Explore or Survey?

[GizmoDuck]

Hi, all.

So, I'm 70-odd hours into the game, which as you know, is *nothing*. I'm still getting my arse handed to me and I'm learning new things.

When you have a Science ship, you have a choice of Explore or Survey a system. What's the difference? You can't do anything in a new system until you Survey it anyway, so why is there an Explore option? I'm sure there's a decent reason. Maybe to stop getting ambushed by unknown alien gribblies?

[lardox2]

For my limited experience in the game, I think it is mainly used to just lift the fog of war on the map. So if you need to find a chokehold on the left side of you, you can scout (explore) with a ship and remove the fog until you find one. Then you can survey rush to it after. I think it could also be used for finding other civs early I guess and finding out if they will be a problem for you. *edit* Thinking about it, if you have the welcome/open new contact then if you find more civs early, then you can get the extra influence bonus earlier on.

[Ryika]

You explore your surroundings to see where the bottlenecks are, to find where planets are, and to get the spawn locations of your neighbors. That's the information you need to fully plan out your expansion, which is what decides in what direction you want to survey towards first.

There are a lot of ways to play the game of course, but with your first science ship, you'll usually want to search the nearest systems and find one of your guaranteed worlds, and then you start surveying the systems that need to be surveyed so you can claim it asap.

You definitely want to add more science ships as soon as possible, too, and with those you probably want to explore your surroundings first. If you want to be aggressive, you should also survey the surroundings of your neighbors with priority, since you cannot claim systems that you haven't visited, and uncovering them via espionage takes a long time.

[Duke Flapjack]

Here's the difference and the reason for it's existence: non-science ships can only travel to systems that have had their hyperlanes explored. You can see that on the galaxy map if you try to send anybody to an "unnamed" system. Explore maps the hyperlane without surveying the system.

[DANEDANGER]

Explore is only used to hit a system, survey to discover what each system contains exactly. Imo your doing your self a disfavor by explore. Gonna need to survey a system anyway, might aswel do it propper from the gekko

[EleventhStar]

real gamer move is to save your game at the start, explore then reload :P

but in general i try to get a 2nd science ship as soon as possible, survey my guaranteed worlds and any systems in between so i can claim them, then explore for choke points, then survey a path to the chokepoints and beat the AI to them.

[Kypamop]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

real gamer move is to save your game at the start, explore then reload :P

You can save your time and use an observe command if you wish to cheat ;)

Explore is perfect for finding where your closest enemies are, so you can rush and get those bottlenecks under your control and build up defences

[Duke Flapjack]

Originally posted by Kypamop:

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

real gamer move is to save your game at the start, explore then reload :P

You can save your time and use an observe command if you wish to cheat ;)

Explore is perfect for finding where your closest enemies are, so you can rush and get those bottlenecks under your control and build up defences

I'm not going to deny I use the observe command every time I start a new game because I really want to migrate my capital to the free relic world that spawns.

[lidku716]

I never use Explore at all. By the time I'm done surveying and expanding, the game goes to the stage where everything around me is claimed. It's pretty circumstantial to use.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by lidku716:

I never use Explore at all. By the time I'm done surveying and expanding, the game goes to the stage where everything around me is claimed. It's pretty circumstantial to use.

If you're never exploring at all, then you're just not playing very efficiently. Exploring is not circumstantial, it's always useful and should always be used if you want to maximize your potential.

If you don't care about maximizing your potential, it's possible to play without it, but the simplicity of focusing on only surveying always comes with the drawback of reduced efficiency.

[Kapika96]

Explore is quick, it's complete the second the ship enters the system. It's for when you want to map things out quickly. Yes you won't get all the details, but you'll get something. It can be useful to just explore the first few systems around your home world until you find one with a planet or something, then survey to that system, so you can start colonising the new planet. If you survey every single system the first time you go there you may end up missing out on planets or strategic goods to other empires (or even if you still get them it'd be later, so less helpful).

[Terminus]

Explore is a great way to find the systems with habitable planets, ruined megastructures, choke points, etc. so you can plan your expansion. Then survey those critical systems first. This gets you to the good stuff before your neighbors, which often means the difference between a long term viable campaign or a quick restart.

It also helps you find your neighbors faster, even getting to their home system before you establish communication and set up borders.

You should explore every system about 5 jumps out from your home system. Meanwhile build new science ships and follow up with full surveys of the best systems for building starbases.

[GizmoDuck]

Thanks, all. It's only now that, reading all these, has it clicked that you can just fling a Science ship out to Explore and the hyperlanes. All this time I've just been Surveying everything straight away and it's been taking ages