Exploration is wildly random?

[Cosmo]

Hello,

I have to say i'm a big fan of this game, but one thing bugged me always. Exploration is wildly random and often unrewarding for hitting higher difficulty planets. When as a level 55 captain with the exocrawler, scouting officer and 25 points in Explorer and 35 in Warrior i endup loosing crew and health on 10 difficulty planets.. something is wrong. Also.in my experience it's close to useless to go for higher planets because the gain in artifacts and such is not enough to justify the losses taken. I usually farm the low areas since the high ones reap less bang for crew.

Am i doing something wrong?

ps: to note i am using about 15 crew per explore.

[Cory Trese]

There are many threads on the forum about learning exploration strategy. Let me try to find some of them in a bit and post some links. Explorer is a tricky class -- especially at Level 55 the Turn is often too high or the Rumors are wrong. Also, I have found many people who express this sentiment have exhausted most planets either by running exploration while in drought rumors, or are simply past the difficulty curve.

Some people like Explorer, others do not. Perhaps Bounty Hunter or Military Officer would be better?

[slayernz]

Explorer is awesome as a starting role - great for being able to get early money in a "relatively" safe way. Exploration at early stages (on the right planets) is pretty safe for you and since the crew are all wearing "expendable" red ensign shirts, they know what they've signed up for anyway.

By the middle stages of the game though (for me, that's turn 10,000+), you should have been able to move away from being an explorer and into more of a filthy-rich merchant. I guess it's like the gold-miners of old. When they struck it rich, they didn't continue to do their gold mining in hazardous environments. Instead, he took his fortune and got into safer business ventures

Level 55 will put you well past turn 10,000. At this stage of the game, exploration returns are very low ... and the only real way to hedge your bets is if you (a) only do exploration when there is the "dark age discovery" rumor, and (b) continue to feed the "Explorer" skill. I'm not even sure that the latter will get you dramatically better results.

[Cory Trese]

Level 55 probably also means hundreds if not thousands of previous exploration attempts. If the Character was playing on the Elite map, it is possible to spread those out enough to not exhaust anything, however, it would take a dedicated strategy.

I'm guilty on many games of tapping out several planets early on during rumors to get rich quick, and then regretting my wasteful ways after turn 15K

[slayernz]

Ya know - I've looked at the rosters of my characters, and nowhere on the main screens does it show the character class. You actually have to scroll through the ship log to the very beginning to see what you are ... or at least that's what I know (which isn't much).

I looked at each of the recent alive/deceased captains and found very few of them had more than a couple-hundred exploration attempts. By then they'd already moved on to bigger more adventurous things.

[Cosmo]

Let me explain. While i did start the game as an explorer, i haven't done a lot of exploring.. under maybe 100 trips. I did other stuff in the meantime and i kept having the explore thing in the background.. 'one day i'll be high enough level to be able to do it'. But that level never came.

Been reading around and there's a lot of background calculus being done that i was not aware of, even after reading the FAQ. Like the max crew you can handle being charisma plus intimidate.

I didn't especially want to make xp out of it, or get filthy rich out of it, just to be able to do it competently and feel like my invested points in skills were not in vain.

And a bit offtopic, there is a lot of lack of information about stats in the game. I did not see any mention of what ship speed/agility does for example.. and that's not counting what i see on the forums here in regards to counting stats to figure out how much x you need, stuff that i just kind of winged and was saying 'more is better'.

[Fenikso]

I had similar problems with Explorer. The main problem for me was increasing game difficulty and me not keeping up with the pace. It is one of the main game principles -- as time passes, it is more and more difficult.

I used a table "Enemy ship levels during the course of gameplay" posted on wiki to find that I should probably be something around 10x bigger level. No suprise there that I was unable to Explore anything with much success.

[blackgauntlet]

Same here. My first Captain (now drifting in the bowels of the Void, no doubt) was an Explorer (I love Exploration... until ST proved me otherwise), with Exploration at 40+ on Challenging. Earlier planets with lower difficulties (less than 10) got me healthy supplies of artifacts which I converted to cash quickly (with a trade permit, of course) in my Steel Song homeworld.

10 years later, with a huge amount of experience under the belt, a really fat wallet, 19 ships of various purposes in dry-dock and flying in the largest vessel (fully modified to ensure maximum cargo space and additional W/F storage) money can buy, I signed up a hundred battle-tested and horny crew members, maximising their numbers to 150.

With the 1st rumor that there was some "discovery of the dark ages", my engines roared and we were there in a jiffy. I sent the maximum number of crew to search with me on the planet (Level 18). It was the 1st time I tried exploring on a planet with this high a level. Having the WRONG impression that I would have a 50% chance of a successful expedition if my skill was 18 (therefore, my chances should be exponentially higher since I am way beyond 18), I was in my comfort zone.

So, click "Explore". BAM! Half the crew died from an eruption. My captain lost a hand.

Thinking that it was just my pure dumb luck, I clicked "Explore" again. BAM! More than half of the crew were eaten by Aliens (F*cking Aliens!!!). My captain was wounded by some kinda viral agent.

Believing in the Monte Carlo method, I clicked "Explore" once more. BAM!!! More crew were killed by some "ingenious ancient trap" laid by Aliens ( Bloody F*cking Aliens!!!). My Captain lost his other hand.

I stared in disbelief. Did I forget to save my game earlier and using the Captain who was 10 years younger? Did I accidentally start with a new character? I checked my data... Nope. So, WTF?

I was left with 15 men now, 10% of the number of crew I started off with. I clicked "Explore" again. It was do or die. I figured that if I continued on with my stats, which basically left me half-assed in combat and incompetent in trading, I might as well restart a new character if I could not even Explore with much success as an EXPLORER.

After that attempt, I find myself left with 1 crew (whom must be feeling REALLY happy since he does not need to share our loot amongst 149 other guys) and missing, get this: 3 hands!

Then, I used a Military guy, using the same vessel but armed to the teeth with guns and torpedoes. This captain survived the last Captain by more than 40 years at a higher difficulty level. Thus, we can conclude... Explorers suck ass.

[phantum]

Exploring is a lot more difficult later in the game, and like any other class if you want to be successful you need to invest all your game play into a successful explore strategy. It is not a hobby, it is a profession, and like any other profession in star trader you will need to:

1. Devote most of your experience into the appropriate skills at the expense of things like combat.
2. Base your exploring on rumours ( like a trader for instance does not expect big returns unless trading with a rumour.
3. Use all your opportunities, both explore and harvest
4. Select appropriate ship and equipment, officers and crew.
5. Experiment with the mechanics of the game to understand how it works, vary the number of crew you send v's difficulty, try without the equipment upgrades if you really think they are not helping.
5a: Recognise when the poor results are due to the random element of lucky dice, and when the game is trying to tell you you are doing something wrong.
6. Know that this game is designed to get harder at a faster rate than you improve, with the idea that this makes it more fun to keep playing to try and get to a higher level takes more than just extra time. Other games make it so you get past a certain level and you are omnipotent. To play to a higher level you need to use everything, every corner of the map, every skill point, every rumour, knowledge of the game. You are never safe, there is always a risk things go bad, and you are rewarded with a fresh start.

Explorer seems to be easy to start with, because the strategy is so obvious, and you don't even need rumours. Compared with the other classes which seem more difficult (but are actually not when you know the right strategy). Then people get into difficulty because they get used to exploring in a world that has a high difficult, without a rumour, and surviving.

Final tip: 7. Each planet has finite resources, and if over explored can be permanently empty, no matter what you do or how you do it. The game has a subtle way to discourage you from trying again.

One of our well known pirates verified this to win a bet by atomising such a planet and counting each atom found nothing with an atomic number 16, winning the bet. Explorers are known to very stubborn with their repeated explore attempts, and the one who lost this dramatic bet handed over something slightly more valuable to his descendants than his right arm...

[blackgauntlet]

Sept 18, 2011 8:20:08 GMT -5 phantum said:

One of our well known pirates verified this to win a bet by atomising such a planet and counting each atom found nothing with an atomic number 16, winning the bet. Explorers are known to very stubborn with their repeated explore attempts, and the one who lost this dramatic bet handed over something slightly more valuable to his descendants than his right arm...

Yeah... like THREE arms.

[Fenikso]

I am thinking about the idea of playing the Explorer once again. So is there any strategy / way / hints / possibility to get to the point when I am able to successfully explore some Hazard 20+ Explore 20+ planets and make it pay off? From what I have read so far it seems that there is no point of exploring anything bigger than 8.

[Cory Trese]

No that is a total over-generalization and if you play by that rule of thumb there won't be a lot of XP and you might over-tax the lower level planets, thus increasing mid-game difficulty unnecessarily.

I suggest that you do some experimentation as you advance and not make too many board generalizations. Explorer is playable but the game is like BlackJack and card counting, knowing when to pass are big parts of the game.

[Fenikso]

I am sorry. I am reading your post over and over again and I am unable to understand it. Please correct me if I did not understand it.

"It is well possible, but you cannot rely on any strategy. You have to experiment and find opportunities yourself. This cannot be generalized to the point of usefulness as it is so complex. Like a BlackJack and card counting."

[Cory Trese]

If you have read all of the explorer guides and tried all the ladders of planets people have posted I think you'll see that comment is incorrect, at least in some people's opinions!

Explorer uses a skill check and is modified by several factors discussed in other guides.

You said "From what I have read so far it seems that there is no point of exploring anything bigger than 8."

My current character disagrees. I think you need to explore on the Elite map when playing in Elite.

[Cory Trese]

Anyway, I am not sure much can be said on the forum in a way that is effective for other players.

I will add a to-do item to compile a list of the latest Explorer Guides and post that to the blog for everyone's use. Hopefully that will be enough to get you going again on Explorer, which is one of my favorite classes!