ENDED - Alliance Exploration Programme

[Senex VII]

Eventually, when the event ended (a couple of days before the deadline), the top 5% got 10 million CR.

Terrestrial business got in my way, and I was only able to spend 12 hours on this quest. But I still reached the top 15%, got 5 million CR reward, plus a 20% (1.3+ Million CR) Asp discount (that everyone got), ON TOP OF the regular data sales (which only amounted to 4 million by themselves). So I'm very happy.

[Antmax]

I noticed it finished at least a day early. I had left for some nearby systems to explore and logged out with the intention of turning in the systems the following day but the event finished early.

Not that bothered since I might have only jumped one bracket and already had a 20% discounted Asp from the full time discount at Alioth.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Well I'm a little pissed. Where the eff do they get off ending this early? Last night my transaction tab said I had until Friday morning, so I was going to finish Thursday night. Now, Wednesday night, it says it's done and I'm sitting here like a fool with 15-20 hours worth of exploration that doesn't count toward the goal. I can't imagine how pissed off people are going to be who have been out exploring and haven't even turned anything in yet. At least I came back and turned in some data because I wanted to help out with Leesti over the weekend. Now I get 20% off an Asp and I already own two.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, FD continues to disappoint.

[Senex VII]

In line with other community goals I've seen (though I can't say I've been involved with that many so far), it seems the events end when either (a) the highest tier goal is reached, or (b) the end date happens, whichever is the earlier. In this case, option (a) was achieved (with at least 1 million records logged, or so it seems), a full two days early as I mentioned in my previous post, so the event ended.

Because I knew this may happen, and because I tracked tier goal progress daily in my Transactions panel, I made sure that I always went out and returned the same day, logging maybe 200 reports per 6 hour journey. I was preparing to do a quick top-up run today to see if I could scrape into the top 5%, but it was already all over.

So that was fine, and I'm OK with it. I'll get my first Asp on discount and pimp it out as an explorer exactly as desired with the rewards, plus data sales, plus downgrade of the type-6 I used for the event, plus some spare cash I had.

However, if I were to bitch about it at all, it wouldn't be about the early finish - which, as I say, I think is consistent with the way they're running other community goals. No - the problem about this exploration event was that it didn't encourage good exploring practices.

Why was that a problem? Because the event's reward thresholds seemed to be based on number of records brought back, not on the exploration profit that Elite rank is based on. The event did not count one record per stellar object but instead as one record per star system. This means that although it may have been more profitable when selling data to surface scan all the good stuff in each system, doing that would actually have penalized you in reward ranking because it 'wasted time', time you could have used to get to the next star.

Thus the way to maximize reward % ranking in this event was as follows: engage your Advanced Discovery Scanner while slowing down from a jump, surface scan the star at the same time, hit the corona to scoop fuel, head away at right angles to cool a little, and then away to the next star - and ignore any juicy stuff in the system! I was averaging one star system every 70 to 120 seconds this way. That's not good exploring practice, neither for profit, nor for Elite rank, nor for the sheer enjoyment of exploring star systems - which arguably is what it's all about.

[Antmax]

Thanks for the explanation Senex VII. This was my first community goal. I just happened to be in the mood for some exploration and figured that the timer was set in stone.

Seems a bit cruel for those first timers that invested a lot of time on a proper expedition.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

In line with other community goals I've seen (though I can't say I've been involved with that many so far), it seems the events end when either (a) the highest tier goal is reached, or (b) the end date happens, whichever is the earlier. In this case, option (a) was achieved (with at least 1 million records logged, or so it seems), a full two days early as I mentioned in my previous post, so the event ended.

Sure, that makes sense for delivering cargo or fighting in conflict zones, where it is "pay as you go", but if they say you have 10 days for exploration, where you can be thousands of light years away, you should get the full 10 days. Don't tell me that I have 2 days and 17 hours left and then end it the next evening. Frontier are really idiots for handling it that way.

...The event did not count one record per stellar object but instead as one record per star system. This means that although it may have been more profitable when selling data to surface scan all the good stuff in each system, doing that would actually have penalized you in reward ranking because it 'wasted time', time you could have used to get to the next star.

That's effing ridiculous. I recall them saying detailed scans were not required, but I had no idea that they weren't being counted toward the cg. Why can't they explain this stuff?

[geoffrey.hdt]

Hi commanders,

I am back from an exploration trip I started last weekend, have landed at Ziemkiewicz Ring in Tsu but do not see the community goal in the bulletin board... I wanted to sign up before selling my exploration data :-/
Is it normal? Was I wrong to think one may sign up at any moment as long as a community goal is active?

[Antmax]

Heh yeah, I detail scanned everything. Would have been super easy to just hop around systems with my advanced scanner. I made more with the detail scanner than the 1m reward for the couple of days I spent time scanning a few dozen systems.

[Senex VII]

Hi commanders,

I am back from an exploration trip I started last weekend, have landed at Ziemkiewicz Ring in Tsu but do not see the community goal in the bulletin board... I wanted to sign up before selling my exploration data :-/
Is it normal? Was I wrong to think one may sign up at any moment as long as a community goal is active?

Sorry Geoffrey. You missed the boat; the event has indeed ended. As I wrote above, community goals seem to be in "tiers" and they end either when the highest tier is achieved by the community as a whole or when the published end time is reached, whichever comes first. For this event its seems that the highest tier goal (1,000,000 totals records logged at Ziemkiewicz Ring by commanders who had signed up) was reached two full days before the end date.

So you weren't "wrong to think one may sign up at any moment as long as a community goal is active." In fact you were right. This particular event just wasn't active anymore. It's not explained very well by Frontier, but I guess we'll all be wiser next time.

[Nanosmo]

Yeah, its kind of a kick in the bits when it ends before it says it will. Even when it reaches the last tier it should continue, or give a 24 hour warning.