Auto-explore?

[Harmacist]

Haven't played in a while, did they implement yet the possibility to setup ships to automatically explore nearby systems?

[Helican]

Yes.

[Harmacist]

Originally posted by Helican:

Yes.

Would you be so kind to tell me how can I do it?

[Parasit]

Its a researchable technology. So its not avaibled at the start of the game.

[Helican]

It is part of a mid-game technology.
When you researched it, it unlocks a button that you just need to press.

[Desolator]

Originally posted by Parasit:

Its a researchable technology. So its not avaibled at the start of the game.

So it's bloody useless for wormhole based empires, since you can easily explore everything within your sphere of influence and jump range

[LordOfPants]

There's also a mod that gives you auto-explore tech at the start if you think that having to research it is silly. You do have to keep an eye on your ships, sometimes it does weird things like try to auto-explore a system with a big pirate fleet hanging out or will tell you that it can't see any unexplored systems to survey when the ship is sitting in an unexplored system surrounded by unexplored systems.

[Desolator]

Originally posted by LordOfPants:

mod

But.... my achievements... Q_Q

[LordOfPants]

Originally posted by Desolator:

So it's bloody useless for wormhole based empires, since you can easily explore everything within your sphere of influence and jump range

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, wormhole based empires can expand their jump range by building stations around neutral stars, so it's easy to have a large chunk of the map within jump range if you put a constructor ship onto building generators for a while.

[Harmacist]

20 years of civilization and 15 of starcraft hasn't tought them that scouting is literally the first thing you need to do? Why put it as a mid-game tech?

[ci915]

It's also pretty brain-dead (going to systems it can see have hostile forces, will go 1/3rd of the way around the galaxy to survey a system with a habiltable planet rather than look next door, etc..), so not actually all that great.

Really shines when trying to find and finish all the systems that have one or two things you didn't survey because you bounced off the 99 orders cap.

[Desolator]

Originally posted by LordOfPants:

Originally posted by Desolator:

So it's bloody useless for wormhole based empires, since you can easily explore everything within your sphere of influence and jump range

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, wormhole based empires can expand their jump range by building stations around neutral stars, so it's easy to have a large chunk of the map within jump range if you put a constructor ship onto building generators for a while.

Only if there's no empires around since you instantly lose any wormhole station that is swallowed by another empires influence (which, by midgame, is probably the case unless you lowered AI empires). Then you have the issue of losing your lvl 5 scientist somewhere in the blue beyond since he / she can't jump back (same issue with warfleets that are deep in enemy territory when they surrender, instant border close + deletion of stations = exit fleet).

[HugsAndSnuggles]

They do emergency jump now when border gets closed, actually. Not sure about discovering less hostile empire.


Either way, that tech is useless, especially in later game.

[LordOfPants]

Originally posted by Desolator:

Only if there's no empires around since you instantly lose any wormhole station that is swallowed by another empires influence (which, by midgame, is probably the case unless you lowered AI empires). Then you have the issue of losing your lvl 5 scientist somewhere in the blue beyond since he / she can't jump back (same issue with warfleets that are deep in enemy territory when they surrender, instant border close + deletion of stations = exit fleet).

I usually play on a 600 star galaxy with the max number of enemy empires and there are a ton of unoccupied systems. Remember that you can jump past enemy empires with wormholes, and it gets much easier once you have at least one boost to wormhole range. I've really never had trouble getting less than half the map within exploration range unless I was so boxed in by a clustered start that I wouldn't be able to explore with other drive types anyway.

You don't lose your scientist that way, just build a new ship, assign them to it, and disband the old ship.

[Desolator]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

They do emergency jump now when border gets closed, actually. Not sure about discovering less hostile empire.


Either way, that tech is useless, especially in later game.

I don't mean when they close a border. What can happen is the following: 1) you build a wornhole station (close to someones border) and send a fleet through. 2) your wormhole station is swallowed by the AI's influence, instantly getting deleted. 3) your ship is now stranded since there are no wormhole stations within range. This can also happen on larger maps in a war when you need to jump deep into enemy territory to actually get to the planets needed to win. Once you're won, your fleet is now stranded because your stations got magically deleted (they should give you like a 2-3 month grace period + warning)