The one thing I'm missing from exploration in Elite: Dangerous is the survival aspect of it. I'm following some home-brewed rules to simulate aspects of that (for example, I installed a first class passenger cabin because in my head-canon the crew quarters aren't designed for long duration flights) but its no substitute for the real thing.
Uhuh.
Way off-topic now but I wish ED had more mundane aspects of ship-maintenance in it.
I wish that, for example, you could look at your left-HUD, look at the systems tab, scroll down to FSD, click on "details" and then see a screen that shows you how your FSD is functioning.
There'd be little graphs and dials and sliders and you'd be able to recalibrate your FSD to ensure you got optimal jump-range with minimal fuel use and reducing wear to a minimum.
As a side-effect of this, you might be able to tweak your FSD so that it could, perhaps, engage faster or give you greater jump-range at the expense of extra fuel usage or higher wear.
Same sort of thing could apply to a variety of systems such as shields, thrusters, PP and weapons too.
None of this stuff would happen suddenly but it'd all be stuff which gradually reduced the efficiency of your ship over a period of, say, 50 jumps so routine maintenance would become something explorers needed to do.
Added to which, there'd be a need to periodically replenish stocks of various mat's in order to keep a ship running.
After a few thousand Ly, for example, your FSD's efficiency would start to reduce noticeably and you'd need to keep a look out for a planet with a supply of, say, Polonium and you'd need to collect some and feed it to your FSD in order to restore it's efficiency to maximum.
Polonium wouldn't be the
only material suitable for repairing your FSD though.
If you're in a tight spot, there'd be other materials which'd get your FSD working again but they wouldn't provide the same efficiency as Polonium.
Alternatively, you might find that feeding some other mat' to your FSD would give you a better jump-range but, again, at the expense of fuel-efficiency or causing damage.
This stuff would all give explorers things to keep them occupied.
You'd be doing your honk-jumping but you'd have to keep an eye on the status of systems such as your life-support, PP, PDist, FSD and keep them properly tuned.
Even so, after a few thousand Ly, eventually you'd have to start thinking about looking for planets that have the mat's you need to make repairs so that you can carry on with your journey.
Course, you could stock up on mat's before embarking on a journey but, depending on how long you're out there, you are, eventually, going to need to find stuff to repair your ship.
Also, if you're flying around the bubble, when you click on "repair all" at a station all this stuff would be taken care of so it'd never become a faff for players doing day-to-day stuff.
It'd only be a concern for explorers... which is kind of handy since they've got little else to keep their attention.