Lazy geologists?

[Zeebie (OP)]

My geology team has never found anything. They have been placed on three planets, two moons, and three asteroids and I've never heard a peep from them.  I've left them in place for up to a year.  Could this just be bad luck? Am I missing something?

[Victuz]

As far as I know the rate at which they find stuff is random. Sometimes it's really fast sometimes it takes forever. My geologists were on Mercury for almost 3 years before they found anything, but than for 4 months in a row they were finding more things up until they said "nothing more here".

I also don't think that the geology team rating affects how fast they find stuff only the quality of said stuff but somebody better informed can correct me on that one.

[o_O]

I'm pretty sure the team's odds of finding something each increment is based on their skill.  They will find things faster on larger bodies, so a good way to train a geo team is on one of those large, high pressure planets near the star. 

[Raaaak]

Just checking, did you survey the body with a Geo Survey vessel first?

[Zeebie (OP)]

I did survey all the bodies with a ship first.  Now after 8 years of trying, my team has surveyed one body (Mars).  Otherwise, they've been completely quiet. 

[Zook]

Are there still five of them, with a reasonably high skill? Maybe four of them died and you didn't notice?

[o_O]

Teams survey larger bodies faster.  I train mine up on large mineral poor planets, since those will never really have useful mineral deposits anyway. 

[Zeebie (OP)]

Are there still five of them, with a reasonably high skill? Maybe four of them died and you didn't notice?

They're all still alive. Their skills range from 11 to 26, I have no sense of whether that is high or low.

[Paladin]

Zeebie:
I have noticed the same thing in my games.  Sometimes one of them dies, and I lose them for years.  Sometimes they're fine and nothing happens.  I have a team that totals 293/300 (good is a total of 150, after that, its great) points, and for a total of 6 years, they found nothing on a large planet.  I wasn't sure why, so I disbanded them and moved them to another planet, where they promptly found about 4 deposits in about three months.  I know that the geological survey was not completed, but they just couldn't find anything. 

I humbly suggest you try what I did and see if there is a change.  I would be excited to hear of what your outcome is.  I realize you've done this before, but even a system change might help, or changing the people comprising the team.  Disbanding and putting them back together might help.  It does seem that your team is fairly low.  Your team (considering standard deviations) has a score of 93, so this is below par.

Your government type MAY have an effect on this as well.  Ctrl-F2 might give you some insight that I do not have.

[Zeebie (OP)]

Hi Paladin-  I disbanded and reformed, but now 6  months and nothing. Thanks for the calibration on what counts as a good team - how do you get numbers that high? Did I just get unlucky with crappy officers?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It's just a matter of time.  Luck changes how much time it takes.

Survey skill increases either when a survey attempt succeeds or if an officer is commanding a survey vessel.

You could probably disband your team and reconstitute it with survey ship captains if you're worried about your team being low.  120 is the lowest you want to use on a planet you plan to mine on.

[Zook]

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Mineral_Generation

[Paladin]

Extraordinarily lucky, yes.  I placed them on very large planets early on and they continued to find deposits.  At this point in the game, they're mostly pushing 80 years old, the only exception is a 30 year old and a 50 year old.

The above posts are very good references, they surpass whatever insight I could provide

[Zeebie (OP)]

Hey folks - I thought I'd give you an update.  After many, many years of no results, my geology team started leveling up rapidly and making frequent discoveries.  Their rating is now up to 288 and turned a virtually empty planet into a cornucopia with hundreds of millions of tons of different minerals at 0.7+.