How to have exploration ships survey planets automatically?

[SatanBless]

I have them on full auto, and they do a fine job when they enter a completely unexplored system, where they will fully survey up to the maximum level allowed by the current survey equipment technology.

However, problems occur when a system is already "explored", such as when I buy system charts offered by pirates, which will "explore" a system to about exploration level 2 and uncover basic information about the planets as well as a few resources, however, at exploration level 2 of course many things remain hidden which I would like my exploration ships that are set to full auto to go and survey.

They never survey any of these systems. Though, it doesn't stop there.

When updating my exploration ships survey equipment to the next tech level, say from the basic one that surveys to level 15, to the second tier which explores to level 25, the exploration ship will completely ignore all planets which are surveyed till level 15 and still have undiscovered items on them.

It gets even worse though.

I tried to manually send my ship to explore a system which I had bought the charts for from a pirate and was explored to level 2.

The ship I send had a level 2 survey module which can survey to level 25, and also a resource scanner which will survey to level 5. I ctrl click on the system, and choose the only available option of "Explore x system".

The ship went to the first planet in the system, began to survey it, and after that, completely stopped. "No mission".

I send it again, same orders, yet, it just went back to the planet it had already surveyed to the max it can (Which still had undiscovered items), and then immediately went "No mission." after confirming indeed, that planet couldn't be surveyed further, despite there being 8 other planets in that system which are explored to level 2 only, not to mention asteroids.

Then, there is asteroids. I have a bunch of asteroids in my systems which get explored to level 5, and then still have undiscovered resources. Now, this is not such a big deal, since these resources are minimal, however it bothers me that there are things left unexplored, I want my exploration screen to be green.

Yet my ship will completely ignore these, and not explore them at all, so the only option I have as far as I can tell, is to manually look over all the asteroids and manually tell a ship to survey them, babysitting them all the way, which is just ridiculous...

Same thing for systems which are explored to low levels of exploration, like level 2 from buying pirate maps, or planets that are explored to the previous tier of exploration tech and can still be further explored with new tech.

Maybe I am missing an obvious option, like an auto survey mode which will make my exploration ships seek out anything that can be surveyed and survey them, like that asteroid at level 5 with undiscovered resources, or better, that planet at survey level 15 which has things to find that I might be able to discover now at the next tech level.

As far as I can tell, the only option available now, is to manually baby sit your ships to survey the planets in those explored systems, one at a time, because there is no objective queueing in the game yet.

Especially for asteroids, this is terrible, but I can look past that, however for planets, especially in my game where I bought more than a dozen system maps, and all my nearby systems are stuck at exploration level 2 due to full auto ships ignoring them, is terrible.

And no, ships on full auto don't go and seek out these planets which can be further explored after they have explored every system in range, they will simply get stuck on "No mission." even if there is a planet literally next to them which is at a lower survey level than what can be explored with your present tech level and that still has undiscovered items.

I've been fighting against this for the past 5 hours, and it's really incredibly bothersome...

[Dervix]

I think I understand your issues.
Exploration Ship automation will prioritize Coordinates/Uniques > unexplored systems > partially explored items
If you want to survey partially explored items first there's no automated method of doing this.
Most players don't notice this because we build dozens and dozens of exploration ships and automation will go for a second pass soon enough.

[SatanBless]

Originally posted by Dervix:

I think I understand your issues.
Exploration Ship automation will prioritize Coordinates/Uniques > unexplored systems > partially explored items
If you want to survey partially explored items first there's no automated method of doing this.
Most players don't notice this because we build dozens and dozens of exploration ships and automation will go for a second pass soon enough.

Do they actually go for a second pass? I haven't noticed this yet..

In my current game this has been a worse problem than usual, because I decided to do diplomacy with the pirates for once and bought a lot of system maps, so all my nearby systems are in this situation where they don't get fully explored..


If they actually go on and explore again, that makes this far less of an issue as it appears to be now, but I'm not sure if they do as I did see exploration ships sitting on "No Mission" next to my spaceport after they ran out of new systems to explore, but perhaps that was only temporary and I didn't observe close enough if they sorted themselves out after a while.

[SatanBless]

Originally posted by Dervix:

I think I understand your issues.
Exploration Ship automation will prioritize Coordinates/Uniques > unexplored systems > partially explored items
If you want to survey partially explored items first there's no automated method of doing this.
Most players don't notice this because we build dozens and dozens of exploration ships and automation will go for a second pass soon enough.

Do you reckon the best way to get around this then is to simply build a massive amount of exploration ships?

I will try that now and see how it goes, instead of 10 I'll have like 30 or more...

The prioritization you mentioned is very helpful to know!

[Thineboot]

Yes, eventually they will come back once better tech is available.

Keep in mind that explorers are state ships, and a massive amount could hurt your budget more than exploring everything as fast as possible will help you.