The 'Exobiologist' career path

[DarthLuca]

Has anybody made any progress on this 'career' path? When I first saw this was going to be a 'thing' in the Alpha I was very excited, It sounds like the kind of thing I would want to do (and I enjoyed the whole finding, scanning etc. thing in the Alpha). But so far in live Odyssey I have visited at least 8 'likely' worlds with an a tenuous 'atmosphere' and mostly blue 'heatmaps' from the DSS scan.
So far I have found 0 (zero) 'organics' and made 0 (zero) credits!!
I have skimmed more surface area in the 'blue' areas looking for these elusive 'organics' than I care to think about. Apparently the DSS scan is no longer a 'heatmap' but just shows where life 'COULD' exist. As I said in another post it seems that Frontier have taken the whole needle in a haystack concept and turned it into an actual game!
Where is the CODEX on the 'Exobiology' career?
If anyone has had any success with exobiology, perhaps they can share their secrets.
Compared to say 'mining' where I can make about 10m credits in about 2 hours (I know it's not all about credits, but I would like to get paid in my chosen career), Exobiology sucks, so far . . .

 

[Artaletta]

I had success. Just scan a planet and if you see "biological" signals - just land there (in the blue zone) and search for plants. But tbh it's not worth it. I spent 1h, scanned 5 plants and got just 500k (and 1/4 of Directionless lol!). I think frontier must buff rewards for exo-biology.

 

[Shaele]

if it only says bacteria then forget it, finding them is a real pain.

Other things are pretty easy to find, land in a blue area according to the DSS, pick a compass heading and drive in that direction

 

[alexzk]

Trick is to use ship or srv in turret mode.
You must have deployed composition scanner. Just fly/drive straight ahead and watch blue arc, once it blinks -> something is there. Land/stop and scan. Usual distance between 2 blinks on straight line (whatch u direction compass and just fly like at 230 degree) is 6 kms. Could be less distance if u rotate around, but that slows u too, so no worse it.
P.S. keep in mind, once u landed scanner is hidden. U must re-deploy it again in air.

 

[Koma Pahu]

Two systems and I’m on the next rung of the ladder.

Not all planets have life despite having an atmosphere and being landable.

But if you’re getting the blue heat-map-replacement you should be finding life. When low level flying if I’m travelling at about 1/2 throttle At 50-100m I’m generally travelling faster than the details are drawn so spotting them is near impossible. Maybe slow down when flying, take an SRV out or just go for a long walk. You’ll get the hang of it, just keep at it!

 

[DarthLuca]

if it only says bacteria then forget it, finding them is a real pain.

Other things are pretty easy to find, land in a blue area according to the DSS, pick a compass heading and drive in that direction

Did that, at least 6 times, found zilch, nada, nothing, zero, b^&%-all. Spent WAY too much time doing THAT. Guess I'm just unlucky, oh wait, yes I KNOW I am unlucky. Luck SHOULDN'T play THAT big a part in it. That's surely what 'SCANNERS' are for. . . If I can have a DSS that 'scans' the whole planet/moon, why can't I have a ship (I'd gladly spend a class 1 slot - I think) or SRV scanner that gives me at least a direction. Yes there is an on-foot scanner (right click), but that seems to scan what 100 metres - useless?

 

[DarthLuca]

Trick is to use ship or srv in turret mode.
You must have deployed composition scanner. Just fly/drive straight ahead and watch blue arc, once it blinks -> something is there. Land/stop and scan. Usual distance between 2 blinks on straight line (whatch u direction compass and just fly like at 230 degree) is 6 kms. Could be less distance if u rotate around, but that slows u too, so no worse it.
P.S. keep in mind, once u landed scanner is hidden. U must re-deploy it again in air.

I will try, thanks, that may be useful. . .

 

[Koma Pahu]

if it only says bacteria then forget it, finding them is a real pain.

Other things are pretty easy to find, land in a blue area according to the DSS, pick a compass heading and drive in that direction

I’ve not had a problem, just fly/drive on a bearing keeping an eye out in a blue area and they turn up.

 

[Bigmaec]

I guess I will skip on this career until after a balance pass and an update on the DSS heatmap.

 

[Northpin]

if it only says bacteria then forget it, finding them is a real pain.

Other things are pretty easy to find, land in a blue area according to the DSS, pick a compass heading and drive in that direction

SRV helps, especially on low grav planets.
Just jump the srv to get some height - vegetation patches can be seen better from the air

 

[Northpin]

What really kills this path for me is the fact that we can scan a single lifeform at once...
I mean, seriously?

 

[crossxfire007]

I wish the srv had a biologicals scanner seriously. You need an srv to get around finding and scanning 3 samples, but once you're in the srv, you have no way of scanning for biological life outside your line of sight.

 

[Koma Pahu]

I wish the srv had a biologicals scanner seriously. You need an srv to get around finding and scanning 3 samples, but once you're in the srv, you have no way of scanning for biological life outside your line of sight.

Or a ship, I use my DBX to seek them out more than my SRV.

I don’t object to the idea of a biological scanner, bacteria can be especially tricky to spot.

 

[DarthLuca]

So I tried using the composition scanner in a large blue area (dropped pretty much where the 'cursor' is) and headed mostly on bearing 150.

I passed over an interesting looking canyon or valley and I thought the comp scanner 'blipped' so I stopped to take a look.
I descended into the valley and found the most stunning location I have seen so far in Odyssey.

Simply stunning. What would have made it perfect would have been finding some 'organics' at the bottom, but needless to say I didn't!
Once I got back to the ship (2k!) I spent the next 30 minutes or so 'skimming' the surface on the 150 bearing and found, you guessed it, still nothing!
Hmm. But a stunning climb/ walk in and of the valley. Whoever reckoned that ALL Odyssey surfaces are 'flat' was very wrong. Maybe Iceballs are, but not this planet!

 

[DarthLuca]

So I finally did find some 'Organics'. I have found a couple of bacteria and a couple of 'plant' species. I think it's obvious now why I couldn't find the early 'Biological signals' as they were invariably bacteria and virtually impossible to 'spot' while skimming the surface in a ship. Knowing what you are looking for makes it a lot easier. The DSS scan seems to have improved at some stage as I now seem to actually have some explanation of what is being shown on the 'heatmap' (so thanks for that Frontier). However I still feel that the process of finding 'bacteria' needs to be improved somehow. Possibly extending the (right-click) 'scan' range of the Bio-scanner (to several hundred metres would make enough difference. At the moment it still feels a little like trying to find that needle in a very large haystack at times. I have given up on two of the last three bacteria as they were just proving too elusive. I have been impressed with the 'plants' I did find though, well done the design peeps at Frontier.

 

[Koma Pahu]

So I finally did find some 'Organics'. I have found a couple of bacteria and a couple of 'plant' species. I think it's obvious now why I couldn't find the early 'Biological signals' as they were invariably bacteria and virtually impossible to 'spot' while skimming the surface in a ship.

Glad you’ve found some.

The bacteria are a pain. I filter for the rarest organic first, so I can be more targeted. And I only look for bacteria in fairly flat areas as they stand out better. I skim at 50-100m travelling at about 25% throttle, once you get your eye in it’s quite easy to spot the little blighters.

 

[LifesAJourney]

After delivering around 30 genomes I got to a Collector rank. Some of my thoughts:

• Scanning only a single species at a time is so painful. I hope that this can be upgraded using better scanner or a suit module but it doesn't seem to be the case so far.
• Heat maps should do a bit better job than showing either "1" or "0". Never saw any difference in color other than difference made by landforms. But definitely saw the difference on the ground, from "not a single freaking plant" to "the freaking forest of plants".
• Some genomes are worth 100+ kCr, some even 700+ kCr, no idea what makes some of them more expensive than others (first discovery bonus is added on top of those amounts).
• The species are generally easy to spot, even from the distance. It quickly becomes pretty easy to distinguish them from stones.
• Bacteria colonies are just a bit less easy to spot. It's much better to look for them from the ship flying 50-80m above the ground than from srv/legs. I introduced a chopper-like flying technique: I leave landing gear down, set throttle to 25% and use vertical thrusters to keep the nose of my ship low which allows me to visually scan quite an area in front of the ship while flying 50-70 m/s. If bacteria colonies are there, I find them quite quickly.
• It took me about 1.5h to find and get all genomes on a 10-bio-signal planet. I believe that ability to scan more species at once would reduce this time 2- or even 3-fold.
• The pace of exploration will generally slow down significantly if an explorer wants to explore bio signals. Which I think is good.
• It's a shame that genomes cannot be sold/stored on the carrier the same way the general exploration data can. No more happy canyoning in the black, the risk of losing results of hours of scanning stuff is too high.
• I've dropped an idea of using shieldless, paperweight ships for exploration. Jump range is not that important anymore (the carrier jumps further than any ship), looking for alien life means constant risk of bumping into a ground or even an alien tree, and visiting RNGed POIs can be dangerous for defenceless vessels. So I switched from my old explo DBX to another DBX, this time equipped with prismatics, point defence turrets and dumbfire missiles. She still jumps 65 Ly and even if it's 10 Ly less than the paper-ship, her survivability is orders of magnitude better.

 

[Koma Pahu]

- I've dropped an idea of using shieldless, paperweight ships for exploration. Jump range is not that important anymore (the carrier jumps further than any ship), looking for alien life means constant risk of bumping into a ground or even an alien tree, and visiting RNGed POIs can be dangerous for defenceless vessels. So I switched from my old explo DBX to another DBX, this time equipped with prismatics, point defence turrets and dumbfire missiles. She still jumps 65 Ly and even if it's 10 Ly less than the paper-ship, her survivability is orders of magnitude higher.

I was churning this over in my head the other day. I'm assuming the POIs out in the (unexplored) black are an oversite, but as I've never gone completely shieldless - we all have bad landing days - there's aren't a worry, I just run away.

My Alt, who's a bubble jumper, has a much more beefed up DBX due to playing mostly in Open so just need arming, when I next play them, with all these new POIs.