This guide has details, hints, and suggestions for gamers who have done quite a bit of exploring and surveying. There’s also a part about fundamental things that might slip your notice, even if you’ve been playing for a while.
Finding More In Your Travels
Some explorers find space travel dull because they haven’t figured out how to spot the interesting sights like encounters and locations. Space is much more fascinating than it appears initially.
Don’t rush through travel. When you reach a system, activate your scanner in space and take a look around. You’ll spot nearby locations and encounters that aren’t displayed on the map, along with nearby moons and the other planets in the system. Other planets or moons with encounters or missions will have a pulsing circle (on PC). Locations on the current planet with intriguing stuff, like encounters or missions, will also pulse when you hover over them with your mouse.
Sustaining A Career Surveying as an Explorer
Running survey missions is key to maintaining a lengthy career. The Constellation board might seem glitchy, running out of missions quickly, but you can actually keep it active for an extended period. Despite regular mission boards not offering many survey missions, there are more regular mission boards than the obvious ones.
Even though it appears to be bugged, I suspect the Constellation board is working as intended. Both Constellation and regular mission boards seem to cover a specific region of space or a pool of planets. To ensure a continuous flow of missions, refrain from surveying planets unless a survey mission directs you there. In my current run at Level 29, about three-fourths of the missions have been survey missions, and the original board in the basement still keeps generating missions.
When your original Constellation board runs out, create new boards in outposts beyond the range of the original board. Ever wondered about the usefulness of outposts? これはそれです.
While most cities and shipyards have regular mission boards, civilian outposts often have them too. The civilian outpost boards appear to draw from a smaller region but do occasionally offer survey missions. Mission boards in the same system seem to pull from the same pool – city and shipyard boards in the same star system usually (いつも?) have the same missions.
Strategies For Efficient Survey
Construct an outpost with a military scanner as soon as you land. This scanner greatly enhances your ability to detect flora, fauna, and inorganics over a much larger distance.
まず最初に, check if the planet has an ocean, and if the ocean contains fauna (even if it gives 0% completion rather than outright saying you can’t land there). そうであれば, prioritize exploring these areas since they are more challenging to find. Land in a coastal region, identified by the scanner saying “Savanna (海岸)” instead of just “Savanna.” Open the surface map, locate the Ocean (the flat region), and head there.
Once you reach the shore, establish an outpost and military scanner. After moving out of its range, dismantle them, and set them up again further up or down the shore. This method is much quicker than running along the coast.
When you switch locations, examine the map for the biome with the lowest percentage completion.
Opt for landing in boundary regions—locations at the edge of two biomes or the intersection of three biomes. These spots will feature flora and fauna from all 2-3 バイオーム, enhancing your surveying efficiency.
Finding Rich Outpost Sites
Explore boundary locations within or near areas displaying the desired resources on the planet map—they usually contain a mix of inorganic resources from different biomes. Biome boundaries are easily noticeable on the surface, allowing you to travel along them and find sites with a variety of resources.
To enhance your scanning capabilities, construct an outpost and a military scanner, providing yourself with a greater scan distance. If the initial location doesn’t yield the desired results, consider tearing down and possibly rebuilding.
When it comes to locating hard-to-find creatures:
- Check the ocean.
- Look in the air—they’re sometimes small and hard to see.
- Explore caves (はい, that elusive creature might be hiding in a cave).
- In the case of tiny creatures, try looking at night and use a power boost pack to gain elevation. Ensure you build an outpost and military scanner for an extended scanning range.
- 他のすべてが失敗した場合, consider switching to a different biome; 時々, creatures are more common elsewhere or easier to spot.
Well-known Stuff You Might Have Overlooked
You can mark a location on the map with a single marker, appearing as a small diamond or box on the compass’s edge. Scan a Point of Interest (POI) marker while on the planet surface for a more detailed version. The new POI marker for landmarks and planet traits can provide clues about the type of trait you might find. 例えば, one resembling pizza wedges often indicates a geophysical phenomenon like Colossal Shards or Energetic Rifting.
While most vendors offer identical prices, two Constellation members stand out. Vladimir pays the most for surveys, while Noel offers the best rates for organic resources.
To harvest from vents (gases), seeps (液体), or live creatures (with the Zoology skill), make sure you’re out of the scanner. Vents and seeps might seem pointless if you’re always scanning during your first run.
Gathered organics usually weigh less than the outpost-produced generic kind (例えば, ファイバ [根] 対. ファイバ); the generic type typically weighs 0.5, while the gathered kind can be as light as 0.1.
Load your harvest into the ship without boarding. Access the cargo hold outside, near the ship (内で 250 メートル), through the Ship overview window (where you view the Crew) by opening the Cargo Hold (default F key on PC). This saves on loading screens and trips back to your ship. This method also works when you’re in the exterior parts of a POI; 例えば, you can unload loot during the infiltration of a pirate base.
Even when in the pilot’s seat, you can use this method of ship access—there’s no need to get up and go to the ship’s hold to swap items to or from your personal inventory, avoiding the getting up/sitting down cutscenes.
ヒントとコツ
To easily locate a specific inorganic material for harvesting, visit an unsurveyed planet with that material, and scan only that type. All nodes of the desired material will appear green, while all other (unwanted) nodes will be blue. This makes it easy to identify without the need to mouse over each node.
While traveling, your ship’s energy allocation might annoyingly reset at times. You can rectify this during loading screens. Take note of the allocation briefly displayed before the loading screen starts. During the loading/travel screen animation, you can reallocate energy, even though you can’t see the energy allocation display (so you have to do it from memory). Adjust your shields or reallocate to/from weapons as needed before the loading screen finishes.
Bugs Affecting Exploration and Survey
時々, the system assigns the same name to two different plants or creatures. しかし, they inhabit distinct biomes, making it more confusing than an actual problem.
In boundary areas, の “Biome Complete” tag can sometimes break. It might register as complete even when you’re looking right at flora/fauna that are not entirely surveyed.
Completed flora/fauna may occasionally appear incomplete (hollow and blue) on your scanner. しかし, scanning them will still reward you with XP for completing the already surveyed creature.
There’s a potential issue where your game can run out of Item IDs, leading to a crash. Item IDs are numerous but limited, and currently, they don’t get recycled after their associated item is destroyed. This might pose problems for explorers aiming to traverse the entire universe. One way to avoid this bug is by starting a New Game+ (NG+), but keep in mind that your exploration progress will be reset.
More details can be found ここ.