Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => General Discussion => Topic started by: liveware on May 13, 2020, 10:50:04 AM
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So, I found a planet (Mars) marked as 'minimal' in the survey tab. I landed the following geo-survey ground unit on the planet:
Medium Geosurvey Vehicle
Transport Size (tons) 130 Cost 35.1 Armour 12 Hit Points 24
Annual Maintenance Cost 4.4 Resupply Cost 6
Geosurvey Equipment: Geo Survey Points 0.1
Crew-Served Anti-Personnel: Shots 6 Penetration 6 Damage 6
Extreme Pressure Combat
Extreme Temperature Combat
High Gravity Combat
Low Gravity Combat
Non-Combat Class
I haven't seen anything in my event log and it's been a few months since I dropped the survey crew planetside. Do I need to give them an order to survey? Or just wait it out?
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Just wait it out. Going to be a while if you only have that 0.1 generating points though.
Usually survey vehicles are double equipped and use multiple of 5's. The planet should show you how many survey points are required to survey if you check the correct box on the tac screen.
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On a side note, you don't need to put additional capabilities on non-combat units and if you exchanged that Crew-served Anti-Personel for a second Geosurvey Eq you would double the survey speed.
If for security or RP you want the survey teams to be armed you would better add to the formations a few armed infantry units with those capabilities, Non-Combat classes won't attack anyway.
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Might need to send some reinforcements to speed things up it seems (or re-design).
For RP reasons, the surveyors get to keep their guns.... never know where you might find hostile xenofauna. Not that they stand a chance against any real military presence, but at least they can return fire.
They're also accompanied by a mech squadron for protection.
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Follow up question:
What is the time period associated with the geo-survey rating? Is it 0.1 per day, per month, per year, etc?
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Follow up question #2:
I was able to land my geo-survey team on Mars using the following dropship launched from my survey carrier:
LCA Jackson 002 (Jackson class Landing Craft Assault) 500 tons 19 Crew 55 BP TCS 10 TH 2 EM 0
192 km/s Armour 2-5 Shields 0-0 HTK 3 Sensors 1/1/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
Maint Life 48.45 Years MSP 75 AFR 2% IFR 0.0% 1YR 0 5YR 1 Max Repair 10 MSP
Troop Capacity 200 tons Boarding Capable
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months Morale Check Required
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton Improved Nuclear Thermal Engine EP0.96 (2) Power 1.9 Fuel Use 15.43% Signature 0.96 Explosion 3%
Fuel Capacity 1,000 Litres Range 2.3 billion km (140 days at full power)
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton Active Search Sensor AS13-R200 (1) GPS 600 Range 14m km Resolution 200
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton EM Sensor EM0.3-1.8 (1) Sensitivity 1.8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10.6m km
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton Thermal Sensor TH0.3-1.8 (1) Sensitivity 1.8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10.6m km
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
However, I am not able to order this ship to land my survey teams on other planets outside of my home system. There must be a way to do this? Do I need to establish a colony on the planet before I land my survey units? Mars was already established as a mining colony before I landed my survey units discussed above.
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Follow up question #2:
I was able to land my geo-survey team on Mars using the following dropship launched from my survey carrier:
LCA Jackson 002 (Jackson class Landing Craft Assault) 500 tons 19 Crew 55 BP TCS 10 TH 2 EM 0
192 km/s Armour 2-5 Shields 0-0 HTK 3 Sensors 1/1/0/0 DCR 1 PPV 0
Maint Life 48.45 Years MSP 75 AFR 2% IFR 0.0% 1YR 0 5YR 1 Max Repair 10 MSP
Troop Capacity 200 tons Boarding Capable
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months Morale Check Required
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton Improved Nuclear Thermal Engine EP0.96 (2) Power 1.9 Fuel Use 15.43% Signature 0.96 Explosion 3%
Fuel Capacity 1,000 Litres Range 2.3 billion km (140 days at full power)
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton Active Search Sensor AS13-R200 (1) GPS 600 Range 14m km Resolution 200
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton EM Sensor EM0.3-1.8 (1) Sensitivity 1.8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10.6m km
Steenbergen-Jaggers Drive Systems Shakleton Thermal Sensor TH0.3-1.8 (1) Sensitivity 1.8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10.6m km
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
However, I am not able to order this ship to land my survey teams on other planets outside of my home system. There must be a way to do this? Do I need to establish a colony on the planet before I land my survey units? Mars was already established as a mining colony before I landed my survey units discussed above.
You don't need boarding capability to drop off surveyors. You do need a colony to drop off to, even if it is empty.
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Should be per day, same as Ships in most (probably all) things. Do note you can only survey a COLONY.
One vehicle is enough, but it will take ages. Don't forget you can have 2! geosurvey tools on your vehicle too (as well as one on the HQ if you want). When designing the unit, very bottom left has Additional Equipment where you can select ANOTHER geosurvey equipment to double your output.
I personally only have one Unit that does ground survey, but it does it FAST, slightly twice as fast as my ships do (I start my geosurvey ships with 3 modules, and with improved sensors go down to 2 while still having 30% more points and less cost/weight). The unit is below 10k tons (which is the smallest size I use for RP purposes).
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To add to that, if you are concerned about defence, whether due to actual hostiles or for RP purposes, I'd send along a regular garrison unit to protect the trucks.
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Or a spec force/commando unit, RPing around that with the idea that that geosurvey is gonna visit a lot of different enviroments and it is a great opportunity for your soldiers to get that experience while also being useful. 8)
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Or a spec force/commando unit, RPing around that with the idea that that geosurvey is gonna visit a lot of different enviroments and it is a great opportunity for your soldiers to get that experience while also being useful. 8)
However you do it, by using a separate unit you can mix-and-match as needed. Integrated units are less flexible, especially since non-combat units don't worry about environmental factors.
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To add to that, if you are concerned about defence, whether due to actual hostiles or for RP purposes, I'd send along a regular garrison unit to protect the trucks.
Each geo survey vehicle gets a squad of 5 of these guys to guard it:
Light Assault Mech
Transport Size (tons) 6 Cost 3.04 Armour 9.0 Hit Points 6
Annual Maintenance Cost 0.38 Resupply Cost 1.3
Improved Personal Weapons: Shots 1 Penetration 8 Damage 6
Boarding Combat
Extreme Pressure Combat
Extreme Temperature Combat
High Gravity Combat
Low Gravity Combat
Still not much against a real enemy, but better than nothing. Also, it's primarily for RP purposes anyway.
You don't need boarding capability to drop off surveyors. You do need a colony to drop off to, even if it is empty.
True. The Jackson class is intended to deliver the above mechs to disabled ships for boarding purposes. Transporting geo-survey teams is a secondary role.
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One vehicle is enough, but it will take ages. Don't forget you can have 2! geosurvey tools on your vehicle too (as well as one on the HQ if you want). When designing the unit, very bottom left has Additional Equipment where you can select ANOTHER geosurvey equipment to double your output.
In addition to aforestated RP reasons, I currently lack a transport with capacity > 200 tons. So I can only use 1 geosurvey module on my survey vehicle otherwise it becomes too heavy for my transport.
Someday I will design a larger transport and then possibly a larger survey vehicle.
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Well, I suck at math but I believe I once read something about Survey needing about 200 points. If it was right, your single vehicle will take about 200/0.1 days to survey the planet (though, I also read that the bigger the planet the longer it takes so it can be better or worse), thus slightly above 5.5 years. Really bad, but assuming you are not in a hurry and can employ multiple vehicles as needed (thus no need to move them from one planet to the other) it could still work.
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For the time being I am just dropping survey squads on all bodies with survey potential. I'll wait 10 years if I need to for results... I have a lot of mining colonies that need to be established in the mean time.
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My survey squad has 3.0 geosurvey rating. It really takes 6 months at most.
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How heavy is it?
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(https://i.hizliresim.com/TvMUBd.png) (https://hizliresim.com/TvMUBd)
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Looks too heavy for my purposes.
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Non-Combat classes won't attack anyway.
Only partially correct - non-combat units with weapons will fire but do so at 20% of the standard accuracy. The point of non-combat is that for the purposes of being targetted the unit is a 5th of its normal size.
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My battalion took 44 days to survey M1 (minimal - dunno whether it plays effect, most likely not) 13000km diameter planet (basically Earth). The unit itself has 8.1 points + 30% from Commander, so 10.53
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The survey vehicle mentioned in my original post has been on Mars for nearly 20 years and I'm still not sure if it has completed it's survey yet or not.
My attention has been focused elsewhere developing mining colonies in Alpha Centauri.
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The survey vehicle mentioned in my original post has been on Mars for nearly 20 years and I'm still not sure if it has completed it's survey yet or not.
My attention has been focused elsewhere developing mining colonies in Alpha Centauri.
Finishing ground survey does not interrupt the game so it is certainly possible to miss the event.
You can check if Mars is still on Survey Sites list in left side menu (main window). Sites with active survey have asterisk after the name (you can see it in my screenshot - Groombridge 34-B I has active team on site). I also advice to use Refresh the Tactical Map button before checking as the list of Survey Sites sometimes does not update after survey is completed.
(https://i.ibb.co/6m49bc5/ground-survey.png) (https://imgbb.com/)
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I really was not paying attention, seems all of my ground surveys are complete. There were six or seven total.
Is there a report about what the surveyors found anywhere? I'll search through the event log and see what I can find.
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AFAIK when survey is done and you missed the event, there is no way to see its results. I don't know how far event log can show the past events as its the only way thay comes to my mind. You can try to entet really big number to the event log and filter it with survey reports or something.
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There is a message on completion. And an additional one if the survey has found more minerals/increased accessibility. But no additional message if it has found nothing, I think.
Most of the time (but that may be bad luck with the RNG), I find only one ground survey potential body in a system. With the "Ground Survey Locations" display option permanently on, a check of the GalacticMap from time to time works for me to remind me if I have let a survey unit grow beards on an already surveyed planet by accident. But I have only two ground survey units and a small territory to manage so far.
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I was unable to find any messages in my event log, however it is possible that I just missed them and they got deleted before I checked. Doesn't seem like I found anything interesting anyway (just minerals that I didn't really need).
Guess I will need to explore some more new jump points.
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Tried to find it in my current universe. The "Geo Survey Complete" message is caught by the "System Events" Filter. And at least the "Accessibility Increase" message by the "Population Summary Events" Filter.
Couldn't find a mineral increase, but I'm not sure if I had one. (subsequently: I had two lucky ground geo surveys in a row, the same "Population Summary Events" filter catches additional minerals, and the event type is "New Mineral Deposit"; that's the same as for space-based geo-survey finds, only, those are filtered by "Fleet-based Events" apparently.) The log gets laggy when I have to go very far back.