Exploration is fine, more or less, but it feels very unfocused at times. You go out, wander aimlessly for a few weeks, and come back with a few hundred million in exploration data. Your chances of encountering another player is zero. Your chances of encountering anything truly interesting is very close to zero.
So I'd like to propose an Exploration Expedition. It could be funded by various sources; companies looking for specific things, maybe Aegis hunting down rumors of aliens, that sort of thing.
But the basic premise is this: They move a Megaship into the center of a search area, far from the bubble(~30kly away). They then pay extra(3x-5x) for any data from within ~100ly of that location. If the objective has not yet been found, the search area is then widened to 150ly, and then 250ly.
This creates a new area for players to explore, and bypasses the boring exploits people have traditionally used like Road to Riches. You can't just run around scanning pre-existing garden worlds, you need to go out and make new maps, find new stuff! Players might cooperate to find lists of garden worlds to share.
When the objective has been found, it would start a new objective; refueling for the jump back. The megaship might buy Tritium for ~300k-500k each, for the jump, giving a side-objective for miners to participate too. And ideally, fdev would have custom-placed a few goodies throughout the area for players to find, as well. Maybe even some alien artifacts, hidden inside those tritium-filled rocks. During this time period, the megaship would continue to pay extra for any exploration data found, now within 500ly of the megaship.
At the end, objective complete, the megaship jumps back to the bubble, mission complete.
Thoughts?
So I'd like to propose an Exploration Expedition. It could be funded by various sources; companies looking for specific things, maybe Aegis hunting down rumors of aliens, that sort of thing.
But the basic premise is this: They move a Megaship into the center of a search area, far from the bubble(~30kly away). They then pay extra(3x-5x) for any data from within ~100ly of that location. If the objective has not yet been found, the search area is then widened to 150ly, and then 250ly.
This creates a new area for players to explore, and bypasses the boring exploits people have traditionally used like Road to Riches. You can't just run around scanning pre-existing garden worlds, you need to go out and make new maps, find new stuff! Players might cooperate to find lists of garden worlds to share.
When the objective has been found, it would start a new objective; refueling for the jump back. The megaship might buy Tritium for ~300k-500k each, for the jump, giving a side-objective for miners to participate too. And ideally, fdev would have custom-placed a few goodies throughout the area for players to find, as well. Maybe even some alien artifacts, hidden inside those tritium-filled rocks. During this time period, the megaship would continue to pay extra for any exploration data found, now within 500ly of the megaship.
At the end, objective complete, the megaship jumps back to the bubble, mission complete.
Thoughts?