice: ~400 to 500
...Rocky: ~300 to 400
...Ammonia: unknown

Protostars:
...T Tauris: ~1200
...Herbig Ae/Be: ~unknown, probably ~1300 (as they're more massive than most stars)

Stars:
...OBAFGKM of any size: ~1200, up to about 3400 for the very largest stars, but almost all are about 1200
...Carbon Stars (C,S): ~1200 as above
...Wolf Rayet: ~unknown, probably ~1200

Stellar Remnants:
...Black Hole: ~~20000, I don't have enough data to be more precise on the range
...Neutron Stars: ~18000 to 20000
...White Dwarfs: ~9000 to 13000

Valuable Planets:
...Earth Like Worlds: ~28000 to 31000
...Water Worlds (candidate for terraforming): ~22000 to 30000
...Water Worlds: ~10000 to 14000
...High Metal Content (candidate for terraforming): unknown

I'm working on it.

(edited to add)

The value of an object does not appear to depend at all upon how many people have scanned it.
Most gas giants, including life-bearing and helium rich, fall into a fairly low value curve.
Class II gas giants (usually bright white) are good value.

If you know of any objects I've missed out, please say. I don't think Pulsars are explicitly modeled and the same goes for variable stars e.g. Delta Scuti is in but without any special note.
 
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But that's an awesome list, looks like a lot of work! I wonder how you got all these separate values (all those AOs usually don't come alone)...
Mostly by flying a particular route (e.g. a trade route between two rare good producers a long way apart) scanning one object per system and seeing what they sell for at the end.

Also, do you have any idea why the Class II is the most valuable of all Gas Giants?
I don't know, it's been puzzling me.

Another interesting question would be what exactly adds to explorer rank. Is it the sheer amount of credits won by exploring, or maybe just the number of explored AOs (unlikely)?
It's by credits won only, I believe, although I suppose there could be a "minimum systems explored" cap on the ranks.
 
Another interesting question would be what exactly adds to explorer rank. Is it the sheer amount of credits won by exploring, or maybe just the number of explored AOs (unlikely)?

It can't be just the credits cashed in because I ranked up to Pathfinder while out on a jaunt and wasn't cashing anything in. Maybe it's a combination? Or maybe it counts the potential profits you've discovered? If I died and lost the exploration data I don't think I'd drop back down to Trailblazer.
 
It can't be just the credits cashed in because I ranked up to Pathfinder while out on a jaunt and wasn't cashing anything in. Maybe it's a combination? Or maybe it counts the potential profits you've discovered? If I died and lost the exploration data I don't think I'd drop back down to Trailblazer.

Oh, interesting - I've lost a huge amount of exploration data through bugs and crashes so my "systems visited" is high (about 2400) compared to my credits returned (about 10,000,000) - my rank ticked up to Ranger at about 9,000,000 credits returned but I've never seen it tick up while out exploring. Sounds like it is a cap on both values then.
 
That's not too far from the proportion I'm at currently. 2,541,000 total profits from 541 systems. Maybe just ticking over to 2.5 million did it and I missed it, but I have been pretty diligent checking the ranking. I haven't turned in much at all in the last 50+. It could be a requirement of 2.5 mil and 500 systems minimum?
 
Before my self-wipe I was at Trailblazer after coming back from the Coal Sack region (after selling the data). So another possible idea would be maximum reached distance from an imaginary (SOL?) reference point. But that's just an idea (wild guess). It could be a combination of various things as well...

Interesting idea. Furthest I've been is about 5000ly out from Sol. Could also be total distance covered. (They're definitely tracking that, because it was mentioned in a newsletter a while back - whether it's being done on a per-Commander basis or just a total of all jumps across all Commanders, I don't know.)
 
Yes.

The value of celestial bodies depends on two things:

1) The type of body.
2) Its mass.

Without going into too much detail, here's what you're looking at for detailed scans:

Gas Giants
...with Ammonia Based Life: ~500 to 1000
...Helium Rich: ~500 to 1000
...Class I: ~1000 to 2000
...Class II: ~5000 to 6000
...Class III: ~700 to 1200
...Class IV: ~700 to 1200
...with Water Based Life: ~500 to 1000

Water Giants
...I don't yet know, but I suspect about the same as a gas giant.

Small Planets
...High Metal Content: ~2000 to 4000
...Icy: ~300 to 800
...Metal Rich: ~4100 to 6000
...Rocky Ice: ~400 to 500
...Rocky: ~300 to 400
...Ammonia: unknown

Protostars:
...T Tauris: ~1200
...Herbig Ae/Be: ~unknown, probably ~1300 (as they're more massive than most stars)

Stars:
...OBAFGKM of any size: ~1200, up to about 3400 for the very largest stars, but almost all are about 1200
...Carbon Stars (C,S): ~1200 as above
...Wolf Rayet: ~unknown, probably ~1200

Stellar Remnants:
...Black Hole: ~~20000, I don't have enough data to be more precise on the range
...Neutron Stars: ~18000 to 20000
...White Dwarfs: ~9000 to 13000

Valuable Planets:
...Earth Like Worlds: ~28000 to 31000
...Water Worlds (candidate for terraforming): ~22000 to 30000
...Water Worlds: ~10000 to 14000
...High Metal Content (candidate for terraforming): unknown

I'm working on it.

(edited to add)

The value of an object does not appear to depend at all upon how many people have scanned it.
Most gas giants, including life-bearing and helium rich, fall into a fairly low value curve.
Class II gas giants (usually bright white) are good value.

If you know of any objects I've missed out, please say. I don't think Pulsars are explicitly modeled and the same goes for variable stars e.g. Delta Scuti is in but without any special note.

Jackie I added the data I had on a few of these and had some more exact formulas:

Stars (including wolf-rayet and carbon stars) pay out: 1200+18.13*(Mass)
Black holes pay out: 17914+270.5*(Mass)
 
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Explorer

I updated that page myself after a 1.6mil haul.
There's more detail in that great post, and also some cross over where our results correlate closely.
I forgot to add black holes and neutron stars, both seem to be worth about 20k as suggested above.

Metallic ore belts definitely pay out, as do planets - anything metallic is worth it.


What I did was use the advanced scanner, and then anything that looked watery or had an atmosphere I went to detail scan (unless it was very far).
200 systems pulled in the 1.6m, average 8k per system.
I barely saw any system worth less than about 5k.
 
Pretty sure you get credits for D-Scanning the belts, but yeah, nothing extra for doing a DSS scan on them.

I need to do some more detailed checking, but I suspect the payout for a DSS relates to the actual mass of ice, rock and especially metal in a body. Some of the really big ice worlds have significant amounts of metal in them. I was seeing about 2500 added for normal 32% metal planets and 5000 for a 100% one (this is above the base D-Scan amount).

Also it's worth mentioning that some high metal worlds with cloudy atmospheres (think Venus) look very much like ice worlds on the system map. These will typically be inner system objects. If you see a white planet closer to a star than a coloured one, scan it.

Oh and an easy test to do - jump to a solo star system and proximity detect it. Jump over to a station and check UC. You'll get about 200 credits for a typical Type M. Jump back and DSS it and you'll get an extra 1000.

I analysed a system with a lot of gas giants and can confirm that any ring adds value (even ice), rocky more than ice and metal even more.

The other thing I confirmed (but I'm sure a lot of you already knew) is that start of scan range relates to size, not mass. I probably have enough data to work out a formula when I get time.
 
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