Exploration and Mapping
13 Oct 2021Aylin Ouyang
Well, the drive to donate materials for the Colonia Bridge project ended a couple of days ago, so I'm back to hauling "normal" trade goods (usually some mineral or metal, those usually pay well). The profits are down but I guess I shouldn't be greedy, even as much as I liked seeing the credits roll in. Less fun was hearing about pirates trying to ambush all the commanders coming in; I got interdicted once by a clumsy, and probably new, pirate as it was the easiest interdiction I've had to foil. My heart beat didn't even go up by much this time!Today, while at Darwin Orbital taking a break and letting the goods get unloaded, I walked by the Universal Cartographics office, and realised that I meant to check them out but kept on forgetting. Apparently they buy exploration data off you if you have gathered any, so I went in to ask around and get a feel for the work involved and the rates they're paying.
What I found out is that the amounts they pay aren't spectacular unless you make a first discovery of something important (important in this case means profitable, with Earth-like worlds paying the most), but data gathering can be done almost passively, and it's like a little bit extra. It also doesn't require an expensive ship to get a good start, unlike with trading (or a mercenary), so it's easy to jump into.
So a ship can have up to three scanner modules, two of which are part of every ship: The Discovery Scanner and the Full Spectrum System Scanner. The former when activated scans the astronomical objects in the system and marks out their rough location. The latter is then used to analyse the signals from the objects and identify them from the filtered signal scans.
Finally there's the Detailed Surface Scanner, which has to be installed as a module on its own. It sends probes to the surface planets and moons to map them. To me, it sounds like the stuff of frontier dreams: Find uninhabited systems, then send probes to the planets to map them out, living a nomadic life.
Well, as much of a nomadic life within the time lime you're allowed to live in zero-g.
I figured since I had some room to spare on Cubeo's Gift, I'd install the DSS and see how it goes. Maybe scan some of the higher-value planets while I'm making some trade drops, and get some extra credits. Or just wander the systems a bit when I get tired of running trade routes. Let's see how this goes!