Make Exploration more attractive

schmu666 · Jun 9, 2020

First of all: I love exploration as a gameplay mechanic.
However, I feel like from a progression point of view, there's no adequate reward for exploring the depths of the universe.

These days with the launch of fleet carriers I thought: "Nice, a real endgame goal for... miners?"
Not saying that people who spent days outside of the bubble don't have credits at all, but I can imagine there's a bunch of people who can't afford
a fleet carrier despite spending hundreds or thousands of hours exploring the galaxy.
Same goes for combat pilots, but all this is not new of course.

Just increasing the cartography reward is probably much needed, but maybe we could add ARX as a reward?
(no, I don't mean the 400 weekly cap)
Give us a incentive to go out of the bubble, besides the search for Raxxla or pretty screenshots of weird gas formations.
Maybe some randomly generated ruins or phenomena could award us a couple of ARX?
Don't want to exaggerate, but depending on implementation this could potentially start a little "goldrush".
I feel like red dead online does it in a way with their bounty hunter role. The payout is horrible compared to other roles, but you can earn premium currency.
Heck, maybe add exclusive costumization like paints or decals to the reward pool.

Just an idea and probably not the first time someone hinted at this.
Gotta try tho O7

LifesAJourney · Jun 9, 2020

I've always thought that payouts for newly discovered bodies should be higher and for already discovered bodies much lower (or even zeroed). That would kill two birds with one stone: encourage people to do actual exploration and kill jokes like Road to Riches.

Maggie_Oz · Jun 9, 2020

Discovery is its own reward

Moniboi · Jun 9, 2020

I can't imagine many explorers doing it for the credits. Honestly, as long as I make enough credits to be able to have rebuys, I'm fine. I can mine for an hour or two if I want credits, it's not a very long task. Exploration clearly isn't the thing somebody looking for credits would do and I don't think credits should be the incentive for explorers.

LifesAJourney · Jun 9, 2020

Of course. However, I consider it pretty weird if almost three years of exploring makes the same amount of Cr as three weeks of mining.

Dziondziak · Jun 9, 2020

I wish they would add new things to the codex. I was so pumped to be able to discover something first. This is all an explorer really wants.
Everything was found in like 24 hours.

LifesAJourney · Jun 9, 2020

Raxxla and Dark Wheel Station are still to be found.

schmu666 · Jun 9, 2020

Maggie_Oz said:
Discovery is its own reward

True. However, I think it would be fair, that a player who chooses to explore instead of mining can buy a fleet carrier at some point.
And this is still "just" a game. I feel like the balancing is a bit off, If some roles make 20 times more money than others.
The incentive might not be credits, but would it hurt to get more/new people into exploration with better rewards?

Rudi Raumkraut · Jun 9, 2020

exploration payout is perfect imo, mining is aswell, just LTDs need a nerf.

And everything else to make money needs a buff

marx · Jun 9, 2020

You do already get Arx for exploring, it's just a very small amount. You get plenty when you sell data, however.
Of course, the problem is that you very quickly max out your weekly Arx cap when you're selling stuff... but that should be less of a problem with carriers.

norlin · Jun 9, 2020

That's definitely should be improved. I'm desperately looking for a game with decent exploration mechanic which is coupled with real gameplay progression, but didn't found any besides Zelda: BotW.

ED have all the needed features to make this part of the game much more exciting, though I don't think getting more credits is a way - it's just boring.
Adding new types of encounters, much more bodies types, possible real artifacts (not a mythic raxxlam which will not be found until a new update which will actually add it to the galaxy) and so on.

Eeka · Jun 9, 2020

In order to increase the fun, we should explore in crews imo, like splitting the roles of exploration among 2-3 people and having them within the expedition would be much better.

Imagine someone as the official pilot, who only does piloting.
The co-pilot could keep the ship flying while the pilot is sleeping or decide to switch roles for a while
Some other roles are vital for exploring, that could be shared: FSS/DSS, route planning, surface exploration/recon (SRV-SLF) etc.

a few new features would be needed though:

the possibility to assign a second helm;
deploy a SRV with a second crew;
waypoint creation in the galmap;
crew setting up next destination;
profit sharing when selling cartographics;
cockpit/crew lounge accessible (space legs);

Exploration can be fun alone, but with a crew it would be a different experience. Imagine a new CMDR being coached in exploration as a co-pilot while visiting his first nebula/black hole.

norlin · Jun 9, 2020

Eeka said:
In order to increase the fun, we should explore in crews imo

That will definitelyy add some fun, but still it's an out-of-the-game fun just because of hanging out with someone. Not really a game feature, unfortunately...
Also can be done rn with just couple of ships instead of limiting to a single one.

Eeka · Jun 9, 2020

norlin said:
That will definitelyy add some fun, but still it's an out-of-the-game fun just because of hanging out with someone. Not really a game feature, unfortunately...
Also can be done rn with just couple of ships instead of limiting to a single one.

multiplayer isnt a game feature? well try playing pubg without this out-of-the-game fun

exploring with multiple ships is another way of exploring but try to keep 3 ships exploring together, with the same jump range, same real life schedule to advance and so on.. after some time or without a lot of effort it turns into solo exploration again

Crew is a feature of a ship, we all learned that from Star Trek right? Why not use this feature to keep exploration more interesting/fun?

norlin · Jun 9, 2020

Eeka said:
multiplayer isnt a game feature?

multiplayer is the feature. Hanging out with someone - no, unless it brings anything new to the gameplay. With ED's exploration, it isn't. With ED combat in a wing - sure, it is.

The overall topic is about adding something new to the exploration mechanics, that's it.
For sure, co-op exploration with appropriate new mechanics can make much more fun. But just hanging out - it's the same as hanging out without exploration, or even without ED, that's what I mean.

Moniboi · Jun 9, 2020

To clarify on my earlier comment, I'm not saying we don't need more incentive. What I'm saying is that I don't think credits are the way to go. I would value increased recognition for what I have discovered much more motivating than credits.

CMDR Yates · Jun 10, 2020

Payout for exploration really isn't bad. Especially compared to how it used to be, pre-3.3.

I find if you want to make money doing it (and that's not most explorer's main focus, but okay, everyone's gotta pay the bills) find a dense area of stars in mostly unexplored space, coreward from the bubble or Colonia, filter the galaxy map to only G & F class stars, set route plotting to "efficient", and plot a route circuiting one of the 100lyx100ly grid squares on the gal map.

If the area is dense enough, it'll work out about 30 jumps per side. About half of stars visited will have at least one terraformable or water world. Many will have more. Surface scan TFs, WWs, ELWs, AWs, and nearby metal rich. You'll earn an average of 300 million per circuit. Not including first discovery bonus.

I'd estimate the earning rate per hour this way is about a third or a quarter of what you'd get mining LTDs, but still way ahead of bounty hunting or most types of mission running.

But yeah, more phenomena, more to discover, more to do out there would be very VERY welcome. I'm just not convinced it needs a massive boost in earnings. There's real danger of an income arms race in this game of late.

I would perhaps like to see the surface scan values for life bearing gas giants boosted a bit, maybe. And perhaps ring hotspots should pay something -- it would make sense from a resource hunting perspective and encourage discovery of new gold-rush zones (double and triple hotspots could pay out like earth-likes).

duckofdeath · Jun 11, 2020

Earnings from exploration isn't bad at all, but it was definitely better before the FSS and probe based DSS mess. Sure, the numbers are a bit better now, but it didn't use to take half an afternoon to detect and scan a few planets in a system.

Back to the OP, I also think the Exploration career needs a lot of love in the Odyssey. The name itself surely must mean they've finally remembered there are people exploring things. I'm not going to have any expectations, as explorers are getting quite used to be ignored in this game. >.<

idahosurge · Jun 14, 2020

I have made 3.47B CR's exploring and all of this was from actual exploring, none of it was from running passengers out to some nebula or to Colonia.

To make exploring more attractive Frontier needs to add things to the game that you can find. For me exploration has just gotten to boring. All you do is jump into system after system and after you have jumped into over 15K systems they all get the same after awhile. There is nothing new to see. Even when they added biological to the game after the first two days every kind was already first discovered by someone in every sector. When you are out exploring there is just not anything unique out there to find.

If there is anything out there to find then you have to have more luck than winning a lotto jackpot to jump into the system where some undiscovered alien ruins or something else is.

When codex was released Frontier said it was going to include clues to find new things out in the black and guess what, Frontier never added the clues.

CMDR Yates · Jun 14, 2020

idahosurge said:
I have made 3.47B CR's exploring and all of this was from actual exploring, none of it was from running passengers out to some nebula or to Colonia.

To make exploring more attractive Frontier needs to add things to the game that you can find. For me exploration has just gotten to boring. All you do is jump into system after system and after you have jumped into over 15K systems they all get the same after awhile. There is nothing new to see. Even when they added biological to the game after the first two days every kind was already first discovered by someone in every sector. When you are out exploring there is just not anything unique out there to find.

If there is anything out there to find then you have to have more luck than winning a lotto jackpot to jump into the system where some undiscovered alien ruins or something else is.

When codex was released Frontier said it was going to include clues to find new things out in the black and guess what, Frontier never added the clues.

Agreed. The Notable Stellar Phenomena are cool, but they have limited interactivity, are so rare you could travel across the galaxy for the rest of your life and not find any of them (if it wasn't for the obviously hand-placed clusters near high-traffic locations), and when you do find them, there's a limited amount of stuff to do at them.

I would like for there to be many more different types of NSP, spread across much more of the galaxy, with more to do at them. So each type remains relatively rare, but there's more of them.

But more importantly, I'd like there to be more variety in general astronomical phenomena to see at the supercruise scale.

Accretion discs, protoplanetary clouds, stellar gas shells, systems with swarms of comets a la Tabby's Star, ice world water plumes, stormy rings, aurora on planets, flare stars, stellar mass ejections...

With enough different phenomena as procedural building blocks, it could go a long way to making every newly discovered system feel like somewhere different and unique.

Also, more things to find on planets, but hopefully that will come with Odyssey.