Explorer Rank

[thegamingplumber]

How to increase my explorer rank?

[Lord Shadowfax]

Sell exploration data to Universal Cartographics

[thegamingplumber]

Originally posted by Shadowfax:

Sell exploration data to Universal Cartographics

Oh ok so thats how. Damn I have alot of exploration data to sell. I just have to be like 20ly away from the places I get it from right?

[DownSouth05]

The game really needs something more as far as exploration goes though. I pimped out a DBE and jumped 340 ly out. Took out the cargo racks and replaced them with fuel tanks so I had 50 tons of fuel. I use an A5 jump drive and an A3 ( could be a 2 ) fuel scoop. Anyway found a system with 35 new items and did level 2 and 3 scans on all of them and brought it all backto HIP 16607 ( my home ) as well as scanning all stops in between and all I made was 190,000 cr for over 2 hours of boredom. Then jumped into my Vulture and worked a Hazardous Resource site ( no cops ) and made 5.5 million cr. ( note I am rank 3 with the Empire and the Leader is political level 2 so I am getting a 30% boost to all bounties in control systems. )

[PlutonArioch]

Originally posted by Skinny_Legs:

The game really needs something more as far as exploration goes though.

... and all I made was 190,000 cr for over 2 hours of boredom.

Does it really need it though? I mean you obviously did something you did not want to do, and got a reward that was not enough for you. Others go out exploring for months, so whats the difference? I would guess, they actually like exploration.
Although it might be good to add some more interesting things to find on explorations, I dont think it needs to convice those that do not like it, to go exploring.
The payout is just there to not have those that want to explore suffer, because they like to explore.
This way everyone can do what they like, and still progress.

I went on a trip in my Courier, 1k ly out. I just went to see some things, and get away from busy space. When I came back, I handed in what I had bothered to scan, and made 1.5 million for a fun holiday, as well as some credit for new discoveries which will carry my name from now on.

[DownSouth05]

I actually like to explore as a break in the action. I know it seemed like I was doing something I didn't want to do. lol Trust me when I say " I don't want to do that" I mean it. What I was trying to convey was the exploration is pretty mundane. There is no sense of "discovery" A player goes to a system and "honks at the rocks" with whatever level scanner they have and a notice appears that X objects were discovered. Now a look at the #1 panel and there is a list of "unexplored" items. Ok lets target lock each one in order and get closer so the player can use the detailed surface scanner. I have come to discover that an asteroid belt pays nothing, even when I fly in close ennough to scan it. Suns, planets and moons. Fly in and scan, then move on. There is no discovery beyond planet, moon, sun or rocks. Yes, the 1st one to discover something is pretty cool but lets face it, how many of those are left out there. Exploring is, without a doubt the most uninspiering part of the game for me. But I still do it in the hopes of finding something interesting.

[thegamingplumber]

How much can you usually get going to different systems, scanning every unexplored signal, and then going to another and just keep on doing that?

[Eddo]

What they need to do with exploration is give us a lot more designs. After a couple day of exploring, I really don't see anything new to me anymore.

I guess with Horizons and landing, they could add to the scope of exploration. At the moment, you have to agree it is simply nothing more than jumping into a different system, press a button, maybe stare at a few planets for a while and move on.

[DownSouth05]

The most I have gotten for just one system was 175,000 cr however, the average is about 23,000. Rumor has it that the really good stuff is way out beyond the fringes of the human space. Now I really need to perfect my fuel scoop skills to risk getting into areas that have no stations at all. Just system after system of planets, moons and suns. The system I did today was HIP 63835. Trip out was from Empire home space and it was 247 ly at 11 jumps. Trip back was 347 ly as I was going to my home system at HIP 16607. I used up a fair amount of fuel transferring from my jump tanks to my reserve tanks exploring. The trip back looked iffy for fuel as many of the stars were Dwarf star and there was no fuel to scoop from them. I had to change the flight path from fastest to most economical which increased the trip from 13 jumps back to 77 jumps. I managed to find a system along the way that had a station to refuel at.

[Agony_Aunt]

While I think many explorers agree more is always good, Horizons has added more stuff to find if you go down to the surface of planets and look around, and more will come as FD add more stuff.

I think many of us are looking forward to the time when life on planets is added and we can go out, find earthlike workds and seek out strange new life and civilizations, to boldly go where noone has gone before.

OP - One thing when exploring, be sure to take a detailed suface scanner, that doubles the payout when you scan planets/stars individually. You can get around 70k for an earthlike. My best payout for a single system was around 300k+ excepting Sag A*, that one nets you almost 500k, but its a hell of a treck.

However, exploring isn't for everyone. Unless you group up, its very lonely, and many people do not see the beauty of the proc gen systems, instead they just see the same system over and over again. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say.

But if you are thinking of doing exploration for just the rank or the money, then you probably are not going to enjoy it. If you really must have the rank, then go to one of the neutron fields towards the core. Scan a few thousand neutron stars and you will get the rank (but its one way to give yourself space madness doing that).

Oh, also, driving around in your SRV will now slowly increase your exploration rank.

Took me exactly 1 year to achieve Explorer rank, and that was doing it roughly 50% of my playtime. Somewhere in the region of 400-500 hours. Of course, some of that was before they doubled the exploration payout and before SRVs existed. YMMV.

[Edelweiss ✿]

Originally posted by Eddo:

What they need to do with exploration is give us a lot more designs. After a couple day of exploring, I really don't see anything new to me anymore.

that's working as intended, they want the galaxy to be a 1:1 representation of the real thing, and there really isn't much variety out there

[PlutonArioch]

Alright, fair enough. Yes, it could use a bit more spice than just "honking" :D. Still I like to go out to see stuff, and the payout is not more than a bonus to me.
With horizons I had much to see on airless planets, and I would immagine exploring will get a lot more interesting when atmospheres are included, and more planetary stuff. Materials, gasses, life? And some really nice views. But we will see about that.

How many undiscovered places are out there? Quite a lot actually. I went through so many undiscovered systems on my trip that I really couldnt be bothered to even scan the star in all of them. Only those that had some interesting features. I still got a pretty long list of new discoveries credited.

Originally posted by KyloRen:

How much can you usually get going to different systems, scanning every unexplored signal, and then going to another and just keep on doing that?

The average is about 20k per system, but sometimes you find something much more valuable.
You can use this guide to estimate the values: http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/elite-dangerous/images/c/c6/Explorer_Infographic_000_ElDubardo.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150302224634

[Hakke]

i bought this game mainly because of the exploring.
i was expecting that the planets are spectacular to look at and that exploring would be amazing. from what i read here and from what i saw so far it wasnt very impressive...the gas giant i visited looked like a big solid marble...
so is it really all just colorful marbles and rocks ? nebulas ? amazing astroids ? are there comets ? what about black holes etc. ? visually impressive stuff ? unexpected things ?

lol i´m really total noob. excited about the big galaxy but at the same time intimdated by the apparent lack of interesting things to discover and the time i have to invest in exploring.

maybe shooting things is the safer way to some fun in this game ?

awww i really really want to be an explorer and scan stuff but i´m really afraid that i spend my game-evenings frustrato-working like i did in eve-online.

[ＤＨＣＰｃｏｎｆｉｇ]

Detailed surface scanner and the advanced scanner for a few Mil. Fly out of inhabited space and just scan everything. I usually do detailed surface scans on interesting stars or planets and don't bother flying around to stuff that isn't neat. A diamondback Explorer is a good ship for this because of the low cost and high jump range when upgraded.

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by Hakke:

i bought this game mainly because of the exploring.
i was expecting that the planets are spectacular to look at and that exploring would be amazing. from what i read here and from what i saw so far it wasnt very impressive...the gas giant i visited looked like a big solid marble...
so is it really all just colorful marbles and rocks ? nebulas ? amazing astroids ? are there comets ? what about black holes etc. ? visually impressive stuff ? unexpected things ?

lol i´m really total noob. excited about the big galaxy but at the same time intimdated by the apparent lack of interesting things to discover and the time i have to invest in exploring.

maybe shooting things is the safer way to some fun in this game ?

awww i really really want to be an explorer and scan stuff but i´m really afraid that i spend my game-evenings frustrato-working like i did in eve-online.

Its in development still. The detail on rocky worlds has really gone up now they have added proper terrain generation to them. Atmosphere worlds will get the next pass probably, so you will have to wait for that before they become really nice looking.

As for gas giants, they were actually worse back around release time, they already got one pass. They will probably get another one day when we get the ability to enter their atmospheres.

[Sapyx]

There are "interesting " things to discover and explore, especially if astronomy is your thing. Yes, there are black holes out there, and they're amongst the most valuable things to scan in the game, on par with an earth-like world. The giant black hole in the galactic core earns you some 300,000 credits.

Nebulas: yes, there's a whole galaxy full of nebulas, both random procedurally-generated ones and actual in-real-life nebuulas reproduced in the game. Nebulas don't look the full "Hollywood sci-fi" swirling clouds and all that, but neither do they look like how they'd look in real life, either (rather pale and boring); they're somewhere in between. They're popular "tourist" desitnations, as are the famous supermassive stars such as VY Canis Majoris.

Asteroids: they're there, but they're boring, and "worthless" to scan - as in, zero credits. Only the OCD-afflicted bother scanning them. Now that 1.5/2.0 comes with a filter, you can filter out the asteroid fields from your scan targets.

Comets: We're told that comets are actually in the game, as orbital abstractions - but we can't actually see them, yet. They're still working on "stuff to do around comets" like mining them etc and when they figure out what that is, they'll be added to a future update.

Visually impressive things: yes, there's that aplenty, if you want it. "Exploring for cash" doesn't require you to fly up close to anything or land on it, but "exploring to see the sights" is always an option.

Unexpected things: well, the stellar forge that randomly generated the galaxy is always tossing up the occasional "odd" thing: deep-blue water worlds without an atmosphere; golden-coloured ammonia worlds; tiny "gas giants" that are barely bigger thant he Earth; translucent gas giants orbiting super-bright stars, where you can see the star shining through the planet; stars spining so fast they resemble pulsars; ice planets that somehow stay "icy" at temperatures hot enough to melt lead; all sorts of things.

Aliens: they are, apparently, out there - we're still waiitng for official first contact. There are vast chunks of the galaxy, whole sectors each the size of Human-inhabited space, that are "permit-locked" - no-one is allowed to visit there yet. The Devs presumably have alien surprises in store for us out there somewhere.