I’m not talking anything kitted out for hardcore combat, more like a couple of shield generators and one or two MIRV mines in box launchers to help escape the odd spoiler or NPR. Or would I be better off using the tonnage for something else?
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Usually, the best way to keep a survey ship alive is for it not to be seen in the first place. You can use drones or small scout fighters to investigate potentially hostile planets before heading in for a survey.
Typically, a lone survey ship is going to be destroyed if it is spotted by a hostile race regardless of how “survivable” it is. A shield generator or a couple of CIWS aren’t enough to stop a dedicated warship (usually of larger size) from tearing a survey ship to shreds. So the best defense is not to be seen at all by the enemy.
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Not being there is not an option. The job is survey after all.
Nuclearslurpee has covered the next best thing already.
Everything else is desperation.
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To add to the above ideas with my two cents:
Box launcher with survey missiles and tiny fire control to shoot long range geo-survey or sensor missiles at big, habbitable bodies
Added weight obviously an efficiency problem, but you could jump into a new system, fire at the biggest four bodies, then do grav surveys. An NPR will show up on your sensor missile and/or shoot down your survey missile to warn you. How friendly of them!
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This is my current survey ship, armed with a spinal particle lance and a pair of 25cm railguns 
That armament is really intended to defend a jump point if necessary, or surprise a raider, so the ship can also launch probe drones to avoid getting into trouble in the first place. Besides, this is a WH40k RP design, so not really intended to be optimal.
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There’s not much you can do to increase survivability of a survey ship if it’s detected by missile ships who are faster than you. If you’re banging away with a large active sensor, try turning that off and changing course to move away in the hopes you drop off their sensor. Other than that you’re probably toast.
If they’re a beam warship with light armor, you could try carrying a few large missiles with decoys and a big warhead in box launcher, and hope you get a lucky hit. Or you could have a 1kt hanger and carry a FAC that’s faster than what might hunt you and armed with a long range spinal weapon so it can kite them while you run.
From an RP perspective I sometimes include an “escape pod” that’s nothing but a small cryo chamber and enough engine to get away. That way you can at least save the crew and officers.
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I’m currently using small stealth ships for surveying because I too wanted to improve their survivability. The idea being that if I can see them on passive before they see me, then I can slowly walk away from the situation.
But I can’t say whether it works or not since the new ships haven’t run into any hostiles yet. Which is quite funny because only one of my 4 survey groups is older non-stealth ships and they’re the ones who found the last 2 contacts.
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After a recent NPR neighbour scare I have developed a scout ship with size 10 passive scanners cloaking and a jamming suite of missile jamming and sensor jamming - I’m sat 90m km from a collection of contacts just within my range and so far I’m inveeeeesible
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I second the “don’t be seen”. I make my survey ships small and cheap. I try to have scout ships or fighters check out the planetary bodies before the survey ships go there, but again, small size for reduced detectability means they really can’t fight, and the endurance required to be efficient means they can’t practically run either.
RP wise, the survey crews (or their family) get a small percent royalty for discovered minerals or a reward from Intelligence if they discover aliens and get any information about them.
Doctrine wise, there is no such thing as a lone survey ship. There will always be a jump pinnace sitting quietly at the jump point to relay information.
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To make my survey ships survivable, I used large ships combined into fleets. Size from 10kt to 12kt, few shields, 5~9 armor layers, thermal reduction, 20% engine power, cloak, 7 years deployment and ~9 years maint life. The secondary fleets had a specialized survey ship with a tractor beam and boarding troops (why not?), a gunship with particle beams, and a “flagship” with a jump engine, several box launchers, railgun, HPM and particle lance. The main exploration fleet had more gunships and survey ships and had specialized PD+plasma and HPM ships. Also at least 1 CIWS on every ship design.
They were quite high-tech, because my turtle-like playing style meant constant researching until someone from the 3 exploration fleets found something interesting. Which happened very rarely.
Once, the main fleet encountered an aggressive NPR. They were able to defeat them without loss due to the presence of HPMs and the enemy’s lack of shields - and even capture several ships to see their design (although this ships had to be abandoned due to the fact that they were too big for the jump engine).
In my current game, I just armed my survey ships with a dozen box launchers and added several armor layers to them - the minimum set for fighting raiders who have been orbiting some random planet for decades. Maybe I’ll start building my main exploration fleet again, it was quite fun. 
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I do use very fast and moderately-thermally-reduced survey ships (5 to 7 Kton) with medium-size (50 to 150 ton) sensor suits. The surveyours being escorted by dedicated probe launcher ship to check the most probable danger points distantly, along with a dedicated (designed specifically for the role) survey escort cruiser to divert enemy attention from the surveyours. I rarely lose one of these, usually the threats are uncovered in time and my ships avoid coming under enemy fire. The price is quite a lot of micromanagement. Such survey squadrons are better to be deployed along with tankers and supply ships, and follow carefully designed exploration protocol (what to do in which order). The overall result is - I do feel a civilization behind the exploration process.
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So much micro-management in this thread.
I am on the cheap survey ships faction. Standard scan everything in current system. If done, I tell it where to scan next.
I lose one? Two? Ten? Who cares. I just make more.
Almost no micro-management. I order them to move every year or so, and survey systems at scale.
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With great RPG comes great responsibility
I dont want my guys to die, they have medals, i know their name, they have families at home, jobs to do - cant just mass produce them and send them out into the stars!!
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As an aside, move slowly. Ships at full speed emit full thermal signatures. And spoilers usually are very excited upon seeing a heat bloom. No shields, no actives, go passive and divert your course.
I personally like to turnabout 150 degrees from previous, towards the nearest empty spot of space. Has saved my smaller surveyors a few times. Of course. If you want to try and defend a warp point with them, well, that is what warships are for.
Fleet scouts do not survey. At least not in the absence of their fleet.
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While we’re on the topic of “unoptomized survey ships,” allow me to share the Explorer Class, AKA the I Am Done Losing Survey Ships To Spoilers AKA I Would Never Build This Without Build Points. For the OP, this is what a combat approach to survivable survey ships looks like: it’s going to be a decent warship in its own right with survey equipment added on. Even with this, just one is likely to lose against a small spoiler squadron, so I recommend deploying in force; I deploy three of these to a fleet supported by a sizable collier/tanker/tender ship.
Note the design choices here: an exploration vessel absolutely requires decent fuel range, because even with tanker support, if they don’t have enough fuel to scan a goodly chunk of the system in one go, they’ll be running back to the support tanker so often that it’ll cut into their effective surveying time pretty significantly. To get reasonably fuel-efficient engines you need lower-power ones, which in turn means your ship will be slow, which in turn means that missiles are your best bet for armament as you can’t hope to control the range against any ship you meet. This further incentivizes a turreted energy armament for both anti-missile point-defense, jump-point brawls (always group your combat ships together and have them squadron-jump into unknown space, lest they land on a jump-point camp,) and anti-fighter defenses.
As others have said, the more cost-efficient method of exploration is stealth; detecting the enemy before they detect you in time to flee. There’s multiple ways to do this and I’ll break them down for you in terms of pros and cons, including the player-facing aspect of micromanagement.
- Probes. As you can see, both Steve and my ship carry probe missiles (missiles with just sensors on them) with very long ranges. This synergizes well with ships that are already carrying missile launchers and a magazine for other reasons (either self-defense or to deploy sensor buoys) and has the major advantage of standoff range; it’s hands-down the lowest risk method of scouting. Downsides are, of course, limited ammo, relatively high micromanagement (you have to drop waypoints then pop into the ship combat screen and assign targets etc.), and esp. in the upcoming version, alien homeworlds and outposts can show up on a much greater range of possible planets, so the current-version advantage of only really needing to launch these at suspect worlds with low colony costs will vanish.
However, this tool can be combined with the next one:
-
Stealthy ship, big sensors. This approach is simple: equip your survey ships with reduced-thermal engines and give them a damn good passive sensor suite; size 3 or 4 passive thermal and EM sensors. This maximizes your chances of spotting hostiles at range before they spot you, in time for your slow survey ship to creep away to the jump point quietly. The downsides of this are that if the hostiles are headed in your general direction for some other reason your slow surveyor might not be able to get out of their detection range in time. There’s also the cost of reduced-thermal engines; they’re actually quite pricey and will increase the maintenance requirements of your ship considerably, but that’s not too bad given survey ships tend to lug around several years worth of maint supplies anyways. It’s nothing a few more engineering spaces won’t cure. Highest overall risk to the crew, but on the other hand, it’s hands-down the lowest micromanagement option.
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Manned scout craft. Equip each of your survey cruisers with a small hangar bay sufficient to fit one (or maybe two) fighter or FAC sized scouts. You can go two ways with this: a slow, stealthy 500 ton fighter with the biggest passive sensor you can cram into it, or a FAC with a passive sensor and as much speed as you can possibly cram into it, so it can zip away from any detected hostiles before they can even get it into active sensor range for a missile shot. I have used both in previous games and they were both very successful. Best of all the micromanagement is very low: you drop waypoints on planets of interest, and some that aren’t of interest, just to ensure your scout criss-crosses the system enough to reasonably pick up any big populations or fleets lying in wait, launch it, give it the move orders and advance time a bit (preferably with a shorter interval manually chosen to ensure it doesn’t whiff by without detecting something.) Among the many quality of life updates Steve has given us recently is the “point of interest” waypoint and standing order; just give your scout a “move to point of interest” standing order and as soon as you launch them they’ll tour the system, the waypoints will delete themselves, and you’ll even get a “cannot execute conditional order” interrupt when its time to send the scout to dock with the mothership. IMO this is the best option going as micromanagement is almost nil (thank you, Steve) and tactical effectiveness is very high - in the absolute worst case scenario you lose a FAC and not the survey mothership. Your tech level will determine this more than preference but I favor the fast FAC simply because it finishes its scouting mission faster and wastes less surveying time.
Obviously you can mix and match these approaches, or take the rarely-used fourth one, which is to build survey carriers - commercial carriers lugging many small survey craft, which scan systems very fast and never expose the mothership directly to harm. Some combination of these approaches should fit your personal preferences as a player and your requirements for flavor or roleplay, while being tactically effective.
Explorer class Survey Cruiser 30,000 tons 743 Crew 5,192.2 BP TCS 600 TH 750 EM 4,440
2500 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 4-86 Shields 148-370 HTK 193 Sensors 24/24/2/2 DCR 23-7 PPV 118.41
Maint Life 3.49 Years MSP 13,426 AFR 554% IFR 7.7% 1YR 1,686 5YR 25,286 Max Repair 1,125 MSP
Troop Capacity 250 tons Boarding Capable Magazine 1,164 / 0
Captain Control Rating 4 BRG ENG CIC SCI
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months CDE 20% Morale Check Required
J30000(3-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 30000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Ion Drive EP1500.00 (1) Power 1500 Fuel Use 39.47% Signature 750.0 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres Range 22.8 billion km (105 days at full power)
Gamma S37 / R370 Shields (4) Recharge 370 seconds (0.4 per second)
Quad 20cm C2.5 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (1x4) Range 256,000km TS 8000 km/s Power 40-10 ROF 20
Triple Gauss Cannon R300-100 Turret (1x9) Range 30,000km TS 12000 km/s Power 0-0 ROF 5
Direct Fire Control R256-TS16000 (70%) (1) Range 256,000 km TS 16,000 km/s ECCM-1
Direct Fire Control R256-TS8000 (70%) (1) Range 256,000 km TS 8,000 km/s ECCM-1
Magnetic Mirror Fusion Reactor R10 (1) Total Power Output 10.1 Exp 5%
Size 12 Missile Launcher (40.0% Reduction) (12) Missile Size: 12 ROF 555
Missile Fire Control FC62-R200 (70%) (2) Range 62.5m km RES 200 ECCM-1 EH-30
Missile Fire Control FC34-R20 (70%) (1) Range 34.7m km RES 20 ECCM-1 EH-30
Sparrow MK1 Anti-Ship Missile (72) Speed 26,250 km/s Range 31.1m km WH 12 Size 12 TH: 2,625 / 5,250 / 10,500
Multi-Sensor Probe (20) Speed 2,350 km/s Range 74,112.9m km WH 0 Size 12 TH: 235 / 470 / 940
Multi-Sensor Bouy (10) Speed 0 km/s Range 0m km WH 0 Size 6 TH: 0 / 0 / 0
Active Search Sensor AS6-R1 (70%) (1) GPS 16 Range 6.4m km MCR 574.5k km RES 1 ECCM-1 EH-30
Active Search Sensor AS52-R200 (70%) (1) GPS 6400 Range 52.8m km RES 200 ECCM-1 EH-30
Active Search Sensor AS24-R20 (70%) (1) GPS 640 Range 24.5m km RES 20 ECCM-1 EH-30
Thermal Sensor TH3.00-24.00 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect 1000: 38.7m km
EM Sensor EM3.00-24.00 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect 1000: 38.7m km
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Electronic Warfare Jammers: Sensor 1 Fire Control 1 Missile 1
Ground Forces
1x Security Team
Missile to hit values are target speeds in km/s for 100% / 50% / 25% chance to hit
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes
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BEHOLD!
Sixth generation, mass production disposable survey craft. slaps hood this thing isn’t going anywhere, without your say so! Just lob this thing into the nearest JP, and it will map out the system for you! If there are enemies in that direction, well, that’s why there’s another Robin right next to this one. First one to figure out there’s an enemy, second one to identify the type of enemy, the third one you send just to make sure!
This thing is the bomb!
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I’ve been using this design philosophy for survey ships in my current game but I couldn’t tell you if they are successful since they haven’t been tested in combat. However, I have realistic expectations - In terms of my current ship, we’re talking about a 25,000 ton vessel that might be able to survive an attack from a couple of 5000 ton beam corvettes or something. It certainly won’t stand up to any true combat ship in it’s weight class. It’s just not entirely helpless.
I think it’s worth remembering that if we’re thinking about starfleet-style exploration vessels, the Constitution Class canonically weighs 1,000,000 tons. I’m sure when I have a million tons to work with I’ll be able to build something that can fight off a few smaller warships.
My 15,000 ton armed survey vessel design (see above) has recently fought a couple of battles with raiders, with the raider ship being about 11,000 tons, speed of 7200 km/s, armed with six 20cm lasers and 2nd generation jammers.
One win, with the raider destroyed, and one draw, with both ships surviving. The raider retreated after losing (I assume) its fire control systems, with the survey ship already crippled. I think I was lucky in both situations, especially as the raider pulled back and engaged from outside particle lance range in the second battle.
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Lost survey ships are always a bit of a bother to replace, so I tend to skip intermediate solutions for a handful of expensive but effective ships.
In my current run I went through the stages of unarmed survey ship → scout cruiser. Couldn’t make a 9k, 13k or 15k frigate/destroyer scout that could defend itself along with acceptable range. I found that disregarding EMCON, and running radars to spot contacts first rather than hope for potential hostiles to not be armed with missiles when contact was made, worked the best. As such, reasonably powerful long-range radar was fitted to the design.
Supported by tankers & supply ships, a battalion of 4 scout cruisers together survey a system before moving on to the next one.
Copypasted from my designs thread:
(note I used TurretTool for railgun turrets)
Gagarin class Scout Cruiser
Increasing hostile encounters have all but made un-escorted exploration missions impossible. In response, a new type of ship was drawn up that combines long-range exporation with protection and firepower. This variant is based on the Groznyy-Class hull, making it possible for the construction of this type of vessels from the same shipyards without retooling.
(Built 2149 - )
Gagarin class Scout Cruiser 55,000 tons 1,547 Crew 24,342.4 BP TCS 1,100 TH 2,045 EM 0
11621 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 10-128 Shields 0-0 HTK 325 Sensors 14/14/2/2 DCR 120-21 PPV 139.64
Maint Life 2.29 Years MSP 17,824 AFR 403% IFR 5.6% 1YR 4,597 5YR 68,948 Max Repair 3,595.5 MSP
Magazine 356 / 168 Cryogenic Berths 200
Kapitan vtorogo ranga Control Rating 4 BRG AUX ENG SCI
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months CDE 68% Morale Check Required
55K-103 FTL drive Max Ship Size 55000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
TRD-3196M-MV "Buran" fusion rocket (4) Power 12784 Fuel Use 81.16% Signature 511.36 Exp 23%
Fuel Capacity 16,300,000 Litres Range 65.7 billion km (65 days at full power)
AK-157M2 Railgun turret (3x157mm) (4x12) Range 210,000km TS 11000 km/s Power 27-18 ROF 10
AK-4152M1 Gaussturret (4x152mm) (8x16) Range 40,000km TS 20000 km/s Power 0-0 ROF 5
1G-040MK Cep.04 fire-control radar (2) Range 40,000 km TS 20,000 km/s ECCM-2
1G-210-13M Cep.01 fire-control radar (1) Range 210,000 km TS 13,562 km/s ECCM-2
11R-72TF Fusion reactor (1) Total Power Output 72.6 Exp 5%
OSA launch system (4) Missile Size: 1 ROF 10
Size 21 Decoy Launcher (8) Decoy Size: 21 Hangar Reload 229 minutes MF Reload 38 hours
1G-500-КД Cep.03 missile guidance radar (2) Range 70.6m km RES 1 ECCM-2 EH-30
MG-21 Chaff (8) Signature 4200 tons ECM-1 Size 21
A-107 (356) Speed 90,000 km/s Range 6.7m km WH 1 Size 1 TH: 9,000 / 18,000 / 36,000
3R-2500-P2 "Duga" radar array (1) GPS 180000 Range 415.7m km RES 100 ECCM-2 EH-30
Perimetr-1 Cep.05 early-warning radar (1) GPS 36 Range 12.7m km MCR 1.1m km RES 1 ECCM-2 EH-30
GLONASS-5 navigation radar (1) GPS 3600 Range 58.8m km RES 100 ECCM-2 EH-30
Perimetr-2 Cep.01 early warning system (1) GPS 280 Range 31.3m km MCR 2.8m km RES 1 ECCM-1 EH-30
TPO-1091 radar warning receiver (1) Sensitivity 14 Detect 1000: 29.6m km
GOI-1142 IR sensor (1) Sensitivity 14 Detect 1000: 29.6m km
Improved Gravitational Sensors (1) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Improved Geological Sensors (1) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Electronic Warfare Jammers: Sensor 2 Fire Control 2 Missile 2
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Ever since I did my first carrier-based Science Ship I fell in love with the idea. The ship itself isn’t necessarily any more survivable, but the turning of it into a large carrier makes it more survivable in an operational sense. You can always have a stealth scout to send further ahead into an unexplored jump point, and it is also armed with thermal and geo exploration missiles for when you want to send something expendable ahead of the main Carrier Science Ship. I added a deep Magazine pool so that it is capable of laying extensive scout buoy networks, and it has engineering spaces and fuel to spend years exploring.
von Braun class Science Ship 100,000 tons 2,327 Crew 15,162.3 BP TCS 2,000 TH 19,200 EM 0
9600 km/s Armour 1-191 Shields 0-0 HTK 506 Sensors 168/160/0/0 DCR 252-25 PPV 1.8
Maint Life 3.06 Years MSP 23,880 AFR 317% IFR 4.4% 1YR 3,824 5YR 57,363 Max Repair 2,880 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 36,000 tons Magazine 202 / 0
Captain Control Rating 5 BRG AUX ENG SCI FLG
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months Flight Crew Berths 720 CDE 75% Morale Check Required
ENG G5-N-S20k-P9.6k/60-PH0.009 "Pusher" (2) Power 19200 Fuel Use 0.88% Signature 9600 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 3,008,000 Litres Range 614 billion km (740 days at full power)
MSL G1-S90-MS6-ROF370/0.3 (1) Missile Size: 6 ROF 370
MFC G1-S25-R1000-RNG95 (1) Range 94.9m km RES 20 ECCM-1
Belovia Geo-Exploration Probe (6) Speed 31,500 km/s Range 5,138.2m km WH 0 Size 6 TH: 3,150 / 6,300 / 12,600
BOY G1-S6-ASS1k (18) Speed 0 km/s Range 0m km WH 0 Size 5.998 TH: 0 / 0 / 0
BOY G1-S6-PST18.6k (8) Speed 0 km/s Range 0m km WH 0 Size 5.9925 TH: 0 / 0 / 0
Thermal-Exploration Probe (1) Speed 31,500 km/s Range 5,138.2m km WH 0 Size 6 TH: 3,150 / 6,300 / 12,600
ASS G4-N-S500-R1k/212.2m-SM320 (1) GPS 12000 Range 212.2m km RES 20
ASS G4-N-S400-R10k/408.9m-SM320 (1) GPS 96000 Range 408.9m km RES 200
ASS G4-N-S400-R50/69.9m/6.293m-SM320 (1) GPS 480 Range 69.9m km MCR 6.3m km RES 1
PST G4-N-350-R102 (1) Sensitivity 168 Detect 1000: 102.5m km
PSEM G4-N-250-R100 (1) Sensitivity 160 Detect 1000: 100m km
ELINT Module (1) Sensitivity 14 Detect 1000: 29.6m km
Missile to hit values are target speeds in km/s for 100% / 50% / 25% chance to hit
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Carrier for auto-assignment purposes
The best part about it is that the expensive sensors are maintained within the individual Geo & Grav survey craft I put inside the carrier, thus making it’s operation both cheaper and more durable in a maintenance sense. The second best part is that this is just a long endurance carrier too. In times of conflict or when I’m planning a military operation I can recall these carriers back, take out the survey craft, and outfit it like a slow but high endurance carrier. 36k hangar space allows it to operate three Corvettes in the vanguard plus some specialized craft. I love these ships, and the concept of recalling Science and Exploration vessels in time of military crisis is just cool to me. I also designed a whole 25kt Military Tug to speed up these ships and for logistics in general. Looking forward to see if I can tune out a von Braun into a (bad) Fleet Carrier in times of need.
I think that the modularity that hangars give you allow you to better equip your survey ships, do you know that you’re being harassed by X spoiler? Prepare squadrons to deal with that. Do you know that you’re sending it to explore safe space? You can prepare it for that too with some micro. Give carrier survey ships a try some day, you might fall in love with them like I did.
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