Question about geology teams.

[MarcAFK]

Did steve tone down geology teams in the last update?
I seem to remember getting quite a lot of small resource deposits in the past, now they do seem to be a little rarer or maybe it's just bias since i haven't really played much lately.

[sublight]

Yes. Geosurvey teams now provide a single second-chance mineral check similar to geosurvey ship finds in both quantity and probability.

Asteroids and small moons are quickly surveyed, but unlikely to ever find anything.
Comets by bug or intent are treated as asteroids of the same size, and rarely find anything good.

Planets and large moons are the most likely to have something, but it can take ground teams a year or more to finish.


I usually expect two or three mineral finds if I survey Mercury, Venus, Mars, Luna, and the Galleon moons.

[Griswel]

As a newbie, I've been pretty committed to sending Geo teams around and it's been a very small percentage chance.   The larger bodies can take forever (I've spent many months on Mars), but also seem to be either Team Skill based or luck based.   I've had some pretty quick team scans on Mars or Venus, though that might have been three clicks that went the full 30 days.   I'm reaching the conclusion that unless it's a body I plan to mine regardless of team finds, or maybe one that is borderline, it's probably not worth my own intervention time except to buff up one team with skill up chances.

As for Aliens, I hear you.   My first try on the laptop (still only played 60 years in my first ever game) I had aliens some blow up my survey vessels one system over from Sol.   I'd taken forever to do the early stuff even with a TN start, and my local mineral finds were poor.   So I walked away, but kept the game to come back to when I'm a bit less incompetent.   The only warships I've ever built I called BS as they were strictly to mollify the peasants.

[Serpentine]

I'm on my first play through and I can't seem to figure out what my geology team is doing, for the past 10 years they have been stationed on about 2 or 3 asteroids/moons, and haven't completed a survey on a single one of them, I'm not sure what the general timetables for teams are but surely they should have finished at least 1 survey by now.    If it helps, they have only been stationed on places marked as colonies.   

Hi, new to Aurora (and loving it) and I have had the same problem.   

My Geology team just sits there doing nothing, a geosurvey ship has done its scan, team shows up on the body in the team tab, everything appears correct but one year after being on an asteroid, still the survey is not complete and no messages in the event log.  .  . 

Not sure if it may be because I am using an older version of Aurora because I forgot to update before I jumped right in  

Edit: Hmmmm, geology team has now worked on Earth successfully but not on Asteroids? Don't think I'll have to worry about Neutronium this game though, I now have a 200 year supply on Earth at current mining rates 

[Paul M]

I think that people who have geosurvey teams on asteroids that don't do them inside of a few months should report this as a bug.  As the chance is calcuated then checked you might just be suffering from bad luck but the chance of surveying an asteroid I'd think is at least around 10% for a reasonably skilled team.

I've surveyed lots of asteriods on the ground and they have all taken between weeks and months to survey.  Only Calheme which is a diameter 26000 km planet has so far taken over two years to survey.

There is no reason an asteroid should take more than 3 months as their diameters are usually 100-400 km.

Just keep in mind you have something like a 10% chance to finish the survey, and that is per week.  So it can take a long time if you just keep rolling poorly.

[Havan_IronOak]

Follow up Question.  .  .  . 

I assembled a geology team on Earth with a rating of 167

I put them on a ship and sent them to Luna

They've been there 1 year 8 months

I got a report that several of the team members leveled up and that the team skill was now 175

They've still not completed the Luna Geological survey or found anything or reported that there was nothing left to find.   

Am I just being impatient or shouldn't they be done by now?  I'm mostly worried that I missed a command or something.  I didn't see any way to tell them specifically to begin the geology study

[db48x]

You'll know once they've finished; they'll complain in the message log every week until you disband the team or move them somewhere they haven't surveyed.

[Havan_IronOak]

Another follow-up question. . .

OK, so my Geological Survey team finally finished and I picked them up and transported them to another location. 
Problem is it's been over a year and I haven't heard from them. 
I quickly went through all the colonies on my list and they don't appear as being stationed on any of them. 
I went through every ship in my fleet and couldn't see them listed there either. 

Short of disbanding the team, what's the best way of finding them?
If I do disbnad them and the reform a team, is there any downside to that?

[AL]

Try finding one of the members of the team in the officers window, it should hopefully list their current position there.

[Havan_IronOak]

I found the team leader and the location field is empty. 
I've checked all my fleets again for the team and have decided that this is a bug of sort. 
I'm gonna try disbanding the team and recreating it on Earth again.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated. 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

there's no downside to disbanding a team, afaik. 

R u sure the team is not still on the ship you picked it up with?

Also, could you have deleted a colony that the team was at?

[Havan_IronOak]

there's no downside to disbanding a team, afaik. 

R u sure the team is not still on the ship you picked it up with?

Also, could you have deleted a colony that the team was at?

Never did find that missing team but gave up when I started a new game.
In my next game I got the whole forming and disbanding geo teams down to a science. Surveyed about 400 bodies. Found something extra a grand total of 8 times. As far as I'm concerned, in its present form it's just not worth it.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

it's not worth it to resurvey smegty asteroids. it works best on substantial bodies.

[Havan_IronOak]

I agree but I think that there is a potential here for a new mechanic.

Have geo-survey teams that can announce when they're done but request pick-up and have a ship or two with orders to pick up idle teams and ferry them to the next body without a ground based survey.

I see it working quite a bit like the orbital surveys then but it would require a few ships and a few teams and perhaps a new order or two.

[TMaekler]

I agree but I think that there is a potential here for a new mechanic.

Have geo-survey teams that can announce when they're done but request pick-up and have a ship or two with orders to pick up idle teams and ferry them to the next body without a ground based survey.

I see it working quite a bit like the orbital surveys then but it would require a few ships and a few teams and perhaps a new order or two.

You should put this under the suggestion tab - as far as I understand, that is where Steve looks for new ideas.