Yeah - any of you guys remember an old game called "Starflight"? Story was that your sun was gonna flare and kill everyone in the system, so you needed to explore the nearby systems and find suitrable planets to colonise - you scanned planetary surfaces and if the gravity, hydrosphere and atmosphere seemed good, you could log it as a potential colony world for cash. You could also land on planet surfaces and mine materials. And every so often you'd encounter alien ruins with messages often pointing you in the direction of some other system, a relic of a lost ancient civilisation. There were also alien races to communicate with, who would sell you information about potential locations of alien ruins and artifacts. It was one of the greatest games I ever played, the only downside was that it was fairly limited in scale. There's SO much opportunity for Elite Dangerous to work similar aspects into the game, but it's all squandered. I hope they fix it and at least offer clues for us to find stuff. I LOVE spending time (hours, days even weeks) trying to decipher clues or investigating leads. I HATE spending even HALF that time searching aimlessly when I don't even know if the thing I'm looking for exists.
EDIT: There was an AMAZING twist in the story in Starflight once you'd gathered enough information about the ancients too...
Got the original cib Amiga version! Never finished it!