I seem to spend most of my time dividing survey ships out of their Jump Tender Task Groups, then a bit later, assimilating them again, and deleting the individual survey Task Groups.
Is there some clever way of ordering the survey ships to return to their parent ship, and join that Task Group, which automatically deletes the now empty Task Group?
I have the second conditional order, currently either to return to entry Jump Point, or to Parent ship, but not join up.
That would save me a lot of clicks, as I have about 6 survey ships with each Tender.
Theres a usefull sequence of orders you can set up with your survey fleets - this assumes that you have all the ships to carry out the survey in one task group, that your TG contains only one kind of surveyor (Geo or Grav), and that you're not in the system to be surveyed (yet), but that the system HAS been probed (ie you're not going into an unexplored WP - if you are you just have to add the steps from 5 onward after one of your units has transited in for the first time - the options wont appear until then)
In the Task Groups window (F12)
On the Special Orders / Organsisation Tab
1> set up Primary default orders to carry out surveying -
for my Stellar (Grav) Survey Groups I usually set Survey Nearest Survey Location, (Next 3 system locations is marginally more efficient)
for Planetary (Geo) Survey Groups set Survey Nearest Planet or Moon
2> Set up Secondary default orders to return to the entry JP (note this sometimes has to be reset after each cycle)
3> Set Conditional order A to "Sub Fleet in Same Location" & "Incorporate Sub Fleets in same location"
3> Set Conditional order B to "Current Speed Less tahn Max" & "Increase Speed to Max"
4> On the Task Force Orders tab Set up orders to Transit to the required system
5> From the WP you have just entered by set up "Detach Non Survey Ships" order
6> From the WP you have just entered by set up "Divide Fleet into single Ships" order
This will get the group to split up & survey in a moderately efficient manner, and once there are no more places to survey move back to the entry WP and combine back into a single TG, it also leaves any support ships at the entry WP (as guards or whatever). This works reasonably well whether there is only 1 Jump capable ship or every ship has a jump drive. You will have some idle time as the ships reassemble, and until the parent TG fleet gets there, you will see the child TGs that have already finished sitting at the JP complaining that they cant fulfill their survey order
You can survey every body if you wish for geos - I rarely survey asteroids / comets as the effort involved in terms of survey ship time is not often worth it. If your TG is entirely made up of survey ships then at step 4 you can use Transit & Divide Fleet - I often have a tanker with my surveyors so I dont use this (it would send off the tanker to survey something, which would never get completed!). I'd love it if there were more default options, as I'd then make the Geos survey Planets, then Moons, then return to the start point, which would make this much more efficient (at the moment all the geos go to the nearest planet/moon system)
