I usually keep the
stellar and
planetary quick reference pages open. I only have a few of the "major" records (size, age, temp) memorized for the star/planet types I look for most often. I've also been looking for so long that I have a good idea of the averages for those values for most object types, so if I see anything that jumps out at me as particularly high or low, I'll go check. Of course, whenever I find a new record, I put it in the notes for that system in EDDiscovery, so at the end of my trip I can just search "record" and see the list of them.
There are
some methods I've discovered to search for interesting destinations within your current sector. These methods work best outside of the core.
I'll just decide on a random interesting destination within 1k LY (there's almost always at least one) and plot a course. Like Mengy, I'll deviate if I see something interesting. I always keep a close eye on the galactic background when I jump into a system. When you're close to a star within a system, its light will overpower all but the biggest and brightest stars in the sky, so every point of light you see in the sky while fuel scooping will usually be a substantial star. If you see any of these that aren't white, there's a good chance they're G, K, or M giants. Those can be some interesting systems. Carbon stars also appear from long distances away, and they're usually a dull yellow spot in the sky without much of a visible corona. The "realistic" view on the galaxy map can help you locate these big stars, because the larger/brighter stars will begin showing up at farther distances in that view than smaller/dimmer ones, so you can scrub the map and look for parallaxing.
Once I've made it to a particularly interesting system, I'll filter the map to show only AFGKM stars, and look around for ones with good temperatures that would be conducive to earth-likes/terraformable water worlds, and then just hop around having a look. AFGKM are the scoopable stars from hottest to coldest, and the numbers after them go 0-9 hottest to coldest. So A0 stars are very hot; M9s are very cold. You generally want to look for systems with stars whose temperatures are around the middle--err toward higher-numbered As and lower-numbered Ms, and anything around the middle for Fs, Gs, and Ks. You'll usually want them to be "V" main sequence stars (which includes VA, VB, and VAB, as the A and B are just brightness ratings). As those go, VI are near-dwarfs, IV are sub-giants, III are giants, II are even brighter giants, and IA and IA0 are supergiants. So an M2 IIIB star will be a somewhat hot M giant that's a little dimmer than usual, whereas a K2 VA would be a bright main sequence star and promising for earth-likes or terraformables. Giants and above seem less likely to have earth-likes and aren't any more valuable than normal-sized stars of their class, but they're really fun systems to visit and fun stars to scoop from.
So far I've made 95 million from exploring while visiting 3900 systems and never going more than 11k LY from the bubble. Relative to some other guys out there, I've only made baby steps. But knowing where to look will certainly help your profits and your enjoyment of it. Jedi's advice is also good--head in "uninteresting" directions to find more undiscovered things sooner. Make sure you also go up or down a few hundred LY to help keep you off the beaten paths.
So I've just built
my first Clipper to do some mining for the first time. I was shooting for something with some legs so I could quickly make it to the outskirts of the bubble and hit up those pristine reserves. Currently at a brown dwarf just 2 jumps away from Kaushpoos with a pristine metallic ring. Pretty fun zappin' these space rocks. Going shieldless makes it much more exciting.
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