Exploring profits

[marx]

Yes, I do. I honestly don't see a problem with it; those who don't like exploring but have an ocd need to get triple elite can do it via this method. Explorers themselves can use it to boost their profits when passing through the area. There's no real problem here.

What exploration needs is additional content, things for explorers to do, not endless fiddling with various sliders.

I see. You are contradicting yourself though. From post #20: "we don't need encouraging for one play style over another because someone arbitrarily decided one is preferred over another." But that's exactly what the current ratio(!) of neutron star prices versus planetary prices does. If you really did change your mind on this, then why do you say now that neutron farming should be far superior and thus be the encouraged method of exploration?

Also, in post #6, you suggested boosting the prices of ELW-s to one million credits (including the first discovery bonus). That would make hunting for them superior to neutron star farming. Update: my bad, I was wrong on this, I miscalculated and it wouldn't be much superior. As per my reasoning above, a base price of 430,000 Cr for ELW-s would make searching for them roughly on par with neutron star farming. Neutron star values are fine as they are, and I think they yield a good enough profit for the risks involved, but scanning other planets should also be comparable to that. Otherwise, due to the disparity in monetary rewards, you are encouraging neutron star farming over other methods of exploration. (For the record, I don't believe this was originally intended by design.)

I'm not saying that there should be no new additional content. Personally, I'd love to see more exploration missions, new kinds of scanning and so on. But changing some static values is far easier and quicker than designing and implementing new gameplay mechanics. I do believe the disparity is an issue, and it could be fixed relatively easily. If you don't believe it is, then that's fine, and we can just agree to disagree.

 

[newman1702]

Don't quote me out of context, please. What I said about not encouraging one play style over another was in response to suggestions that would try and nudge players towards not skipping boring ice ball systems and scanning them instead because there would be a financial reward for doing so. That does not mean I suddenly think neutron farming should be removed from the game; it's a separate issue. You're talking about removing something that's already in there for, in my opinion, no valid reason - removing neutron farming will not improve exploration in any way.

These two suggestions are similar in one way, though; they both try to discourage something you decided you dislike - skipping boring systems and neutron farming. I say, let players skip and let them farm neutrons if they want to. Nobody's forcing anyone to do it, and it's a well known fact that most explorers don't really explore for the money; I can make several months worth of exploration in the bubble inside of a week, easily. I still go out exploring for months at a time.

As far as boosting ELW prices go, going by my own statistics I don't think that they would still be farmable on the same level as neutron stars; a single neutron star is worth what, 40 something k with the first discovery bonus? So you need about 22 of them to break 1 million in profits; finding 22 neutron stars is extremely easy and fast in the neutron fields and could be done in less than an hour. If you can consistently find me an ELW every 22 systems, then I think you got something here, otherwise the numbers don't quite work.

 

[jabberwalkie]

Analysis:
Now what I take from this is that the payouts for scanning are radically underwhelming. I can honk a system every 45 seconds or so but flying to ELW's or WW's or whatever can take upwards of 5 minutes. Even stopping to scan a black hole can turn a 45 sec system into a 1:30 system. And if you are farming BH/NS you need to manual route plot, keep eye on fuel etc as I mentioned earlier.

This is all bearing in mind that prior to 2.1 you can get 200mil in combat in a day or two and that's not mentioning smuggling.

Thoughts - Buff planet-scanning a ton but leave honking payouts where they are.
Do this by - Introduce different grades of detailed surface scanners that sit in larger module slots to allow for some progression for explorers instead of a Cobra being as effective as an Anaconda. Possibly 4 grades fitting slot sizes 1/3/5/7

Yes they are pretty underwhelming, which is why people are extremely selective in what they detail scan to begin with all in an effort to maximize time spent for credits earned. I think we are all probably guilty of doing this at one point or another, I know I am in regards to selectively scanning stuff because I rarely scan entire systems to include moons/planetary satellites anymore. It's something that I have started to do over time in the game after having gotten a decently equipped Asp Explorer, which is different from what I used to do when I was exploring in my Cobra Mk3. Buffing the payout detail scans of planets is probably one way to do that, but I don't think a bonus for module slots would be the best way to do that.

I'd suggest probably adding a small bonus percentage on top of detail scans in regards to the distance from the bubble or turn in spot. If the module size of a DSS was going to determine this, then there needs to be a bit of a buff on their scan range. Not much is more frustrating that having to fly across the system for a planet that as it turns out is extremely small just so you can be the first to tag that planet that hasn't been tagged yet. This bonus would of course cap out, much in the same way that rares cap out. But the point is that the financial incentive for scanning would be higher, and then the incentive to find new systems that have not been previously scanned would also be higher.

One thing I think most of us have been waiting for though is different grade of modules for scanners like the ADS or DSS. One thing you could do that way is buff the payout for detailed scans, and then slightly increase the scanning range between the grades of the scanning modules. I think that this would be more of a quality of life type of thing rather than reward, but when you are traveling significant distances within a system something like this would be nice IMO. This way you get to enjoy the higher payout with less time spent in a system itself, but everyone has an equal chance of earning and allows for more options for outfitting and upward scaling of modules that otherwise explorers don't usually take advantage of.

Other than buffing the payout for detailed scans, the other option would be to lower the base amount earned just for honking and jumping. I think that's a worse alternative personally, but it is an option. Though I could only imagine the whaling and gnashing of teeth if that actually occurred.

 

[marx]

@ newman1702: Please read my posts again and don't attribute things to me that I didn't say. I never said that neutron farming should be removed from the game. In fact, I repeatedly said that they are fine the way they are now.
What I have said is that the prices for detailed scans should be increased. You yourself have in fact said this too. Why would this suddenly remove neutron star farming? Again, let me repeat that I don't want to do that. I don't see why buffing other methods would suddenly make neutron star farming less viable, never mind removing it entirely.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Just to throw it out there:

I don't want any mathematical formula to make things like ELW equal to NS farming. All I want and I think something we all agree on is a buff to scan values in some form of game mechanic because at current it's almost not worth even looking at the system map imho when 6 average system honks = 1 ELW/NS/BH. I actually wonder if it's faster to get Elite by scanning systems instead of neutron stars.
Edit: Interesting maths though (been reading in more detail since I posted this) I doubt Frontier would go for a wholesale 600% increase though given we have a 200% increase a while back. I like your idea because it seems fair, I dislike your idea because people would add ELW farming to the to-do list. As above my main goal of this thread and suggestion was to make it worthwhile opening the system map and scanning planets of interest. Ice/rocky worlds will still be not really worth scanning apart from for the completion bonus but AW/ELW/WW would actually be an "ooh" instead of my current "is it worth going 12,000Ly for it?"?

I honestly don't care that much about the neutron vs other scannables except to say that NS/BH can be a guaranteed find. People that grind will always grind and that's ok, I generally don't and don't care about that side of it. I care about why I should scan anything at all when Universal Cartographics seems to place much more weight & cash on a honk scan than a detailed scan.

 

[mls]

I just remembered that explorers actually get paid a lot more per hour than everybody else. While we may get less credits per hour than smugglers or bounty hunters, we certainly get a lot more beautifull sights in the process which is more than enough for me.
Personally that can't be compensated by credits no matter how much.

... just a thought

 

[marx]

Edit: Interesting maths though (been reading in more detail since I posted this) I doubt Frontier would go for a wholesale 600% increase though given we have a 200% increase a while back. I like your idea because it seems fair, I dislike your idea because people would add ELW farming to the to-do list. As above my main goal of this thread and suggestion was to make it worthwhile opening the system map and scanning planets of interest. Ice/rocky worlds will still be not really worth scanning apart from for the completion bonus but AW/ELW/WW would actually be an "ooh" instead of my current "is it worth going 12,000Ly for it?"?

Yeah, now that you mention it, I find it unlikely that Frontier would give such an increase. After all, it's not just the change, but also how you communicate the change. The most likely increase I could see would be a double in value if the last release of Horizons will include major exploration content.
However, that's not the only way it could go. For example, an alternative would be to give a big bonus to planets bearing life. Which could also partially solve an issue that Ziggy brought up: namely, that the payouts for gas giants are uncharacteristically low. But this would just solve that for gas giants bearing simple life, and not the other types.
Still, assigning bonuses for specific planetary characteristics would be an idea worth exploring. (Pardon the pun.)

Also, going by what I wrote earlier, I believe that it isn't faster to get to Elite by honk-and-jumping than it is by NS farming, but it's quite possible that it actually is faster than looking for Earth-likes and other rare planets. Perhaps if there were a flat rate for honking a system as opposed to getting credit per bodies even if you don't scan them, turning data in might also be quicker. But I have no idea about the internal workings of Universal Cartographics, so this is just speculation.

 

[newman1702]

I don't see why buffing other methods would suddenly make neutron star farming less viable, never mind removing it entirely.

I suppose it depends on how much you buff other prices, and which of them you touch. This is why I suggested just bumping ELW's, because they're rare enough to not upset any balance currently present by too much. I presented my argument on why that is just above. Lore wise I think it also makes sense, because data on a ready to go world should be a lot more valuable than data on a world that is terraformable, but would require lots of time, effort and investment to make it livable.

Buffing everything across the board? Sure, by a smaller amount, just enough to make detail scanning more worth it than honking I'd be fine with; and this boost would be for everything, neutrons and bh's included. Not sure about exact numbers needed here. But you didn't say you wanted that, what you said was that neutron prices are fine but you want to boost everything else, and then followed it up by saying you don't see why this would hurt neutron farming. Well, as Sam L. Jackson would say, allow me to retort (and explain). Equalize (or come close) prices of neutron stars to everything else, or just common objects such as HMC's effectively removes neutron farming from the game. Why go to the core if you can just grab a bunch of HMC's of similar value without ever going 5kly away from the bubble?

See, saying prices of neutron stars are fine but wanting to buff everything else is a very, very different thing to saying neutron farming is fine and should stay. You don't farm something if you can find stuff of similar value closer and in large quantities. This is what we disagree on, I suspect, perhaps I wasn't clear enough before but I trust that clears it up. And we don't have to agree on the issue - I'm just offering a point of view that says neutron farming is fine and doesn't hurt anyone.

 

[jabberwalkie]

All I want and I think something we all agree on is a buff to scan values in some form of game mechanic because at current it's almost not worth even looking at the system map imho when 6 average system honks = 1 ELW/NS/BH. I actually wonder if it's faster to get Elite by scanning systems instead of neutron stars.

Math isn't my strong point, but my gut says probably not. There are too many variables in regards to systems. At this point, I'd guess that a good amount of people know or the information is easy enough to find for the locations of neutron stars and that most of the guess work/randomness associated with going from system to system and scanning is likely more time consuming in regards to time v profit margin than farming NS.

 

[Mengy]

I just remembered that explorers actually get paid a lot more per hour than everybody else. While we may get less credits per hour than smugglers or bounty hunters, we certainly get a lot more beautifull sights in the process which is more than enough for me.
Personally that can't be compensated by credits no matter how much.

... just a thought

For a lot of us explorers, that's enough.


For most Elite players though, that's enough of a reason to never bother with exploring.

 

[marx]

@ newman1702: Hm, I see. I didn't consider this: "Why go to the core if you can just grab a bunch of HMC's of similar value without ever going 5kly away from the bubble?" Because neutron stars are still guaranteed finds, and quicker to scan than any planets. No need to fly around after you jump into the system, after all. I think I could adjust my calculations above to take this into account as well, but I'm actually curious about something else. Do you mean that neutron star farming is a good thing because it encourages people who are just exploring to powerlevel their rank to go the long distance? And see more of the galaxy.
I never thought about it that way, but it makes sense.
I still say that the disparity between other activities and neutron star farming is too large, but perhaps it would be better to just halve the gap, and not erase it.


Oh, and about terraforming and values: yeah, it does make sense that Earth-likes should net the most per scan, but I'd also adjust terraforming candidates. After all, a world that's just a few years of terraforming from becoming Earth-like should net somewhat comparable credits to one that's ready-made so to speak. Not nearly as much, of course, but not five percent of it either. The thing is, as long as a planet is within a star's habitable zone, the game appears to almost always label it a TC; it would be better if it could differentiate between ones that would need relatively little terraforming and ones that are basically hellholes that happen to be in a lucky orbit. Gradual changes would be nicer, so that if players find an almost-habitable world, they'd still be happy for that, as opposed to "oh poop, this is almost Earth-like, but because it isn't I'll get far less for it".

 

[newman1702]

@ newman1702: Hm, I see. I didn't consider this: "Why go to the core if you can just grab a bunch of HMC's of similar value without ever going 5kly away from the bubble?" Because neutron stars are still guaranteed finds, and quicker to scan than any planets. No need to fly around after you jump into the system, after all.

This is true, neutrons are easy to find once in the neutron fields. However, things like HMC's are also quite common and you don't need to travel 20kly to reach an area where there's lots of them. I do see your point, though.

Do you mean that neutron star farming is a good thing because it encourages people who are just exploring to powerlevel their rank to go the long distance? And see more of the galaxy.

That's definitely a part of it. The way I see it, some just want the rank and won't leave the bubble ever again when they hit elite. Players like that neutron farming? I certainly won't consider them to be "elite explorers", but if saying "elite" under exploration makes them happy, it doesn't hurt me so let them have it through neutron farming if they want it so much.

But to do that, they need to travel to the core, which is a significant trip and will expose them to the realities of long term exploration. Those that don't hate the experience might become new explorers who never thought they'd like it, but they got bitten by the bug.

This is why I'm of the mind that current prices don't need too much fiddling with short of a few adjustments. I honestly cannot say if just speedhonking is more profitable to detail scanning - if it is, that might need a small adjustment, but other than that I'd leave it be and rather have FD focus on adding more actual game mechanics to exploration. Still hopeful that happens as we get atmo landings. My naiveté knows no bounds, perhaps

 

[marx]

This is why I'm of the mind that current prices don't need too much fiddling with short of a few adjustments. I honestly cannot say if just speedhonking is more profitable to detail scanning - if it is, that might need a small adjustment, but other than that I'd leave it be and rather have FD focus on adding more actual game mechanics to exploration. Still hopeful that happens as we get atmo landings. My naiveté knows no bounds, perhaps

The thing about honk-and-jumping, or speedhonking, is that it's fairly easy to estimate how much time it takes, but it's much more difficult to estimate how much time detail scanning a system takes. Not just because of what the explorer might find, but also how far they might have to travel in-system. I think the most extreme example I've seen so far was an Earth-like over 500k ls away from the arrival point. Anyway, the point is that with speedhonking, the time spent in the system is not varied, but easily predictable: as short as possible.
Going by what I calculated above, I'm fairly certain by now that speedhonking could well be the second most profitable method of exploration, and I was surprised by that at first.

Let's take a look at it from a different perspective. With speedhonking, let's assume that an explorer spends one minute in the system, and with an average of ten bodies per system, gets 5000 Cr per minute. Of course, they will have to scoop fuel sometime, so let's say that they spend one extra minute scooping after every fifth jump. Within one hour, they'd traverse 54 systems, earning 270,000 Cr. Here's the important question: what would a detail scanning explorer need to find to be able to match that?
That would be either 4 undiscovered neutron stars (going with the 45k base price), or 3 undiscovered ELW-s, or 4 discovered ELW-s, or five undiscovered ammonia worlds, or 12 undiscovered metal rich planets (with a 15k base price).

Finding four undiscovered neutron stars within an hour is of course very easy, but I'm fairly certain that unless you're very lucky, you'll be hard pressed to match speedhonking with the rest. Well, except with already-discovered Earth-likes, because if you had a list of their locations, you could conceivably visit more than four of them in the space of an hour. (Here's me shooting myself in the foot now.) So I guess ELW tourism might be the second most lucrative, and speedhonking the third.

Of course, a crucial assumption with the above is the average bodies per system. I think that ten is fairly realistic though, especially if you're going coreward. I'd have to record data and see if it matches up to my expectations though, or not. Next time I'm out there, I think I'll do just that, as I'm quite curious now. Does anybody happen to have any data on this already?


Oh, and about new game mechanics and atmospheric flight: I'm quite hopeful for the fact that in the 2.1 beta, there's a separate "Surface scanner" category now, with only the DSS in it. If FD didn't plan on adding new stuff there later, why would they make a separate category for one piece of equipment? (The D-scanners are labeled as Stellar scanners.) One thing that would be simple enough to implement and could already help a lot would be a detailed atmospheric scanner: something you could only run while inside a planet's atmosphere, which would give you far more detailed and valuable information than the DSS does.
Granted, I'd like to see new gameplay mechanics that involve more than just pressing one more button in a specific situation, but hey, I'll take any improvement however small.

 

[Spacecat]

Exactly this!

You'd think there would be a bonus for a complete scan since it's so time consuming.

 

[TheLastCall]

You'd think there would be a bonus for a complete scan since it's so time consuming.

I like the idea a 5% bonus per body for a completed scanned system. If you scan the lot you get the bonus. 5 bodies 25% bonus. 10 = 50%. 20 = 100%.
120 = 600%.

 

[mono]

Certainly agree that some of the rarer bodies out there deserve a buff and a bonus for full system scans seems reasonable.

 

[Azriphail]

There are some nice ideas on how to make exploring more financially rewarding for those that take the time to scan whole systems. I like the idea of full system bonuses as it provides another layer of engagement with the game. One more reason to take the time.

If i honk and jump its generally because I am "traveling" not exploring. The real "exploring" begins once I finish traveling. The former being the journey the later being the destination.

Credits only last as as long as you have something to spend them on, bigger ship, bigger gun, more mining drones. Those rewards soon loose there appeal.

There is one benefit in this game that us explorers are given that no other professions are given. I have my name forever linked to an earthlike, a Carbon Star, a bunch of Neutrons and any number of other bodies in the galaxy, those tags can never be ganked, destroyed or nerfed. They are there for all future players to see my achievements. The only permanent impact on the game a player can make that other players can see.

TAGS!

I see it as an investment each time I scan a system and it increases in value the longer we play.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

There are some nice ideas on how to make exploring more financially rewarding for those that take the time to scan whole systems. I like the idea of full system bonuses as it provides another layer of engagement with the game. One more reason to take the time.

If i honk and jump its generally because I am "traveling" not exploring. The real "exploring" begins once I finish traveling. The former being the journey the later being the destination.

Credits only last as as long as you have something to spend them on, bigger ship, bigger gun, more mining drones. Those rewards soon loose there appeal.

There is one benefit in this game that us explorers are given that no other professions are given. I have my name forever linked to an earthlike, a Carbon Star, a bunch of Neutrons and any number of other bodies in the galaxy, those tags can never be ganked, destroyed or nerfed. They are there for all future players to see my achievements. The only permanent impact on the game a player can make that other players can see.

TAGS!

I see it as an investment each time I scan a system and it increases in value the longer we play.

True although the low profits do put people off exploring altogether. I'm not saying they should compete with the others but at least making them in the same sport even if they arn't quite in the same ballpark would be nice. I mean how often do the forums here spark a thread with "I never tried exploring before, took a short trip to X and now I'm hooked". Recently distant worlds showcased to many what exploring can be if given the chance.

Not to derail my own thread but how about some irrationally amazing reward such as "name your own system and planets if you explore over X, Y or Z" <- These could be 50,000 unique systems honked or 10,000 unique objects scanned or whatever but something really massive so Frontier can manually implement the name changes.
Addendum, has to be a system and planets that you have all the tags on, no partial systems. This will exclude certain places like Sag A* and most nebula but will allow people to customise planetary nebula or systems with 4 Earth likes or whatever etc.
Needs to be low enough to have maximum of say 10 per year to make it manageable for FDev.

 

[Spacecat]

Hmmmm, with all the complaining about grinding for upgrades in 2.1, what would be cool is if there were a few raw materials needed for upgrades scattered around randomly. Once explorers discovered a location of W-onium (Whatever-onium) they could sell the secret location to miners (there's 20 tons on W-onium on planet X), then miners could go mine it and sell it to stations where players looking to upgrad their ships could buy it. It would make it more rewarding for everybody.

 

[Zeeman]

Just to throw it out there:

I don't want any mathematical formula to make things like ELW equal to NS farming. All I want and I think something we all agree on is a buff to scan values in some form of game mechanic because at current it's almost not worth even looking at the system map imho when 6 average system honks = 1 ELW/NS/BH. I actually wonder if it's faster to get Elite by scanning systems instead of neutron stars.
Edit: Interesting maths though (been reading in more detail since I posted this) I doubt Frontier would go for a wholesale 600% increase though given we have a 200% increase a while back. I like your idea because it seems fair, I dislike your idea because people would add ELW farming to the to-do list. As above my main goal of this thread and suggestion was to make it worthwhile opening the system map and scanning planets of interest. Ice/rocky worlds will still be not really worth scanning apart from for the completion bonus but AW/ELW/WW would actually be an "ooh" instead of my current "is it worth going 12,000Ly for it?"?

I honestly don't care that much about the neutron vs other scannables except to say that NS/BH can be a guaranteed find. People that grind will always grind and that's ok, I generally don't and don't care about that side of it. I care about why I should scan anything at all when Universal Cartographics seems to place much more weight & cash on a honk scan than a detailed scan.

It's very hard to farm ELW's. It's not like they can be located ont he galaxy map on something. Sure you could make it a priority to look for them, but it won't make them any easier to find.

As is, I'm at about 100 ELW's discovered on my current trip, and about 220k LY travelled. In a period of 5 months, that works out to a good night doing Robigo runs.

Z...