NPC exploration

[Falcrack]

Currently, when ordering your ships to explore, they do a pretty pathetic job of it. Here are some thoughts I had so as to make it a bit more interesting, with different behaviors tied to the piloting skill level of your captain.

0-1 stars
-No exploration as an option

2 stars
-Cannot use the long range scanner, but manually uncovers search areas using the standard radar
-Will fly to each station it encounters in the search radius (defined by the size of the bubble as seen on the map)

3 stars
-Uses the long range scanner with 50% efficiency (100 km range)
-Can be instructed to drop satellites near stations (no attempt to maximize coverage)
-Larger search radius bubble than 2 star captains

4 stars
-Long range scanner has 75% efficiency (150 km range)
-Will drop satellites near stations, attempts to minimize the number of satellites dropped so as to have as few satellites as possible cover the maximal amount of stations
-Will also investigate data vaults and wormholes, by dropping nav beacons labelled as “wormhole” or “data vault” at places where it discovers these.
-Larger search bubble radius than 3 stars captains

5 stars
-Long range scanner has 100% efficiency (200 km range)
-All of the above 4 star level option, plus the following:
-Can be set to automatically explore the universe, and automatically go to stations and buy new satellites.
-Will not miss uncovering stations in any given sector it is set to explore.
-Largest search bubble size

[grapedog]

From what I remember from a few weeks ago, the devs are aware of the issue with the explore command, and it's on one of their burners. Not sure if it's a front burner, or back burner... but they're aware of the issues.

[Adalphage]

Nice suggestion. I really think captain stars should matter in their capabilities (not just 3 stars you can do something at full efficiency, 2 stars you are useless). However, the devs need to work in the crew leveling / hiring system before implement something like that.

[Tali$]

5 stars
-Long range scanner has 100% efficiency (200 km range)
-All of the above 4 star level option, plus the following:
-Can be set to automatically explore the universe, and automatically go to stations and buy new satellites.
-Will not miss uncovering stations in any given sector it is set to explore.
-Largest search bubble size

5 star captains actually exist in this game!? I can count the 4 star captains with one hand in my game that started at 3 stars with 40 hours of playtime -

[grapedog]

5 stars
-Long range scanner has 100% efficiency (200 km range)
-All of the above 4 star level option, plus the following:
-Can be set to automatically explore the universe, and automatically go to stations and buy new satellites.
-Will not miss uncovering stations in any given sector it is set to explore.
-Largest search bubble size

5 star captains actually exist in this game!? I can count the 4 star captains with one hand in my game that started at 3 stars with 40 hours of playtime -

I'm at 330 hours playtime, or more... and I don't think I've gotten a single 5 star captain yet, and still only a handful, less than 10-15, 4 star captains.... and I have at least 150+ ships roaming around.

[Falcrack]

5 stars
-Long range scanner has 100% efficiency (200 km range)
-All of the above 4 star level option, plus the following:
-Can be set to automatically explore the universe, and automatically go to stations and buy new satellites.
-Will not miss uncovering stations in any given sector it is set to explore.
-Largest search bubble size

5 star captains actually exist in this game!? I can count the 4 star captains with one hand in my game that started at 3 stars with 40 hours of playtime -

I'm at 330 hours playtime, or more... and I don't think I've gotten a single 5 star captain yet, and still only a handful, less than 10-15, 4 star captains.... and I have at least 150+ ships roaming around.

Well my outline was just a proposal, and also kinda assumes they will fix the leveling and crew gaining experience at some point too...