How good is the profit of exploration?

[Snix]

I am the exploring type of a person, always curious.
As of last week, i decided that instead of struggling with combat capabilities, i would start exploring full time instead.
Right now i am about 7,000 light years away from Sol, i am planning to reach the Sag A* in 2 weeks.
Now obviously once i reach Sag A*, i will not start planning my return to Sol, i will actually start looking for more Black Holes, and perhaps nuetron stars to get some good profit once i come back.
I will be visiting docents of systems each day and making a "first discovery profit" in each one.

1. How much do you think i would earn approximately when i return to Sol in about 6-8 weeks?
2. Is exploring a full time a good income if i enjoy it much more than anything else?
3. Once i got beyond the point of 4k-5k LY from Sol, i've stopped encountering systems which were "discovered by x", does this mean that i am the first person ever to discover this particular star system and it will show that it was discovered by me?
4. When you make a first discovery, do i have to make a detailed scan of the stars which i discovered if i want to leave the "discovered by X" mark? or simply using the discovery tool and knowing which stuff is in orbit good enough without a detailed scan?
5. I have bought the surface scanner, does it act as a passive for the detailed scanner or do i have to use it somehow differently?
6. What is a data link scanner?
7. last question but it was bugging me really a whole lot when i started getting into exploration:

How the heck do people know if there are more stars which are out of reach from your advanced discovery scan? I couldn't afford the infinite one, but still.
There are sometimes suns which are as far as 300k or even 700k LS from the center of the system, and since i have the advanced discovery scan, my way knowing if there are more stars was trying to get as far as 2,000 LS from the center and head back, while really focusing on the screen and try to see if there are any distant stars which are actually moving pixel after pixel on the monitor, if they do then they are an actual star (which i need to fly to and scan) and not some star part of an image that the game generated.

Sorry for all the annoying questions, i am still quite new to this game especially the exploration part.

[Turd Ferguson]

1) if you're doing 1st level scans - maybe a few tens of milions. If you're stopping to do level 3 scans of ELW's ammonia worlds, and terraformables, potentially 100's of millions

2) it can be. you don't NEED a lot of money if all you want to do is explore so maybe you won't make as much if you look in terms of credits/hour but you don't really need much if you're out exploring...and if it's what you enjoy and you're making enough credits to do it, what does it matter? once you've built your ship and got all your modules engineered, all you need money for is repairs and restocking when you dock.

3) if you're the first person to SELL that data then yes. seeing it first doesn't do anything. getting back to a station and selling it does. you get a bonus of 2x payout for any first discovery.

4) yes you have to do a detailed discovery to have it tagged as discovered by you

5) the detailed surface scanner is exactly the right thing. you will get more money (and more info about the bodies you scan). all you have to do is have it when you do your detailed scans (they're called level 3 scans)

6) it's for interfacing with data ports on ships you might encouter. derilict megaships have data points you can scan and get information from them that tell some of the story of how they ended up there. I believe you get some money for collecting that data (it's intel data you can sell)

7) you don't. if you don't have an ADS and it's an uninhabited system, you just don't know. Some stars move so slowly you'll never see them move...and they could be so far away that it would take an hour to get to it....IF you're right so for all practical purposes, if it's outside your scan range, forget about it.

also, ALL the stars you see are actual in-game stars. it's not a random skybox. it is calculated from your position in the galaxy and every one of those stars is an actual star you can travel to...and that background will change for every jump to reflect your position in the galaxy.

[fUn*z13l5ch31b3]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1088207134

[Ottomic]

Originally posted by Nik:

How good is the profit of exploration?

Stupid good. I just made 80 mil from a 3kly long range passenger mission.

[Snix]

Every single amonia / earth like / water world / metal content world / gas giants i see, i scan.
I am very lazy to make a detailed scan because i always have to get really up close to some of them which wastes like 5-10 minutes of travel time, although i cant let go of such handsome amount of credit.
Then i guess its kind of ideal to assume i will earn a good 200mil cr if i really do my best doing lvl 3 scans of the stars i mentioned above.
How is earning 100mil cr possible from just exploring so much? if a water world is worth like 30k cr for example, i need to scan like 100 of them to rougly get 3mil cr, maybe 5-6 for the first discovery.

Also, how do i know if a planet is terraformable? The fact that 'extrateresrial life can evolve' or "human can inhabit it" is what it means, i still don't understand how does one simply knows if its terraformable or not.
Do i need to read it's description and details if i want to know whether it is or not?

[Finn]

me and a friend took a 100-180ly trip.. while he scanned everything i didnt have a scanner, when we got to our desination i earned 400k off of his dicoverys just travel long distants scanning everything

[Gharrie]

1: Depends on how many high value planets you find (e.g. terraformable high metal content/water worlds, earth-likes and ammonia worlds) and if you have a detailed surface scanner, make sure you have a detailed surface scanner. A water world goes from an average of 125k > 301k if you use a detailed surface scanner (290k->700k if terraformable).

2: It can be quite profitable although it depends on what you find in the system. Neutron star fields will yield fast income, but it's mind numbing bussiness. If you go above or below the galactic plane you tend to start finding unexplored systems, which adds a 50% bonus CR income on top of the sale price if scanned with a detailed surface scanner.

7: Not really, unless you can eyeball them. That said flying 300kls will put a dent in your income as you jump several systems in this time, I only really ever do it if there are 3-4 water worlds with an earth-like nearby and I need to go afk for a while.

https://postimg.org/image/lquhdv87d/ here's a handy little visual guide for celestial body values if you are interested, courtesy of CMDR Fru. Note that values from planets also depend on their size; finding a large terraformable high metal content planet will pay more than a small one.

[Vuud]

I took a trip from the bubble out to Maia and back with a detailed surface scanner, when I got back I raked in around 3,000,000 in UC data alone.

[Sapyx]

Terraformability for the most part depends on whether or not the planet is in the "goldilocks zone" of the star. By comparison, Earth and Mars are both in the "Goldlocks zone" of Sol. Sol is a G2 class star; as a general rule of thumb, any Class G star will have about the same goldilocks zone (500-800 Ls). Cooler stars have a zone closer to the star, hotter stars, the zone is further away. Estimating the zone locations is complicated when there are more than 2 stars present in the system.

The only other major factor of concern is the surface gravity, which is determined by the planet's mass and the physical size of the planet. Below 0.08 Earth-masses is generally too small to terraform; above 4 Earth-masses is probably going to be too big. Any solid world inside the Goldilocks zone, and inside that mass-range, is likely to be terraformable.

Don't forget moons. If a world in the goldilocks zone has a moon and the moon is bigger than 0.08 earth-masses, it might be terraformable too.