If anyone is interested in trying out exploration in the game, here are some things I’ve learned:
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[li]The intermediate discovery scanner is worth grabbing at the earliest opportunity. While its range is only double that of the basic version, this translates to 8x the volume scanned. Ping it, ping it often, ping it when you’re bored, ping it when you’re scanning something else–sometimes you’ll get lucky.
[/li][li]The detailed surface scanner will net you a lot more income in the long run, once you pony up the necessary CR for it. It’s a good investment for if you’ve decided that you enjoy exploring, but otherwise skip it. It gets used automatically when you point your ship at something marked “unexplored” and get close enough to figure out what it is. If all you plan on doing is jumping into a system, pulsing your discovery scanner to mark everything within 500-1000 Ls, and then selling that for some quick, easy CR once you dock somewhere over 20 Ly away, this won’t help with that.
[/li][li]When you’re flying towards something marked “unexplored” trying to get into range to scan it, and you notice something else moving across the background starscape, change direction pronto to fly towards it and don’t stop pinging your discovery scanner until you mark it. You may think you’ll remember roughly where it was, and you may at that, but other times you’ll spend 5-10 minutes trying to find it again, whereas once something is on your contact list, it’s trivial to get back to it again even if you have to turn around and fly all the way back.
[/li][li]Periodically check your system map. Sometimes you’ll find gaps in planetary lists indicating you’ve missed something and more or less how far out you can expect them to be.
[/li][li]Most planets are found within an orbital plane, but not always.
[/li][li]Binary stars can be a total pain. When you jump into a system and scan the star (not just ping it), the system page will indicate its orbital period. If that number is less than about 100,000 days, you can usually get to it in a few (2-5) minutes worth of supercruise. If that number is in the millions of days, you’ll be traveling for a while. Also, when you target the original star, you’ll also get its orbital path. Usually the binary partner will be the brightest object on that path, and should be the same color as on the system map. With trinaries and more, well sometimes you’ll get lucky and have a close-orbiting pair, but if not I just skip 'em. Maybe once I get an advanced discovery scanner…
[/li][li]If you’ve been flying towards what you suspect is the binary partner for a while and start slowing down, then you’re on the right track. Once your speed drops down to 30c, you should be in range of a pulse from the intermediate discovery scanner.
[/li][li]A good fuel scoop is a must. Scoop when the scooping is good, as you might just run into a string of systems that won’t easily give up their hydrogen.
[/li][li]A good shield is helpful. In addition to the obvious reason, it will let you take more excess heat while scooping before a crash-stop.
[/li][li]I’ve posted this upthread, but this is a good video that will teach you how to use parallax to find planets and stars out of range of your scanner. Watch the HD version if you can.
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