Newcomer / Intro Why did Road to Riches take so long for me? Also why didn't it pay out as much? Did I forget something?

[Old_Man_Steve]

So all this started when I left the starting bubble by accident. I thought that system was on the bubble list? I only had 5 million to my name, a few clues from the Newcomers section here at Frontier, and no idea what to do next without getting arrested or blown up 40 times for delivering a ton of scrap metal.
So I saw the Hawkes Gaming video on Road to Riches and said to myself "I'll do this first and I'll have enough money to get what I want next". The video said it'd take a few hours to get all the planets done. It seemed a tab bit grindy but hey it's exploring the galaxy. After all, that's why I bought the game. I went to edtools, put in my starting point Annekaliii something, and got started.

65 real days later,
I finally...finished...the damn...thing. A few hours my ass! Did I miss something in the video?
It took me a while to figure out I could increase my jump distance in the Galaxy map by clicking Fastest routes. Anyway, I'm supposed to be mapping the cosmos, didn't want to skip something in case there's some derelict ship out there or gameplay thingie I'm supposed to see.
My hands hurt from holding the controller so long.
I had to buy a new ship halfway through because the old one kept smoking when fuel scooping. It's a DBX which is cool and all but it made this HURRUUMMRUUMM RUUMM whenever I push the thrusters to full, sounds like someone shoved a Halo Elite into a bus engine. I bought some better thrusters so it's less noisy and creepy.
The music got a bit tedious so I used Youtube podcasts on my phone but one time I had to hit 'skip' taking my eyes off the screen and I crashed into the black box thing this group asked me to pick up. Anyway I caught up with all the Anton Petrov What Da Math? videos I had missed so it wasn't all bad.
I scanned every system I visited on the flight path for at least 200 of them, but it got a bit annoying going to empty systems so I used edtools to find those and skip them.
I sold data along the way to make sure I didn't have to start from scratch if my ship got blown up (again).

At the end of it all, I got Elite status for Exploring, 380 million credits, hand cramps, and I'm allied with 6 different communist factions and 2 of those big groups the Federation and Imperial powerplay powerbook powermac whatever. It shouldn't have taken this long to finish the 300 systems on the chart. Where did I go wrong? Did I miss something so screamingly obvious that every player is now spitting in their keyboards in laughter at me?

And by the way, why are there so many aliens around HIP 17837? Did I just fly through some event?

 

[kalrix]

It sounds like you spent a lot of time NOT doing Road to Riches, comrade:

• You spent a lot of time in Economical routing, that gooches everyone at least once.
• you scanned EVERY system which was more time spent not scanning high value targets; the entire point of Road to Riches is that it tells you specifically what bodies have the most value, and you opted to not take advantage of that.
• You didn't mention what value threshold you set for your Road to Riches route; if you set it low ( below around 500k credits ) you'll spend a lot of time scanning a lot of relatively low value planets, instead of a smaller number of very high value ones
• You also set an INCREDIBLY high goal, 380 million credits. A good non-First Discovery can get you up to 1.5 million. Even under those optimal conditions, that's 254 planets you have to map. I'd bet your average planet value during this trip was waaaaaaaaaaaay lower than 1.5 million ( see previous bullet point about value threshold )
• It also sounds like your ships were unengineered and possibly had fitting issues causing overheating and probably hindering your jump range too.

So it seems like there's a lot of reasons why it took so long.

 

[Batkung]

you also never mentioned whether you actually DSS'ed the target planets from the r2r output (that's where the real money is)

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

65 days and 380mcr... were you just honking?

 

[aRJay]

65 days to elite explorer is more than fast enough it took me years, but then I didn’t focus on it exclusively and got bored following the step by step instructions of the road to riches after only a handful of systems.

I much prefer the do what I am enjoying until I fancy doing something else approach and see little benefit in rushing stuff.

 

[d8veh]

You make about 10 mil per hour if you just scan the high value planets in the list. You can increase that to 30 mil per hour if you DSS scan them too, and you can get that up to 90 mil per hour by doing the level 5 Li Yong Rui powerplay deliveries, which takes about 4 hours and costs about 50 mil, and it's well worth it of you have a lot of data to sell. If you had spent an additional 4 hours doing it, you would have got a billion rather than 380 mil.

If you're doing R to R, the trick is to keep all your data, then do the powerplay on the Wedensday before you finish doing the R to R so that you can cash in any time during the next 7days, since the 300% bonus runs from the Thursday to Wednesday in the week after doing the PP.

It's a shame you didn't ask before going on the trip. It would have taken about 20 hours to get three times as much money.

 

[Old_Man_Steve]

• You spent a lot of time in Economical routing, that gooches everyone at least once.

I had a feeling my mistake was something this obvious.

• you scanned EVERY system which was more time spent not scanning high value targets; the entire point of Road to Riches is that it tells you specifically what bodies have the most value, and you opted to not take advantage of that.

I assumed Road to Riches was cumulative and that the ones on the list were the most high value, but the whole system had to be scanned. I mostly mapped the high value planets from the list, once I figured out that the abbreviations meant. I must've thought completely scanning each system would lead to a higher market value than if I only mapped the ones from the list. Apparently that was wrong.

• You didn't mention what value threshold you set for your Road to Riches route; if you set it low ( below around 500k credits ) you'll spend a lot of time scanning a lot of relatively low value planets, instead of a smaller number of very high value ones

EDtools.cc didn't have a value threshold on the site. It allowed me to set max distance and max systems. I had no idea that was a feature?

• You also set an INCREDIBLY high goal, 380 million credits. A good non-First Discovery can get you up to 1.5 million. Even under those optimal conditions, that's 254 planets you have to map. I'd bet your average planet value during this trip was waaaaaaaaaaaay lower than 1.5 million ( see previous bullet point about value threshold )

Actually, I figured I would earn a billion. Or something. When I started, I had little clue as how the game's economy works. I knew scanning systems and mapping planets meant "easy" money. I just remember Hawkes Gaming earning 15 million on his demonstration journey and figured "well if I do that a lot, I should be in the ballpark of a billion." Now I realize I was off a little bit.

• It also sounds like your ships were unengineered and possibly had fitting issues causing overheating and probably hindering your jump range too.

Yes-ish! I did at least a third of the journey in the base Sidewinder with a 15ly max jump. When I got around 50 million, I got the DBX and as I went through system, bought better stuff. For the past month, I'm jumping around 34.8ly max with a 4A FSD. I didn't know engineering was a thing until 3 weeks ago. I got the Felicity Farseer message and was confused for awhile until I checked the wiki last week.
I think I might have been flying too close to the star with the Sidewinder. The DBX seems a bit more forgiving of high temperature though it does get a bit smoky at 70% max heat. Of course it could be I've got the wrong hull plating for the task.

• you also never mentioned whether you actually DSS'ed the target planets from the r2r output (that's where the real money is)

I'm not 100% sure I did it for every system at the start of the journey. Certainly I didn't get the efficiency bonus on a consistent basis for the first 20 planets.

• 65 days and 380mcr... were you just honking?

I always honked unless the system was already in the database. I spent the time in-system probing the 3 interesting world-types until I figured out what the list on the right-hand sitde of the R2R page was. I figured 'well they're all worth money, so make sure I get 'em all' and go for total amount. Apparently that's not how it works and I derped.
I also took a few side quests like fuel rescues and collecting salvage if the item or ship was on my way to a planet.

• 65 days to elite explorer is more than fast enough it took me years, but then I didn’t focus on it exclusively and got bored following the step by step instructions of the road to riches after only a handful of systems.

I didn't even know I could get Elite status by doing this exclusively. I thought it was tied to quests and the other things that go on in the game (finding a Thargold hideout or something). When the status update popped up, I was shocked.

• You make about 10 mil per hour if you just scan the high value planets in the list. You can increase that to 30 mil per hour if you DSS scan them too, and you can get that up to 90 mil per hour by doing the level 5 Li Yong Rui powerplay deliveries, which takes about 4 hours and costs about 50 mil, and it's well worth it of you have a lot of data to sell. If you had spent an additional 4 hours doing it, you would have got a billion rather than 380 mil.

And that was what I missed in the video. I thought he scanned everything in each visited system on the list and my mistake was elsewhere in my process. If I had paid better attention but spent the same amount of time I would have had a trillion by now. Whoops.

Well, thanks everyone for all the advice. Apparently my assumptions of the gameplay mechanics were waaay off and the powerplay thing is more beneficial than I assumed.
I shall keep that in mind the next time I start another ED adventure. Hopefully with fewer 'derps'.

 

[Para Handy]

....
I assumed Road to Riches was cumulative and that the ones on the list were the most high value, but the whole system had to be scanned. I mostly mapped the high value planets from the list, once I figured out that the abbreviations meant. I must've thought completely scanning each system would lead to a higher market value than if I only mapped the ones from the list. Apparently that was wrong.
....
I think I might have been flying too close to the star with the Sidewinder. The DBX seems a bit more forgiving of high temperature though it does get a bit smoky at 70% max heat. Of course it could be I've got the wrong hull plating for the task.
....
Well, thanks everyone for all the advice. Apparently my assumptions of the gameplay mechanics were waaay off and the powerplay thing is more beneficial than I assumed.
I shall keep that in mind the next time I start another ED adventure. Hopefully with fewer 'derps'.

There is actually a bonus - one bonus level is for scanning (FSS-ing) every body and there is a much higher bonus for mapping all bodies in the system. I can't remember what the bonuses are now but it is an amount per body - I don't bother with the mapping-all bonus unless there are not too many bodies.

All ships have the smoke effect over 70% - don't worry about it, you do get sparks flying over 100% though and start to take a bit of damage (not a lot at first). Your shields nor armour upgrades give no protection from this - surprising but true, even reflective armour and top-grade ultra engineered thermal resist shields protect you not a jot from the heat at the star.

I never did powerpants as I find it boring (plus didn't like seeing "hostile" on the one time I did pledge to help out a friend), it seems to me that the rewards are not worth the effort. I have no PP weaponry or goodies and don't miss them - but then again I don't do PvP. Your choice whether to give PP a go, just don't feel that you "must" (unless you want to indulge in PvP combat of course).

Good luck.

 

[kalrix]

I must've thought completely scanning each system would lead to a higher market value than if I only mapped the ones from the list. Apparently that was wrong.

There is a tiny tiny tiny tiny bonus you get for fully FSSing and/or fully DSSing a system. This bonus is trivial and i think it never amounts to more than about 50,000 extra credits. So your instinct wasn't entirely wrong!

EDtools.cc didn't have a value threshold on the site

I see now. Spansh's Road to Riches tool has a little more polish, a few more dials to tune to make your route better for your specific needs. Day late and a dollar short, but now you know.

Overall, your intuition was mostly on the mark. You just ended up making more work for yourself than was strictly necessary. That's a SUPER normal part of the learning curve for Elite, so congratulations and welcome to the community!

 

[Para Handy]

There is a tiny tiny tiny tiny bonus you get for fully FSSing and/or fully DSSing a system. This bonus is trivial and i think it never amounts to more than about 50,000 extra credits. So your instinct wasn't entirely wrong!
....

Well yes the bonuses (boni LOL ) are not huge, certainly not in comparison to high-value mapped bodies but I would not say it is exactly trivial.

For completely FSSing a system you get a bonus of 10,000x№ of bodies.

For completely DSS mapping every body in a systems the bonus is 100,000 per body.

Hence why if I discover a system with not very many bodies and there are no large distances involved I am tempted to map them all. So a lowly icy body worth 500 FSS or 2,500 DSS suddenly becomes worth 102,500 instead.

Admittedly, with credits being so easy to earn elsewhere, that is not a lot of moolah - but for exploration progress it can mount up. However I tend to do it just because it is there, all my accounts are Elite explorers quite quickly (not via R2R or passengers either).

There is a thread investigating / establishing the exploration values of things (F D don't provide underlying data etc. for anything) in the Exploration sub forum which is currently establishing the ins-and-outs of the Horizons bonuses etc:

Exploration value formulae

UPDATE Sep 2022 Since 3.3, payouts have been tweaked. For stars, broadly speaking, the basic calculation remains: (k + (m * k / 66.25)) Where k is: k Star 1200 NS/BH 22628 WD 14057 The main star also gets a bonus for honking based of the value of all the other bodies in the...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Kissamies]

Actually, I figured I would earn a billion. Or something. When I started, I had little clue as how the game's economy works. I knew scanning systems and mapping planets meant "easy" money. I just remember Hawkes Gaming earning 15 million on his demonstration journey and figured "well if I do that a lot, I should be in the ballpark of a billion." Now I realize I was off a little bit.

Yeah, that's pretty optimistic. My best earning from a single expedition was about 900M when I started from Explorer's Anchorage at the Core, travelled to Beagle Point and returned to Colonia. Swung around the most travelled path so vast majority of the systems were first discoveries. I was already pretty experienced by then and knew the optimal systems with good likelyhood of valuable targets. Took my time going up there and then rushed back pretty fast because there was developments that made me want to refit my ship.

Road to Riches strikes me as a way to make first few millions to buy a proper ship with which you can then use for more lucrative methods.

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

Excuse bad spelling - typing on phone....

Assuming getting credits fast early in the game is your goal, as the previous post says, road to riches is great to raise about the first 25 to 30 million. You skip past a lot of cheaper fun ships and early mission running that is fun you you first start, but it lands you in an ASP Explorer quickly. With this ship it's big enough with a decent jump range that you can go laser mining which is quit hard work for 30+ million an hour or put passenger cabins in and take criminals on site seeing tours Robigo Mines outpost to Sothis system Sirius Astrometrics tourist beacon by planet A 5. Once you build your reputation with the factions 40 million an hour is possible in an ASP Explorer and that money gets you into a Python with no shields and passenger cabins up to 12 passengers each (no passenger lounge missions areire than that) and you can make 80+ million per hour doing this. You can also pick material rewards:
Modified Embedded Firmware top grade 5 which can be traded at materials trader in nearby CEOS Brunel Hub for lower grades. All 5 grades of these encoded materials are ingredients in engineering thruster upgrade and multi-canon upgrades.
Excuisite Focus Crystals also grade 5 manufactured material that can be traded for 1 to 4 grades. These crystals at all grades are needed for Guardian FSD Booster construction (up to additional 10.5 light year jump range depend on size of booster you make) and laser weapon upgrades.
This Robigo Mines run is the easiest way to make credits fast, but deep core mining and expert level laser mining with just the right ship and lots of practice can make 100 to 200 million per hour.
I can't make deep core asteroid mining work for me - never Fing the right asteroids, and laser mining is hard and dull work that pay no better than these easy Robigo passenger runs.

Note the Python needs the FSD upgrading to at least increased range 1 to make the Robigo round trip plotting fastest route all the way. You don't fit a fuel scoop for this job to maximise cabin space and profits.
Felicity Farseer can do this engineering after you sell her exploration data - 20 million worth for grade 5 FSD engineering access (back to road 2 riches), but if you want a size 5 FSD, better to get engineered FSD V1 from technology broker. Material requirements are steep, but Hawked Gaming videos can help you find a way to get them faster. Data Mined Wake exceptions - almost impossible to get without trader at encoded material trader with other more easily obtained encoded materials like those found at Jameson's crashed Cobra site not far from Diaguandri Ray Gateway where there is another encoded materials trader.
Google these things and track down YouTube video guides - Hawkes Gaming and Down To Earth Astronomy are my favourites.