Author Topic: What do you do with your exploration ships?  (Read 5555 times)

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Offline DaMachinator (OP)

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What do you do with your exploration ships?
« on: July 25, 2016, 03:48:30 PM »
Escorted, armed, defensive only, or completely defenceless?

For me, it's completely defenseless, with only the single layer of armor. Especially geosurvey ships. Gravisurvey ships may acquire shields because they're already military craft. I may also thicken the armor and add CIWS to my exploratory craft.

Also, does anyone make armored or armed freighters/tankers?
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Iranon

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2016, 04:25:40 PM »
Defenceless.
If they keep running into trouble, I may try something:
Make the next generation fighter-sized and escort them with recon fighters equipped with passive sensors.
Escort them if I have cheap and efficient warships available (I usually do).
Put a basic sensor package on the Geosurvey ships if i figure that's enough to avoid getting shot at.

I don't really armour any civilian ships, or even disposable warships. I prefer large low-power engines as damage sinks.
 

Offline DaMachinator (OP)

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2016, 05:03:21 PM »
My primary tactic so far to get out of confrontation pretty much amounts to "jump capable + gotta go fast + big passives". Tactic: GTFO heading on a direction that is not close to the jump point. If possible, use Lagrange points to increase misdirection, then transit out.
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Offline Drgong

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2016, 06:13:50 PM »
A little trick.

 you can put a small sensor (I think 1 HS sized) on a ship and it still commercial. 

I use ships that have both Geo and grav sensors most of the time.  I give them some passive sensors too and there defense is running.   If not, scratch one survey ship. 
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Offline DaMachinator (OP)

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2016, 07:07:38 PM »
A little trick.

 you can put a small sensor (I think 1 HS sized) on a ship and it still commercial. 

I use ships that have both Geo and grav sensors most of the time.  I give them some passive sensors too and there defense is running.   If not, scratch one survey ship.

Earlygame size-one passive sensors are useless for ship detection. With size 1 and Thermal Sensor Sensitivity 6, a passive sensor has nowhere near the detection range I'd like to have, and gravisurvey and EM sensors make your ship a military vessel.

My survey ships run in teams of 2 or 3, and are rather expensive BP-wise. Typical outfit: Basic commercial or military jump drive, 50 HS minimum power commercial engine, and from 3 to 5 geosurvey or gravisurvey sensors.  Construction times are cut by prefabricating engines, jump drive, and sensors.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2016, 07:43:58 PM by DaMachinator »
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Offline Bughunter

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2016, 03:16:14 AM »
I have been putting a size 1 thermal sensor om my geosurvey ships so they can detect any populations.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2016, 05:53:26 PM »
Defenseless, but with decent sensors so they can hopefully see an enemy coming and run. Arming survey ships always seemed fairly useless, as a halfhearted collection of guns and defenses on a single ship isn't going to help against most threats survey ships run into, and escorting always seemed overly expensive and micromanagement heavy. Economically, the most efficient way to handle it seems to be to make cheap survey ships and accept losses.

If I'm playing a game where I want to roleplay keeping the crews safe, I'll generally have an actual fleet detachment check out the system first and then send in the survey ships.
 

Offline Kytuzian

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2016, 08:30:06 PM »
I've done both. I find that it's better to make them defenseless, at least for how I play, because I would have to send a large fleet of armed survey ships, or make my survey ships dramatically bigger, in order to actually make them viable in combat against enemy ships. And while that is obviously not impossible, I much prefer to send single survey ships out, and if one gets destroyed, so be it.
 

Offline hubgbf

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #8 on: July 28, 2016, 08:00:49 AM »
Defenseless, but with size 1 TH and EM sensors.

Once at middle game (and after having lost several defenseless ships), I usually design a first-contact ship which is a small carrier with gauss defense and armor. It is staffed with a jump fighter (minimal sensor suit) to check the other side of a jump point. Then the first-contact ship jump in system at low speed, and lauch several mini fighters optimized for range and low-profile EM and TH. These small fighter will go to each planet with small sensors.

Once every planet and moon on the system is checked, the defenseless  geo and gravsurvey ship can start to work.

Use a bit of micromanagment, and is far from perfect (won't spot spoilers), but I consider it more logical once the first hostile encounter happened.

My 2 cents
 

Offline JOKER

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2016, 01:07:13 PM »
Defenceless. I found it's hard to fit enough weapon arrays into my all-purpose exploration ships. But my design carries some sensor-tipped missile and space mines for blockade, if they made it to jump point, there will be a surprise for enemy.
 

Offline Borealis4x

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #10 on: July 30, 2016, 10:03:24 PM »
How do people feel about mixing geosurvey with gravsurvey? I like being able to point a ship at a system and eventually have it completely surveyed.

Also, is there any way to automate exploration so the ship will go through jump points and explore? And a way to make it jump back for fuel?
 

Offline linkxsc

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #11 on: July 30, 2016, 11:14:10 PM »
You can probably hunt through old thread in ahip design and find my normal surveyors.

But i usually run an all military fleet, usually 1.5x the speed of a normal warship, and split into 4 classes, a geosurvey, gravsurvey, em, and therm detection ships. All designed closely enough that call can be produced from the same yard without retooling.

Usually works quite well.

Am running a game now though. 0 NPRs, cause i wanna mess with apoilers alone. And for that ive been running small carriers "seaplane tenders" that service tony long ranged FAC surveyors and scouts.
 

Offline Kytuzian

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #12 on: July 31, 2016, 06:58:39 AM »
How do people feel about mixing geosurvey with gravsurvey? I like being able to point a ship at a system and eventually have it completely surveyed.

Also, is there any way to automate exploration so the ship will go through jump points and explore? And a way to make it jump back for fuel?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by automate exploration, but you can have them survey all the survey locations in a system automatically, and you can have them survey all bodies in a system automatically. However, to the best of my knowledge, there is no "go through nearest unexplored jump point" order, or such thing. You can have them automatically jump back for fuel too, just use the conditional orders ("Fuel less than X%", "Refuel at Colony or Tanker").
 

Iranon

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #13 on: July 31, 2016, 07:09:28 AM »
How do people feel about mixing geosurvey with gravsurvey? I like being able to point a ship at a system and eventually have it completely surveyed.

Also, is there any way to automate exploration so the ship will go through jump points and explore? And a way to make it jump back for fuel?

Seems terrible. It means the whole ship counts as military, and the automation will be suboptimal (we'd need a "survey nearest body or survey location" to avoid wasting fuel and travel time).

Having them automatically jump to unexlored systems isn't possible afaik... and it probably wouldn't be very useful either, because new system may be discovered or connected to the gate network while the ships are underway. I rarely use automated jump gate building for similar reasons, and that has one less source of sillyness.
 

Offline Drgong

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Re: What do you do with your exploration ships?
« Reply #14 on: July 31, 2016, 07:20:46 AM »
Seems terrible. It means the whole ship counts as military, and the automation will be suboptimal (we'd need a "survey nearest body or survey location" to avoid wasting fuel and travel time).

Having them automatically jump to unexlored systems isn't possible afaik... and it probably wouldn't be very useful either, because new system may be discovered or connected to the gate network while the ships are underway. I rarely use automated jump gate building for similar reasons, and that has one less source of sillyness.
I have been known to do that for this reason.

Have Jump tender, and bring two science vessels with both sensors.

No matter how the layout of the system I can set one to grav scan, and then do geo, and one Geo and then grav scan.   I have a fair amount of fuel and set it for 24 months.   They finish the search unless it a really crowded system, and even then, its the 24 months that comes before the fuel issues.   In that case a new jump tender shows up and the old science team heads back, goes into overhaul mode.  Works well. 

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