I'm doing something wrong...
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
What scanner do you have?
Only the Advanced Discovery Scanner has unlimited range - you need to be within a particular distance of an object for the other two.
.... or maybe there's only one object in the system....
Only the Advanced Discovery Scanner has unlimited range - you need to be within a particular distance of an object for the other two.
.... or maybe there's only one object in the system....
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Me too slow again: Trades description act says 'unlimited' should mean just that; but the advanced scanned IS limited to the system you are in and nothing more.
There are systems with only one star and no other stellar objects. In this case simply target the star and scan it. You will need an Advanced Discovery Scanner to see all the bodies in a system and a Detailed Surface Scanner to get detailed level 3 scans for each body.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Indeed.
.... otherwise the first player to honk with one would have "won" the Exploration game....
The wording is a little misleading. Advanced Discovery Scanners don't actually "discover" bodies in the game in regard to tagging things, they just discover them so that they can then more easily be "discovered," if a player prefers to, or show that they've already been "discovered." [hehe]
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One feature that is not widely known or spoken about is your discovery scanner's "passive detection range". This is the range within which your scanner automatically detects all stars and planets, without even needing to fire the honk. For the Advanced Discovery Scanner, this range is about 30 Ls (cheaper scanners have a smaller passive scan range). If an object is within that range when you first arrive, it will automatically be detected. Since primary stars are almost always within that range of the arrival point, you basically get the detection of the primary star in the system "for free". You will occasionally get a companion star if it's a very close-orbiting binary, and will sometimes get super-close planets, too.
So the usual procedure for arriving in a star system is:
- throttle to zero before you arrive, so you don't ram into the star
- Arrive. The passive discovery scan begins automatically and immediately upon arrival.
- Fire the ADS honk. You'll see the blue line indicate the scan progress.
- The passive scan will complete; you'll see a message "1 new object detected" (the primary star), or the number might be higher than 1 if more objects are within passive scan range.
- The ADS honk will complete, giving you the foghorn sound and a second message "X new objects detected", where "X" is the number of objects. Note: asteroid belt clusters each count as "an object", even if you've set the filter to ignore them on your nav panel.
- Fire up the system map and check out what might have been discovered.
Most explorers point their ship towards the primary star while the scans and system-map-loading are happening, to get a DSS of the star (and a Tag on it, if it's never been Tagged before).
So the usual procedure for arriving in a star system is:
- throttle to zero before you arrive, so you don't ram into the star
- Arrive. The passive discovery scan begins automatically and immediately upon arrival.
- Fire the ADS honk. You'll see the blue line indicate the scan progress.
- The passive scan will complete; you'll see a message "1 new object detected" (the primary star), or the number might be higher than 1 if more objects are within passive scan range.
- The ADS honk will complete, giving you the foghorn sound and a second message "X new objects detected", where "X" is the number of objects. Note: asteroid belt clusters each count as "an object", even if you've set the filter to ignore them on your nav panel.
- Fire up the system map and check out what might have been discovered.
Most explorers point their ship towards the primary star while the scans and system-map-loading are happening, to get a DSS of the star (and a Tag on it, if it's never been Tagged before).
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+1 rep for all of this. Very standard procedure.
As to what's worth scanning, versus skipping, that's a whole separate conversation, and there will probably be very little agreement among the explorers. Some people like to scan everything (completionists), but that means spending an awful long time in supercruise. Some people prefer to cherry-pick and go after only the highest value planets (earth-likes, water worlds, and ammonia worlds, and possibly class-II gas giants). Some people prefer to scan all of the High Metal Content worlds, so that they can get the terraformable bonuses. You can learn to get a feel for where the habitable zones tend to be for each star class, but you can't know for sure whether the planet is terraformable until after you scan it, unfortunately.
Earth-likes and water worlds tend to be easy to find around class F,G,K stars, but the larger ones (O,B,A,F) tend to have wide habitable zones, so they can earn a lot of money from the HMC planets. M-class stars tend not to be big money makers, but they're numerous and everywhere, and quick to fly around for scooping and jumping. Personally I will filter out M-class stars if I want to make money (or make the route planner work better when near the core, due to star density), but I'll include them (or use them exclusively) when I want to travel quickly. Near the core I'll often filter down to just F,G stars, and widen the selection the further from the core I happen to be. I always recommend letting the filter include the "bottom four" selections too (such as non-sequence stars (black holes, neutron stars), carbon stars, etc), due to their rarity and/or level of interest.
But all of this comes down to a matter of preference, and what your goals are.