Yep, with you on this.As many of us already know, the exploration activity is mainly rewarded with ARX when you sell the exploration data for profit.
The ARX earned during the real exploration gameplay (FSS scan, Surface Scan, Scanning Geological and Biological Elements) are instead really poor.
This system suggests that the best way for an explorer to earn ARX is by exploring system nearby the bubble and come back to a station to sell exploration data as much as possible to ensure you don't exceed the weekly cap.
PROBLEM:
This system rewards only casual explorers while they are doing also other activities and not "full-time" explorers.
All explorers that want to stay away from the bubble for very long time (weeks/months) are not well rewarded with ARX:
SOLUTION:
- the ARX earned for scanning new systems and planets is around 8-10 ARX/hour. It means that a player needs to play the game for at least 40 hours/week to reach the weekly cap of 400 ARX
- when the explorer finally returns from his expedition he could have enough data to earn thousands of ARX (especially if he was off for months, like during DW2). But the weekly cap will limit this to 400 ARX so months of gameplay are wasted in this respect. The only way around would be to sell data little by little over the weeks, but this means that the explorer can't leave the bubble for weeks just because of this.
Revert this process such that selling exploration data rewards only few ARX and improve the ones earned by fully scanning systems with the FSS, by surface scanning planets and by finding geologica/biological elements on planets surface.
This system would reward both casual and "full-time" explorers.
I'm not going to switch up my play style for max arx but it is a touch irksome that the 'just play to get arx' thing doesn't really work here & I'll be effectively missing out a little. Sure free is free and that is great but still...
Perhaps some sort of deferred arx thing so you can exceed the weekly cap for arx effectively earnt at another time?? But then just reward at the time... Anyway, no doubt they'll be much fiddling with this.