Ground survey potential?

[undercovergeek (OP)]

Is there a marker in the system screen to show which colonies are ripe for a ground survey - beyond those that have ruins etc?

And does the different coloured lines in the system screen mean anything - bright blue, brown etc

TIA

[nuclearslurpee]

Referring to the attached screenshot as a visual aid:

• Ground survey potential for a system is indicated with a number when the Ground Survey Potential box (both circled in green) is checked. A higher number means a higher ground survey potential. Note that ground survey potential has absolutely nothing to do with the presence of ruins on a body, these are two completely separate features.
• The different line colors visually indicate the colony cost of the body (light yellow circle). Dark blue indicates colony costs under 2.0 (should be modified by the Colonization Cost tech level), light blue indicates colony costs from 2.0 to 3.0, and brown indicates colony costs of 3.0 to about 5.0, IIRC (unsure about the upper limit, could be 6.0). As a rough rule of thumb, anything greater than 5.0 is probably not worth colonizing without terraforming and/or Ark Modules unless you just need to drop a couple million people on the surface to run maintenance facilities for a fleet outpost.
• In case you are unaware (or for the benefit of other readers): once a mineral survey is done, bodies with minerals are indicated by the 'M' when the Minerals checkbox is on (both circled in orange). A 'U' in the same column indicates an unsurveyed body. If the "OM Eligible" box is checked, eligible bodies are marked in the same column by a letter 'E'.

[paolot]

Be also aware that colours can change if a body has an high eccentricity orbit (i.e. the orbit is an elongated ellipse), as the surface conditions undergo (strong) variations during the orbit. Therefore, also the colonization cost of that body changes at the different zones of the orbit.
Mercury shows this variation, and it's rather easy to observ thanks to its short orbital period (in this moment, in my game, CC for Mercury is 2.46 and the colour is light blue, against the situation of Nuclearslurpee, where it is brown at 3.38).

Be aware too that things depend on the settings of your race. If you set large or small ranges of environmental compatibility for it, colours can be very different from the ones shown in the image posted by NS.

[undercovergeek (OP)]

Thank you both very much

[bankshot]

Also there is a tab called "Survey Sites" on the galactic map window just under the player race dropdown.  This lists all of the planets with ground survey potential in your empire.  Ones with a ground survey crew working on them are marked with a *.

I added a small troop transport bay to my Geosurvey craft.  250t is just enough room for one VEH with 2x geosurvey equipment plus an INF HQ.  When a suitable planet is found I drop the surveyor.  It takes months but saves making a second trip for inconveniently located bodies, and only costs 10BP per formation. 

[undercovergeek (OP)]

Having conducted a survey of a ‘good’ potential planet there were no extra resources

Did I fail a dice roll of doom against my survey team or was there genuinely nothing extra to find?

[nuclearslurpee]

Having conducted a survey of a ‘good’ potential planet there were no extra resources

Did I fail a dice roll of doom against my survey team or was there genuinely nothing extra to find?

Dice roll of doom, sorry mate. 

[undercovergeek (OP)]

Ooooo theres an RNG element to it - excellent

Before i send my hapless boffins off to the next one, my teams are made up of 1 5000 sized HQ and 22 survey units making 5000 tonnes of survey boffins - 4.5 GE points - is that a bit small?

[Steve Walmsley]

Once the survey is complete, a roll is made for mineral generation. This is done exactly like a normal mineral generation for the body, but with a modifier for each mineral to be present (/3 for low, /2 for good, x1 for high and x2 for excellent) and a modifier for accessibility (+0.1 for high and +0.2 for excellent, with a max of 1).

For each mineral, if a newly generated deposit is larger than the existing one, it replaces it. If the accessibility is higher (even if the size is lower), the existing deposit is changed to the higher accessibility.

The size of the survey team only affects the speed of the survey. It has no effect on the results.