How does the game decide how much your data is worth?
I wonder because I keep hearing people talking about the millions and millions they get from doing a month of exploration... yet I'm getting 50k, 60k for the same period. Dozens of star systems, hundreds of planets and stars, and I'm only making a fraction of what others are reporting.
Am I doing something wrong?
I have the advanced DScanner, and I have the planetary surface scanner, so I don't know what else there is...
I know this might be a dumb question but are you actually triggering the advanced discovery scanner? A basic discovery scanner and the advanced scanner will both automatically do a passive scan of the closest object(s) when you drop into a system (i.e. the main star and any very close planets or binary companions to the main star) and give you a message telling you the presence of a new object has been identified but it will still be shown as 'unexplored' in both the contacts list and if you select it on the system map.
Tto use the advanced discovery scanner 'properly' you need to bind it to a key or button and hold that key (it doesn't matter whether you have anything selected or not, the ADS scans the whole system and will find everything - you will see a blue bar move in your HUD beneath the ADS when you hold the button and hear the famous 'honk ' sound when the scan has completed - you will now be able to see
all objects in the system in the contacts list and on the map, not just the ones that were close enough to be picked up by the automatic 'passive' scan.
Finally, to use the detailed surface scanner, you need to select an object and fly towards it. When you're in range for the DSS to work, you will see the bottom left hand display in your cockpit change to show 'scanning'. When the detailed scan has finished you will get a message in blue at the top right of your HUD and you will see that the selected object's name has changed from 'unexplored' to whatever its actual designation is. The easiest way to test your DSS is when you jump into a system at first come to a dead stop, point yourself at the centre of the star and target it - your DSS should start to scan it.
As for how much things are worth there are a few tables online with the values of various types of star, planets etc. I need to get some work done right now lol, but if nobody else has done it, I'll link them when I get home in a couple of hours.
Hope the above doesn't come across as patronising or that I'm teaching you to suck eggs - it's just that it sounded from your post that you might just be doing the automatic passve scan in each system but not fully using the advanced scanner or the detailed scanner.
One thing I will say is that unless you're a completionist who just has to scan every body in a system when you discover it, you might find yourself getting a bit selective about what you do and don't perform detailed scans on. Depends whether you're doing it primarily for money or just the joy of discovery. The great thing with exploration is that there's no right or wrong way to do it, just have fun with it.
If you are chasing the credits, black holes and neutron stars are the best paying as I recall. Easiest way to find some is to head about 10k light years in towards the core (although you can find them much closer than that, I hit a field of them about 6k light years inward last time I headed towards the core) and then head about 1k light years straight up. Be very careful jumping into systems with a neutron star as the primary star though and ALWAYS set your throttle to zero before you come out of hyperspace unless you like cooking your ship.
