Ok, so here some bad news and good news on the issue.
o Nr.1 bad news is that Join Parent conditional order is broken in current Aurora, and doesn't work as hoped anyway.
I tried the following setup:
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...but that is impossible for two reasons. One, the conditional order is of higher hierarchy in Aurora, so the docking would come before the survey, making it useless for this purpose. But secondly also, because the Join Parent does work with an error only. You will get a couple of error windows equal to the number of ships that were ordered, and then this happens:
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Though it appears right in the log, the join-command in the TF window has no target. I experimented a bit to see if it was maybe because of the special signs, or I needed distance, or if it simply wouldn't work when default and conditionals were given together... . Yet, no matter what, it simply is dysfunctional, so that is no option as of now.
o Nr.2 bad news is that not even the "follow parent" alternative would work. I can set up a
secondary default order of 'follow higher fleet in system', which is nice, because it of course works so that it comes
after a completed survey. However, even so that part is working out, you would want those crafts to join into your carrier group automatically once they are there, or else it will be micromayhem once again. ..So what you'd have to do to the carrier tg is this:
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...and it doesn't work. Through testing I have determined that the bottleneck here is the trigger, and Aurora cannot recognize for some reason if there really is a sub-fleet present at the same spot. I had them all stacked up, with follow order, without, with better naming etc., but it doesn't do it.
The incorporation itself works fine though, as I could test with the usual method from the tutorial above, where the first survey drone is actually the higher fleet, not the carrier. With that I could set the condition to "Fuel tanks full", and it would neatly absorb every other drone in place back into the tg.
..You can't do that with the carrier of course who will likely never be at 100%, and the only other cheat trigger condition in the list that could've probably been used is "current speed not equal to max" if you artificially decrease it. Yet that trigger is also dysfunctional, and does nothing as of now.
So it can't be done.
o Nr.3 bad news is there are no good news.(yet) Though you could technically do the divide command very neatly and quick from the carrier, having the carrier then as superior formation does rob you of the option to make the unison docking call, thus having all ships called back without micromanagement. Since both methods from above that could have automated the procedure don't work, and the carrier tg cannot target itself to 'dock on itself' and copy those orders down, you would end up having to do a docking or merging command for every single drone you sent, which would be unnerving with already these 18 drones from above. Real automation should not care whether you send 4 or 400 individual drones, as it is the same amount of clicks to order them, so it is better to stick to the 'lead survey' ship method for now.
Bridging the neutral orders thing is however a real improvement, and I am looking forward to seeing the incorporate sub fleet work in the future, which would make all the magic suddenly work out and even spare you the docking call, and, -most importantly-, the log spam of those ships who finished survey.
It would also be nice to have a "no orders" or so condition, so that "join parent" could be used for those idle survey ships without overtaking the order hierarchy.(would become the superior method of those two possible options, since there is no delay here in waiting for the carrier to absorb, and it doesn't take away a conditional order slot on it then too ofc.
//Edit/...hmm, on the other hand the "follow" method also gets rid of the problem with the moving carrier not being able to land any craft, and thus causing orders to get interrupted. Normally he doesn't need to move, but it would be nice if he could)