@reality-bytes asked how I made so much money on that last “paycheck”
So first of all for those who didn’t got it, I was on an expedition of 14 weeks that went around 38′000LY from Sol, and that last pay was the result of aproximatively 2 monthes without seeing any station (I went back to colonia around WP4). The only ships I’ve seen where the comrades on the expedition’s meetings and near the end the cruise ships at the tourist beacon of a blackhole...
Now then, about the first discoveries bonus, it highly depends on what you find. An ELW (Earth-Like World) is worth a lot more than a rocky body for example. It also varies with with star and distance to star etc etc.
Finally if you’re in the dark and struggle to know what to scan, look for ELW and WW (Water World), also AW (Ammonia Wolrd) and eventually HMC (High Metal Content). Terraformable planets have a good bonus to the exploration data, check the system map after the scan of the planet to know if it is terraformable. A WW is worth around 250k while a TWW is worth more than 500k. Stars are not worth much. Black holes and neutrons are okay, but you mostly scan them for the tag when there’s none.
To know which body is what too, open your system map after the honk and look for planets that either look like matte blue, sometimes with a banquise on the poles, or planets that actually look like earth. Planets with greenish colors might be AW too. A planet without athmosphere will never be terraformable.
In conclusion I couldn’t know much about that without the help of fellow explorers, Like CMDR Fru who was with us on the expedition and made this nice chart on the beta of the 2.3 since pricing changed.
Frontier Forum thread link
Hope it answers the question, but remember the 100+ millions are from a few month of exploration