Exploration is a bit awkward to write about – a large part of the fun is discovering stuff for yourself, and I don’t want to totally ruin it for you. On the other hand, I think it’s an interesting topic, so, a compromise: most of the blog post will be focused on the mechanics and systems in play, with less in the way of specific examples and screenshots.

If you’ve read the previous blog post about planetary surveys, you know that procedural generation is already in the dev build. In a literal sense, flying around new star systems every game and checking them out is exploration, but clearly that by itself wouldn’t really merit being called that, not as an official feature. Even if (if I do say so myself!) the procedural generation produces some pretty nice starscapes.

So, what makes exploration fun, and why do we want exploration in the first place?
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