Without being too prescriptive, you said astronomical ranges. Are we thinking across to the other end of the solar system? Are we thinking into other solar systems?
TL;DRProbes will be limited to a single solar system, with players choosing an area to scan, and different probe types trading range against precision, so travel to another system is needed to probe there.
It's going to be localized to the solar system. And even then, you won't be able to just go like, yeah, do the entire solar system. You have to choose it. You'll look on the map and go like, well, there's been a lot of things happening here. I'm going to send my probes in that area and see if I narrow it down. It might go there. It might be nothing. Or it might be something you don't care about.
The probes still have traveling time and a defined amount of fuel they can take. So that is a restriction. But yeah, the goal is that one solar system is basically the entire range of one probe. So no going to another solar system with a probe. So you have to travel to another system and then probe there.
And also what will happen is we'll have different types of probes. So you might get a probe that covers almost the entire system, but the precision of that probe is going to be so bad, it's just going to give you an overview. So if you want to narrow it down, you're going to have to use very precise probes with a very limited range.