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Posted by: Zincat
« on: January 04, 2017, 02:13:07 AM »

I am always a bit perplexed by the posts about survey carriers. Maybe it's because I always play conventional start and so...
When I see people talking about large survey carriers..... My warships are not large, let alone a survey ship XD


At any rate, for me it's cheap and expendable. 5-6000 tons civilian cheapo ships with size 1 passives and 2 survey modules (or military ship with grav survey modules for grav survey). Good range/speed tradeoff. I usually have 8-10 survey ships and 8-10 grav survey ships. They cost nothing.

If one gets destroyed well... I can always build another. Or another 10. And I can often say what killed them. Most spoilers are recognizable. If not, provided the survey ship did not die just out of the jump point, I send it a military supercharged sensor ship with huge passives, and an active to turn on if necessary. I can, usually, get it out of the system in time if the bad guys come after it.

At any rate, I will say it again. Playing with a conventional start, main point for me is: do NOT lose something you cannot afford to lose. I have trouble as it is getting up a basic fleet to defend my system with. And I also play with the very bad spoilers on, so it's stressful XD
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: January 03, 2017, 05:05:18 PM »

I'll weigh in again. From my experience the only way to keep exploration ships alive is to make them small and slow to keep signatures down, and equip large passive sensors so you can see stuff before it sees you. Generally NPR's and spoilers run on passives unless they have detected something, so you should be fine untill you get too close.
If I can I usually make my exploration ships quite fast but run them at low speed unless they get spotted, then increase if it'll give them a chance of getting away.
Posted by: TheDeadlyShoe
« on: January 03, 2017, 01:47:03 PM »

I really hate doing it, but I usually run mostly defenceless.  Everything that is a danger to an exploration vessel requires a full battlegroup to deal with, and possible a full fleet.  Even a 40,000-50,000 ton survey carrier has difficulty carrying a meaningful amount of military power, considering the tonnage required for the jumpdrive.  I can't commit that much force to covering exploration ships, especially in the early game.    I don't miss minefields - they were hella laggy - but at least they were something a tough exploration ship could conceivably survive.

I do often put armor and sometimes CIWS on tankers, and sometimes other civilian vessels. Usually a waste of bp, but sometimes it's saved a commercial vessel from taking meaningful damage.
Posted by: Nori
« on: January 03, 2017, 01:12:57 PM »

All but one of my designs has been more or less defenseless.  I had one model with CIWS but it proved to be merely a mass sink as the one ship couldn't handle any amount of enemies.

For my next design I need to put more powerful passive sensors in.  That should help keep them alive.  Also going to try for higher speed.  Currently they go 4545KM/s.

In any case, I honestly haven't lost that many.  3 dozen systems explored and I think I've lost around 4.
Posted by: Michael Sandy
« on: November 13, 2016, 06:53:53 AM »

Early game exploration is a bit of a gamble, expand fast, grow your economy, and then hope you can build up your military in time to deal with surprises.  But a large standing fleet, especially of obsolete ships, is a drain on the economy.  Starting off with survey carriers and survey drones, you at least have the option of quickly building some fighters and war missiles so they have some fighting capability.

As survey ships, they may have excess magazine capability, but they can use their huge launchers to act as mine launchers.  They may be ancient, mostly obsolete ships, but with the most modern missiles.
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: September 01, 2016, 10:48:57 AM »

Early on, defenseless.

I will usually lose a couple of geosurvey ships. As tech improves, they pickup armor, speed, and passives. I usually drop a CIWS on them as well, along with good passives.

The last couple of games, I have a dedicated scout go through with BIG sensors and sweep the system. If its clean, the scout moves on, and the dedicated surveyors come through. Works well, and saves me some ships. A bit more micromanaging, and I still lose the odd geosurvey ship, but meh, they are cheap.
Posted by: TCD
« on: August 29, 2016, 10:11:40 AM »

Quote from: NuclearStudent on August 26, 2016, 03:18:48 PM
Pick crew who enjoy the splendid isolation!  ;D
Nah, that's what the 5 year fuel harvesting mission is for!
Posted by: NuclearStudent
« on: August 26, 2016, 03:18:48 PM »

Quote from: TCD on August 26, 2016, 01:44:57 PM
A patrol craft seems sensible, I just don't like the thought of the poor crew sat out in some obscure system for month after month!

Pick crew who enjoy the splendid isolation!  ;D
Posted by: TCD
« on: August 26, 2016, 01:44:57 PM »

A patrol craft seems sensible, I just don't like the thought of the poor crew sat out in some obscure system for month after month!
Posted by: Drgong
« on: August 26, 2016, 12:43:46 PM »

Quote from: TCD on August 26, 2016, 09:17:07 AM
Yes, I had a first contact ship as well. Just don't assume that because a system was empty a year ago when you checked it out it will necessarily still be empty...

Normally when I doing expansion, exploration happens soon after, or I leave a patrol craft to keep tabs on the system.
Posted by: TCD
« on: August 26, 2016, 09:17:07 AM »

Yes, I had a first contact ship as well. Just don't assume that because a system was empty a year ago when you checked it out it will necessarily still be empty...
Posted by: Drgong
« on: August 25, 2016, 08:02:29 PM »

In my current game I been trying out having a "first contact" ship that is the first to jump into a system.  it has some launchers and launches probes at anything remotely inhabitable so that it a probe that sets off alerts, not a ship in case the planet is occupied.   Not met a NPR or spoilers yet, and after  a few games of playing knife actions in one system out of sol, it nice to be able to establish some colonies and so on before meeting anyone.

Of course, my battle fleet might need a big upgrade, and not sure how I shall go about it. 
Posted by: TCD
« on: August 25, 2016, 09:25:10 AM »

I was reminded last night about the importance of sending an escort through before a fleet even when the system is not new. I had sent a survey fleet to what I thought was an empty system for a routine geo-survey, only to find that an NPR had moved a squadron to the jump point in the months since my initial scouting. The first target for their meson canons was my jump ship...
Posted by: bitbucket
« on: August 24, 2016, 07:14:51 PM »

After scouting out the immediate neighboring stars to make sure I even have the luxury to think about exploring (as opposed to fighting a war of survival on my doorstep), I go to a fleet-based exploration model with a 60k-ton carrier as a command ship for an exploration task force, which will travel with a tanker and several corvette-sized escort ships.  The big 60k-ton command ship has fifteen FAC-sized survey ships in its hangars, 10 for geo scans and 5 for grav scans. 

When exploring a new system, at first the escorts peek in (the carrier doubles as jump tender), and if there's no sign of trouble after an hour (ie, a hostile fleet camping the other side), the carrier and tanker follow.  They all wait at the entry jump point for another week and if nobody seems to be home (ie, no long-range missile fire, no scouts showing up to investigate what the heck just showed up in their system, and no giant thermal/EM signatures coming from terrestrial planets), I give the all-clear for the parasite surveyors to go out and play, scan all the things, then come back to the carrier.

While it might have a little bit of fight in it, the carrier wasn't made for serious combat, never leaves the jump point, and in the event that something hostile shows up that got missed, it'll just jump right back out along with the tanker while the escorts cause a distraction.  The little surveyors are expendable.  If they make it to the jump point, the carrier is waiting on the other side holding the door open, and the escorts will do their best to fight off anything unwanted that follows them.  If they don't escape, oh well.

Then it's time to send in the bigger guns.
Posted by: drejr
« on: August 03, 2016, 08:52:25 AM »

I arm my survey ships because I find them uniquely well-suited to hunting other survey ships. Another common scenario is being faster than an NPR battle fleet but slower than its scouts. Sometimes you really don't want them following you through the jump point. They're also likely to encounter construction ships.

A launcher drastically increases survivability when used to launch reconnaissance probes at likely planets, preventing the classic blunder into an orbital weapon station mistake.