Few questions, geologicals, systems

[Crumly]

A few years back I unlocked the one engineer, saw a couple tourist things on the way back, and when Odyssey came out I did some exobiology, mostly during the beta. I haven't played as much in the last couple years, and decided I wanted a FC, so I wanted to do a really big exploration/exobiology trip, earn some credits, try out exploring which I hadn't really done before. I could head back now, but I'd like to keep going. But some things are routinely bugging me and I think it's just because I don't really know what I'm doing.

I saw a YT guide saying to plot a course to K stars, and look for HMC worlds, and Stratum Tectonicas. This has worked, sorta, enough that I have quite a bit of credits to claim. But I am frustrated with how few HMC's there are, and how few Biological signals there are in general. By and large I've been fully FSS'ing each system, a few times I got frustrated and only did HMC's, or when I saw there were no HMC's, I just left. A few times I've found HMC's with Bio's, but it was bacterium when I flew up and DSS. I haven't been keeping notes, but I have been looking at the planets somewhat. Sometimes I go scan planets, if they are ELW or some water worlds. I have multiple apps running, SRV Survey, EDDiscovery, EDMC with plugins, even had EDCopilot but it keeps telling me to leave systems, I'm pretty sure it doesn't know what it's talking about, I think it just see's no record of the system on EDSM or wherever so it doesn't know what biologicals are there and assumes it's none? I dunno. Anyway, the apps predict the value of DSS'ing a planet, and somehow seems to usually accurately predict what possible Bio's are on a planet.

Are there regions of space that don't have HMC's?
Is there something I can do to find more HMC's?
Does stratum grow on HMC's that aren't ammonia atmosphere? I wasn't paying attention to the first bunch I found, then I started finding more HMC with bacterium and noticed they weren't ammonia atmosphere.
If a planet is orbiting another planet, are those considered moons?
In the interest of exploring in a larger sense than just trying to find Stratum Tectonicas purely for earning credits, I have been trying to figure out how other players determine what's worth going and DSS'ing and visually inspecting?
Do you guys DSS rings on planets?
Is there any point DSS'ing gas giants? They don't seem to be worth much credits, so I'm guessing unless they have rings, there is no point to DSS them?
If they do have rings, and you do think DSS'ing gas giant rings is worthwhile, is there certain types of gas giant that has interesting rings? (assuming it has rings)
Can I exit my SRV, board my ship, and target my SRV and get a repair limpet to fix the SRV hull?
I remember doing a little "prospecting" waaaaaay back.
In the interest of being a proper explorer, I've randomly gone and checked out Geologicals, I find it very tedious finding them once I'm on the ground, I only just learned today I can switch to combat mode to turn off the heat map filters, so I was frequently landing in the dark side of a planet. Anyway, I read you can find minerals near geologicals. Well, I've found precious little at them.
How do I find crystalline shards, like the ones I went to years ago to fill up raw materials?
How do I find brain trees? They seem like they'd be biologicals? But I don't know if they show up when DSS's? They used to get a waypoint you could navigate to, I think anyway.
Are there geologicals worth checking out? Does atmosphere type or anything else give me any info I can use to decide if I should go check them out?
I've found a few minerals attached to vents or fumaroles. Not anything to raise an eyebrow over though, very, very little. Seems like every time I DSS a planet to find geologicals, it's Vent, Fumarole, or Geyser, and not much interesting down on the surface to find

 

[Faded Glory]

Can't answer all your questions, but I'll have a go at some... (From experience)

Not aware of regions of space that do/don't have HMC's, but you will be more likely to find them around A, B, G, F and K stars. They will pop up around M stars, but less. Not much that I'm aware of to find more.

Stratum Techtonicas are valuable and easy to scan. As far as I'm aware they can turn up on pretty much any landable HMC. A sure way to know that you will find one is if you find an HMC with two bio signals. One will be bacterium, the other will be a Stratum. Sometimes they will be present as the only bio signal, but one signal is more likely to be bacterium and I only bother to scan those if they are also terraformable. Otherwise you want an HMC with more bio signals for one to be stratum, usually more than 5. That at least is my experience.

Another good source of valuable bio signals is any planet with a Water atmosphere.

To figure out what signals are valuable, take a look at the spreadsheet linked in the first post in this thread. (Credit to marx.) There are a few bacterium that are quite valuable on planets with nitrogen or oxygen atmospheres.

Finally, as far as value goes, just make sure you are scanning signals that haven't been scanned before, so you are the first discoverer. Rewards are multiplied four or five times. I just came back from a meandering trip, system scan data was around 500 million credits, bio scans (and there weren't that many, just one page when I sold them) were over 2 billion credits. All first discoveries.

Hopefully others will turn up with more info for you.

 

[Anticon]

Too many questions for me to answer right now, but I'd recommend you use Elite Observatory with BioInsights plugin for best exobio results and most efficient use of your time. And if a planet is orbiting another, then it's a moon (so an HMC could be a moon of a gas giant); but if the two bodies "orbit" each other, they are binaries.

 

[Crumly]

Too many questions for me to answer right now, but I'd recommend you use Elite Observatory with BioInsights plugin for best exobio results and most efficient use of your time. And if a planet is orbiting another, then it's a moon (so an HMC could be a moon of a gas giant); but if the two bodies "orbit" each other, they are binaries.

I installed it and tried it, and I am not a very smart guy, maybe you could answer another question. All I've been able to use the BioInsights is by alt-tabbing and reading the box in EDMC. I thought by reading that it had an in-game over lay, and I also installed a plugin for EDMC Overlay, but it didn't seem to work. I have been quite a fan of the app SRV Survey, it's over lay is very good and I like the exo-distance-map thing it has. But I am a very eager user of apps and plug ins and wanted to compare these apps. Are you using BioInsights as an overlay?
I really love all the apps but I am struggling to actually use some of them

 

[cmdr chequers]

I installed it and tried it, and I am not a very smart guy, maybe you could answer another question. All I've been able to use the BioInsights is by alt-tabbing and reading the box in EDMC. I thought by reading that it had an in-game over lay, and I also installed a plugin for EDMC Overlay, but it didn't seem to work. I have been quite a fan of the app SRV Survey, it's over lay is very good and I like the exo-distance-map thing it has. But I am a very eager user of apps and plug ins and wanted to compare these apps. Are you using BioInsights as an overlay?
I really love all the apps but I am struggling to actually use some of them

I use Elite observatory on an laptop networked, on a side note EDdiscovery can send the same data as EDMC.

 

[Sheetrock]

I tend to use this link: https://ed-dsn.net/en/conditions-of-emergence-of-exobiological-species-on-planets-a-atmosphere-fine/
and tie it with this one for value: https://ed-dsn.net/en/vista-genomics-values/

So yes, as was stated above, I find that HMCs are hard to find. I tend to look for more than K stars in the KGB FOAM grouping and as you can see from the website I listed above, HMC worlds with Ammonia, Carbon Dioxide, Water, or Sulfure Dioxide atmospheres could have stratum tectonicas - sometimes with one bio signal; almost always if there are two or more bio signals. You will note that the same applies for oxygen atmosphere planets.

So, this is how I do it:
jump to K G B F O A stars (I skip M stars);
do the FSS thing;
look for HMC worlds with Ammonia, Carbon Dioxide, Water, or Sulfure Dioxide atmospheres; or any world with Oxygen;
Any HMC worlds with 2 or more bio signs, DSS and be prepared to land;
Any HMC worlds with 1 bio sign, depends how enthusiastic I am - most times I DSS and am prepared to land
DSS and land on any Oxygen atmosphere worlds.

Finally, I tend to last no more than a week of the above steps, get tired and cruise back to the bubble for something different.

 

[MattG]

I installed it and tried it, and I am not a very smart guy, maybe you could answer another question. All I've been able to use the BioInsights is by alt-tabbing and reading the box in EDMC. I thought by reading that it had an in-game over lay, and I also installed a plugin for EDMC Overlay, but it didn't seem to work. I have been quite a fan of the app SRV Survey, it's over lay is very good and I like the exo-distance-map thing it has. But I am a very eager user of apps and plug ins and wanted to compare these apps. Are you using BioInsights as an overlay?
I really love all the apps but I am struggling to actually use some of them

For BioInsights there’s a couple of things you can do. First, grab the StellarOverlay plugin - it’s an overlay specifically for Observatory and spend a few minutes testing/configuring it. Then go in to BioInsights Settings -> Advanced and make sure FSS popup is enabled - this will give a popup when when FSSing planets of interest. You can also use the popout button in BioInsights. If you right click on the popout you can lock the position of the window, remove the buttons etc, then back in Advanced you can tweak the transparency of the popout and also make it only appear on certain GUI modes - I have it so the popout only appears when I look at the left panel in ship/SRV.

I’m also working to improve the information shown on the overlay, but not enough hours in the day.

 

[Crumly]

For BioInsights there’s a couple of things you can do. First, grab the StellarOverlay plugin - it’s an overlay specifically for Observatory and spend a few minutes testing/configuring it. Then go in to BioInsights Settings -> Advanced and make sure FSS popup is enabled - this will give a popup when when FSSing planets of interest. You can also use the popout button in BioInsights. If you right click on the popout you can lock the position of the window, remove the buttons etc, then back in Advanced you can tweak the transparency of the popout and also make it only appear on certain GUI modes - I have it so the popout only appears when I look at the left panel in ship/SRV.

I’m also working to improve the information shown on the overlay, but not enough hours in the day.

i am really dumb, because I now realize i was talking about BioScan which is an EDMC plugin. I remember when first downloading these that I had wanted your plugins for Observatory and EDJP because I was keen to see if I could figure out how to use it to track boxel and see if I could find more exo biology targets if I stayed in a boxel that I had already found some in,
But somewhere I must have downloaded the wrong one