Huh? Well I disagree mightily.
What the heck is the difference if I jump, honk, and scan, all by myself or I do it with people in a module?
Same honk, same scan, same data - zero difference.
If you want to say the passenger mission itself shouldn't count then that's fine but Exploration data is Exploration data is it not?
if you do the exploring and happen to have passengers - you are still exploring you just have an audience - and witnesses for any court battle over who got first discovery of course. but the point here is, you go out and discover systems, or at least honk and scan and provide more current/more detailed scans, and get paid, thats STILL real exploration. the passengers are irrelevant. if you however taxi passenger from Earth to the moon or from sol to sirus b - and dont even bother scanning because you did that ages ago - why the hell should it raise exploration rank? what have you contributed by that run to exploring? a current scan that might reveal a star has gone unstable, or that a collision occurred and now two asteroids in belt A are gone? nothing. scans should count. now if there was a hopsitality or taxi ranking by all means raise those kinds of ranks. a transport baron or something. cruise company.
now thats an idea; have a business tycoon rank. you can start a mining business or passenger business as normal now, but when you have enough money you can purchase a spot in a big station or on a planet in a city, as HQ and then you can hire ships and crews in the same way you can hire pilots for your fighter, and run a transport business. you dont buy and transport and sell the cargo (so its no longer trading - others do that, and you have transport missions on passenger lounge and transport hub) anf you asign ship types you own/rent and their crew depending on the mission and any potential danger. so you can send a new pilot out into the deep space with a tourist mission thats unlikely to run into pirates but for that gold bullion transport you need a federal corvette all kitted out, with fighters and maybe another corvette for escort, and with 2 good well seasoned combat vet crews. THEN you have some rank that takes account of speedy and safe delivery, and passenger satisfaction. something like you can do with the fleet in assassins creed black flag. and us explorers will be exploring to get elite not running a bus route between safe systems to do the same thing with no real effort or risk.
because exploring - THE REAL thing - is dangerous no matter what you think. when you are 6000 ly from the nearest repair depot, you HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION. example 1: i once had a senior moment and i hit emergency drop and damaged everything. i had set out without an AFMU. i had to turn back, luckily only 1100 ly from a station. i got lucky.
example 2,3,4 - thats the number of times when well over 5000ly from any inhabited place, i had a close escape on jump in to a multiple star close binary. one time i was already on my way to one of the colonia stops because i had found a black hole and 3 neutron stars orbitting it and i wanted that first discovery tag. so i got someplace to repair that time after making running repairs with my AFMU. the other times i was luckier, avoiding dropping in between the stars and took no heat damage - but i was VERY fortunate on one because there was a THIRD star as i dropped in on the way. that encounter was so close my Fuel scoop actually BLIPPED on and off as i passed it. i thought it was over to be honest. but i zoomed past it to the close binary and stuck on the outside of the primary thank god. a double escape. people who say exploring has no risk have never been exploring, not really, not out where there is no help at all if you mess up or you just DONT miss that 3rd star on the way in system.
