What earns Exploration Rank?

[Ursusskandia]

Having earned my elite in trading I want to do some serious exploration. Is it only "honk-scans" that count toward exploration rank? Or is scanning the whole "unexplored" system counting as well?

The reason I ask is the great delay between cashing in the data and the rise in rank, so I can't really see what gives. When money earned = rank then I really should scan every unexplored system...

Thanks for your time fellow Commanders,

o7

 

[Ian Phillips]

Kilometeres travelled in an SRV counts as well.

 

[Bottom Hat]

The amount of experience gained is set in terms of the profit made from scanning, be it direct surface scans or honks as you say.

In other words, they pay you for the furthest planet on a honk, or if you go there and use a DSS to scan it as well, they pay you much more for that particular planet, on top of the amount you get from using the honk ADS initially.

My method is to honk my way around, and if there are bodies within 100Ls or so that will scan whilst I am scooping, I will do that as it is bonus money essentially - You can even scan a body/planet etc. through the surface of the sun, which is kind of handy, but I imagine a bug/mistake thing with the coding? Maybe not?!

Then, once I go to sell this carto data at the next Universal Cartographics place, they pay me for each of the plants or systems scanned using the DSS, and those with the honk, then the Pilot's Federation calculates the amount of experience you gain from this amount of profit, and increases your rank accordingly. For example, coming back from Maia the other day to an engineer was 15 jumps, using the honk and DSS-nearby method I wrote above, I made 1.3m profit from the date, and it put 4% on to my Ranger rank [the image below is out of date].

Does this help mate?

I also have read things about passenger missions increasing rank, but I have yet to do any myself. I wonder if they work in the same way that delivery missions do for trade rank - ie: the profit gained from the mission is directly assumed to relate t your Exploration rank with the pilot's federation, and they increase the rank accordingly - a 2.5m passenger mission would put my Ranger rank up by about 7-8% working on the principles above.

However I am yet to do passenger missions as explained, but I guess the profit it in addition to any actual honk/DSS data that you gain from honking on the way to the destination if it is available?

Cheers,
The Hat



PS: Ooh nice information Ian, I didn't know that either, thank you

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Kilometeres travelled in an SRV counts as well.

That really makes me wonder.. Ian, if I park my SRV on a ship and that ship travels along with me riding on it, does that count as distance traveled in an SRV, since I would still technically be in the SRV?

My SRV distance traveled has not been measures in km in a very long time. It's measures in Mm these days. I'm also kind of curious what it will be measured in when I break the 999 Mm mark.

 

[duckofdeath]

Cartography adds the most to the rank. The scale is "a bit" messed up by Frontier's dumb decision to add passengers as exploration rank contributors.
The old elite rank, before 2.3, was at 157.5 million credits earned. Post 2.3, 50% of credits earned on cartography adds towards that 157.5 million target. Passengers adds less per credits earned, I think it's 30% of the value on long range exploration missions and 15% on in-bubble exploration missions.
Long story short, don't bother try to calculate how much you have to earn to get here any more if you're doing a bit of everything.
The fastest way to rank up these days is probably by taking a few long range missions in the same direction and scan valuable planets on the way. You can probably get the full Elite rank by a return-trip to Colonia, with a few cabins of VIP's on-board. Which in my opinion makes the rank way to simple.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

That really makes me wonder.. Ian, if I park my SRV on a ship and that ship travels along with me riding on it, does that count as distance traveled in an SRV, since I would still technically be in the SRV?

My SRV distance traveled has not been measures in km in a very long time. It's measures in Mm these days. I'm also kind of curious what it will be measured in when I break the 999 Mm mark.

I'm hoping it goes to Ls at the 30Mm mark - or have you passed that already?
I'm quite proud of my 2.96Mm


Also, IIRC you get an Exploration bonus for collecting new material types.

 

[Ursusskandia]

Thanks everybody for that fast and full response. So money=rank. But in relation to passenger missions i seriously doubt that the amount payed by the passenger earns to the rank. I have made roundabout a billion from passenger missions and only if I fly to new systems am I gaining rank. But thanks to you I now know that I should also scan the system and not only "honk". The suggestion about a quick tour to Colonia is noted! But as a Mac user I have no access to engineering and my best jumper ship makes 35 ly at best. But I will go there eventually.

Thanks again for your time,
o7

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Thanks everybody for that fast and full response. So money=rank. But in relation to passenger missions i seriously doubt that the amount payed by the passenger earns to the rank. I have made roundabout a billion from passenger missions and only if I fly to new systems am I gaining rank. But thanks to you I now know that I should also scan the system and not only "honk". The suggestion about a quick tour to Colonia is noted! But as a Mac user I have no access to engineering and my best jumper ship makes 35 ly at best. But I will go there eventually.

Thanks again for your time,
o7

For passenger missions you get rank based on a percentage of the mission reward.
No idea what the numeric value is, but I believe they nerfed it a few patches back.

For reference, I've guestimated the Trading rank gain from appropriate missions to be at around 10% of mission value.

 

[duckofdeath]

Thanks everybody for that fast and full response. So money=rank. But in relation to passenger missions i seriously doubt that the amount payed by the passenger earns to the rank. I have made roundabout a billion from passenger missions and only if I fly to new systems am I gaining rank. But thanks to you I now know that I should also scan the system and not only "honk". The suggestion about a quick tour to Colonia is noted! But as a Mac user I have no access to engineering and my best jumper ship makes 35 ly at best. But I will go there eventually.

Thanks again for your time,
o7

It's only exploration passenger missions that adds to the exploration rank. The non-exploration ones adds to the trade rank.

 

[Ben Sevil]

The amount of experience gained is set in terms of the profit made from scanning, be it direct surface scans or honks as you say.

In other words, they pay you for the furthest planet on a honk, or if you go there and use a DSS to scan it as well, they pay you much more for that particular planet, on top of the amount you get from using the honk ADS initially.

My method is to honk my way around, and if there are bodies within 100Ls or so that will scan whilst I am scooping, I will do that as it is bonus money essentially - You can even scan a body/planet etc. through the surface of the sun, which is kind of handy, but I imagine a bug/mistake thing with the coding? Maybe not?!

Then, once I go to sell this carto data at the next Universal Cartographics place, they pay me for each of the plants or systems scanned using the DSS, and those with the honk, then the Pilot's Federation calculates the amount of experience you gain from this amount of profit, and increases your rank accordingly. For example, coming back from Maia the other day to an engineer was 15 jumps, using the honk and DSS-nearby method I wrote above, I made 1.3m profit from the date, and it put 4% on to my Ranger rank [the image below is out of date].

Does this help mate?

I also have read things about passenger missions increasing rank, but I have yet to do any myself. I wonder if they work in the same way that delivery missions do for trade rank - ie: the profit gained from the mission is directly assumed to relate t your Exploration rank with the pilot's federation, and they increase the rank accordingly - a 2.5m passenger mission would put my Ranger rank up by about 7-8% working on the principles above.

However I am yet to do passenger missions as explained, but I guess the profit it in addition to any actual honk/DSS data that you gain from honking on the way to the destination if it is available?

Cheers,
The Hat



PS: Ooh nice information Ian, I didn't know that either, thank you

Cartography adds the most to the rank. The scale is "a bit" messed up by Frontier's dumb decision to add passengers as exploration rank contributors.
The old elite rank, before 2.3, was at 157.5 million credits earned. Post 2.3, 50% of credits earned on cartography adds towards that 157.5 million target. Passengers adds less per credits earned, I think it's 30% of the value on long range exploration missions and 15% on in-bubble exploration missions.
Long story short, don't bother try to calculate how much you have to earn to get here any more if you're doing a bit of everything.
The fastest way to rank up these days is probably by taking a few long range missions in the same direction and scan valuable planets on the way. You can probably get the full Elite rank by a return-trip to Colonia, with a few cabins of VIP's on-board. Which in my opinion makes the rank way to simple.

I'm currently trying to figure out how passenger missions affect rank, and diligently recording my trips, so if I may, I'll add my tuppence:

If the Wiki entry on rank progression is correct, at my current rank, I should get 1% to Pioneer per 0.80mn credits worth of honking and scanning - real "exploration" data. This does indeed appear to be pretty much the case, though whether it is exactly 0.80mn per 1%, I couldn't say. (It seems to be more than 0.80mn is required, possibly 1.16mn).

I have also found that IFF you are not allied with the faction giving you the return passenger mission, these too appear to translate at 1:1. So if I get a 4m cr payout, I will rise 4-5% (there is rounding involved). However, as payouts on passenger missions seem to rise with how closely you are affiliated with the faction (though there is wide variation due to RNG), this slows progression.

So, for example, a neutral faction might give you a simple A>B>A mission for 0.5-0.8m, for maybe 0-1% progression. A cordial faction could show one for 1.7m cr, for 1% or so or maybe a little more (rounding). If allied, it might go above 2.5 - but there would be no rank progression. I have taken multiple multi-million cr missions for allied factions and have had no increase whatsoever (which is why I started digging into it).

Getting me to Pioneer rank doing nothing but passenger missions will require me to use three different systems' factions (no overlap). My current projections are for a further five-to-seven systems-worth for Elite. I'll probably travel and do some real exploring instead.

There seems to be no correlation with passenger class, total LYs travelled or whether honking has unearthed anything new.

o7

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Didn't the passenger mission rank increase get sorted in an update?

 

[Meric]

Progress from scanning is directly related to credits earned. I keep this link handy...

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/339546-2-3-exploration-payouts-visual-guide

You get bonuses for

- long range passenger missions (i assume at the same credit/percent rate as scans).

- Driving the SRV
- Discovering new materials

But the final 2 seem to be negligible.

Didn't the passenger mission rank increase get sorted in an update?

They changed it so that only the long range missions counted.

 

[duckofdeath]

Didn't the passenger mission rank increase get sorted in an update?

It did. There is no variation in numbers depending on allegiance, faction or such. It was clarified that long range exploration adds 30% of their value and short range (sightseeing) adds 15%. (Don't quote me on the exact numbers, could be 20% and 10%.)
The problem here is the poor way Frontier decides to share relevant game info to gamers. In random forum post responses on the internet. Meaning, now, a couple months after they clarified it, no one has a reference to it as it's drowned by a million other forum comments.

 

[Ben Sevil]

It did. There is no variation in numbers depending on allegiance, faction or such. It was clarified that long range exploration adds 30% of their value and short range (sightseeing) adds 15%. (Don't quote me on the exact numbers, could be 20% and 10%.)
The problem here is the poor way Frontier decides to share relevant game info to gamers. In random forum post responses on the internet. Meaning, now, a couple months after they clarified it, no one has a reference to it as it's drowned by a million other forum comments.

Unless the game is bugged in my favour or unless the Elite Wiki is wrong regarding the amounts needed to progress, I'm not so sure. There night be a discount, but it's not 70 or 85%.

The following are my return missions (the "Take me to Blooby Visitor Beacon and then the Spitfire Gas Vents" variety), the cash in the first column, the progression from Ranger to Pioneer in the second (all factions neutral at start, now four cordial and one friendly):

start at 6%
4.59... 9%
5.04...11%
0.62...12%
0.98...12%
sell data appx 1.3m > 13%
2.22...14%
3.02...16%
1.07...16%
1.79...17%
2.42...18%
5.56...21%
2.64...23%
1.43...23%
2.02...24%
3.28...26%
3.73...28%
3.26...29%
4.38...32%
sell data appx 1.3m > 33%
1.74...34%
3.94...36%
5.29...39%

I hadn't planned on doing anything with this information until I had the whole sequence to Pioneer, but I thought I might show this now.

 

[Bottom Hat]

Really very interesting, thank you for sharing Ben. And thanks to everyone else, I hadn't realised it had grown this complicated!

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Having earned my elite in trading I want to do some serious exploration. Is it only "honk-scans" that count toward exploration rank? Or is scanning the whole "unexplored" system counting as well?

The reason I ask is the great delay between cashing in the data and the rise in rank, so I can't really see what gives. When money earned = rank then I really should scan every unexplored system...

Thanks for your time fellow Commanders,

o7

Crashing into planets, and being burned by white dwarfs.

 

[Arthur Shappey]

...
The problem here is the poor way Frontier decides to share relevant game info to gamers. In random forum post responses on the internet. Meaning, now, a couple months after they clarified it, no one has a reference to it as it's drowned by a million other forum comments.

Is that the problem? I think I agree, but probably for opposite reasons than you intended. Isn't the great thing about ED [and all the forbears] that there isn't a proper manual or proper - official - facts? Therefore community is encouraged [even to the point of view of it being the main game we talked about as school-kids in the 1980s wondering how the game really worked...]

I adore the way people have gone to extreme lengths to compile facts about this game and share them - all because FDev have totally failed to share. This is _good_!

Therefore the only spoiler is when FDev staff can't help but spill beans on this site etc...

[Just my farthings worth... I'll put the kettle on...]

 

[bambam_ofc]

If you want to earn Exploration %% as fast as possible, here's the route that got me from Pathfinder to Elite recently:

Type your current location into:

http://edtools.ddns.net/expl.php

That will give you a route through a list of star systems with Earthlike, Terraformable, and High Metal Content worlds.

Just follow the route given with an Advanced Discovery Scanner (honk when you enter the system) and a Detailed Surface Scanner (select target planet, supercruise towards it, and auto-scan the planet when within tens of lightseconds).

If the high-value planets are more than 2000ls away, just honk and move on.

Remember to click the 'visited' flag on the webpage as you jump out, and the website will remember that.

I got up to 15 million credits an hour with practice, and 200 million got me Pioneer to Elite (I did ~10 times 20 million)