After stopping and starting once or twice over the course of a year, crashing and nearly dying on an extremely high G planet, mistaking a white dwarf for a neutron star and nearly burning to a crisp, and making as few civilized pit stops as possible- yesterday I finally arrived in Colonia.
Something I realized while on that trip is that if you enjoy the exploration part of this game, you essentially enjoy roleplaying a field researcher with a dash of survival on the side. It’s tedious, boring work and you have to be really into the details of all the stuff you find to keep going.
I keep IRL notes on a lot of my finds. I stay more engaged and I can easily find the location of some interesting thing I passed.