How do you look for NPR

[Norm49 (OP)]

Hi i have a tendency to lose geoservey ship when they discover a NPR. I have some idea of my own on how to deal with this like launching probe at every planet in a new system or a ship rely fast ship with usage passive sensor and with CIWS but I wanted to know how you do it. I always lose my ship that discover some ruins and it kinda piss me off.

(little back ground story just for fun)
Of course i will take my revenge on the last geoservey I lost but SOL is in a dead end witch is blockade by invader so I need to find ancient construct to close the rift and now I find precursor. When this start I was building my navy and I had 1 destroyer and 2 frigate so yea my navy was use at like 1 billion % of is capacity, I can't relay afford to retoll a ship ward to replace goeservey ship. At least my tiny navy actually did a amazing job and with new ship retake the other system but I am starting to fall back with those new ship coming out of the rift and one resource ruining low in sol with force me to chose what i build. I manage to pass some convoy before with heavy escort but with the last wave of invader ship that pass the rift I not sure my navy can do it any more.

[non sequitur]

So, there are a couple different ways I handle this problem

1. stick passive sensors on your survey ship. This wont completely eliminate the problem, but will allow for some early warning
2. dedicated survey fleets. survey ships+a dedicated sensor platform+some offensive defensive power
3. Stick 500 tons of hanger on your survey ships and give them all a sensor fighter and allow that to do an initial pass through a new system. It's a lot easier to rebuild a fighter than a ship if the fighter gets destroyed
4. just accept that survey is an inherently dangerous job and captains of survey ships have short life spans.

[Norm49 (OP)]

1: That what i did. But it wasn't sufficient.
2: That a lot of ship
3: I haven think about that one, with is strange because I am already doing it with military ship before passing a jump point. That could be a good idea if I manage to do a fighter with relatively long range. Maybe not on the servery ship so I keep the tonnage low for better range but I could do a mother ship for that purpose.
4: Lest the fighter or probe die

[Barkhorn]

I have thermal reduction on my survey ship's engines, so they don't get spotted as easily, and I include a big thermal sensor.  The idea being I'll see them before they see me.

[Garfunkel]

You don't have to shoot sensor missiles at every planet in a system - target low colony cost planets as those are most likely to have existing owners. There are exceptions but those are pretty rare.

[Barkhorn]

btw passive sensor missiles and buoys are bugged in v1.11.  They don't work in systems without active sensors present.  This is a known bug and is fixed for v1.12.

[Froggiest1982]

Small Sensors as already said, personally I use all size 1: Active, Thermal and EM.

Don't use Military Engines, true NPR don't react well to the and no Active ON for same reason.

This will solve the NPR unless they are of an aggressive nature. For Spoiler races, nothing you can do. You may start using Scout Vessels and once the system is marked secure ships will jump in if you are in full auto mode. Usually as soon as I discover a new system I mark it as alien controlled until I am 100% sure it's empty and then I unflag it.

[Aurex]

The way I deal with the issue differs from playthrough to playthrough.
I almost always use geo/grav science vessels in a single neat package, but they're around 14000 tons in magnetoplasma era, and when I lose one to NPR or Spoiler races I tend to get quite mad.  It makes for a nice RP moment, but still. . .  so I've come up with a way of exploring that's a little less risky.
First, I postpone the exploration of every system but the ones in direct proximity to Sol to at least Ion Drive era.
Then I design a jump-capable carrier.  No armament, enough hangar space to hold 4 survey ships.  Its main feature is an enormously powerful sensor array, both EM and thermal.
These survey ships have thermal reduction on their engines, they're rather slow-ish and they have an extremely low thermal emission.  They have decent thermal sensors.

The exploration strategy I employ with those vessels is:
-Send the carrier through the jump point.  Out of 250+ explored systems in the current playthrough I've never found a threat directly in range of a JP.
-Move the carrier in a position that will guarantee a nice escape route if needed, but more importantly enough EM/thermal coverage to pick up any colony or ship that might be present.
-In case of a 2. 00 colony cost world I suspect might be dangerous even if the sensor coverage says otherwise, I will approach it very carefully with just a single science vessel.

I know it's not revolutionary or perfect, but I've explored thousands of systems with these ships and I've never, ever lost a single ship.  I'm not home right now, but I will share the designs another day if anyone's interested!

[misanthropope]

I tend to search for NPRs with a 1500 ton res 80 active.  or by targeting all the candidate planets in a system with a cruise missile each and waiting for the point defense interrupt.

[Steve Walmsley]

In my current campaign I have dedicated exploration ships that transit every new jump point, then fire probes and geological survey drones at any planets in the habitable range. 15 years in with over a hundred systems explored, two NPRs and seven precursor systems encountered, and I haven't lost a single survey ship. This is the first time I have used this approach but it seems to be working well so far. The other option is add a small number of box launchers to your survey ships and use them to fire probes.

Or just accept surveying is dangerous and use survey ships as a trip-wire

[bankshot]

I haven't progressed far enough in C# to bother yet but after discovering ruins in my VB game I made a dedicated scout carrier with fighter scouts to explore new systems.  The carrier was 2,400 tons - just big enough for a 1,000 capacity hangar, engines, jump drive, and some extra fuel.  Load it with a one man 150 ton jump fighter with an overclocked engine to probe the jump point then two 400ish ton high endurance fighters with stealthy engines and a large thermal/EM sensor.  Or for extra stealth drop down to three 280ish ton fighters - one EM, one thermal, and one with a gauss or reduced size laser.

The carrier sends the Evil Knievel jump scout through to see if the warp point is occupied.  If the warp point is clear the carrier jumps through, recovers the jump scout and launches the EM/Thermal scout wing.  It sits on the warp point while the scout wing does a flyover of all planets and terrestrial size moons.  If there are no surprises the grav and planetary survey ships jump in.

Since they are small with low thermal signature the fighters are likely to see NPRs before being spotted themselves, and even if they are caught they would be relatively easy to replace. 

[Norm49 (OP)]

This topic just demonstrate one of the thing I love about this game. There is some ways to see a problem and so many ways to see a solution and those solution can be drastically apart. In other game you usually have one ways to deal with a situation, here there is tonnes of them.