Jump Point Survey

[backstab (OP)]

Hi,

I'm new here ..... just wondering how do I survey systems for jup points ??

[Zyffyr]

First, you need one or more ships with Grav sensors.

Then, you need to tell those ships to do the survey.
There are 2 ways to do so.
1)Put a check in the "Survey Locations" box on the Task Groups Orders. Then pick one of the locations and tell it to survey it.
2)Set either the Primary or Secondary 'Default Orders' for the TG to "Survey Nearest Survey Location", and then don't have any manually assigned orders.

In either case, until all Survey Locations are checked out no Jump Points other than your initial entry point will show up.

Also, if you check the "Survey Locations" box on the System Map, they will show up. Unsurveyed locations will be empty white circles, surveyed spots are filled in.

[Steve Walmsley]

Hi,

I'm new here ..... just wondering how do I survey systems for jup points ??

Each system has thirty jump point locations. You can show them on the F3 system map by clicking the Show JP Survey Locations on the Display tab of the sidebar. The position of these locations and how many survey points they require is determined by the mass of the star. You can survey a brown dwarf system in a few days but systems with massive primary stars will take a long time. The F9 system view has a field named "JSP per Survey Location" near the bottom right which will show the number of points required per survey location

To actually carry out the survey, you need a ship equipped with one or more gravitational survey sensors. If your race doesn't already have them, you will need to research jump point theory before you can research gravitational survey sensors. You can either manually order the fleet with the survey ship to survey each location or you can set the primary default order (midway down the right-hand side of the Task Group Orders tab of the F12 Task group window) to Survey Nearest Survey Location. When a task group has no order set, it will check the default order and carry that out. If you have several survey ships in the system with the Survey Nearest Survey Location selected, or if you have task groups with manual orders set, each ship will be aware of all the others and will not try to survey a location that one of the other ships is planning to survey.

What I usually do to survey a system is send a fleet of 3-4 survey ships with the Survey Nearest Survey Location default order set. I order the fleet to "Divide Fleet into Single Ships". Each sub-fleet will retain the default order and between them they will automatically survey the system, working out for themselves which survey locations to survey and avoiding locations being surveyed by the others.

If you are surveying a newly discovered system, you can set the secondary default order to Move to Entry Jump Point and each ship will return to the entry point once there are no more locations to survey.

Steve

[vergeraiders]

I just want to say that once I figured it out, the options for automatic surveying are about the most useful I've ever found in this kind of game.

1) I move fleet to JP
2) Tranist JP
3) Detatch non-surver ships (sometimes reverse 2 & 3)
4) split fleet into single ships
5 do auto survey
6 have them return to entry system
7 join parent group if in same laocation

I can't wait to have an empire rich enough to afford dedicated survey command ships

I usually use 6 ships per formation, I think (but haven't done a side by side comaprison) that due to the number and location of Survey points this is an efficient number, 3 might also be good at later tech).

if theres a quibble I have is that the survey location AI doesn't look far enough ahead in assigning locations to survey (its more aparent in the system body survey)

An easy to see example of this is if you have 29 points surveyed the ship that gets to do the last one is the first one that finishes the previous point even if its farthest away and would comlete the last point after any other ships.

The choose next 3 (or 5 body) options help but do not eliminate this small innefficency.

I have no idea how to solve this for body surveys (other than a horrible brute for compare many options) but I'm sure that given the location of the entry point in a new system there is a calculable 'best' survey plan.

[Erik L]

I usually run 5 ship survey groups with a jump drive in each ship. The basic design is jump drive, 5 survey inst (max available), 5 engines, EM or Thermal scanner, fuel and crew to 6k tons. The command variant drops 1 survey inst for a flag bridge.

And once you get going, surveying is a behind the scenes automatic thing.

Set conditional orders for increase speed to max (ALL my TG have this), and Fuel under 20%, refuel at neareast colony/tanker in 4 jumps.

Grav survey have the "Survey next 3 locations" for primary default and the Geo survey have "Survey next 5 bodies" for primary default.

I also keep my grav and geo ships in different TG. That way I don't have one type waiting on the other and no need to create ad-hoc groups.