surface geological POIs - how to "use" them?

[Deleted member 115407]

Just visited my first one on the ground, and got a quite good mat yield.

And I'll say, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than driving around looking for metallic meteorites.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I've come to conclusion that deploying the SRV .. is not as clumsy, or as random as scanning from your ship.

If Obi Wan did composition scanning I think he'd find the surface vehicle more elegant, than hanging halfway upside down! lol

Perhaps, but I’m sure someone would find your lack of faith disturbing.

 

[Phil JMac]

scan them with the comp scanner - in discovery mode


I've found G5 mats at geological sites Im sure?

 

[JetsonRING]

Suppose you need some raw material, for instance, to engineer an FSD module. In my case, this was Arsenic. According to EDDB the worlds highest in Arsenic are only 2.9% Arsenic, the stuff isn't exactly laying around to be scooped up. You could go to one of these Arsenic "rich" worlds, drive around randomly for hours in your SRV hoping to stumble across an outcrop, a mesosiderite or metallic meteorite and hoping again that those structures grudgingly give up 3 or six units of Arsenic OR, what if you could go to a place where you could be relatively sure to find some Arsenic?

Go to geological sites. Each site will likely have fumaroles, or geysers, or some structure with deposits containing the raw materials that planet has available attached to them. Each type of deposit gives up different materials but the drop is consistent so you must determine, through testing (prospecting) which deposits give up the materials you are looking for. The planet I was prospecting, Umbila 1 C a, in addition to Arsenic and Carbon (Crystal Fragments) was also giving up Yttrium (Needle Crystals), Tungsten and Mercury (Crystal Clusters), plus Iron, Sulfur and Phosphorus (Pisceos Cobbles). Once you have determined which type of deposit gives up the raw material you are looking for you can save time by ignoring the rest. In my case I was short on Carbon, Tungsten, Phosphorus and Iron too so Umbila 1 C a was a candy store with 20 something geological sites. Once one of the sites was cleaned out I just moved on to the next and am now full up on Arsenic, Yttrium, Carbon, Selenium, Mercury, Tungsten, Iron, Phosphorus and Sulfur.

Not bad for a day's work. o7

PS: Whenver possible, land your ship right in the middle of the site. That way, your ship identifies several deposits for you before you even deploy the SRV.

 

[DarkPaladin]

You can see the value of coded data in your Transaction tab, and this data is sold separately from your regular Exploration data, to the station Authority contact, much like Intel data.

Ooops, I missed that part. I wondered why nothing was showing up. I just checked my transaction tab, just over 1 million credits there. How silly of me not to think that exploration data would be found in the transaction tab.

Thanks for that little tidbit!

Come to think of it, when I sold my last batch of cartography data I then went into the contacts list just to see what was new. I don't recall seeing anything exploration related, and I had all this transaction data at the time.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

Thank you all for the very useful replies.

I will make a comparison test.
Searching for stones to shoot usually results in about 4 metallic meteorites and quite a few mensosiderites. It's going to be interesting if the surface POIs will indeed result in more higher grade materials.
Looks like the surface sites I visited might have been not the best. Deep in a canyon and not very accessible - this might have have influenced the outcome. Not sure if I can jump into SC and back to the next POI faster than finding mesosiderites and metallic outcrops on the surface.

The aspect of knowing I will find something vs. not knowing is something I didn't take into account. This is a good point.
Same for collecting the mats in a POI while doing something else.

Thanks again for all the replies, highly appreciated.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

…
I will make a comparison test.
…

OK, the results of 30 minutes "driving around" and POIs:

driving around: ~ 10 Mesosiderites and various bronzite (?).
7 Germanium; 6 Zinc; 5 Selen; 6 Niobium; 2 Mercury, 1 Polonium (and a lot of low grade stuff)

POI: one site and a short time in a second one
6 Polonium; 5 Cadmium; 3 Niobium (and various lower grade stuff)

What really surprised me was the POI site. It happened to be one on a plane and there where mat signals everywhere. Driving around collecting the mats was quick and easy. Needle crystals always containing polonium (0.3% on that moon).
The second site was in a deep canyon with steep walls and only a few vents where accessible and/or showed up on the scanner.

Conclusion of this not very scientific test:
It looks like POIs are very good to get the very rare material on the planet/moon.
Driving around has the higher material yield and a high spread of materials gathered.
POIs in deep and steep canyons are not worth the effort (for me).

 

[JetsonRING]

Looks like the surface sites I visited might have been not the best. Deep in a canyon and not very accessible - this might have have influenced the outcome. Not sure if I can jump into SC and back to the next POI faster than finding mesosiderites and metallic outcrops on the surface.

Oh G-d, don't bother with the sites in canyons and on the sides of mountains, those make me seasick. Just put an "X" next to those (I make a list to keep track), fly on to the next site and stick to the sites on relatively flat ground. Also, you can absolutely fly between sites faster than driving around on the surface, I have done it. I fly straight up from a site, hit the SC switch, as soon as I enter SC I fly upside-down and almost level toward the next site, very carefully avoiding the red "drop" zone in the HUD and when I am right over the next site, hit the SC switch again, drop out of SC and fly down the 15 or 20 Km to the site on thrusters. Easy-Peasy. o7

PS: The numbers in parentheses next to the geological sites in the NAV panel are arbitrary, just there to help you keep track of them.

 

[DarkPaladin]

Ooops, I missed that part. I wondered why nothing was showing up. I just checked my transaction tab, just over 1 million credits there. How silly of me not to think that exploration data would be found in the transaction tab.

Thanks for that little tidbit!

Come to think of it, when I sold my last batch of cartography data I then went into the contacts list just to see what was new. I don't recall seeing anything exploration related, and I had all this transaction data at the time.

So now I dock at Sacaqawea Space Port on the way to Colonia (a detour I made on my way to SagA*) and still can't sell the codex entries because there's no 'contacts' tab here? I think turning in the codex entries would be better placed under the cartography tab.