The way that the geo teams work when surveying a planet is each build phase there is a chance of finding more minerals and a chance of finishing the survey so no more minerals can be found.  The higher the team rating is the better the chance of finding minerals and the lower the chance to finish is.  Also you will tend to get results much faster on planets while asteroids are very slow to find any minerals on.  This sort of compensates for the amount/scarcity of the minerals found.  That will match the normal generation chance for the type of body (terrestrial/chunk ect) that you are on.  Asteroids have much higher availabilities in general.

If there is an alien colony you can still land your team.  They may get attacked in which case you will lose them as they don't have a combat value.  They can perform the mineral survey but anybody who has a colony on the planet will benifit from what they find.

Brian

They can go anywhere but Gas Giants since colonys can't be made on them. You dont need to worry about their health or the planets conditions. There is no way to know their progress, but as long as there are five members and the survey isn't complete they will eventually. Even if this takes years at a time.

The F2 window will show you if the Geologists have completed their survey. Its located at the bottom of the summary of your planet. When it is complete it is time to move the team to a new world to discover new minerals. This happens automatically, you only need to make sure that all 5 members are alive and that the survey for that world isn't complete for them to go about their task. Once its time to move on select a ship you wish to use (can be any type of ship) on the F12 screen select the planet they are on. Then select the Pick Up Team order and then select the team. The process of unloading is practically identical. Select a place you want surveyed and drop them off.

Also the place they are dropped doesn't need to be made into a colony before hand because dropping them off automatically makes the location into a colony.

As for minerals on Mars, we are speaking of Trans Newtonian minerals only in Aurora, so this explains why you can have planets without any mineral whatsoever... 

Right.

Aurora's Economy use ONLY Trans-Newtonian ore.

And a warm welcome by new Officer.

careful out there.."The Steve's Evil Mind" had bad new setup in other Solar System,..

With mass drivers just make sure you never remove the final mass driver on a planet that is recieving minerals this way.   If you do then the rest of the mineral packets will be bombarding your planet and they can do lots of damage to the planet.

Brian

Thankfully there's a warning for that now.

All right, great ! I'll try mass drivers ASAP, looks fun 

Back to the minerals question : I was checking the Population & Production Screen (F2) and in the Summary tab, for all the colonies, I see : geological team survey completed.  What does it mean ?

Mass Drivers would be a better alternative have one set up on earth and one on mars. The mass driver will shoot minerals from earth to mars when it is set up to do so. Also they are the standard form of shifting minerals to industrial worlds from your mining planets.

A couple of questions for you to start with.

Have you done a geological survey of mars yet.  This would normally require a ship with geological survey instruments.  If you have not or are not sure then the fast way is to turn on the SM functions and then open up the system display screen (F9).  If Mars has been surveyed then in the far left there will be a letter either a S, or an M.  S means that the planet was surveyed but no minerals were found, and a M says that there are minerals on the planet.  If that far left column is blank then use the button down on the far right that says body survey.  Make sure that Mars is selected and it will survey mars for you.  If you just want to have the entire system surveyed then use the button that says system survey.

Any other questions we would be happy to help.  If there is nobody else on the forum that speaks french let me know I still can get along with my french even though it has been years.

Brian Neumann