Newcomer / Intro Question about Universal Cartographics

[TroublingLeopard]

Recently I bought Elite Dangerous and the Horizons season pass from the Steam summer sale and I've been having an absolute blast with it.

81 hours in and I'm up to 62 million credits in the bank, a Mk3 Cobra, Type 6, A rated and slightly engineered Vulture, and a recently kitted out DBX for some light exploration.

Anyway, I wanted to try out the exploration aspect of the game by visiting some nearby nebula (around 1000 LY) and I wanted to know if the value of exploration data you carry
increases over distance and if it does, by how much, or does it stop at 20 LY?

Common sense says it will gain value over distance, but I wanted to be sure.

 

[Jon flint]

Nope, it's a flat rate, it won't matter of you sell it 20ly or 20'000ly from where you scanned it, you'll still get the same payout.

 

[Maymo]

Recently I bought Elite Dangerous and the Horizons season pass from the Steam summer sale and I've been having an absolute blast with it.

81 hours in and I'm up to 62 million credits in the bank, a Mk3 Cobra, Type 6, A rated and slightly engineered Vulture, and a recently kitted out DBX for some light exploration.

Anyway, I wanted to try out the exploration aspect of the game by visiting some nearby nebula (around 1000 LY) and I wanted to know if the value of exploration data you carry
increases over distance and if it does, by how much, or does it stop at 20 LY?

Common sense says it will gain value over distance, but I wanted to be sure.

It's actually a really good idea, maybe more people would explore deep space if there was more credits in it.

The data won't increase in value but the chance of being the first to discover a new system does increase the further away from the bubble you travel. Once you get about 200-300ly away from inhabited space you'll start running across systems that haven't been surface scanned by other CMDR's, these are all worth 50% more credits.

 

[SpiralValve]

It's actually a really good idea, maybe more people would explore deep space if there was more credits in it.

The data won't increase in value but the chance of being the first to discover a new system does increase the further away from the bubble you travel. Once you get about 200-300ly away from inhabited space you'll start running across systems that haven't been surface scanned by other CMDR's, these are all worth 50% more credits.

Thanks for that info, I just started playing on PS4 and I made all my money exploring so far. Went to coalsack and back to a base and made 1.5m with my sidewinder, now I got a cobra and just landed at some conflict zone called quince. Thinking I may do some of these missions but not sure if I will wanna rebut my new cobra already lol

 

[Sapyx]

If you head for a "popular" tourist destination like one of the bright, famous nebulae, it's almost certain you won't find any undiscovered systems on the way there and back again - plenty of other CMDRs will have been there before you. If you want to discover truly Unexplored, undiscovered planets, go off the beaten tracks and aim for nothing at all. Pick a star at random that's 1000 LYs away and NOT in the direction of a major tourist site, and you'll almost certainly find Untagged planets and systems before you reach 1000 LYs.

 

[Gully Foyle]

Adding to Sapyx's good advice:

Ploy your trip to no wheres with economic jumps, lots of systems get skipped when travelling in "efficient"

 

[aRJay]

When you start your return journey you can reset your map filters so that route plotting will not take you to a star you have visited before unless you select it by name or bookmark, this will help increase your exploration points.

A riskier suggestion if you want to find unvisited systems is to filter out scoopable stars as most people to avoid the risk of running out of fuel set the filters to only look for them.