How much should Exobiology be worth?

[Darth Ender]

It's a risk vs reward thing, and exploration is no risk - little reward. Very relaxing, but not something to do for quick money.

Upping the payout would do nothing to make it better, as Road to Riches exploration would get out of hand similar to what mining and certain other activities did. Upping the risk would also not work, as we would still have the issue of little reward.

A solution could be to add actual sampling, which could be the real profit maker. That sampling could be the biology sampling we can already do expanded to on-foot exobiology, as well as on-foot "mining" by core sampling different "geomes" on each visited body. A sample could take up a fraction of a cargo unit (1/10? 1/100?), but be able to eventually fill up a cargo hold. Values of each sample could be on par with some of the more valuable minerals we can mine, though, thereby really racking up profit when taking a load back to civilisation. The values could also depend on distance from known space, similar to the range adjuster for rare commodities.

S

the gameplay scaling with other activities is the issue there though. How do you provide reward using the same currency you get when in your ship to, for instance, "mine" when it's obvious the scope of mining in a ship is going to be many orders of magnitude larger than doing it by hand? Fdev would just create a new commodity that is only hand-minable ... but all that does is try to balance the credit reward. but that really can't be done, because players are going to see the holistic game and not be satisfied with the activity at ship scale giving an equal reward as doing something by hand ... and if the reward isn't then nobody is going to want to participate in the on-foot activity because that takes longer and tends to be more tedious.

Not only does there need to be actual gameplay involved (and thus added) to exo biology and exploration in general, but the rewards need to be entirely re-thought and not solely dependent on credits. Players should have a reason for doing all of the various activities and just getting credits is not a very good one. Nor is just "personal good feelings".

 

[alexzk]

Players should have a reason for doing all of the various activities and just getting credits is not a very good one. Nor is just "personal good feelings".

Refilling ship's food generator in Void far away from supplies.
Carriers could have bigger, but limited supply too (and used by the crew/passengers as well), like tritium they have.

 

[Sysmon]

the gameplay scaling with other activities is the issue there though. How do you provide reward using the same currency you get when in your ship to, for instance, "mine" when it's obvious the scope of mining in a ship is going to be many orders of magnitude larger than doing it by hand? Fdev would just create a new commodity that is only hand-minable ... but all that does is try to balance the credit reward. but that really can't be done, because players are going to see the wholistic game and not be satisfied with the activity at ship scale giving an equal reward as doing something by hand ... and if the reward isn't then nobody is going to want to participate in the on-foot activity because that takes longer and tends to be more tedious.

Not only does there need to be actual gameplay involved (and thus added) to exo biology and exploration in general, but the rewards need to be entirely re-thought and not solely dependent on credits. Players should have a reason for doing all of the various activities and just getting credits is not a very good one. Nor is just "personal good feelings".

"Personal good feelings", however, is exactly what gaming is about. What that comprises is different for everybody. The balance to be struck is between investment (in risk and/or effort) and in-game rewards.

S

 

[nemolomen]

In my, oh so, humble opinion...I enjoy the hunt for the salad, it pays well enough for me to keep doing it, I find the amount of time I spend on a planet looking for bacteria to be the only drawback, but I do love to fly my Scarab around...so it works for me as is...

 

[Darth Ender]

"Personal good feelings", however, is exactly what gaming is about. What that comprises is different for everybody.

S

personal good feelings though is a solution that involves doing absolutely nothing to anything and letting the chips fall where they may and not caring about any of the mechanics being good or making sense.

It's like discussing belief. It's not interesting because it's unprovable and incomparable.

there are points however, that can be made that mechanic A is bad for reasons B, C and D. and those are arguable. That's what matters, because if you're going to rely on "good feelings", then there is no discussion. People can find that in even the most idiotic and sadistic activities.

The balance to be struck is between investment (in risk and/or effort) and in-game rewards.

Yes, but it should be important to players that "effort" is not just sustaining consciousness while waiting out some time sink of nothingness or mindless repetition. Risk and effort need a component of skill ...not just persistence over time sinks. Skill is where you can shape mechanics across different scales and begin to balance a reward. But the rewards also need to be varied in a way that makes each activity uniquely important to the game. Since that too is part of the balance of different activities that can make a reward valuable without having to tie it to a currency.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Once you're good at this, lets assume it takes maybe 10 minutes to locate them for the first time, on average, and after that, another 3 minutes to locate scans 2 and 3.

I think you're significantly overestimating how long it takes to find them in the first place - five minutes per full sample set per plant type, slightly quicker if their areas overlap (which they often do), slightly quicker for things like tussocks and cactoida with short clonal ranges, is more what I'd guess.

(Checking a couple of yesterday's logs ... 50 minutes for an 8-organic rocky planet, 8 minutes for a 2-organic ice ball ... 5 minutes per plant seems about right to me from that)

You can also in practice double the payout because you will be getting first discovery bonuses with no extra effort while actually out exploring.

So that would be more like 500k/plant, call it 10 plants per hour, that's 5M/hour. Which isn't a great payout either, but isn't massively uncompetitive with exploration which isn't just focused terraformable mapping either (if you focus on planets with high-value plants, you can get over 5M/hour too, but that's trickier).

Agreed that they should pay out a bit more than they do but it's not too bad right now for what's essentially an excuse to go for a bit of a drive. Moving the cheaper plants up to pay out more like the expensive ones - it's not as if the price right now has much to do with their rarity or the difficulty of getting a sample - would probably be enough.

 

[DemiserofD]

If one is credit driven, doing exploration is not worthwhile, surely?

Honestly, it has the potential to be decent right now. Not on its own, but combined with the Li-Yong Rui bonus, I've been able to make upwards of 75m/hour when exploring efficiently. I guess I'm assuming that bonus also applies to Exobiology; if it doesn't, it absolutely should.

Those are both good points. I'd like to refer you to "I'm being lazy" in my original post.



Having given this some thought now (read: I thought about it for the 45 seconds I've been writing this and I'm still falling back on the 'too lazy' excuse), I'm not quite sure we're accurately accounting for time and I believe we're being overly optimistic about 'regular' exploration payouts.

While OP's experience has been "[finding], on average, about 1 terraformable planet per jump", I don't think my success rate there has been anywhere near that as I scanned systems all the way to Colonia, then Sag A*, then Beagle Point and back.

Also, we're not taking into account the number of bodies in a system. While there are some systems that have one or two stars and no planets/moons, there are also systems that have 30+ bodies. I'm sure this all averages out, but if there are 32 bodies in a system (one of the systems I was in heading to the Jameson crash site to farm some encoded mats), now we're looking at over an hour and a half to scan that system... and that's not taking into account some of those might be 100k+ ls from the main star. The vast majority of those will be rice, earning maybe 10k CR for FSS + DSS or a little more if it's a First Discovery.

Let's say we average 15 bodies per system, and let's say we use OP's times of 3 minutes per body, that's 45 minutes. Given 1 terraformable world per system (and I think that's VERY generous), we're looking at probably 3.5M CR per system which works out to less than 60k CR per minute. Now, if all we're doing is mapping that one terraformable world, then we're looking at 2M CR for the four minutes originally quoted. And, yes.. that is 500k per minute.

If we're only mapping the high-paying bodies, but then travel to the bodies that have biological signals - let's say we average one per system - we will add that 18 minutes to our total time and it's taking 23 minutes total and adding ~275k CR to the total equaling ~2.3M CR, or ~383k per minute.

If we're mapping the whole system, then our CR/min is around 59.5k.

Again, based on my own experience, I think the idea we find one terraformable world per system is overly optimistic. If we take that out of the equation, then the CR/min for mapping an 'average' system would be about 10k with a biological and about 5k without. In this case, we're doubling our payout by scanning exos.

I guess the bottom line is:

If you simply want credits per hour, or credits at all, for exploration, then look up ELWs in the bubble on INARA and just go system to system and DSS them. You'll get about 1.1M credits (source) for each one. Your hit rate is 100% per system, and your CR/hr is going to be better than if you're in the black.

Other than that, I think the exobiology payouts are in line with the rest of the exploration payouts when one considers a biological signal is along the same lines as a geological signal and not the same magnitude of a terraformable or earth-like world.

You'll probably notice as you explore that the vast majority of players only FSS 95%+ of bodies, and DSS exclusively the most valuable. Very few players bother to fully DSS an entire system, and the ones who do certainly don't care about credits. I myself fall in the middle of the spectrum; I don't outright ignore cheaper bodies if given the opportunity to scan them, but I also won't go out of my way. I WOULD like to see the full system DSS bonus improved, as it's currently utterly garbage, but that's another topic.

I want to clarify that my experience of one terraformable per jump is averaged over a 50+ hour exploration journey. There were many, many systems where I found no terraformables at all, but also a fair few where I found 3-6. Overall, it balanced out.

I would like to see biological signals as roughly akin to Metal-Rich worlds. Right now, a Terraformable is worth traveling to, and an earthlike definitely so, almost regardless of distance. By contrast, a metal-rich world is only worth about 300k-400k, making it an efficient investment of time only if it's less than about 15ls from the central star, or can be tagged along the way to a more valuable object. That, to me, would strike the correct balance for both explorers who will explore regardless of profit, and credit earners who are more interested in efficiency.

I would, however, like to point out that your math isn't quite right on your last calculation: If you're making 500k/minute exploring, and stop for 18 minutes to gain an additional 287k, then you'll have reduced your income per minute to (2000+287)/22=130k/minute. Remember, you need to take into account the opportunity cost of doing it. By doing exobiology, you sacrifice your ability to do exploration at the same time.

It's a risk vs reward thing, and exploration is no risk - little reward. Very relaxing, but not something to do for quick money.

Exobiology very much turns that on its head, actually. In fact, I'd say exobiology is easily one of the highest risk activities in the game. You are typically playing in a very light and stripped-down ship, and every single landing you make in such a ship is a chance of death. And if you do die, you risk losing HUNDREDS of hours of gameplay from a single mistake.

Compare this to combat, where you typically don't have more than an hour or two of bounties on you, simply because of ammo totals, and you're in a ship built exclusively for the purposes of survival!

Old exploration was very low risk, but also had no reason to go down to the surface where you were in danger. Exobiology requires you to fly close to the ground, so you can see exos loading in, and that can and does result in quick and messy death.

 

[alexzk]

and that can and does result in quick and messy death.

Not with carriers.
1. you can use special ship for low - flying. My dolphin can hit ground all the day.
2. you can go back for repairs.
3. you sell data on each docking to carrier.

 

[DemiserofD]

I think this consideration is a little too short-sighted, and it seems to me that there is a certain farming mentality behind it. You cannot simply look at exo-biology in isolation from all other activities. As an exobiologist, you will most likely be on a long exploration trip, which alone will earn you quite a lot of credits.

Similarly, I might make the mistake of considering the necessary tritium mining to fuel my FC to be terribly ineffective when I could simply buy large quantities up front and raise the necessary money through one of the currently popular meta-income sources. Except I don't think I'd enjoy such a strategy half as much. The bit of logistics required for my hand-to-mouth method, which involves scouting out tritium sources on a regular basis (which frequently leads to even more exploration, FFSing, scanning etc.), among other things, would be eliminated. And then I would be right in the middle of the grinding treadmill.

But apart from that, I actually see some signs of "balancing" in the payment within the different genera, depending on the rarity of the occurrences and possibly even the difficulty of the terrain to land there. This will be very difficult to prove conclusively, but the tendency seems to me to go in this direction. Then, of course, it depends on how you go about it. I, for example, prefer to fly low over the area below 50 metres with my ship. I don't think anyone with an SRV will be half as effective. However, this requires a suitable ship and a certain level of skill, especially in rough environments, which ultimately generates the income.

Well, grind to one player is gameplay to another. Ideally, all the systems would be relatively balanced with one another so that players can choose as per their preferences without feeling unduly biased against.

Tritium mining is honestly a great example. I think it should be buffed, because it could be. You could increase the outputs of tritium mining more than threefold, and it still wouldn't be more time-efficient than mining platinum and using that platinum to pay other players to load your carrier for you. Ideally, if you wanted to mine tritium, you could do so and feel like your time wasn't being wasted. Of course, this doesn't concern all players, but it does concern some of them, and at worst doesn't particularly hurt the players who don't care. So it's a win/win.

I absolutely don't want to encourage players to 'farm' exobiological data, and agree 100% with the statement above that most value should arise from first discoveries. But getting those first discoveries in the first place should also feel worthwhile!

I think you're significantly overestimating how long it takes to find them in the first place - five minutes per full sample set per plant type, slightly quicker if their areas overlap (which they often do), slightly quicker for things like tussocks and cactoida with short clonal ranges, is more what I'd guess.

(Checking a couple of yesterday's logs ... 50 minutes for an 8-organic rocky planet, 8 minutes for a 2-organic ice ball ... 5 minutes per plant seems about right to me from that)

You can also in practice double the payout because you will be getting first discovery bonuses with no extra effort while actually out exploring.

So that would be more like 500k/plant, call it 10 plants per hour, that's 5M/hour. Which isn't a great payout either, but isn't massively uncompetitive with exploration which isn't just focused terraformable mapping either (if you focus on planets with high-value plants, you can get over 5M/hour too, but that's trickier).

Agreed that they should pay out a bit more than they do but it's not too bad right now for what's essentially an excuse to go for a bit of a drive. Moving the cheaper plants up to pay out more like the expensive ones - it's not as if the price right now has much to do with their rarity or the difficulty of getting a sample - would probably be enough.

That's absolutely fair. I've only been doing it for a little while, and have already noticed a significant improvement in how long it takes me to find them. I plan to do it a fair bit more; once I consider myself a 'master', I'll average out my times and try to get a more accurate figure. But it's important not to forget that you'll sometimes have outliers that drag the average down.

 

[DemiserofD]

Not with carriers.
1. you can use special ship for low - flying. My dolphin can hit ground all the day.
2. you can go back for repairs.
3. you sell data on each docking to carrier.

True, but using a carrier has its own costs that counteract those benefits. If you're jumping your carrier a few times a day, you're already looking at undoing all those benefits and more besides.

And that's ignoring entirely the loss of 66% of your profits from losing the Li-Yong Rui bonus!

All in all, carriers are a convenient tool for exploration, but from any efficiency standpoint, I cannot really advise their use, at least not from a solo gameplay perspective.

 

[Sysmon]

Exobiology very much turns that on its head, actually. In fact, I'd say exobiology is easily one of the highest risk activities in the game. You are typically playing in a very light and stripped-down ship, and every single landing you make in such a ship is a chance of death. And if you do die, you risk losing HUNDREDS of hours of gameplay from a single mistake.

Compare this to combat, where you typically don't have more than an hour or two of bounties on you, simply because of ammo totals, and you're in a ship built exclusively for the purposes of survival!

Old exploration was very low risk, but also had no reason to go down to the surface where you were in danger. Exobiology requires you to fly close to the ground, so you can see exos loading in, and that can and does result in quick and messy death.

Well, no. Flying a stripped-down ship is a personal choice and a silly one at that. Also, having to go back for ammo is also a personal choice that can be circumvented simply by using lasers or carrying plenty of resupply mats. I've read about people doing dumb things such as stocking and keeping exploration data waiting for a CG or only drip-feeding the data at selected stations to spread rep around. Fair enough, but when they then complain they got shot down and lost everything, it's all on them.

Exploration has always been, and still is, extremely low risk. Consequence of failing is very high, though, as data paradoxically can't be recovered even if everything else including so-called rare and special modifications (engineering) can be 3D printed easy enough everywhere.

However, it is also not riskiness or danger as such that I ask for. It is engagement and things to do that will bring rewards. The sampling scheme I describe above will be one such spin on exploration. It can even be taken a step further, so that if ground sampling comes upon something, bigger rewards could be gained from constraining it better. Could be room for a little puzzle mini-game here.

S

 

[Darth Ender]

I want to clarify that my experience of one terraformable per jump is averaged over a 50+ hour exploration journey. There were many, many systems where I found no terraformables at all, but also a fair few where I found 3-6. Overall, it balanced out.

I would like to see biological signals as roughly akin to Metal-Rich worlds. Right now, a Terraformable is worth traveling to, and an earthlike definitely so, almost regardless of distance. By contrast, a metal-rich world is only worth about 300k-400k, making it an efficient investment of time only if it's less than about 15ls from the central star, or can be tagged along the way to a more valuable object. That, to me, would strike the correct balance for both explorers who will explore regardless of profit, and credit earners who are more interested in efficiency.

I would, however, like to point out that your math isn't quite right on your last calculation: If you're making 500k/minute exploring, and stop for 18 minutes to gain an additional 287k, then you'll have reduced your income per minute to (500+287)/19=41k/minute. Remember, you need to take into account the opportunity cost of doing it. By doing exobiology, you sacrifice your ability to do exploration at the same time.

and how much is your reward for all of the worthless systems and planets ? The payout balance for the role seems to be one suggested entirely around cost of time ...but the player accrues all kinds of time spent not finding anything...and a player has no way of knowing if they'll find anything unless they're visiting previously explored places and going off a list.

The mechanic is bad. The role is pointless. The reward you get is arbitrary and insufficent while at the same time, the risk is non-existent as is the skill.

how do you balance such a thing as-is? you can't obviously. Which is why it is like it is 7 years after release.

Exobiology very much turns that on its head, actually. In fact, I'd say exobiology is easily one of the highest risk activities in the game. You are typically playing in a very light and stripped-down ship, and every single landing you make in such a ship is a chance of death. And if you do die, you risk losing HUNDREDS of hours of gameplay from a single mistake.

Compare this to combat, where you typically don't have more than an hour or two of bounties on you, simply because of ammo totals, and you're in a ship built exclusively for the purposes of survival!

Old exploration was very low risk, but also had no reason to go down to the surface where you were in danger. Exobiology requires you to fly close to the ground, so you can see exos loading in, and that can and does result in quick and messy death.

why are you in a paper ship for exo biology? I dont get that. Any ship can land and take off (and have shields so bumping the ground hardly matters), and bigger ships can hold more srv's or slf's - though medium ships would be the most ideal for speed of thrust and capability for holding cargo / srv's etc. The mass doesn't have to be small for these. Are you suggesting that exo biology requires max-jump ships for some reason? It doesn't. No role does.

Then once you're on the planet, all you have to worry about is not straying too far from your ship or srv to the point of running out of suit energy. That's the only risk. And there's pretty much never a reason you would ever be far away from one of those two things.

The activity itself, gathering the sample has no gameplay...so definitely no risk.

and so all you end up with is wanting to be paid for timesink perseverance. It takes longer to goto the surface and walk around, so the reward should be higher. But that argument ignores the fact that you dont need to goto the surface and walk around ...and the whole time you're not really showing any kind of skill or partaking in any kind of risky activity all to do an activity the game could not care less about at a scale that is way less impactful than other activities. What justification in-game is there for these activities to pay equivalent credits when the outcome for some are vastly different from others. it ceases to make any sense when a player looks at all of these things and that's the problem. we get nonsense like trading hundreds of tons of personal weapons being worth X, but when you're on foot a single personal weapon costs an unrealistic amount. Finding an earth like world is worth X but scanning the dna of a blob on some random inhospitable moon is supposed to be comparable?

These activities need a reward that goes beyond credits in order to be balanced because they would never believably be worth the same amount of credits in-game. And certainly not worth the amount needed to justify the time cost for the different activities. They need the bgs and game to care about the activity ...and not just convert it to a credit trade.

 

[DemiserofD]

Well, no. Flying a stripped-down ship is a personal choice and a silly one at that. Also, having to go back for ammo is also a personal choice that can be circumvented simply by using lasers or carrying plenty of resupply mats. I've read about people doing dumb things such as stocking and keeping exploration data waiting for a CG or only drip-feeding the data at selected stations to spread rep around. Fair enough, but when they then complain they got shot down and lost everything, it's all on them.

Exploration has always been, and still is, extremely low risk. Consequence of failing is very high, though, as data paradoxically can't be recovered even if everything else including so-called rare and special modifications (engineering) can be 3D printed easy enough everywhere.

However, it is also not riskiness or danger as such that I ask for. It is engagement and things to do that will bring rewards. The sampling scheme I describe above will be one such spin on exploration. It can even be taken a step further, so that if ground sampling comes upon something, bigger rewards could be gained from constraining it better. Could be room for a little puzzle mini-game here.

S

Even a ship outfitted for durability can easily die from a single mistake, something that simply cannot happen in combat. And exploration is, by default, long-term, while combat is almost always going to be short term. The ability to build a ship that doesn't reload doesn't remove the fact that reloads are constantly available, while in exploration, they are not.

I'm sorry, but from any reasonable expectation, exploration is far more risky.

 

[alexzk]

loss of 66% of your profits from losing the Li-Yong Rui bonus!

Never bothered since day 1
Also my NPC pilot takes 10%. She earned own carrier already.
And UC takes 12.5% if you own carrier.

 

[Darth Ender]

Even a ship outfitted for durability can easily die from a single mistake, something that simply cannot happen in combat. And exploration is, by default, long-term, while combat is now. The ability to build a ship that doesn't reload doesn't remove the fact that reloads are constantly available, while in exploration, they are not.

I'm sorry, but from any reasonable expectation, exploration is far more risky.

i've been away from civilization for literally almost 2 years out in the black. Exploration's only risk is driving into a star because you are watching a second screen or fell asleep or left the computer and forgot you were still playing. If you die any other way then your bar for risk in the game is at such a low level that the word no longer has meaning because everything you can possibly do is risky.

There's no hazards out to get you. no enemies to defeat or circumvent. There's no problems you need to solve to survive. You get paid to press a button near a thing that almost all of the time is completely non-interactive and at most, heats you up a bit letting you know to back off. If exploration is risky, then we're not playing the same game. I'm playing elite dangerous. The game populated by 400 billion systems and the only ones with content that can be considered somewhat risky are all in 2 very tiny concentrated spots called the bubble and soly provided by npc pirates or npc thargoids or human ships.

 

[alexzk]

heats you up a bit letting you know to back off

Well ...lava fields in Ody are risky. Not so long ago landed to scan space pumpkins in lava hell. Drived over lava spot, stuck on srv, jumped out 5 seconds later. It was 20% left of SRV alive - hull, modules - all was heavy damaged. 4-5 more seconds there and it would explode killing me too.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It should be worth my time.

So, nothing then?

 

[Darth Ender]

Well ...lava fields in Ody are risky. Not so long ago landed to scan space pumpkins in lava hell. Drived over lava spot, stuck on srv, jumped out 5 seconds later. It was 20% left of SRV alive - hull, modules - all was heavy damaged. 4-5 more seconds there and it would explode killing me too.

and that may be a hazard worth expanding upon ...but did it make those space pumpkins more valuable ? was your reward greater in the game because of the hazard? No. and so it's like saying that trade is hazardous because dropping into a USS to get all that juicy gold in your unarmed paper ship is risky and so trade is risky. Going out of your way to be in risky situations that the game isn't asking you to be in (and certainly not recognizing that risk) is not really part of the role. SRV driving can lead to death if you drive off a cliff at full speed on a high G planet, but there is nothing in the game that would put you in a situation where you'd have to try that.


edit: and by expanding on that.. i mean there should be something in the game directing players to have to navigate such a lava filled hell planet to accomplish the task of scanning the space pumpkin. Allowing the game to recognize that achievement and reward appropriately. Even better if the reward isn't just converting the activity into credits.

Then you can start to say that exo-biology has risk. because then such things would be part of the role. And not just players choosing to do things that create risk for no real reason and no recognition of that choice.

 

[alexzk]

but there is nothing in the game that would put you in a situation where you'd have to try that.

Once I fall in deep crack ...so took me 30-40 mins to get to the point where ship landed and srv was far away. Could die too there.
Is it game put me there or my wrong step? hard to say.

 

[DemiserofD]

and how much is your reward for all of the worthless systems and planets ? The payout balance for the role seems to be one suggested entirely around cost of time ...but the player accrues all kinds of time spent not finding anything...and a player has no way of knowing if they'll find anything unless they're visiting previously explored places and going off a list.

The mechanic is bad. The role is pointless. The reward you get is arbitrary and insufficent while at the same time, the risk is non-existent as is the skill.

how do you balance such a thing as-is? you can't obviously. Which is why it is like it is 7 years after release.

In aggregate, over time. It's basically a gacha game, true, but they can be balanced, too.

why are you in a paper ship for exo biology? I dont get that. Any ship can land and take off (and have shields so bumping the ground hardly matters), and bigger ships can hold more srv's or slf's - though medium ships would be the most ideal for speed of thrust and capability for holding cargo / srv's etc. The mass doesn't have to be small for these. Are you suggesting that exo biology requires max-jump ships for some reason? It doesn't. No role does.

Then once you're on the planet, all you have to worry about is not straying too far from your ship or srv to the point of running out of suit energy. That's the only risk. And there's pretty much never a reason you would ever be far away from one of those two things.

The activity itself, gathering the sample has no gameplay...so definitely no risk.

and so all you end up with is wanting to be paid for timesink perseverance. It takes longer to goto the surface and walk around, so the reward should be higher. But that argument ignores the fact that you dont need to goto the surface and walk around ...and the whole time you're not really showing any kind of skill or partaking in any kind of risky activity all to do an activity the game could not care less about at a scale that is way less impactful than other activities. What justification in-game is there for these activities to pay equivalent credits when the outcome for some are vastly different from others. it ceases to make any sense when a player looks at all of these things and that's the problem. we get nonsense like trading hundreds of tons of personal weapons being worth X, but when you're on foot a single personal weapon costs an unrealistic amount. Finding an earth like world is worth X but scanning the dna of a blob on some random inhospitable moon is supposed to be comparable?

These activities need a reward that goes beyond credits in order to be balanced because they would never believably be worth the same amount of credits in-game. And certainly not worth the amount needed to justify the time cost for the different activities. They need the bgs and game to care about the activity ...and not just convert it to a credit trade.

Time efficiency. Any time wasted means credits not earned. If you take a heavily shielded and armored ship out into the black, you'll end up spending 3-4 hours getting there, where a lighter ship can get there in one.

Time efficiency is 100% the core of exploration. Yes, you see cool things, but at its core, it's about doing as much valuable stuff as possible, in the shortest possible amount of time. That IS exploration, from an income standpoint. And it has a lot of room for improvement; as much or more than other non-combat activities like mining, for example.

That's why I think that the existing bonuses for fully FSSing and DSSing a system need to be reworked. Ideally, they would encourage players to not only fly efficiently in supercruise, but also to be able to judge quickly whether or not a system is worth doing, and how best to do it. Do you fly to the gas giant and scan it first, including all its many moons, and then use the lighter gravity further from the star to quickly navigate the other closer planets? Or do you fly out progressively and ignore the gas giant entirely?

These mechanics still exist, even absent the full system bonuses, but they could be improved substantially.