Undiscovered Star Systems...

[cmdr febreeze]

Last year I got my name in the Codex for 5 different biologicals as the first discoverer of them in their respective regions.

I also found a landable ice planet that had a temperature of over 30°C during the day.

I've found mountains to hike up and canyons to fly.

It's true that you're not going to find a long lost alien civilisation out there. To be honest, this is a complaint that can't ever be fixed. If frontier adds hidden things to find like this, they get found and then people complain there's nothing left. If the procedurally generated lots of "special" things to find, people would complain that there's nothing actually interesting to find.

If you want to be an explorer now, you've gotta have an appreciation for stellar forge quirks and unique system configurations or planet formations.

If that doesn't work for you, I don't think there's much frontier could ever do to fix that problem.

That said, you could always be the first one to discover something like a new HGG or even a GGG.

I guess I just never really understand these complaints. Yes, looking on the galaxy map for nebulas is not going to give you any free first discovered tags. Because, like you, everyone else before you had that idea. I don't really know what you're expecting.

Frontier just 2 years ago added so many new landable planets and revitalised all the old ones. There are whole new landscapes out there to discover now, new mountains, skies and horizons. They could add earthlike worlds tomorrow and people would still say "I've been to one, they're all procedural so none of them mean anything there's nothing actually unique to find"

My approach would be to reevaluate what you actually want from exploration. Personally, I want to travel alone through the black, looking for unique systems (billions of those still exist untouched), unique planets (trillions or more), and unique vistas (even more of those). The joy of flying through a real, persistent galaxy is what keeps exploration alive for me. And that's something the game gives in spades.

And on the aspect of community comin together for things like the DSSA, famous explorers didn't just get famous from a discovery. They get famous from community. Beagle Point is not just famous because a guy called Erimus went there first. It's famous because he catalogued the journey, shared it with the community and then helped organise and uplift the exploration community during its early days.

If you want to leave your mark on the galaxy, you need to be willing to work with and for the community itself.

Basically, the real exploration was the friends we made along the way.

These are all good points. And your point about revaluating what one actual wants from exploration is the crux of the matter for people who have become bored of it or find it uninspiring. At one point I did set my own goals of retracing some of the more famous expeditionary routes, and I enjoyed that for what it was, but I can't help feeling I still missed out as those events were community events, and doing them alone was interesting but not that inspiring tbh. My own fault for coming to this party late. I even went along on some of the edsm expeditions last year, and enjoyed them for what they were (despite only ever bumping into half a dozen different people along the way).

I still hold out hope the multi-thousand mega community events will return to Elite someday, but as I mentioned in my earlier post, as the years go by and elite galaxy as a whole remains unchanged, I can understand why they're probably a thing of the past.

 

[Ceres_O7]

These are all good points. And your point about revaluating what one actual wants from exploration is the crux of the matter for people who have become bored of it or find it uninspiring. At one point I did set my own goals of retracing some of the more famous expeditionary routes, and I enjoyed that for what it was, but I can't help feeling I still missed out as those events were community events, and doing them alone was interesting but not that inspiring tbh. My own fault for coming to this party late. I even went along on some of the edsm expeditions last year, and enjoyed them for what they were (despite only ever bumping into half a dozen different people along the way).

I still hold out hope the multi-thousand mega community events will return to Elite someday, but as I mentioned in my earlier post, as the years go by and elite galaxy as a whole remains unchanged, I can understand why they're probably a thing of the past.

At The Eldritch Gate last year had 138 people attending, and there were a few meetups along the way including a party aboard a fleet carrier and a party on the surface of the moon of the missing gas giant the expedition was hosted to find.

On the moon at least, we have nearly 30 people in a single instance. Also, the whole trip had everyone talking, theorising and sharing discoveries and knowledge in the expedition discord chat.

The group by the way is IEA, and they host big expeditions around once or twice a year - keep an eye out for the next one, because I'll be going and they're probably some of the biggest community expeditions that happen now.

I would have gone on Celebration of Early Astronomy 5 last week as well had I not been doing rescues in the war. That has 82 participants on EDSM right now.

Community in exploration comes from journeying together but separately, attending the meetups and events, and chatting and sharing with the others in whatever channel they use. Whether it's discord, a squadron channel or something else. I never finished Distant Worlds 2, but I used to chat with the squadron members the whole time while I was out in the black before I fell behind the group and made my own way instead.

I do still have lots of people on my friends list from the old Distant Worlds 2 days, but thing is due to the size of the expedition you'll never meet the same CMDRs twice...

At the Eldritch Gate though was a much smaller group and it helps you get to know your fellow CMDRs a bit better, and chat with famous explorers and authors of powerful community tools.

All I'm trying to say is, the magic of exploring in a community is still there, alive and well. ATEG last year was the highlight of my Elite Career, and I went on DW2, at least for the first leg. Don't give up hope just yet!

 

[Nadreck]

I found two Earthlike worlds within 20ly of each other, out in the Formidine Rift. They went into the Codex, which has since had amnesia and forgotten them. As I hadn't anticipated that, I no longer know where they are.

I did recently find a system out in the Void sector where another CMDR had tagged the star but not the planets, and he'd missed an Earthlike world, I bagged that one and bookmarked it.

 

[Rufus Ruffcut]

Since logic dictates that to navigate I must pick a star (on the galaxy map) to jump to then said star must be on the map. If it's on the map then it has been discovered, surely?

 

[varonica]

Since logic dictates that to navigate I must pick a star (on the galaxy map) to jump to then said star must be on the map. If it's on the map then it has been discovered, surely?

My telescope can see mountains on the moon, craters on mars, deep valleys on Mercury, oh well no point in anybody going there now, I've already discovered them.

 

[Riverside]

Since logic dictates that to navigate I must pick a star (on the galaxy map) to jump to then said star must be on the map. If it's on the map then it has been discovered, surely?

Every system that can be visited is on the in-game galaxy map already. Whether anyone has actually visited it (and sold the data or updated an external database) is another matter.

In general go in a straight line for a bit then change direction & undiscovered systems are plentiful.

 

[Rufus Ruffcut]

Ah Ha!

 

[thistle]

I found undiscovered systems last week by jumping in a random direction below the galactic plane, I'd need to check but probably no more than 1000ly from the bubble. Routing will jump over systems as people try to get from A to B as fast as possible, leaving lots behind.

 

[Fnord Velkor]

I am currently working on a method to predict where undiscovered star systems can still be found with some high certainty.... than plotting a line from A to B and 'hope' it contains an undiscovered star system or two.
...

Select economical route.