The game's reward system

[Greasetrap42]

No currently exobiology is a single level activity, the only skill ladder is your ability to spot stuff and know where stuff is likely to be improves with practice.

With the caveat that building and testing a good ship is also part of the learning curve costing credits, engineering mats, and time. It is good time spent because as the OP mentions it is a long road to get through the elite ranks.

In addition to my traditional exploration ships (DBX ad AspX) I created several dedicated fully engineered ships to test for exobiology:

1. Chieftain - great handling, felt great, good visibility,large landing footprint makes it not great.
2. Viper4 - All round excellent except frustrating visibility when looking at planet in orbit for bio sites. Also reduced visibility (but okay) when skimming planet surface.
3. Sidewinder - Small size is fantastic for landing. Tumbles uncontrollably if you touch planet surface. Cockpit canopy crossbar right in my line-of-site when looking for bio.
4. Eagle Mk2 - Best short range bio ship. All round excellent. Must be careful with small fuel tank.
5. DBX - Best long distance bio ship. Much more beefed up than a mini/maxed DBX exploration ship. With A-rated G5 thrusters, 4A shields, 3A distributer it has 64Ly jump range, great visibility, good handling, and fairly small landing footprint.

Certainly a cmdr could pick and equip any ship and use it for exobiology and just live with it. They can skip this learning curve. Or watch youtube videos and copy what someone else did.

 

[Miscellaneous]

NOON FOUNDATION TIPS FOR M.E.T.A. EXOBIOLOGY
- Did you know you can sub cactoida pulp for tubus berries in exocuisine?

 

[Schmack]

All this information regarding tactics and best known methods for exobiology progress is really what the term "elite" should indicate. Once elite, these are things I'd think you'd know already if you don't now, assuming there's no R2R taken.

It seems exobiology is one of the few (if not the only) status bar that doesn't have an alternative option (like how exploration rank increases by hauling passengers to beacons over and over, or how trade grows because a CG artificially raises the price of dirt to diamond level, or how the AFK farming in CZs or CNBs used to work)

NOON FOUNDATION TIPS FOR M.E.T.A. EXOBIOLOGY
- Did you know you can sub cactoida pulp for tubus berries in exocuisine?

Of course, I have several culinary recipes.

 

[Hellrider]

You've gotten probably all the responses you wanted however I decided some time ago that, if I don't like an activity (like exploration or exobiology) then being Elite in that doesn't make sense. Why be elite in something you don't even want to do? I don't believe the ranks are the end-all, be-all of the game. I think they are just benchmarks along the way.

To be fair I always felt, that ranks should works exactly this way.
It should show TRUE dedication to one of main gameloops.
Not be pokemon "catch em all" or "timmy did trade for 1 evening in broken CG".

Looking at fact that all ranks are credit based (and even exobio doesnt require ultra much effort, just 100 valuable worlds) combat rank is doing it the best.

 

[aRJay]

To be fair I always felt, that ranks should works exactly this way.
It should show TRUE dedication to one of main gameloops.
Not be pokemon "catch em all" or "timmy did trade for 1 evening in broken CG".

Looking at fact that all ranks are credit based (and even exobio doesnt require ultra much effort, just 100 valuable worlds) combat rank is doing it the best.

Combat rank is the only one that isn’t based on credits, which is why it is the best one.

It would be marvellous if FDev in some future key feature update altered the other ranks so that they weren’t based on credits that way balance passes on credits or earnings would have fewer unintended side effects which would be better for players and devs alike.

 

[JMCorp]

I came back to ED about a month and a half ago. Starting with 0 skill in Exo I am now Elite with a FC and 3bn in the FC bank. This is my best advice for grinding Exo.

Grinding is all about efficiency. Equip and engineer an Imperial Eagle (that's what i use anyway) because it can get just shy of 30LY with an SRV loaded and by itself can land almost anywhere. You want a small ship that can land in the mountains to deploy the SRV for the hard-to-reach bios. Make sure you use a size 3 fuel scoop so that it takes zero time to refuel.

Once you have your exploration ship, do NOT jump way out in the middle of nowhere. Exploration data isn't worth anything and takes too long. Change route to economical, with not visited systems enabled, visited systems disabled. Set your destination as far as it will let you out into the black from your base in the bubble. In the IE I get about 40 jumps. There are plenty of already discovered systems that have been exploration scanned but haven't been Exo scanned. Then you jump that route looking for bodies that have at least 2 bios on them but don't have a first footfall. You can do this in the system map without employing the slow AF FSSS. Once you get to the end of your jump route, pick a direction and do it again, but try to end in an area so that coming back to the bubble to turn in your data is only one route. It took me about 6 trips like this to get the FC.

Once I got the FC I loaded it up with some extra tritium, which wasn't actually necessary, and the vista service and jumped it 500LY into the black and used that as my base instead of the bubble. Just jump one route out and back to the FC. I actually didn't go the full 1k economical once I started doing this. I was only jumping out about 200LY. It made it a little less tedious in my mind because I was now getting my payout faster, kinda to your point.

All told it took me about 4 weeks to get where I am now. moved back to the bubble and doing haz rez sites for combat rank.

 

[Schmack]

NOON FOUNDATION TIPS FOR M.E.T.A. EXOBIOLOGY
- Did you know you can sub cactoida pulp for tubus berries in exocuisine?

I came back to ED about a month and a half ago. Starting with 0 skill in Exo I am now Elite with a FC and 3bn in the FC bank. This is my best advice for grinding Exo.

Grinding is all about efficiency. Equip and engineer an Imperial Eagle (that's what i use anyway) because it can get just shy of 30LY with an SRV loaded and by itself can land almost anywhere. You want a small ship that can land in the mountains to deploy the SRV for the hard-to-reach bios. Make sure you use a size 3 fuel scoop so that it takes zero time to refuel.

Once you have your exploration ship, do NOT jump way out in the middle of nowhere. Exploration data isn't worth anything and takes too long. Change route to economical, with not visited systems enabled, visited systems disabled. Set your destination as far as it will let you out into the black from your base in the bubble. In the IE I get about 40 jumps. There are plenty of already discovered systems that have been exploration scanned but haven't been Exo scanned. Then you jump that route looking for bodies that have at least 2 bios on them but don't have a first footfall. You can do this in the system map without employing the slow AF FSSS. Once you get to the end of your jump route, pick a direction and do it again, but try to end in an area so that coming back to the bubble to turn in your data is only one route. It took me about 6 trips like this to get the FC.

Once I got the FC I loaded it up with some extra tritium, which wasn't actually necessary, and the vista service and jumped it 500LY into the black and used that as my base instead of the bubble. Just jump one route out and back to the FC. I actually didn't go the full 1k economical once I started doing this. I was only jumping out about 200LY. It made it a little less tedious in my mind because I was now getting my payout faster, kinda to your point.

All told it took me about 4 weeks to get where I am now. moved back to the bubble and doing haz rez sites for combat rank.

Find a pirate activity signal source with a high level. You'll have constant action and I don't get many interruptions from other ships trying to get involved. Bring a KWS.