Exploration - Zero to Hero in under 5 days
- Thread starter Becky
- Start date
Repped for providing very detailed info.
More info is always appreciated, and of course can be used by each individual according to their play styles and philosophies.
I'm actually very close to Elite in exploration on one of my accounts, and was considering how best to "top it off." This will help.
Thanks for putting in the effort for this!
More info is always appreciated, and of course can be used by each individual according to their play styles and philosophies.
I'm actually very close to Elite in exploration on one of my accounts, and was considering how best to "top it off." This will help.
Thanks for putting in the effort for this!
It's good to see so many commanders are passionate about exploration. For me this list is about ranking up quickly and making cash, much like Neutron farming used to be, or visiting ELW's that have already been discovered by others via EDDB or other methods. Much like using EDDB to get the best routes for trading and therefore ranking up/ getting cash as a trader.
IMHO they are all legitimate methods of gaining the required cash/ rank. If some commanders don't agree with them then don't use them!
I attained Elite the old fashioned way, but it makes no difference to me how quickly anyone else attains the rank or by what method, each to their own I guess. Maybe that's not a very purist approach, but I enjoy this game too much to be worrying what everyone else is doing all the time or whether they deserve their achievements.
IMHO they are all legitimate methods of gaining the required cash/ rank. If some commanders don't agree with them then don't use them!
I attained Elite the old fashioned way, but it makes no difference to me how quickly anyone else attains the rank or by what method, each to their own I guess. Maybe that's not a very purist approach, but I enjoy this game too much to be worrying what everyone else is doing all the time or whether they deserve their achievements.
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It depends what you go looking for and how you scan.
If you just jump and honk, mostly through small M-class star+iceball systems, then you'll probably rank up slower than in previous versions.
On my (fairly DSS-heavy) exploration pattern I've gone from getting ~500k to 1M per page to getting 5-10M per page (before first discovery bonuses), so 10 times more cash, 5 times faster ranking if I wasn't Elite already.
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"Max distance from start: 572 LY"
Words fail me... Exploration Elite ain't what it used to be when I was a lad.
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When I was a lad we didn't have all these fancy "Exploration" Elite's - you were Combat Elite or you were nothing.
It's been possible since 1.0, though, to get Exploration Elite with a much lower distance-from-start than that, though. There's 20,000ish inhabited systems in the bubble under 200 LY from Sol, and probably the same again in uninhabited systems. Go through all of them that aren't pre-explored with a detailed surface scanner and you'll get Elite and plenty to spare. Extend to 250 LY from Sol so you can start getting lots of ELWs and terraformables and even on pre-2.3 prices it would go a lot faster.
Of course, back then you could get first discovery bonuses - at least on some sort of iceball - without going much further than 250 LY from Sol.
As the original poster I'd like to give some insight into why I wrote this.
It all started off when I bought an alt account (space elf) to help BGS activities and try to give my main account a trade rank boost.
I did a cargo transfer from my main account (488T) to secondary account of roughly 2-3 million to buy a cobra and that took 4 hours, since I was starting in a loan sidewinder with very small cargo hold ... then I had an idea to scan water worlds in the bubble to get up to a Type-6; and that was really fast - it only took me 4 or 5 systems to get from a cobra to a type-6 and that gave me an idea to just create myself a map to follow that would get me to Elite, unlock farseer for better FSD, get a bunch of system permits I needed for BGS activities etc.
So that was my first challenge; and it took 8 hours from having the idea to having a workable spreadsheet, I wont go into specifics, but it involved a lot of data aggregation and programming, luckily I'm a database architect as a career so it was right up my street. I started it with 200 systems - and I had to write the route plotting algorithm myself; it's not optimised by any stretch but I ironed out some unreasonable treks manually, some of them were +300ly between systems.
And off I went, expecting to get back with Elite Rank... 3 weeks later real time I had scanned all systems on my map, added a few systems & terraformable bodies that weren't on there (EDSM/EDDB are incomplete, who knew?) paid off farseer for grade 5, bought a few system permits handed in all the data to various systems for BGS helping... and ... I was 51% pioneer, not Elite as I had expected (based on 2.2 rank).
So I bought a diamond back explorer fit up with exploration modules, SRV and went off farming enough materials for 50 FSD rolls... and what I found out is; even though the DBX has really good jump range, the fuel scoop is too small and there were other small things that were nagging against me... so I switched to my treasured post 2.3 favourite, the Orca.
Farseer was gratuitous enough to bestow me with a few good rolls...
5A FSD 52.5+2.5% FSD (orca)
5A FSD 52% (DBX)
5A FSD 49% ~spare~
4A FSD 52% (Type-6)
4A FSD 48% (Cobra)
I worked out, with the 2.3 rank scaling I needed about 100 million more to finish rank up... and luckily for me, by the time I got back EDPathfinder 1.2.0 had been released with a new "Terraformable systems plotter" functionality so after a few tweeks to the settings I built the remaining 80 systems in seconds rather than hours and off I went again; filling in all the gaps as I went.
It actually surprised me how many systems had just had the water worlds scanned and skipped 3 or 4 terraformable high metal bodies; the bodies list was far from complete when I started and I wanted to leave a legacy for people that wanted to follow in my path.
The reasons that the systems scanned is relatively low; is because the route is optimised for high yield systems. Most of them were between 1 and 3 million a pop.
With EDPathfinder 1.2.0 this sheet is largely redundant since you can make new ones on the fly in seconds; but the advantages of the sheet is that it's a known quantity with no gaps.
I guess my final, perhaps salty, thoughts on Rank are...
It all started off when I bought an alt account (space elf) to help BGS activities and try to give my main account a trade rank boost.
I did a cargo transfer from my main account (488T) to secondary account of roughly 2-3 million to buy a cobra and that took 4 hours, since I was starting in a loan sidewinder with very small cargo hold ... then I had an idea to scan water worlds in the bubble to get up to a Type-6; and that was really fast - it only took me 4 or 5 systems to get from a cobra to a type-6 and that gave me an idea to just create myself a map to follow that would get me to Elite, unlock farseer for better FSD, get a bunch of system permits I needed for BGS activities etc.
So that was my first challenge; and it took 8 hours from having the idea to having a workable spreadsheet, I wont go into specifics, but it involved a lot of data aggregation and programming, luckily I'm a database architect as a career so it was right up my street. I started it with 200 systems - and I had to write the route plotting algorithm myself; it's not optimised by any stretch but I ironed out some unreasonable treks manually, some of them were +300ly between systems.
And off I went, expecting to get back with Elite Rank... 3 weeks later real time I had scanned all systems on my map, added a few systems & terraformable bodies that weren't on there (EDSM/EDDB are incomplete, who knew?) paid off farseer for grade 5, bought a few system permits handed in all the data to various systems for BGS helping... and ... I was 51% pioneer, not Elite as I had expected (based on 2.2 rank).
So I bought a diamond back explorer fit up with exploration modules, SRV and went off farming enough materials for 50 FSD rolls... and what I found out is; even though the DBX has really good jump range, the fuel scoop is too small and there were other small things that were nagging against me... so I switched to my treasured post 2.3 favourite, the Orca.
Farseer was gratuitous enough to bestow me with a few good rolls...
5A FSD 52.5+2.5% FSD (orca)
5A FSD 52% (DBX)
5A FSD 49% ~spare~
4A FSD 52% (Type-6)
4A FSD 48% (Cobra)
I worked out, with the 2.3 rank scaling I needed about 100 million more to finish rank up... and luckily for me, by the time I got back EDPathfinder 1.2.0 had been released with a new "Terraformable systems plotter" functionality so after a few tweeks to the settings I built the remaining 80 systems in seconds rather than hours and off I went again; filling in all the gaps as I went.
It actually surprised me how many systems had just had the water worlds scanned and skipped 3 or 4 terraformable high metal bodies; the bodies list was far from complete when I started and I wanted to leave a legacy for people that wanted to follow in my path.
The reasons that the systems scanned is relatively low; is because the route is optimised for high yield systems. Most of them were between 1 and 3 million a pop.
With EDPathfinder 1.2.0 this sheet is largely redundant since you can make new ones on the fly in seconds; but the advantages of the sheet is that it's a known quantity with no gaps.
I guess my final, perhaps salty, thoughts on Rank are...
To me, hitting Elite has no more significance than hitting level 90 in warcraft (or whatever the max level is these days) - if you put in the grind hours you get the rank; and like the warcraft mission add-ons - sheets like this only help people optimise "the grind". In my opinion, Rank is a progress meter of "The Grind", along the way there have been several ways to speed up "the grind"... islave mission stealing, 2.2 passenger missions, getting an all turret anaconda with big big shields, etc - but ultimately, in my view, that's all it is.
Except in warcraft; max level is the start of a whole new game... the raiding & max-level gear grind game... In Elite the only payoff is access to Founders world and Lori Jameson; The engineering grind you can start in a sidewinder if you want to - and so perhaps rightly so people want it to mean more than it does because there's nothing left to do afterwards (as far as the grind is concerned). If elite unlocked new adventures and special privileges (ships/modules) perhaps people would have more of a reason to grind it out; but currently a lot of people just leave it be and let it go up naturally as they play because its only value is the value people assign to it.
Assigning "prestige" to Rank is only going to lead to emotional torment as people with different play styles, views and opinions come together under a single banner called "the game".
I have been to Colonia, SagA* on my main account, other things like 65,000ly from sol, 1500ly above the galactic plain etc - these things are prestige worthy - people have lots of "badges of honour" etc. They actually have some significance. But rank, at least to me, shouldn't be a thing.
Except in warcraft; max level is the start of a whole new game... the raiding & max-level gear grind game... In Elite the only payoff is access to Founders world and Lori Jameson; The engineering grind you can start in a sidewinder if you want to - and so perhaps rightly so people want it to mean more than it does because there's nothing left to do afterwards (as far as the grind is concerned). If elite unlocked new adventures and special privileges (ships/modules) perhaps people would have more of a reason to grind it out; but currently a lot of people just leave it be and let it go up naturally as they play because its only value is the value people assign to it.
Assigning "prestige" to Rank is only going to lead to emotional torment as people with different play styles, views and opinions come together under a single banner called "the game".
I have been to Colonia, SagA* on my main account, other things like 65,000ly from sol, 1500ly above the galactic plain etc - these things are prestige worthy - people have lots of "badges of honour" etc. They actually have some significance. But rank, at least to me, shouldn't be a thing.
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I think the guide you've written is very good and will undoubtedly assist scores of people who are welcome to use whatever means and methods they want to get where they need to go in-game: it makes no difference to me. I'm just surprised at how easy it seemingly is to get to Elite status via this method. I started playing in Jan 2015 and am now just a few percentage points away from getting to Elite: it's taken me a long time.
When I was a lad we didn't have all these fancy "Exploration" Elite's - you were Combat Elite or you were nothing.
It's been possible since 1.0, though, to get Exploration Elite with a much lower distance-from-start than that, though. There's 20,000ish inhabited systems in the bubble under 200 LY from Sol, and probably the same again in uninhabited systems. Go through all of them that aren't pre-explored with a detailed surface scanner and you'll get Elite and plenty to spare. Extend to 250 LY from Sol so you can start getting lots of ELWs and terraformables and even on pre-2.3 prices it would go a lot faster.
Of course, back then you could get first discovery bonuses - at least on some sort of iceball - without going much further than 250 LY from Sol.
Dammit, man! You've completely spoilt my condescending manner and tone with your well thought-out and reasoned arguments!
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...plus at least one round trip to Beagle Point.
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Those tags weren't a thing from day 1; they were added later - and even then it would have given the "early adopters" an unfair advantage - only having to go as far as Maia to get their "first discovered tags"; with each new generation of explorers the bar will be set further and further out as more systems are scanned and "discovered".
The way it is currently, the bar is the same for everyone - and that's how it should be.
I'll be honest, after the 2.3 scan reward increases I'm surprised no one else thought about it; or if they did they wanted to keep it a "cult secret" or some nonsense so fdev wouldn't hit it with the nerf hammer as they often do right after someone publishes some thing like this.
While I was creating and testing this route I saw a few people creating different "10 million credit exploration routes" so they could collect easy data drops for BGS - and as I said, EDPathfinder was in progress at the same time - I just took it to it's ultimate and inescapable conclusion.
I fail to believe that frontier development didn't think of this consequence when they jacked up the rewards.
I only did it for the Shinrarta holy water
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Becky, a fabulous chart to help players wanting to rank up quickly. For caring and putting in the many hours to actually type that lot out is brilliant.
For my part, I've only been playing since last December and I've made 7% pioneer already...I feel like many others that FDev have devalued the ranking system. Even only as far back as December if I saw a pilot that had any elite status, it was not only quite rare, but for me, it held a kind of respect of them having achieved it.
These days, noobs with less than a couple of weeks in them are getting elite status just for stacking 1ls passenger missions up at Quince, getting rear admiral or king status and then running around killing other noobs in vettes or cutters. We are about to be hit with another wave of kids on their consoles thinking they're playing COD or GTA 5
I'm an old fogey , a purist if you like, I value our galaxy and what FDev are providing for us to enjoy. I had respect when I saw a Cmdr who went to Sag A or Beagle...it doesn't hold the same feelings for me if they've done it for 30m credits as part of a mission. That's not exploring, that's doing a passenger mission...I truly feel that rep shouldn't be given or not the same level as explorers...I digress my apologies.
All I can say in closing is that Cmdrs have enough short cuts in the game these days , as good as your chart is. I don't think it's doing the game any good.
For my part, I've only been playing since last December and I've made 7% pioneer already...I feel like many others that FDev have devalued the ranking system. Even only as far back as December if I saw a pilot that had any elite status, it was not only quite rare, but for me, it held a kind of respect of them having achieved it.
These days, noobs with less than a couple of weeks in them are getting elite status just for stacking 1ls passenger missions up at Quince, getting rear admiral or king status and then running around killing other noobs in vettes or cutters. We are about to be hit with another wave of kids on their consoles thinking they're playing COD or GTA 5
I'm an old fogey , a purist if you like, I value our galaxy and what FDev are providing for us to enjoy. I had respect when I saw a Cmdr who went to Sag A or Beagle...it doesn't hold the same feelings for me if they've done it for 30m credits as part of a mission. That's not exploring, that's doing a passenger mission...I truly feel that rep shouldn't be given or not the same level as explorers...I digress my apologies.
All I can say in closing is that Cmdrs have enough short cuts in the game these days , as good as your chart is. I don't think it's doing the game any good.
Rep to OP.
Personally, I don't really care about rank, and without checking in game (I'm at work) The only rank I have that I could be sure about is Combat (Novice). As for exploration and trade, no idea.
I will however follow some of this route just for the filthy lucre in exploration credits
Personally, I don't really care about rank, and without checking in game (I'm at work) The only rank I have that I could be sure about is Combat (Novice). As for exploration and trade, no idea.
I will however follow some of this route just for the filthy lucre in exploration credits
They were added later but the information was retained from the launch, which is why my name's on half of Orion.
I think it's a tricky subject. Opportunities to show yourself incontrovertibly Elite in exploration are rare, so we're left to an extent with the horribly fickle beast of community approbation. Arguably it's even harder to prove yourself Elite for combat; shooting NPCs ad tedium certainly doesn't cut it, unless perhaps you like to hang out in a high-intensity CZ in a stock Sidewinder or something.
From my point of view, neutron-star "farming" is a nothing; but whoever it was first realised the existence of the neutron fields, that was a noteworthy thing. And so on. The implication being that some kudos are due for compiling a handy list, but not so much for using that list...