Of Geosurvey Drones

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

hey,

Trying to see if a geo survey drone has some advantages over the good old way. Theoretically I see two:

a) send the drone to a very distant planet (planets of a binary star 10 bm away) so that you don't have to haul your ship there.

b) drop the drone over a big planet (as a bomb) and let it do its work slowly while you process something else.

Now, I'm trying to come with a size 24 drone for that (as my navy possesses 24 Cal. Torp launchers tubes) but I'm impeded by a few things.

Most notably, the max geo survey points of the missile is dependant of the engine I use, because I think the game assumes I'll burn up all my fuel travelling, which is not true. So any clue or design here, how you do the trick?

Should I design a missile engine with super low fuel usage anyway?

[Wolfius]

AFAIK reactor endurance is now unlimited and geosurvey missiles will self-destruct after completing their job, although I haven't tested it myself.

Tried to make one to survey the planets around the binary component of my home system earlier today, but I kept getting overflow errors - I suspect the fact it was 1.26 trillion km(ie 8400 AU ie 0.13 lightyears) away had something to do with it.

Sent a ship instead. ETA: 20 years. Hope they packed enough snacks.

[MarcAFK]

I sorely wanted to make survey drones, but the extreme RP requirement of large missiles and particularly large launchers has always deterred me.
However in my newer games i will keep around some ICBM launchers for launching the odd probe, they're slow but for exploration it shouldn't matter so much.

[Nibelung44 (OP)]

I can help you on that: research the techs reducing rate of fire in exchange of a reduction in size of the launcher, this way they cost much less to research. At least the 5x / 0.5 one.