Orbital planetary surveillance

Good ideas!

I like this.

Sounds nice.   

There would need to be some kind of drawback to this, like the need to use your survey ship for the task, or taking up an entire turn with the colony ship in order to do the survey.

Excellent idea! I have been known on occasion to save my game just before colonizing a planet and then if i was not too happy about the planet reload and move on to another planet. This is cheese i know but on smaller maps where planet selection is critical it does have it's uses. (Though at times i swear it must be a random selection of the planet 'cause sometimes after reloading and colonizing that planet again later, it is different. Might be i am losing my mind too.)

A bit of planet scouting before colonization is a good use of sensors too. Unless your the type of player who builds Eyes of the Universe, you probably don't research past Senors 1 (Survey Module). This idea would give Sensors more usability. Create a module that is say given with Sensors 3. The "Planetary Survey Module" make it about the size of Basic Life Support and with a similar cost. Opens up some interesting possibilities and might just slow down the rush at the start of the game, provided the AI make proper use of it.

If you put it that late it won't get nearly as much use.

I'd really like the ability for a survey ship to do it, since you get one from the start.

I usually rush-buy two sensor ships (cargo hulls with one engine and the rest sensors) to scout out ahead of my first colony ships. For the first few turns I'll also manually steer my flagship to a promising system before setting it to auto-survey.

That's how I get a feel for the local neighborhood, and where to colonize first. It works better for me than "scouting" with colony ships, because sensor ships keep going ahead when a colony is established. Colony ships just disappear to help build the colony, so any further intelligence about that general area is lost. After the first colony rush, the sensor ships become pickets on the frontier to keep an eye on the neighbors. So this wouldn't do me any good, for that particular play style. I don't base my decisions on which planet to colonize, based on the colony ship's location. Colony ships follow behind the first wave of scout/sensor ships.

If this was a "Planet Survey Module" that was immediately available at the start of the game for all ship types, it might be useful.... but I still might choose one more sensor module for that slot.

The first question is, would it severely unbalance the game if the planetary surveyor module was available immediately (or at Sensors I) at low cost? I don't think so; in my experience it's actually a rather rare situation to be at luxury to look critically at one's colonisation possibilities. That Class 9 over there is going to get colonised ASAP, whether it be bristling with bonus tiles or devoid of them. Likewise, I'm wary of Class <= 3 worlds until I have some good terraforming going, which is certainly not early. Thus, it seems that real, hard gains due to this module would actually be minimal.

This, however, is no objection to the idea; to me it's just all the more reason to put it in! I say make it a low-level tech, requiring Sensors I or II, allowing you to attach a Planetary Surveyor Module to any ship. This module must be only slightly more expensive than first-level Sensors, and should probably not give you a sensor radius bonus. As for its functioning, a week's analysis of the world -- tectonics, biology, weather patterns and mineral deposits -- from orbit should give you all the data. Thus one could replace the standard Sensors on a Colony ship with this module at only a slight increase in price.

The player should find him/herself presented with two options: fast colonisation with no knowledge of planetary bonuses or slower colonisation with the ability to pick the best planets.

This raises some other interesting possibilities. What if planets, in the normal viewscreen, didn't tell you exactly what their Class is? Instead of knowing straight away that this is a Class 12, for instance, the cursor only reveals that it is an "Earth-like world"; instead of Class 2, a "Bleak world"; instead of Class 16, an "Elysian world". Then the surveyor might be indispensable; also, you should then be able to build up a database on all previously surveyed -- but uncolonised -- worlds, to refer back to later. The Extreme Colonisation would still be just as relevant; however, one would not know that this "Aquatic world" had the potential to be transformed into a Class 20 or a Class 5 until one has the Aquatic Worlds technology (this makes sense, after all). If one has this tech plus a Planetary Surveyor in orbit, one week's data gathering would reveal the planet's full potential.

This last would integrate the idea fully into the game and, moreover, add a little bit of mystery to the whole colonisation thing. It would be cool but unnecessary; I reckon the good ol' Planetary Surveyor Module on its own might be a fun addition itself.

J.

This idea would work even better if those tiles you get by terraforming would also have a chance to be speccial bonus tiles ...

That was why i thought it might be best to have it later on, but on smaller maps i guess it would not get used at all. Perhaps it's size could be increased so as not to make it too powerful.

Perhaps this could be given at sensors 1 and the survey module moved to sensors 2, since anomolies re-spawn now that would not make so much of a difference.

But it would need to have some limitations. Perhaps it cannot work on the toxic, heavy gravity..etc, planets until extreme colonization had been researched.

If nothing else comes out of this thread, that would be an awesome idea, imho.

Of course, being able to survey planets before actually colonizing them is an awesome idea too. I really don't think it would change the game that much, though.

Exactly. To me, making it a separate tech and a slightly more expensive module already decreases its "brokenness" (pardon the MTG term), since in the early game the economy is pretty tight. I fully agree with making hazardous worlds "unsurveyable" until the appropriate Extreme Colonisation has been researched. This allows a nice way of scaling the Planetary Surveyor tech whilst maintaining its early game functionality.

J.

Early game what would be the more powerful, "Planetary Survey" or the Survey Module. The hope would be early game you could have one or the other on a ship, not both.

Would have you thinking for a bit until you got some Miniturization(sp) techs.