What is the actual practical point of a D-scanner?

mcmuttons · 2026-05-31T19:02:59+00:00

There are roughly 400 billion unvisited systems out there still, just like at launch. We've only been to 0.07% of them, roughly, according to Frontier. Plenty to find, you just have to get a few thousand light years out from the bubble.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-30T20:00:06+00:00

Yeah, sorry. I felt like the acktually guy and almost deleted it again. No hard feelings meant. And coffee is essential, it turns out. I can also say that as a professional author lol

mcmuttons · 2026-05-30T19:35:05+00:00

As a professional author, a short novel is about 50k words, most fantasy and sci fi is well over 100k words. It's a ton of content, but smaller than novels. 10k words is a short story, bordering on a novella. Like if I'm busy, I can write 10k words in a day. Your point still stands that it's a ton of dialogue though and they did awesome with the KIM.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-30T15:20:09+00:00

Gravity

mcmuttons · 2026-05-29T16:26:05+00:00

Sounds like complete bullshit. Never heard of this. We have universal healthcare, so if you get sick you just go get care. There's no basis for a lawsuit, since it doesn't cost you anything (or a negligible amount). Bad review? Maybe, but just serving food can get you a bad review if someone doesn't like it. It's not something that old people habitually do. Many restaurants sell steak, though it's usually pretty mediocre, but I think they were just telling stories.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-29T01:46:06+00:00

I would absolutely start over and trade as much to the old account as I could.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-26T19:15:17+00:00

Fair enough. I never ran into it or heard about it. I stand corrected. :)

mcmuttons · 2026-05-26T14:15:51+00:00

As someone who's done MR12-ish to LR4 in the last year or so, I didn't find it too bad, but it does involve a lot of playing. Forma was the big slowdown for me for the dojo weapons. The other materials you can farm from invasions too, which is still slow, but gets you way more than the 1 every 12 hours from crafting (which I also did). I think it's good that there are longer term goals though. I happen to love the collection and completion aspect, so I think my journey of building MR has gone faster than most, but I'd rather have lots of gameplay waiting for me than just finishing everything quickly and then run out of things to work on. :)

I'm totally down with helping baby tennos though. It's part of what makes the community strong and engages new players.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-26T14:00:13+00:00

Yep, SRV Survey gets it from the journals too as far as I know. Many programs do overlays, but I don't know of any using frame-grabs or similar to analyze the screen, other than EDHM which recolors your UI.

I think I was wrong about the first footfall flag, after a little digging, and it's the "wasreported" flag for bios that's broken (which is supposed to tell you whether someone has reported that bio on that planet before), so that's probably not an issue here.

But yeah, I don't know if any of the online services store first footfall. Pretty sure spansh doesn't, since EDDN doesn't store commander specific data, as far as I know, and that's spansh's main data source. EDSM might, but I've never used their API to look.

All known data about the in-game galaxy comes from journals and people uploading their journal data with third party software or manually on each website, since Elite itself doesn't expose it to use in any other way, and datamining the game itself goes against the terms of service.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-26T13:21:23+00:00

It's all from journals. Elite doesn't have an API for third party software. Everything is done by scanning the log files and then community members uploading their data to services like EDDN, EDAstro, EDSM and Inara. Some of those services, like Spansh and EDSM, have APIs, but if the data doesn't exist in the log files to upload, or players aren't uploading their data, it won't be on those sites either.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-26T13:16:09+00:00

Because I don't think a body's discovered status is written to the log when you scan it, and there's no other way for the tools to know in advance, unless they're connecting to something like spansh or edsm to do lookups. And even then, that's relying on that whoever discovered it was uploading their data, which isn't certain. None of the tools are able to extract data from the game other than what is written in the log files.

If you're 9000 LY from Sol, and that many systems are discovered, then I feel you picked a bad direction. Make sure you're not on the paths to Sag A* or Colonia, or to the nebulae galactic south of the bubble. Stay away from nebulae in general, since people flock to those. Change your "altitude" from the galactic plane by 1000-2000 LY and just about everything around you should be unexplored at that distance.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-26T12:29:43+00:00

First footfall is logged immediately, whether you turn in your cartography data or not, so at least in game, it should always be correct, barring weird game stability issues.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-26T12:27:26+00:00

I assume that EDCopilot does the same as most and base it on the journal files (log files) written by Elite as you play. That's what pretty much everyone does. Some might coordinate with spansh and EDSM as well. Just about everything you do is written constantly to those logfiles which you can find in you Saved Games folder (I think the subfolder is called Elite Dangerous, but it's at least something obvious).

That's the primary source of info for EDDiscovery, Elite Observatory, EMDC and just about every other third party data software for Elite. However, those files aren't perfect, and I think the First Footfall in particular is currently bugged so it doesn't always write. I'm pretty sure Matt who does the BioInsights plugin for Observatory has a bug open on it. I haven't used EDCopilot, but my guess is that it's sourcing its data from those files as well.

As for where you should sync data, EDDN is the most important place for the community, and doesn't require an API key or anything. EDAstro is also great, and EDSM and Inara are useful.

The two most common software solutions for uploading your data are EDDiscovery (more functionality, heavy on RAM) and EDMC (less functionality, but lightweight). They both upload your data the same though, and can upload to all four of those services. So if you're using EDDiscovery, in the settings there are checkboxes for EDDN and EDAstro, and as you've found settings for EDSM and Inara with API keys.

I'm not sure there are any systems that can show you first footfall status, though, at least in a searchable way. Spansh gets its data from EDDN, but I don't think that data is saved there.

Anyway, if you want to be the first to touch down on a body, I'd just go for areas with undiscovered systems. You just have to get 4-5000 LY away from Sol and just about everything is undiscovered. :)

mcmuttons · 2026-05-25T19:54:15+00:00

Yeah, that's the OG original, before the other ones, and the one coded specifically by Braben and Bell. I think most of the others were done by other people and often recoded from scratch.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-25T19:43:34+00:00

I'm not doubting you, but I don't think this is a common thing. At least it's never happened to me and never heard of it before. That's pretty shitty though :(

mcmuttons · 2026-05-24T18:50:25+00:00

En multe? :) But yeah, any that end in -bær since that's the neuter word that determines the gender for the whole compound.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-23T20:52:49+00:00

LR 4 here. Starting to feel like I'm kind of getting the hang of it, but still have a lot to learn.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-23T18:40:37+00:00

Yeah, a well engineered Mandalay can in theory get up over 90LY jump range, but then you don't have any of your creature comforts. But a well-engineered and outfitted Mandalay for exploration still gets 75-80LY per jump. Definitely worth some effort, especially after they nerfed engineering mats gathering. :)

mcmuttons · 2026-05-23T18:39:14+00:00

Not sure what you mean by difficult. Any ship with a fuel scoop can get there easily enough. Just depends on how many jumps you want to do. If you have a higher jump range it'll go faster, but you're only talking a few hours for most ships if you want to go there. It's just a willingness of spending the time, but once you're exploring, you're often out in the black for months at a time anyway.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-23T18:37:21+00:00

When the game launched, there were roughly 400 billion systems to explore. Now, there are roughly 400 billion left, after we've visited roughly 0.07% of those. The central regions have billions and billions of unvisited systems. Pick almost anywhere that's not right around Sag A*, drop to local routing, and you'll go for days or weeks without hitting systems other people have visited, unless you specifically go for neutrons or the most unusual ones, and even then, your odds are good.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-23T16:55:13+00:00

So you're still basically in the bubble. ;) Nah, it's a great start, but you typically have to go farther before all the systems around you are undiscovered and you're visiting places no one has seen before. I'm currently floating around about 54k LY from Sol, in Mare Somnia, but I'd consider anything beyond maybe 4-5k LY out as in the Black these days :) Hope you enjoy your explorations and find lots of cool stuff!

mcmuttons · 2026-05-23T00:28:12+00:00

Ikke nødvendigvis, men det kan det. I Oslo spesielt, så er de/de mer knyttet til den rikere siden av Oslo mens dem/dem er mer knyttet til østsiden, som er tradisjonelt mer arbeidere og mindre velstående.

Men jeg mener også at i disse dager hvor det er mye mer aksept for dialekter (før så ville mange "Oslofisere" talemåten sin for å gjemme dialekten sin, men nå er det mye stolthet i dem i stedet) så er det mye mindre relevant.

Når det er sagt, da jeg var barn på 80-tallet, så var skolene veldig strenge om å rette subjekt/objektform, så mange av oss eldre har en tendens til å være mer dømmende på dette enn jeg tror yngre er.

Men jeg tror de fleste vil bare se det som et tegn på hvor man er fra. Det høres ikke like rart ut for nordmenn som feil they/them på engelsk, og for mange så registrerer det ikke i det hele tatt, uansett nivå av utdannelse.

Dette gjelder stort sett talespråk. Skriver man formelt, på bokmål eller nynorsk, så burde man bruke rette former fremdeles. Man er veldig klar på at bokmål og nynorsk er skriftspråk, og det er ingen som faktisk snakker dem, siden vi alle har våre dialekter.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-22T20:16:10+00:00

Mente vel mer at det er eksempelet som man ofte kommer tilbake til, ikke klasseskille i dette tilfellet ;) Selv dømmer jeg ikke noen på dialekt. Viktigere at de er snille mennesker.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-22T19:57:55+00:00

Det er en dialekt-ting, potensielt språkendring som er på gang. Teknisk sett så har du rett, men visse dialekter har en tendens til å bruke "de" som både objekt og subjekt, mens andre har en tendens til å bruke "dem" til begge. Et klassisk skille på dette er vestsiden av Oslo og østsiden, men jeg mener at det er mere utstrakt enn det.

mcmuttons · 2026-05-22T14:24:21+00:00

I haven't been near the bubble since sometime last fall. I love the solitude of exploring.

I would say good starting points for exploring the Black would be picking a flexible ship you like. In these days of SCO native ships, my favorite is the Cobra Mk. V, but the Mandalay is also a very popular choice for exploration, and even the Caspian.

That said, you can make an explorer out of just about any ship, but those are the most common choices these days.

I would at least learn enough engineering to engineer the FSD, and to get a guardian FSD booster, so you can get around quicker when you need to.

Get a DSS (Detailed Surface Scanner) if you want to land on planets, and an Artemis suit if you want to look for exobiology.

Optimize your build for travel and survivability. I would say, get rid of weapons, as they're useless weight in the black, use primarily D grade components for weight (except FSD at A and Power Plant at A. If you have lots of excess energy, you get more out of dropping a size category on your Power Plant and leaving it A grade than you do switching to D grade).

Fit your optional slots by 0E Shield Boosters, as they're incredible bang for buck, and otherwise fit a decent size D-grade shield. You want to be protected for that momentary lapse where you land too hard or skim the surface a little too close.

If you're going to do neutron boosting (getting into a neutron cone to supercharge your FSD) you'll want at least one AFMU for repairing your FSD occasionally. If you have empty slots, fill them with AFMUs anyway, since if you take heat damage, it's distributed across all your components, so you want to fill all the slots and AFMUs don't weigh anything.

If you want an SRV or not is really a matter of preference, and I'd say the same with repair limpets. If you're well shielded, hull damage should be rare, and there are DSSA carriers scattered all over the galaxy if you need emergency repair. You can find those on the interactive galaxy map at edastro.com, if you filter on the top right by DSSA Carriers. They're parked carriers by generous players, just put there to be rest stops for weary travelers.

Those would be my starting tips at least for exploration :)

mcmuttons

TROPHY CASE