Exobiology feels like the emptiest (ranked) career path in Elite at the moment, on account of the gameplay being "walk to x, scan x", but there's a few details that a lot of players might not pick up on; namely that exoflora varies depending on a planet's classification, atmospheric composition (also surface composition?), and terrain type. If you know these 3 conditions for a given specimen, you can find it very reliably. Exobiology is also a nice change of pace, makes for nice supplemental income to exploration, and can give you stunning views from time to time.
With all that said, though, it is incredibly boring, and the sparse populations of most exoflora makes finding enough samples frustrating, so I'd like to propose a few changes:
- Make terrain more varied! Now hold off with those pitchforks a second, I'm not proposing another terrain generation overhaul. The groundwork for terrain types is already there, but it doesn't look all too different visually. Some small height generation tweaks wouldn't go amiss, but more variation in terrain shaders could make any barren ice ball look good – like those shown off in 2018:
- Increase exoflora density! Not by a large amount, but by enough that makes it less frustrating to find that last Fungoida sample. The densities in the alpha were a tad high, but looked nice – perhaps larger 'forests' as back then would work. Also slightly increase the range of conditions in which some genera can exist.
- Add more functionality! Perhaps research and agricultural settlements would allow you to further process your samples or buy them from you in lieu of Vista Genomics, with either providing larger payouts. Mission types involving finding certain samples would be nice, perhaps being more common during outbreaks. Tying it into the background simulation in some way would be quite welcome.
The terrain changes would in themselves make it easier to find certain samples, especially Electricae, the codex entry for which states that they exist in the vicinity of frozen lakes (as seen above); they would also make beautiful vistas more common and hopefully encourage more exploration.
