$ per hour

Alex Brentnall · May 9, 2015

I hope to give a rough answer to this next week (busy this weekend).
I'm 68 game hours in. Have been travelling, honking and scanning Worlds/earth likes/Neutron stars/Black holes and occasionally gas giants.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=142301

Mostly my trip has been a nebula sightseeing tour, but I do want to get to Elite so I will be aiming for high profits on my next trip. If this trip nets me anything near 1mil/hr I will be very very happy. I expect as has been said it will be about half that.

Cmdr PeryplusErithrea · May 9, 2015

I have no idea whatsoever as to my Credits per hour, nor do i care
The credits are nice don't get me wrong and i really want to get that larger ship(although i have no idea what i want just yet) but each time i feel that i should be heading back to cash in and upgrade.
another system comes along, then another.....and another
I lose track of time and all that other stuff falls into the background

Galten75 · May 9, 2015

Exploration is probably the most low paid job out there. However we are out there doing what we like for a long time with almost no expenses and get back to a paycheck that might look big but credits per hour isn't that great, depending a little on your playstyle of course. You can make a good profit doing the Gas-break-honk, gas-break-honk routine and farm the neutron fields. And that is ok.

Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of thousand and thousands of starships. Our mission: To find new life and new civilizations, to - in relative safety - go where no one has gone before, to get the sights and take pics to prove it, to put our name on undiscovered systems and get paid for it in the end.

// G

Slippery Jim DiGriz · May 9, 2015

crua9 said:
how dangerous is exploring?

Wrong question, although exploration is intrinsically not very dangerous the potential losses are by far the highest of any profession in Elite, a trader can lose a ship and a single cargo load, a fighter could lose a ship and maybe an hour or two of bounties, an explorer can lose a ship and maybe several weeks worth of work with a single mistake.

To answer the original question exploration is probably the easiest way to make money with a small relatively cheap ship, if you don't spend too much time looking at the sights, don't stop to scan all the low value stuff like ice planets and go far enough to find lots of virgin systems and maybe the odd neutron star field you can make 500k/hour but you will miss some interesting things going that fast, slow down a bit and it's a lot more interesting and will still net around 300-400k/hr, if you are the obsessive type and have to scan everything in every system that'll drop to around 250/hr but that is joy of exploration, there is no "right" or "wrong" way to do it, whatever works for you is good.

Wizz · May 9, 2015

Lance 'Spacecat' D. said:
Agreed, exploration outside known space is very 'Zen'.

Yes it was. Until yesterday my canopy cracked while I was 26.000LY away from any repair facility due to flying just a few k's away from a blackhole.
Now I'm flying zenlike anymore

Stoo · May 9, 2015

You don't need money when you're out exploring, so to me it's not really about the cash...

dognosh · May 9, 2015

Wizz said:
Yes it was. Until yesterday my canopy cracked while I was 26.000LY away from any repair facility due to flying just a few k's away from a blackhole.
Now I'm flying zenlike anymore

you do know that your canopy is destroyed on the 4th crack ? So if you got your 1st canopy crack, you can ignore it

dognosh · May 9, 2015

crua9 said:
I was wondering. How much does the average explorer make per hour

At this time I'm making anywhere between 100-500k on average in combat, 100k-200k in trading, and about 10k or so in mining per hour.

NOTE: I had another question, and I don't know if I posted it in the wrong place since no one is answering it. For those of you that explores. Please take a look at my ship question.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=143702&p=2208891&highlight=#post2208891

As everyone has said, we don't do it for credits, but :
1. you need around 160M Exploration credits for ELITE (the 160 varies for different players as it is a scaled value, because the exploration rewards have changed at least twice recently)
2. If you need Explo Cr then go to the neutron fields, you can make around 3 Million an hour as you can scan a neutron star and get to the next one in about 60-70 seconds(each is worth 55K with the 50% bonus)
3. look in holo-icons thread for explo values and neutron guide thread for location of neutron fields, both in my sig

Slippery Jim DiGriz · May 9, 2015

Wizz said:
Yes it was. Until yesterday my canopy cracked while I was 26.000LY away from any repair facility due to flying just a few k's away from a blackhole.
Now I'm flying zenlike anymore

Black holes are like puppies, fun to play with but they can bite.

CMDR DoubleSkulls · May 9, 2015

Varrag said:
I know some explorers are in it exclusively for money (like neutron field farmers)

Given the travel time to a neutron field (~15 klys) isn't this still far less profitable than trading/bounty hunting? I had assumed the neutron field farmers were largely in it for the explorer ranking, as I believe that is based on the amount of cash you get from exploring (so they can get to elite faster).

dognosh · May 9, 2015

CMDR DoubleSkulls said:
Given the travel time to a neutron field (~15 klys) isn't this still far less profitable than trading/bounty hunting? I had assumed the neutron field farmers were largely in it for the explorer ranking, as I believe that is based on the amount of cash you get from exploring (so they can get to elite faster).

Exactly, hence why I said it is worth it for making "Exploration" credits for the rankings

Wizz · May 9, 2015

dognosh said:
you do know that your canopy is destroyed on the 4th crack ? So if you got your 1st canopy crack, you can ignore it

Well, that sounds a bit like a relief but still it flies a bit more comfortable without those nasty cracks in front of my face.
The crack means I can afford 1 less mistake

puca · May 9, 2015

I think one thing about exploring is that I believe it is the easiest profession to hit elite in. You can do this in a few days farming neutron stars and black holes. You know, if you care about hitting elite the fastest.

neXib · May 9, 2015

200k per hour trading isn't that good, so might as well explore then if you get the jump range for it. (there are nearby black hole clusters that pay decently)

As for the whole $ per hour thing. I feel this justifies the answers us fans of Rotaries give when we are confronted about how gas guzzling the engines in our cars are. For us it's smiles per gallon, not miles per gallon. And that's how I feel about exploration too, I try to optimize between seeing awesome stuff and earning money, but if it wasn't for seeing awesome stuff I wouldn't be out there.

Ziljan · May 9, 2015

I commend all of you virtuos players who don't seem to care about money, but wouldn't it be nice the game rewarded players for actually seeing the Galaxy? The current reward structure doesn't even make logical sense. If the UC Galaxy maps already give info on the star type for every unexplored system in the galaxy by default, why is star hopping the best way to make cash? Wouldn't the actually "unknown" planetary/mining data be the most valuable? Shouldn't getting close enough to a planet give you better angular resolution and increase the value of the image?

It's not not just about credits/hr. It's about logic, consistency, and better gameplay that aligns with and rewards (or at least doesn't penalize) explorers for playing the way they already want to play.

Galten75 · May 9, 2015

I really hope that we are getting a larger update covering exploring in the future now that the Civ-space guys have their Power Play coming. I think most of us would like a higher pay grade but I get the feeling even more would trade that raise for more content. At least I get that feeling when reading several threads with hundreds of suggestions, most are not about the money but content.

// G

TruffleSnout · May 9, 2015

Ziggy Starduster said:
I make about 2 to 3 pictures an hour. But to be fair, many of them are deleted because they didn't turn out the way I wanted, so effectively about 1 per hour.

The only true way to measure success in Exploration: the number of screenshots in your folder when you get back.

Finbar · May 9, 2015

Ziggy Starduster said:
I make about 2 to 3 pictures an hour. But to be fair, many of them are deleted because they didn't turn out the way I wanted, so effectively about 1 per hour.

On the other hand, a big plus is that nobody can take them off you when you come back; which is also true of all the other pleasures you get from exploring...

iain666 · May 10, 2015

Ziljan said:
wouldn't it be nice the game rewarded players for actually seeing the Galaxy?

We see the galaxy. Is that not enough reward already?

EddyRockSteady · May 10, 2015

Ziljan said:
I commend all of you virtuos players who don't seem to care about money, but wouldn't it be nice the game rewarded players for actually seeing the Galaxy? The current reward structure doesn't even make logical sense. If the UC Galaxy maps already give info on the star type for every unexplored system in the galaxy by default, why is star hopping the best way to make cash? Wouldn't the actually "unknown" planetary/mining data be the most valuable? Shouldn't getting close enough to a planet give you better angular resolution and increase the value of the image?

It's not not just about credits/hr. It's about logic, consistency, and better gameplay that aligns with and rewards (or at least doesn't penalize) explorers for playing the way they already want to play.

I get to see this:

And the kicker?

I am the very first CMDR too see that and surf those rings, likely to stay that way for years and years. Nobody else's exhaust trails will sully that vacuum.

No amount of credits gained can top that feeling.