Exploring the Universe

Fuel

To travel outside the Starter Systems you need Fuel, and to obtain Fuel you need Warp Capsules.

Each Fuel unit allows your ship to fly for a distance of 1 Light Year (LY), and each system is 10 LY away from the next one. So you need 10 units of Fuel to explore a neighbour system.

Remember

The Fuel efficiency Catalyst reduces the fuel cost of every system jump, capped at 60%.

Once you arrive at an undiscovered system you will receive:

• An XP bonus for being the first explorer there
• Some Cosmic Dust
• Bonus credits, if you choose to share the discovery on The Atlas, plus a 10% chance of a reward chest holding credits scaled to your exploring level, one common resource and one rare resource scaled to your gathering level. Premium raises all three by 10%, and systems published from a Voyager expedition roll that chest at 25% instead
• If the system is inhabited, you can wire currencies and Trade at the Market

What a discovery is worth

A discovery pays more the further it is from the starter systems, and that part of the reward has no cap.

Every system has a cosmic dust value built from three parts:

star value + bodies * 20 + light years to the nearest starter system
					

The star is worth between 10 and 300 depending on its type:

The star value and the body count are bounded, the distance is not. A system 200 LY out adds 200 to its value and one 5,000 LY out adds 5,000. The distance is measured from where the system is, not from the length of your last jump, so a short jump into deep space is worth the same as a long one ending at the same place.

The whole value is then multiplied by your exploring investments: your sensors and the crafted Scan reward bonus, the Technology cosmic dust skill, an active Owl pet, a base on a crystal body, your squadron's exploring dungeon level and PvP tiles, the space station bonus, premium and the Cosmic dust Catalyst stat.

Publishing the system

Sharing a system on The Atlas pays 1,000 credits for every point of cosmic dust that system was worth to you. A system that hands you 5,000 dust pays 5,000,000 credits when published, and since the dust already includes the distance and all your bonuses, so do the credits.

Two things to note:

• The cosmic dust is subject to your squadron tax. The publishing credits are not.
• The XP does not scale with distance. It is a flat gain per discovery scaled by your exploring level.

What else you can find out there

Every system you discover manually also rolls for the finds below. They are independent of each other, so a single jump can hand you more than one.

Runes are not exclusive to new systems

A rare star rolls for a rune on your first visit to that system, even if somebody else discovered it before you. On top of that, whenever any player finds a rune the whole galaxy gets the coordinates, and that system hands out the same rune to every visitor for the next 4 hours. See Collections.

Starter systems never award runes, and travelling between them never drops catalysts or dungeon entrances either. Everything on this list needs you out in unexplored space.

Cool down

Once you arrive at a system, your engines will need 10 minutes to cool down. This changes depending on how far you jumped from system to system.

Improving your engine will reduce that cool down time, and there is also a crafting bonus for engine and sensors that reduces it.

Starter systems

The systems already listed on the Galaxy Map are Starter Systems. Moving between them is free and needs no fuel.

Getting stranded

You will get an “SOS Stranded” warning if all of the following are true:

• Less than 10 fuel units
• Ran out of Warp Capsules
• Not enough resources to generate one Warp Capsule at Using the Lab
• Your current system does not have gathering nodes to obtain the resources for a Warp Capsule

You then have two options:

• Travel to the nearest starter system. There is no instant return to your current position.
• Send an SOS signal that will be published on a public list. This reveals your position, and other players can rescue you and share fuel with you using a warp capsule. The rescuing player gets a chest with credits, materials and resources.

TL;DR:

• Focus on traveling to undiscovered systems.
• The further from the starter systems, the more every discovery pays. Distance is the biggest part of a system's value and it has no cap.
• Every discovery rolls for a catalyst, a solo dungeon entrance and, on rare stars, a rune.
• Publish your discoveries on the Atlas: it pays 1,000 credits per point of cosmic dust, and there is a 10% chance of a reward chest on top.
• Keep enough warp capsules to avoid getting stranded.
• Improve your engine to reduce the cool down between jumps.