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[Kohlenstoff]

I use this Neutron Detector with great success. I can empty even large systems with just one or two rounds around the main star. Small systems just need to be crossed once and they are empty. The Neutron Detector found very often single ships or groups of ships or juicy stations in the outer rims of large systems which i would never found without it.

Without this the exploration takes 2-5 times longer to empty a system. Large systems can not be emptied reliably without too much excess time to spend.

You can see me using this during a whole playthrough. Here just one part for example:

[Aeson]

I use this Neutron Detector with great success. I can empty even large systems with just one or two rounds around the main star. Small systems just need to be crossed once and they are empty. The Neutron Detector found very often single ships or groups of ships or juicy stations in the outer rims of large systems which i would never found without it.

I'm not going to watch an hour-and-a-half-long video to see what you mean by this, but it doesn't match my experience with Neutrino Detector at all - sure, if I bother using it I'll occasionally stumble across something I wouldn't otherwise have found, but most of the time I'll have found pretty much everything of value in the system just by visiting obvious points of interest, and on top of that a lot of the "value" of the things you can find in exploration is pretty dubious, especially by the time you have a decent fleet and a stable source of income or at least a lot of credits in the bank. 99% of derelicts and blueprints are things that the player probably isn't ever going to use, derelicts aren't really worth recovering for their resale value, and it's really hard to get excited about the commodities and other vendor trash that comprise the majority of what you get by salvaging/scrapping derelicts and stations even before you have a big late-game fleet and a few colonies giving you more money than you can readily spend on anything actually useful.

Additionally, carrying around a stack of volatiles so that I can use Neutrino Detector if I want is kind of a big opportunity cost at the stage of the game where I might actually find it useful to locate derelicts or stations that I wouldn't otherwise run into just visiting the obvious points of interest in a system - that stack of 50 or 100 or whatever volatiles is cargo space that I'm not using on revenue-generating cargo/salvage, or on the supplies that let me spend time surveying the fringe, or on the supplies that let me recover from a fight with pirates/remnant/whatever, or on the supplies that let me recondition a derelict that I'm actually interested in recovering at this early stage of the game when my fleet's still taking shape, or on the metals and transplutonics that let me build stable point structures, and it's often something that I'd have to go out of my way to obtain if I want to have it on hand since it's somewhat rare as salvage/loot and generally isn't worth buying as a trade good (at least in 0.96; I haven't tried 0.97 yet). On top of that, volatiles are, at least in my experience, generally a relatively expensive commodity whereas most of the stuff you get from derelicts and stations is low-value junk, and unless you're dragging around half a dozen Atlases or something else like that it's usually pretty easy to fill up cargo space just hitting obvious points of interest in a couple of systems, even if you're a bit picky about what you take instead of insisting on finding a way to sell every last bit of that massive stack of ore that the mining station dropped when you scrapped it despite the ore hardly being worth the fuel, supplies, and crew/officer wages it'll take to move it to the nearest merchant, so I just don't see where the return on what I'm spending, both in volatiles actually expended and in cargo space allocated to the rest of the stack, to use the Neutrino Detector is supposed to be coming from.

[Nettle]

I'm not going to watch an hour-and-a-half-long video to see what you mean by this, but it doesn't match my experience with Neutrino Detector at all - sure, if I bother using it I'll occasionally stumble across something I wouldn't otherwise have found, but most of the time I'll have found pretty much everything of value in the system just by visiting obvious points of interest, and on top of that a lot of the "value" of the things you can find in exploration is pretty dubious, especially by the time you have a decent fleet and a stable source of income or at least a lot of credits in the bank.

Well I was curious and took a glance with 2x speed, only jumping to segments where the neutrino detector was actually used. In case you are curious too, I estimate that roughly a single minor equipment cache that they would have otherwise missed (since it was reasonably far away from any points of interest) was retrieved due to neutrino detector use.

[Princess of Evil]

(Which, considering ND using up a pretty expensive item to work, was likely completely not worth it.)

[Megas]

Additionally, carrying around a stack of volatiles so that I can use Neutrino Detector if I want is kind of a big opportunity cost at the stage of the game...

Yesterday, I thought about using Neutrino Detector to find some mission objects I had trouble finding only to discover I had no volatiles in cargo, usually while I am in a lone Dram that needs all the cargo space it has for supplies for those cheap and quick trips near the edge of the sector.  Without the Detector, I spammed 3 (Sensor Burst) a lot to find the objects.

[intrinsic_parity]

I have found a decent number of abandoned stations and domain era stuff with neutrino, it's definitely not useless. It also burns volatiles VERY slowly. I never buy volatiles, using ND in every system barely puts a dent in the amount you will find exploring.

[Nettle]

I have found a decent number of abandoned stations and domain era stuff with neutrino, it's definitely not useless. It also burns volatiles VERY slowly. I never buy volatiles, using ND in every system barely puts a dent in the amount you will find exploring.

By the time you visited every landmark on the map within a given system, most likely you had already found everything worth looking for. While ND has more range than your sensors do, it's still finite. You will have to cover a lot of ground before you will know for sure that there is nothing left on the outskirts. And even with ND I would often fail to find Galatia probes/derelict ships in nebula systems, even though I knew they were there. Unless you are also hunting for a quest item, your time is better spent just scavenging other systems instead of running around with ND in a 90% scavenged system looking for crumbs.

[intrinsic_parity]

I don't think it has finite range, I think the strength of the returns decreases with distance and so functionally can fade into the background noise for small objects, but larger objects like stations will be visible from across the system.

I have definitely found things that were not near landmarks as well. Particularly systems with large asteroid belts tend to have stuff like mining stations randomly in the belt in places you would not reasonably look otherwise. I would not say domain colony items from stations are 'crumbs', and I have found stuff like that on occasion that I would have missed. Also, domain era stuff can spawn randomly out on the edge of the system, far enough away that you would not find it otherwise. I have found survey ships that way before.

Another big plus for ND is negative returns. You know you DON'T need to fly across the system to check if anything is orbiting the outer jump point or a distant gate or a big asteroid belt etc.

I also don't spend any extra time with it on flying around. I just have it on while checking the normal landmarks, and then it will let me know if I need to check for other stuff. It's pretty easy to pick out the false returns like that if you know what you are doing. A lot of the time I only need to turn it on for a couple seconds to know there is nothing worthwhile to hunt for in the system.

For smaller systems, it is mostly useless though since one sensor ping will cover most of the possible locations things can spawn. It's only useful for very large systems where there are too many spawn locations to reasonably check.

[Kohlenstoff]

....
Another big plus for ND is negative returns. You know you DON'T need to fly across the system to check if anything is orbiting the outer jump point or a distant gate or a big asteroid belt etc.
....

Exactly. It saves really much time. I know in few seconds if a system is empty. This saves time and supplies. Especially if the system is full of asteroids or nebula. The Detectors range is not reduced by those.

I have definitely found things that were not near landmarks as well. Particularly systems with large asteroid belts tend to have stuff like mining stations randomly in the belt in places you would not reasonably look otherwise. I would not say domain colony items from stations are 'crumbs', and I have found stuff like that on occasion that I would have missed. Also, domain era stuff can spawn randomly out on the edge of the system, far enough away that you would not find it otherwise. I have found survey ships that way before.

Exactly. The mining stations contain Catalytic Cores, Synchroton Cores and Pristine Nanoforges and are mostly in some belts. Or let me tell that in another way. Some People in this forum complain about often not having all of these items. I never had a playthrough were i did not have all of these at least once.

[Flet]

I just pretend it doesn't exist. I tried to use it at times but the constant drain on resources (both volatiles and supplies as you wind up spending a lot more time in each system) was not worth it.
Its a shame because i like the concept of flying around and trying to triangulate things but the in game time it takes to really get immersed in this too much.
There are various ways it could be fixed from removing volatile cost so its only costing you time, to reworking it entirely in various ways, but currently its just not worth it.
The idea of using increased rewards to entice players to do a painful activity can work and make people even feel satisfaction from it but that underlying suffering is still there and maybe games shouldnt have things like this.

[Kohlenstoff]

I just pretend it doesn't exist. I tried to use it at times but the constant drain on resources (both volatiles and supplies as you wind up spending a lot more time in each system) was not worth it.
Its a shame because i like the concept of flying around and trying to triangulate things but the in game time it takes to really get immersed in this too much.

You don neither triangulate nor directly follow any spike. You fly sideways a few seconds instead of following a spike. If the angle of spike changes then you follow it. Otherwise it is a false signal. In this way you actually save time. If you spend more time using the neutron detector you are using it wrong.

[Arghy]

I've watched videos and i think i mastered it like a few times but it was so damn intensive and annoying to use. Get the neutrino detector mk II mod, you can try both of them it doesn't replace the original ND and look how much better it is. Being able to just pulse it to check for points and ruling out absolutely massive chunks of the map is amazing.

Today i found an insane red giant system that had another large star that was pushing points literally off the map as in the fringe point was a good solid grid square into the blackness. Thanks to ND MKII i was able to find a supply catch and a derelict ship literally 5 days of travel at burn 20 from the central star. The smaller systems with loot within reasonable distances aren't the issue, it's insane giant systems which are a pain in the ass to find anything in.

Sure i can jump through unintuitive hoops using something that most people agree is not fun or we can replace it with something thats not so punishing.

[Megas]

Yesterday, I turned on Neutrino Detector to find a probe on a quest mission.  Neutrino did not pick it up.  I then used Sensor Burst and the minimap lit up.  I moved to where the ping was and there it was.  I moved near to the probe and activated Neutrino detector again to check it out, but the ring had no spike pointing toward the probe.  What?!

So, if Neutrino Detector cannot even find some objects that I need to find and gives false positives that are hard to confirm false, then it is even more reason not to use this piece of trash.  Neutrino has been more trouble than it is worth in my current game.

[Awe]

ND is useless. Same thought about "remote survey" and "solar shielding"(for exploration). Things should be easy to use(clearly not ND), provide real benefit over default routine(remote survey *cough*) and at least not compete with really precious OP or S-mods like solar shielding. But tbh I'm not care if they are in game or not as far as I'm not forced to use it.

[Princess of Evil]

Oh, don't get me started on remote survey. Not only is it worthless due to you having to survey anyway, but it's also short range and takes entirely too much time. Plus, a survey by the midgame costs 5 supplies pretty much always - you have no reason not to go there and survey.
Solar shielding can be useful, but i'd use it a lot more if there were a LG Atlas with it. It's entirely worthless on combat ships (which largely just don't get hurt by the main reason you'd use RS - hyperstorms), and while it can be useful on civilian ones, it just competes with too much. And no, 10% resistance to one damage type isn't worth LG getting saddled with it at full cost. I swear, Alex hates Diktat and just spent last patch cyberbullying it.