If we're on the subject of Exploration income, I have some thoughts on the matter.
To start with, some numbers based on my exploration adventures. I've explored for a good while, earning over 2.5 billion credits in exploration data thus far, and based on this, this is the current status quo:
Average Exploration Income: 25m/hour.
Average profit per system: ~1.5m.
Average bonus for FSSing an entire system: About 10k, or about 0.66%
Average bonus for DSSing an entire system: About 100k, but it also takes about half an hour, so it actually reduces your income per hour.
Functionally speaking, the FSS and DSS full-system bonuses are defunct. They're never worth even thinking about. Even if you just always scan everything, the total bonus to your income is going to be unnoticeable.
Something else to consider are Codex entries; as it currently stands, the 50k reward for a new Codex scan is dramatically out of proportion for the rarity of the codex entries you might discover. Functionally speaking, it's not even worth visiting unusual phenomena from a monetary perspective, which I think is wrong.
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Step One: Full System Scan
The problem is pretty simple, it's just never worth it to fully scan a system if the bodies aren't inherently valuable. If all you have left are icy worlds, even if you had ten other planets already scanned, you still are actively hurting yourself to search for that last icy body. My ideal scenario is a system where FSSing an entire system is sometimes, but not always, worth the effort. This allows the player to optimize and gives an opportunity to think and problem solve.
I believe the optimal value for this is around or above 10k credits. Right now, if you have 9 High-Metal planets and 1 icy planet, the icy planet functionally gains a value of 1300+(10 x 1000) or 11300 credits. This is only 33% the value of the High-Metal Planets, each of which are worth 38k to scan. At 10k credits, the icy world would be worth 100k, a clear bonus, but you're far more likely to have lots of icy bodies, not lots of metal-rich bodies; f there were two icy worlds, each one would be worth half that, or 50k, still relatively valuable. Figuring out whether or not a system was worth fully scanning would be a moderately interesting challenge that players could improve upon.
Probably the most common thing I'll see is ~3 planets worth scanning and 6+ icy bodies. For that to be worth fully scanning, the bonus would need to be 20k.
So somewhere between 10k and 20k would be ideal, 20k might be too high and would encourage fully scanning TOO much.
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Step Two: Full System Mapping
The problem becomes more complicated with full system DSSing, because travel times are highly variable. Still, you want the same general approach; for Fully DSSing to be sometimes, but not always, worth it.
DSS-worthy planets are more rare, so this bonus would need to be significantly larger. For example, finding a system with 9 terraformable planets and 1 icy body would be a one in a million chance, but getting 9 FSS-worthy planets is uncommon but not unheard-of. Therefore, the payouts must be appropriately higher even before considering the travel times.
Take a very basic case. Two terraformable metal worlds, and a single unterraformable. Right now, the total value of this system would be 2m+2m+150k. Current-form Full System DSSing adds 30k to this total, an absurdly small amount, never worth bothering with even in an ideal case like this.
Now, this could be fixed with simple numerical tweaking. It would require a bonus of around a million credits per body, which would be absurd, but it would technically be possible.
But I would like to propose an alternative solution. Remove the credit bonus entirely, and replace it with an extension of the efficiency bonus.
This bonus would be based on the TOTAL number of probes beneath the efficiency rating, on ALL planets in the system, that the player manages to achieve.
For example, say that each probe beneath the efficiency goal gives the entire system a 5% bonus. This means that if you can scan each world in the above example with 5 probes instead of 6, you're looking at a 15% total bonus to the system, or about an extra 600k. But as the system gets bigger and contains more gas giants, this multiplier could go up significantly.
I am, with a fully-engineered scanner, able to scan a 20 probe gas giant with as few as 12 probes. That means that a single gas giant could give the entire system a 40% bonus. This still wouldn't be effective with just a single terraformable world(this is good, it shouldn't ALWAYS be worth doing, after all) but with the correct conditions you could get significant income bonuses, based on the player's skill with the probes! This, to me, is a perfect solution to three problems; the uselessness of scanning an entire system, the lack of general income for exploration, and the pointlessness of scanning gas giants.
This would also slightly tweak exploration income upwards, which would be good. I'd expect to see perhaps a 25% increase with these two changes.
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Step Three: Ultra-Rare Discoveries
The last thing to change is the value of extremely rare discoveries. Ringed Earthlikes, Earthlikes around Neutron Stars, Ringed Earthlikes around Neutron Stars, Biological Signals, Unusual Spacial Phenomena, etc. All of them are extremely rare and offer no significant reward for their discovery.
When a player finds something extremely rare like this, they should feel rewarded, not just in terms of the joy of discovery, but also in terms of credits. When they get back to the bubble and see that huge payout chit, it brings back every bit of discovery they felt out in the black, and makes them want to get back out there and do it again.
Basically, these values just need to be dramatically increased, preferably via multiplier. For example, rings on an earthlike should multiply the value by 5. Being around a Neutron Star should multiply the value by 10. Being near a black hole should multiply the value by 20. Codex discoveries should be stackable(for multiple discovery locations, of course; no scanning a bunch of stuff in the same place), and should pay out substantially more. Biological Signals, for example, take a fairly significant time investment to get down and scan, definitely far more than FSSing or even DSSing. The player should feel rewarded for that. Based on my earlier calculations and general travel times, I'd say a fair payout for scanning something biological on a planet should be around 1.5m.
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Do all of this, and exploration would at least be in the right ballpark for income. It still won't pay as much as mining, but players doing it will feel rewarded for their hard work, and I can't think of any reason why they shouldn't be rewarded.
That's why it is magical and best to have. I think grade 3 is 10 and 8 too.
