If you're ONLY concerned with making money, is it more lucrative only honking and jumping?

Branithar

Branithar
If there are 10 planets, it might take 5 minutes total time of Discovery Scanning...plus...there's the time spent flying within scanning range of each planet. On the payout list, it looks like if you only honk, you make 10% of what you would make if you use the Discovery Scanner.

That being said, if you only honk+scoop+ scan, would you end up making more money in the same amount of time, since you only spend a very small amount of time in each system?
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
Branithar said:
If there are 10 planets, it might take 5 minutes total time of Discovery Scanning...plus...there's the time spent flying within scanning range of each planet. On the payout list, it looks like if you only honk, you make 10% of what you would make if you use the Discovery Scanner.

That being said, if you only honk+scoop+ scan, would you end up making more money in the same amount of time, since you only spend a very small amount of time in each system?
Click to expand...


This will help:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/339546-2-3-exploration-payouts-visual-guide

or this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange..._significantly_increased_exploration_payouts/

or this:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...t-for-Holo-Icons-Planet-Types-and-Scan-Values
 
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Allitnil

Allitnil
Jonking (jumping & honking) might pay better than scanning absolutely everything as much of what exists pays out very little, eg gas giants & their moons. But selective scanning will pay out massively more than either.

As a rough guide, if you filter out the stars you visit to class A and F and then scan all ELWs, WWs, AWs that orbit the primary star and also planets with masses between 0.08 and 3.9 Earth masses which lie within the habitable zone of the primary star - so are likely to be terraformable candidates - then once you factor in the first discovery bonus you should be looking at something close to 10 million credits per hour. So, basically, anything that doesn't pay out at least 150,000 credits per minute or 2,500 credits per second is non-optimal if maximising credits is your only criteria. This does present a nice little paradox as it really isn't worth scanning the main star other than if you don't then you can't work out the habitable zone which is necessary for the optimisation...

Add other star types and other things to scan as required to avoid making it a hopeless grind ;)

ps: various tools exist to calculate the habitable zone, I use EDDiscovery.
 

Major Klutz

Major Klutz
The Discovery scanner IS the Honk
Surface Scanner is the scan you have to get in range for.

Level 1 Scan is a Discovery Scan AKA "Honk"
Level 2 Scan is a surface scan WITHOUT a DSS equipped.
Level 3 Scan is a surface scan WITH a DSS.

You just have to judge at each system you jump through. If there are terraformables, WW, ELW, AW, within easy range for a DSS scan, you can make more scanning a single terraformable than you could from honking 10 systems.
But if there are just HMCs and or Ice balls, you're probably better off jumping and honking.

I often waste time scanning the primary star no matter what and I use ED Discovery which tells me the habitable zone of the star.
If I see any HMCs within the habitable zone range, I know they are terraformable and I will go ahead and scan them.
If I see any WWs, ELWs or AWs, I'll scan them even if they are further out because they are worth much more than 10 minutes of Jonking
 
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Valije

Valije
I would say terraformable HMC are where the bulk of the credits is. They pay around 2/3 of a ELW or terraformable WW, but they are way more abundant. I use EDDiscovery to to calculate the goldilocks zone (it is pretty accurate with single star systems) and a bit of guessing and experience when there is more than one star.

And, for some reason, I always scan the main star.
 

Satsuma

Satsuma
My suspicion is that fast jonking (honking and jumping) will pay more per hour than anything other than very selectively scanning of nearby high value planets. If I'm traveling (jonking), I average between 500k and 2 million per page of data (50 jumps), which is about 45 minutes work. Call it 1.5 million per hour, on the average. On the other hand, a terraformable water world pays 600k+. Non-terraformable water worlds are a tad over 200k, so let's say a high value target averages 400k - we're talking just water worlds, ELWs, and ammonia worlds here, since we're just looking at maximizing our income.

For grins and ease of math, let's say that a nearby high value target averages 3 minutes in travel and scan time. No screenshots. Nothing else. Just that scan. 3 minutes becomes our quanta of time. A high value target is worth 400k for 3 minutes. Jonking, at 1.5 million per hour, earns 75k for that same 3 minutes. It's easy to see, then, that hitting those nearby high-value targets earns us more per hour. I suspect a lot of explorers fall in this group: lots of jonking, with scanning of nearby high value targets.

In fact, sticking with just those high value targets for a minute, with jonking earning us 25k per minute, we can see we could spend 16 minutes traveling to a high value target before breaking even (400k / 25k per minute = 16 minutes). I suspect that any of the explorers who spend 16 minutes supercruising out to scan something aren't doing it for the money.

Now, supercruising all over a system scanning everything will net you lots of 2-3k finds at the expense of a lot of time in supercruise. Clearly that's down on the far side of the money making peak. But again, I don't think the explorers who do this are doing it for the money.

So, no. Jonking isn't more lucrative.
 

iain666

iain666
I always have showing EDSM data turned off - I start the scan on the main star, open the sysmap and if there are likely candidates wait for the scan to complete and confirm the zone in the overlay and select the first target in the sysmap.
 
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