I feel cheated when...

Well then manually manage your ships. I will look at the map, find the artifacts and send ships to the hex before it. Once my surveys get there I change techs and go one  after the other till I get an Unfortunate Genius event. This lets me carefully get the techs I really want. It requires more micro but hey, its a 4x game after all. You are gonna have some micro.

I know this doesn't help but just pointing it out. I really doubt there is going to be a code fix for this. 

Happy conquering! 

Maybe there was just more than once genius who thought of the same thing at roughly the same time.

Wouldn't be the first time in history that happened.

You have created a system that is more efficient than can be intelligently handled by the available automation.  You probably shouldn't do that.  I say that because I have a similar tendency and had to control it.  The real answer is to create less survey ships or drive at least some of them manually. There is a principle the devs use of not having the game play itself for you.  They are likely to think this applies.  I doubt that you will find them eager to create a situation where you can be gifted handfuls of techs at once.  There are already many other ways to abuse the game badly.  Go find them instead.

Larsenex, Thank you for the suggestion but while I agree a certain amount of micro management is expected, when playing a very large map and after taking the time/energy to produce multiple ships, or fleets of ships (excess of 20 or more) then we end up with the same cycle as what existed with the old starbase upgrade model.  I very much appreciate the latest enhancement to the starbase management system and just think similar thought could be given to this instance.  As a reminder, until I get to the point I can have a ship running solo, I have to manually match up a survey ship with escorts to keep them alive already.

Leiavoli, Interesting point.  However, the game does not have such repetitive features elsewhere.  By this I mean, once a tech is learned it is available to all your planets/ships.  You don't have to learn it over to apply it to another world - as an example.

Erischild. Agreed, to a point.  I understand the developers desire not to have the game play itself for you, but (admittedly my coding experience is limited and my schooling on the subject was 30+ years ago) as I recall, all they need to do is add a simple case statement to check to see if something is being researched after each anomaly is researched, if not, call the function to assign a new tech, then return to the code for executing the remainder of the survey ships actions.  It would be a small amount of effort on their part to greatly enhance satisfaction to the player who invests all the time and effort to create such a fleet to exploit the resource the game generates and presents for game play.  I don't see it as a "gift" given the effort it takes to develop such a fleet in gameplay, nor do I think this tactic is an abuse of the game.  If they oppose allowing a player to think and come up with such a tactic - well, that would be a self imposed limitation on player satisfaction, IMHO.

Thanks for the replies, all!  Keep them coming!

Galactic Civilizations II did a very good job at this, however, at this time the only way I know of getting around that is do what Larsenex suggested and enter into manual survey mode, which is a pain in the extreme map settings or accept that they will go to waste.

I will add that I am not-so-patiently waiting for when I can properly queue up techs that aren't just in one branch.  I have tried the select-a-tech trick Larsenex describes.  It makes me feel it is an error to label the anomalies so specifically.   So, I make myself ignore the labels, which is quite a trick for an obsessive micro-manger in denial.  If we keep the present labels, I would gladly settle for having an extensive tech queue that could absorb a sudden surge of random genii.  

Another possibility is to have it grant you the cheapest tech available if one is not selected.  It would be an issue with specialization techs, though.

IIRC, GC3 will not allow you to research (i.e. acquire) more than one tech per turn, regardless of how much research capability you have. This differs from GC2, where if you had sufficient Research points, you could get 2 or even 3 techs simultaneously.

Naturally, this would impact excessive tech finds through anomalies, since any automated moves fall into the same timeframe as research happens. Only in manual mode does that not apply (and maybe it should - perhaps it might be a good thing to not allow more than 1 tech to be acquired per turn, INCLUDING during manual mode). 

Frankly, I'm OK with that limit, as it prevents one side from jumping so far ahead of the others as to be uncatchable. That's a game-breaker.

This is not correct.  GC3 does allow multiple techs per turn.  In my most excessive late game high research phase I can take out a tech tree branch in one turn.  I have to deliberately ignore the branch and then research it later to show off to myself, but it is possible.

Erischild wrote; ""Another possibility is to have it grant you the cheapest tech available if one is not selected.  It would be an issue with specialization techs, though."  Now, that would be interesting... but I would prefer it be a random tech from the tree available for selection for the player at that point in the game.  Just selecting the cheapest would still require some logic as many have the same costs in terms of number of turns. 

Trims2u wrote; "Frankly, I'm OK with that limit, as it prevents one side from jumping so far ahead of the others as to be uncatchable. That's a game-breaker."  Isn't that the point however?  If I can crush my enemies faster then I win.  If they are able to crush me, they win.  And if we find ourselves in a loosing position to fight and turn that around by adapting and changing our strategy or loosing the game outright.  My favorite memories of games long past have been situations where I had to dig out of a loosing position and turn the game around for a win.

I very much appreciate all the thoughts posted on this thread.  Is there anyone from Stardock who can weigh in on this thread and let us know the possibility of having them look at this from a more official position?

One thing I'd lie to see is to CNTL+CLICK and cue up 'several' techs say 5 so you can plan a path and that way you are always researching. I don't have a solution for the problem of wasting UG's. I usually will look at every anomaly and select a path for my starter survey. Then I wait and build precursor killers and build 5 of those and manually move all of them, hunting guarded precursor relics first then artifacts. 

The ai needs to steal our survey ship designs, at least the ones we build to survey the guarded precursor ones. 

I like the op idea, but even if we could only research one tech per turn then can either the computer remove this selection from the anomalies choice until next turn,  or que up tech ques where each turn you research a tech until the free tech que is empty. Don't tell me a computer cant do this. This would require extra programming, but you could do a comparing where if you get certain anomalies. You could even assign each anomoly a. Number with nested ifs you remove the selected number from the list. Then you would use the new list until end of turn. Come on guys computers are not that stupid we just don't want to do the work.

As far as automated anomalies ever in two multiple survey ships would pick the same anomoly. In three they took out the cheese where they don't go to unexplored anomalies. Making automated surveying pointless for awhile. Can we have an option to go for guarded anomalies. This would need to be anoption, because not all survey ships are armed. Can we have an option to ignore wormholes. I don't mind unarmed anomoly ships going through wormholes. It is annoying when you have guarded anomalies with umteen unarmed survey ships, and your armed survey ships beelines for wormholes. I would like to have an option where if their are no anomalies explore stars instead of singing do was diddy... Without these options auto survey usually doesn't work. Again it doesn't make sense for multiple survey ships to go after the same anomoly. I think they fixed it in three, but in two it was annoying when survey ships would trek for anomalies when.one three spaces from it wasn't being surveyed because a previous survey ship a million miles away claimed it first.

^Yeah it would be nice to be able to basically give different objects of the game our own designed logical routines - because that's really the only way to ensure that automated features are working out exactly like we individually want them to be.

But I don't think alot of people would actually bother, neither will the devs.

You simply have to accept that if you want to have something done most optimally, you'll have to micro it.

Nevertheless, the claim of the OP is valid IMO, because GC2 solved this issue, and I don't see why the successor should be inferior in that regard. Once a tech gets researched -no matter via whatever methods- simply autopick the next one or prompt the player to select one.