Slowing down research

[serger]

Yep, with default pop and research rate all those techs of 1-3 tiers are nothing, no need to have them in the game mechanics at all.
My usual start of campaign - is 50-100m pop and now, with new options in C# version - 10-25% research, survey and terraforming rates.
With this, I feel that every decision is important, every good specialist is important, and that is history I made, not only a story.

[Seolferwulf]

Yep, with default pop and research rate all those techs of 1-3 tiers are nothing, no need to have them in the game mechanics at all.
My usual start of campaign - is 50-100m pop and now, with new options in C# version - 10-25% research, survey and terraforming rates.
With this, I feel that every decision is important, every good specialist is important, and that is history I made, not only a story.

The first few tiers of a tech were never put to use in my games either.
Plus I researched everything on my home world.
When a site with a research bonus was found it simply wasn't needed.
In my current game I've cut the research rate to 5% and survey rate to 10%.
It was year ~250 when the first jump point was explored and surveying the systems was actually a struggle.
Now my empire is running out Gallicite...
I wish I had found the thread sooner 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Another thing is that if you want to play a more modern unified Earth with say 5-8 billion people or something you can do that now as you can reduce both terraforming, research and survey to very low ratings. This also make researcher admin ratings really matter as you will have allot of labs and will need lots of researchers.

I would like to have a global production value as well but you can make it work if you really want to.

[Thrake]

I don't know how you can play with that sort of survey speed. I decreased it to 75% as I went for 50% research and terra speed, so that felt like I should decrease survey too, but the survey micro would kill me. Unless you're designing supermassive survey ships with half a century of expected autonomy

[amram]

I gave mine a decade's endurance, on 5% survey speed, and it was enough that they'd roam through a system or two each before they'd have to come back in.  Later on, with phased array survey sensors, they could plow through 5 or 6 systems solo in that same time span.

Made them 10,000 tons initially, shrank as tech improved, one of each sensor, own jump drive as soon as it could be made to fit within 10,000 tons.  Send them to a system, and forget they exist for a few years of game time.

[serger]

Mine, in the contrary, are squads of 1000-ton cutters with 3-year deployment.
They are more effective, especially with asteroid fields.

[amram]

Mine, in the contrary, are squads of 1000-ton cutters with 3-year deployment.
They are more effective, especially with asteroid fields.

More effective at cost of higher micro, which was the previous poster's concern, and reason I didn't go that route as well.

[Zincat]

I too am currently a fan of severely reduced survey speed. I feel that it really makes the game feel more "epic", especially considered I also cut down research speed a lot.

No longer I just leap over systems and exploit only the really nice ones.  When you tech is low (which also means your speed is low and your fuel consumption is high) and it takes a long time to survey, even so-so systems become important in the struggle for survival.

I have been using "normal" survey ships though. I have not yet experimented with very small "cutters". It's an interesting idea, I just worry about the micro required XD

[Seolferwulf]

I'm using carriers with fighter-sized crafts for surveys.
In the beginning most of the micro came from me needing to learn the new narval interface and messing up in the process.

[serger]

More effective at cost of higher micro, which was the previous poster's concern, and reason I didn't go that route as well.

I have no choice really, because I just cannot beleave in ships with more then 3-4 years route in deep space, if it's not some huge generational ship-habitat.
And there is still no auto-orders mechanics in current version to automate survey routes (with auto-return-home) properly.
That's not a huge micro load, comparing to HR (for the sake of the same believability I have to play with additional lower ranks, so my 20yo officers are starting as lieutenants, and I have to promote them all manually, because otherwise the most zealous of them would inevitably end up in flag rank at 25-th birthday, wich I cannot believe at all).

[Jorgen_CAB]

I also have 5% survey and that gives me a MUCH better feeling for the vastness of space... I have about 30-40 geo and grav survey vessels that roam around doing their thing. Deployment times have been around 3-6 years roughly depending on design.

But then again I don't rush through the game all that much and I don't mind some micromanagement. I do wish there were a few better conditional orders and conditions to help out though so survey ships could be more or less completely automated. There should be an order like "Refuel, Resupply and Overhaul" for example and conditions like if you exceeded deployment or say 80% of a ships designed maintenance life expectancy. That would make it much easier to automate your survey vessels if you want to do that. To be honest I don't understand why there already are no conditional order of "Refuel and Resupply" as it is. If you do one you might as well do the other while you are in port anyway. I also think that the Overhaul order should ALWAYS try to also refuel and resupply a ship if possible at then end of any Overhaul, there should rather be an order that perhaps don't do that rather than do.

Right now I just allow my ship to go until I get a deployment overextended message, then I just send the ship to the nearest maintenance facility to refuel, resupply and overhaul. It takes a few seconds per ship. As they are designed to be in space for a long time they will never need to get back to refuel or resupply within that time anyway.