Geosurvey bouys not following waypoint/planet.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

I have searched for ages and can't find out why this isn't working.  I use these buoys as a second stage on a missile engine as long range probes and they work fine.  I make a waypoint and fire them off using my weapons fire control.  My bouys then sit there, happily following the planet along it's orbit. 

However, if I go to the waypoint and do exactly they same thing with a buoy instead of a probe then they get left behind when the planet moves.  I have also tried using the "Launch Ready Ordnance" option on the movement orders tab and the same thing happens.  Even though they work fine as a second stage on a missile I have still tried making probes with engines, in the hopes they will follow the waypoints or planets, but they just sit there, getting left behind and claiming they are moving at 1000's of KM/s.

Why do they work fine as a second stage but not at all on their own? I am hoping maybe I am missing something obvious otherwise I suppose I should post this in the bugs section.  It would save a lot of fuel and ordnance for when I am right next to a bunch of planets and moons.

[xenoscepter]

I think I know what the problem is. Try this:

  1. Make a waypoint as you normally would.

  2. Tell your ship to move to the body you want to survey, not the waypoint itself.

  3. When the ship is in orbit of the body, go to the combat screen.

  4. Make sure your M-FCS has the appropriate launchers assigned, make sure your Active Sensors are in the ON position and make sure your launchers have the right missiles loaded.

  5. Double check that you have the right missiles loaded. This a good habit to form, as it prevents unintended self-nuking.

  6. Assign the waypoint to your M-FCS and tell it to fire, then advance time by 5 seconds AKA one increment.

 - If I'm remembering correctly that is how I do it, and it works. Try it.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

Thanks for the advice.  I did some extensive testing, from what I can tell, my first attempt at making a buoy with a small engine was a mistake/bugged, which confused me.  I spend abosuletly ages testing different buoy/probe designs.  I haven't tried this with active sensors on yet but from my testing. . . :

1.  Moving to a body or waypoint and just using "Launch Ready Ordnance" doesn't work, as expected.
2.  Going to a Waypoint on a body and then targeting that waypoint with Fire Control and launching your buoy/probe will work, as expected.
3.  Geosurvey bouys without engines will not follow a body so are only good for a few days, which makes sense I suppose. . .  (I imagined them landing/being put in orbit and therefore following the planet without engines).
4.  Geosurvey buoys with engines will follow the body, but if their fuel is too low they will self destruct before they finish surveying.  My smallest and slowest 200m/s engine was fast enough to follow the body.
5.  Geosurvey buoys as a second stage on a probe work wether or not they have an engine, without an engine they will happily follow a body without self destructing.
6.  The above all worked (or didn't) without active sensors on.

I really struggled to find any clear information on the forums or the internet about this and there is a lot of misleading information posted; people are regularly showing off geosurvey buoys without engines for some reason, this is why I thought it was bugged or I was doing something wrong.  Bug or feature?

I will post my findings somewhere more useful for anyone else who has been scratching their heads about this.  Dropping geosurvey buoys is a relatively unorthodox tactic/doctrine but I think it has a lot of promise in the right curcumstances if you don't mind some micromanagement.

Things I still need to test:

1.  If you have your fire control set up and ready, targeting the body your are moving to, does the "Launch Ready Ordnance" order launch a buoy/probe correctly?
2.  Do geosurvey buoys with engines eventually self-destruct if launched as a second stage?
4.  Checking active sensors don't make engineless buoys work for some reason.
3.  What is the most efficient way to drop multiple buoys in a system and what is the easiest way to quickly choose and set waypoints on the desired bodies? (A set waypoint hotkey or a menu button when looking at the list of bodies would be really helpful).

[xenoscepter]

"1.  If you have your fire control set up and ready, targeting the body your are moving to, does the "Launch Ready Ordnance" order launch a buoy/probe correctly?"

 - I've tested that one, and the answer was "No." Feel free to test it yourself though.

[Garfunkel]

Dropping geosurvey buoys is a relatively unorthodox tactic/doctrine but I think it has a lot of promise in the right curcumstances if you don't mind some micromanagement.

It certainly is unorthodox. I don't understand why you would ever do it, though. It sounds like it has the worst of both worlds - need to spend time/fuel visiting each body you wish to survey AND the micromanagement of handling the buoys. I guess there could be a situation where you're lacking minerals for making missiles since they need engines and you don't have time for your surveyor to stay in a single system for weeks and you need to get geological information about that system as soon as possible - but that's a really, really, really niche case. Have you found another reason to do it that way? I'm always curious about new ways of playing the game.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

I got sidetracked and this wasn't the quick reply I had planned, but if anyone gets to the end and has any thoughts I would be interested to hear them.

------------------------------------

This all happened because I was experimenting with a deep space exploration cruiser that could act as an early prototype for a future military cruiser.  I was thinking sort of along the lines to Start Trek TNG's Enterprise.  I want to be able to just keep forging ahead through jump points as quickly as possible as I discover them and just leave gravsurvey probes on any nearby promising planets as I pass through the system, leaving the busywork to more conventional automated Geosurvey vessels behind me.

I got excited when I saw the "Launch Ready Ordnance" move order and though I would be able to just queue dropping dopping geosurvey bouys through a system with a few clicks on the movement orders screen.  I am really annoyed it doesn't work for following orbital bodies, it's not the end of the world though, ease of use and intuitive UI are definitely not Aurora's strong points in the first place.  It is annoying to have to micromanage, but I am really enjoying trying to build something a bit less conventional and see just what you can get away with from the flexibility of the class design interface.

The geo buoys are great to just plonk down on moons and planets with qualities like tectonics and low colony cost, as I pass through a system waiting for the gravsurveys to complete.  As normal buoys don't track planets without an engine but can be put into a second stage and then work as intended I was curious to see what the best "highest geosurvey power to smallest engine ratio" I could on fit a size 1 buoy and a first stage payload delivery missile was.  I got the "Boyle-Gardner SR 25 Achilles GS Probe":

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Missile Size: 1.8567 MSP  (4.64175 Tons)     Warhead: 0    Radiation Damage: 0    Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 215 km/s     Fuel: 1     1st Stage Flight Time: 32 hours    1st Stage Range: 25.1m km
2nd Stage Flight Time: 1 seconds    2nd Stage Range: 0k km
Cost Per Missile: 0.144     Development Cost: 14
Second Stage: Boyle-Gardner Achilles GS Buoy x1
Second Stage Separation Range: 150,000 km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 2.2%   3k km/s 0.7%   5k km/s 0.4%   10k km/s 0.2%

Materials Required
Boronide  0.054
Uridium  0.09
Fuel:  1

The first stage Boyle-Gardner Achilles GS Buoy:

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Missile Size: 1.7563 MSP  (4.39075 Tons)     Warhead: 0    Radiation Damage: 0    Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 0 km/s     Fuel: 0     Flight Time: 1 seconds     Range: 0 km
Geo Sensor Strength: 0.09     Geo Points Per Day: 2.16
Cost Per Missile: 0.144     Development Cost: 14
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 0%   3k km/s 0%   5k km/s 0%   10k km/s 0%

Materials Required
Boronide  0.054
Uridium  0.09
It is really frustrating that if I make it 2. 4 Geo Points Per Day buoy, it goes just over 2 MSP, because that is exactly a 10th of a geosurvey modules output.  I haven't got around to testing if a 0 km/s first stage will still leave the buoy deployed and tracking a body properly, but I am kind of fond of my token 1 fuel micro engine.  I didn't care about range or speed because it was primarily just a solution to not being able to drop a buoy without an engine, and the cost was identical when making it a two stage missile as when adding engines directly to the first missile.  I decided to just switch out different sensor bouys and mines into the first stage "engine" missile if I need to drop probes that will follow bodies in orbit.

One buoy generates approximately 1/12th of a geosurvey module and runs until completion, no matter the survey points ultimately required.  It actually turns out that even with this seemingly pointless first stage payload carrier you can sit on a planet with 20 moons in a low orbit and still just use these buoys as very short range probes to all the moons around you, which is certainly easier than setting move orders to each waypoint and then dropping the buoys.  I am actually suffering a chronic fuel shortage right now so them having a 25m km.  range at the cost of 1 fuel is pretty great.  When my fuel situation changes I might upgrade the design with an outrageous 2 fuel so I can sit on a drop point and quickly deploy mines out to a few 100m KMs without too much hassle.  (I really need to beg Steve to put in some function to quickly waypoint a selected body, unless I am missing something obvious).

This was all originally just a tiny part of my plan to make a rediculously over-engineered experimental exploration ship.  I planned to arm my cruiser with a wide selection of useful probes and buoys and I designed some 50% thermal reduction engines with slightly increased efficiency in the hopes of both increasing range and reducing detectability.  I went with three smaller engines rather than one big one as I wasn't sure if the thermal signature gets x3 or stays as low as a single engine, if I am mistaken about this please let me know.  Anyway, it is still an early prototype design and on my second jump I bumped into an NPR and quite predictably. . .  immidiately got detected.

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Fermium class Exploration Cruiser      20,000 tons       435 Crew       2,694.2 BP       TCS 400    TH 768    EM 0
3840 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 1-65       Shields 0-0       HTK 108      Sensors 80/80/0/0      DCR 18      PPV 4.1
Maint Life 4.21 Years     MSP 3,915    AFR 178%    IFR 2.5%    1YR 354    5YR 5,303    Max Repair 484 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 3,000 tons     Magazine 249   
Ensign    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Flight Crew Berths 60    Morale Check Required   

Gardner Aeromarine J20100(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 20100 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

Llama Co. XR57 HR50 Magneto-P Drive  EP512.00 (3)    Power 1536    Fuel Use 20.04%    Signature 256.0    Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 2,024,000 Litres    Range 90.9 billion km (274 days at full power)

Ahmed Armaments Size 1 Missile Launcher (2)     Missile Size: 1    Rate of Fire 10
Allen-Bates Size 5 Probe Launcher (30.0% Reduction) (1)     Missile Size: 5    Rate of Fire 1680
Allen-Andrews Size 2.0 Buoy Launcher (30.0% Reduction) (1)     Missile Size: 2    Rate of Fire 1065
Ahmed Armaments Missile Fire Control FC10-R1 (1)     Range 10.3m km    Resolution 1
Alpacca Solutions Passives Fire Control FC14-R100 (1)     Range 14.8m km    Resolution 100
Ahmed Armaments CTH 65 AMM (90)    Speed: 38,400 km/s    End: 0.4m     Range: 1m km    WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 217/130/65
Sense Systems TH 0.64 Buoy (2)    Speed: 0 km/s    End: 0m     Range: 0m km    WH: 0    Size: 2    TH: 0/0/0
Sense Systems XR 12 AS 8-R100 Probe (2)    Speed: 3,600 km/s    End: 38.7d     Range: 12,026.8m km    WH: 0    Size: 5    TH: 12/7/3
Sense Systems AS 8-R100 Buoy (2)    Speed: 0 km/s    End: 0m     Range: 0m km    WH: 0    Size: 2    TH: 0/0/0
Sense Systems XR 12 TH 0.64 Probe (2)    Speed: 3,600 km/s    End: 38.7d     Range: 12,026.8m km    WH: 0    Size: 5    TH: 12/7/3
Boyle-Gardner XR 12 Atlas GS Probe (12)    Speed: 2,840 km/s    End: 50.1d     Range: 12,294.9m km    WH: 0    Size: 5    TH: 9/5/2
Boyle-Gardner SR 25 Achilles GS Probe (35)    Speed: 215 km/s    End: 1.4d     Range: 25.1m km    WH: 0    Size: 1.8567    TH: 0/0/0
Boyle-Gardner XR 18 Achilles GS Probe (1)    Speed: 2,960 km/s    End: 72.9d     Range: 18,651.8m km    WH: 0    Size: 5    TH: 9/5/2

Andrews-Roberts Missile Detection Sensor AS10-R1 (1)     GPS 48     Range 11m km    MCR 987.2k km    Resolution 1
Weston Warning & Control EM Sensor EM10-80 (1)     Sensitivity 80     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  70.7m km
Weston Warning & Control Thermal Sensor TH10-80 (1)     Sensitivity 80     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  70.7m km

Strike Group
6x Midge Gravsurvey Ship   Speed: 2882 km/s    Size: 9.99

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Somehow it wasn't a complete disaster, my passives picked them up immediately too, and I paused to have a look at the system.  I got a chance to launch some long range sensor probes at the planet the aliens were sitting next to but as they flew right past their fleet they were no surprisingly shot down.  I am annoyed I didn't think to have an active sensor probe in my loadout and that is still on my to-do list.  I still had plenty of time before I had to escape back through the jump gate so I decided to wait and see what would happen.  At the time I was also carrying a scout fighter instead of one midge but I forgot about that, and it's active search sensor.  Within a few minutes I detected 5 new thermal signatures moving towards me at 30,000 km/s, so I thought I would find out how my woefully short range AMMs designed to hit targets at 20,000 km/s a second would fare.  I only had time to fire off two volleys of AMMs before the missiles were going to hit me but both volleys were effective, surprisingly, but that still left 3 missiles so I decided to jump out of system. 

Luckily I had the presence of mind to drop thermal and active sensor buoys at the jump gate point.  They were eventually destroyed but gave me some good updated intel on the ships attacking me.  The first thing I did before moving off was to drop my second active sensor buoy on my side of the jump point behind me so I would know if they ever decided to come through in the future.

I've attached an image of what the system currently looks like if you are interested.  Not sure if embeding images is working.  (First time posting anything in-depth. )


https://i. imgur. com/NSOxWaG. jpg

I've not played Aurora for a couple of years and I learned quite a bit from all this, among other things;

• Geosurvey buoys are far more fiddly to use than some of the orders would imply and the waypoint system can be quite tedious for this sort of use.
• My low thermal engines on a ship this big aren't going to help me if I jump into a system 100m km from aliens with active and passive sensors.
• NPRs are going to shoot down my probes if I shoot them right past them.
• I seriously need to upgrade my AMMs or add more point defence for this kind of situation.
• Sensor buoys are useful.
• Geosurvey buoys definitely do not work as you would expect.
• Steve is an evil genius who made this game just to make me obsess over trivialities and never be sure if something is a feature or a bug.

But most importantly: If you don't get stuck for hours working out something you are not even sure is a bug or a feature, then persuing the design of a vanity ship project is where this game really shines.  I plan to keep modifying this ship doctrine.  I think it has a lot of potential.  It definitely has promise to be gruadually modified to take on an woefully over-engineered flagship role as my game continues.  I have just researched a bunch of command and control modules and I don't have any large warships to put them on.  I will probably split this design into one very OTT Exploration Cruiser as originally intended and also into a another variant with a more military theme, for leading large fleets into the outer edges of my domain.

I will definitely be experimenting more with tiny engine two stage probes/mines but I probably won't be using them as my primary means of doing geosurveys unless I can find a way of streamlining waypoints and deploying ordnance.  That being said, it is only slightly more time consuming than manually designating waypoints and firing long range probes at planets as it is.  I'll hopefully get around to adding some requests to the suggestions thread.

If you want to offer any feedback on both the use of geoprobes and the viability of this sort of design for long range exploration then that would be welcome.  You aren't gong to stop me trying to make a very expensive and overengineered "Enterprise style exploration vessel though.   

A few things I already want to work on.  Probably make the engines more efficient for a sacrifice for speed, I would like to double the range as my survey parasites do all the heavy lifting when I enter a new system anyway.  Three years is not really long enough to do any really deep space exploration with the time it takes to finish a systems grav survey; Athough I should probably be keener to just jump through the first point and move on.  I am thinking of making my survey vessels have slower, more efficient engines too as they eat up quite a bit of my fuel when they dock after surveying.  Speed of engines vs speed of surveying is a tricky balance for how I am trying to use this ship.  My extreme range geo probes have been really useful for conserving fuel when I have entered a binary with an interesting planetary system almost 20b km away and without a legrange point.  I might add one much slower XXR probe for the rare times you find another star orbiting over 40b km away, just in case.

I have some new tech I am researching that I can use to make new components to improve on these, but for reference here are the current parasite designs I have:

My midges work quite well, but I doubt I need both EM and Thermal sensors, I wanted something though, as they are moving all over the system.  It's nice to have a vague idea what killed you or realise a planet has a population on it.  I'm not 100% sure what an EM sensor is good for.  Originally I had Thermal on the Geosurvey Ships and EM on the Gravsurveys as that just seemed right from a narrative perspective:

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Midge class Gravsurvey Ship      500 tons       12 Crew       130.8 BP       TCS 10    TH 29    EM 0
2882 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 3      Sensors 0/0/1/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 0.60 Years     MSP 20    AFR 100%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 33    5YR 500    Max Repair 100 MSP
Midshipman    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Morale Check Required   

Hewitt Drive Systems FC77 Magneto-plasma Drive  EP28.80 (1)    Power 28.8    Fuel Use 120.28%    Signature 28.8    Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 84,000 Litres    Range 25.2 billion km (101 days at full power)

Howard Sensor Systems EM Sensor EM0.1-0.8 (1)     Sensitivity 0.8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.1m km
Howard Sensor Systems Thermal Sensor TH0.1-0.8 (1)     Sensitivity 0.8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.1m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

I was using 1000 ton Dragonflies but their fuel reserves were too low and more midges seemed to be more efficient with 30 points to survey.  This is my current updated design with a prototype engine, I probably don't need both sensors but I had free space and like to get them to 1000/500 Tons just out of neatness.

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Dragonfly XR class Gravsurvey Ship (P)      1,000 tons       29 Crew       264.4 BP       TCS 20    TH 58    EM 0
2882 km/s      Armour 1-8       Shields 0-0       HTK 8      Sensors 8/8/2/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 0.94 Years     MSP 36    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 38    5YR 573    Max Repair 100 MSP
Midshipman    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Gardner Drive Systems Magneto-plasma Drive  EP57.60 (1)    Power 57.6    Fuel Use 59.73%    Signature 57.6    Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 62,000 Litres    Range 18.7 billion km (75 days at full power)

Howard Sensor Systems Thermal Sensor TH1.0-8.0 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Howard Sensor Systems EM Sensor EM1.0-8.0 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

If a system has lots of really interesting planets then it is nice to have a geosurvey parasite, but they got in the way of moving on to the next system quickly and meant my probes/buoys were a bit redundant so I just have them on some much more basic survey carrier variants of the above ship.  They get the job done well.

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Hover Fly class Geosurvey Ship      500 tons       12 Crew       130.8 BP       TCS 10    TH 29    EM 0
2882 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 3      Sensors 0/0/0/1      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 0.60 Years     MSP 20    AFR 100%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 33    5YR 500    Max Repair 100 MSP
Midshipman    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Morale Check Required   

Hewitt Drive Systems FC77 Magneto-plasma Drive  EP28.80 (1)    Power 28.8    Fuel Use 120.28%    Signature 28.8    Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 84,000 Litres    Range 25.2 billion km (101 days at full power)

Howard Sensor Systems EM Sensor EM0.1-0.8 (1)     Sensitivity 0.8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.1m km
Howard Sensor Systems Thermal Sensor TH0.1-0.8 (1)     Sensitivity 0.8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.1m km
Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

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Bumble Bee class Geosurvey Ship      1,000 tons       29 Crew       272.9 BP       TCS 20    TH 65    EM 0
3243 km/s      Armour 1-8       Shields 0-0       HTK 7      Sensors 8/8/0/2      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 0.95 Years     MSP 37    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 39    5YR 587    Max Repair 100 MSP
Midshipman    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months    Morale Check Required   

Hewitt Drive Systems FC77 Magneto-plasma Drive  EP64.80 (1)    Power 64.8    Fuel Use 80.19%    Signature 64.8    Explosion 9%
Fuel Capacity 62,000 Litres    Range 13.9 billion km (49 days at full power)

Howard Sensor Systems EM Sensor EM1.0-8.0 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Howard Sensor Systems Thermal Sensor TH1.0-8.0 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2)   2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

And just so you know I am not completely stubborn I do have a few much more convensional survey craft flying around picking up after my me.

I will probably end up increasing the tonnage for a while as my shipyards expand and the design calls for it.  The Fermium class is meant to forge a way through newly discovered systems and operate for many years at a time, not be a basic survey vessel.  Having figher sized gravsurvey ships seems to work really well to quickly survey and move on.  If I had ten of them then they would each need to just suvey three points each for a system to be completely gravsurveyed.  That would be fast enough for me to drop buoys and launch probes at a few choice locations and then move on.  My main survey fleets and scouts can catch up later and finish autosurveying all the less interesting locations.

A few things I am not sure about is if more, smaller engines will make me harder to detect and if stealth is worth attempting with such a large ship given the added cost to hull space and AFR/MSP.  I already have 18 Engineering spaces and 2 maintenance storage bays just to get a maintenance life of 3 years.  Long range exploration and the ability to scout dangerous or suspicious systems I stumble into and then escape is my primary goal.  I imagine adding back a scout to my hangar might pay off in that respect.  I also think range is much more important than speed for this ships intended use, so I can probably optimise the engines a lot more.  I strongly suspect the next design of this ship will also go up to at least 25000 tons.

Well done if you've read this far, I was just going to make a quick reply and I went off on a tangent.  Hope that explains in a very long-winded way why I spent so much time trying to get Geosurvey buoys working.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

The thermal signature is the sum of the engines, just like engine power. So using multiple small engines isn't any stealthier than 1 big one.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

Ah thanks, I suspected as much. That will help with my range then.

[xenoscepter]

The thermal signature is the sum of the engines, just like engine power. So using multiple small engines isn't any stealthier than 1 big one.

 - Actually, that's not correct. I'm being lazy here, but if you go rifling through the changes list for C#, it mentions that the minimum Thermal Signature for a ship is no longer 0, but rather it is the minimum Thermal Signature of your engine. Not engines, plural, but engine. In other words, the design of your engine. So having multiple smaller engines with Thermal Reduction will allow you to be stealthier... with the caveat that your moving at reduced speed. Or standing still. I haven't extensively tested this mechanic, but I'd imagine that you could go slow enough that the thermal signature won't go lower even if you go slower, and so effectively your moving at full stealth, but not full speed... if that makes any sense.

EDIT: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg113792#msg113792
  ^Turns out the standing still thermal signature is calculated differently than a "moving" ship, AKA one with orders of any sort. The ones with orders use the base thermal output as a minimum, meaning if you go slow enough thermal reduction stops helping. So with lot's of small engines, you can move stealthier. As I read it the base thermal output is used as a minimum, which seems to imply that this base thermal out is related to the engine itself, not the overall thermal signature of every engine. Which makes some sense considering by going slower your reducing the output of all the engines in tandem. It makes sense that the lowest possible signature would be equal to just one engine.

UPDATE: I did a quick test, and it seems that my interpretation is wrong. My ship could only achieve 5.something reduction, but by going slow enough I got my thermal sig down to 2. This finding makes me PUMPED!

[Llamageddon (OP)]

Nice research, thanks for sharing. I think I understand. Does that mean that if all my engines are running at full power it is the same thermal signature as 1 engine of the same tech but 3x bigger, but if I lower my speed I get better gains to thermal reduction per % decrease in speed than I would with just one big engine and also that their standing still thermal signature will be lower than with just the one engine? I hope I understood right. I need to do some tests myself but I'm not even sure where to see what my current thermal signature is...

[liveware]

I've been using 1000 ton survey corvettes lately in my games. Standard fleet doctrine is to jump into a new system and launch scout missiles (2 stage missiles with a variety of sensor buoys on the second stage) at any planets of interest while the survey corvettes run around completing grav/geo surveys. I have not been using geosurvey probes too much this far, but their use would allow my corvettes to focus on gravsurveys and allow me to scout more distant systems more rapidly. I think I am going to start using geoprobes...

Concerning fuel efficiency and engine size, I have found that smaller engines with high fuel efficiency are best for survey purposes. I usually use 4-5 year deployment times on my survey ships and aim for around 1000 km/s cruising speed (or less). I can usually remain undetected so long as I don't jump directly on top of an NPR fleet and can get some rudimentary reconnaissance completed via scout missiles before sending in more capable scout ships.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

In the end, in my v1.11 game, after working out that two stage probes worked as expected, I was getting some pretty good results doing something similar. I had a large mothership with efficient engines that had a probe launcher and which held a good quentity of small gravsurvey parasites. I'd launch my two stage geosurvey probes at any notable planet whilst gravsurveys go off and do their thing. I had a couple of extra long range probes for binary systems to save travelling billions of kilometers just to look at one or two bodies.

It got to be a pretty large ship but could survey all jump points and move on at a very fast pace. More conventional geosurvey vessels could then move in behind and finish off checking out all the small, less promising bodies in the systems behind me. This seemed to be more efficient for both fuel and surveying time than having individual GSVs and GEVs flying around independently, though it did need more micromanagement. Being able to place waypoints more easily on selected bodies would make this a lot less of a hastle. I plan on trying it again in my new 1.12 game. I'll see if I can streamline the process any better.