Scout ship blown to smithereens by what I assume is planetary launched missiles as the wreck is over a planet - by the time I realised what was happening the shortened turn times were over and I’m a decorated explorer down
I’m in undiscovered territory here - do I send a bigger better with better sensors scout ship there to peep at what’s on the planet or around it or unleash the fury of a planetary invasion with an invasion fleet yet to be built
Welcome in the club (shot down in the first meeting)!!! 
Probably, you met some STO. But, it could be some ships/defence satellites in orbit too.
Had your scout any EM or thermal sensor onboard, apart, I presume, geosensors? Did it see any ship(s) before being destroyed?
You could think to send a scout, armed with probes (i.e. missiles with sensors). They should have rather long range, let’s say some tens of million km, so you can shoot them from a safe distance. Going near to the planet espose you to be shot again.
For the probe, you can design a two stages missile: the first stage is only engine and fuel, and the second one is a sensor buoy to deploy where you need (e.g., at a waypoint attached to the planet).
Before committing any forces, you need more intel. What is on the planet, any other ships in the system, where are the jump points, etc.? Is this a colony of a larger Empire and if so, in what direction are the core systems and where are the ideal choke points? If there are ships, what size, number and speed (as the latter will give an indication of tech level and the others overall strength).
It’s really important to get as much information as possible and ensure logistics are in place, before committing to any major operations, because it’s usually surprise that kills you - superior forces you can handle as long as you know about them beforehand 
Here is a simple sensor drone from my current campaign. If you place a waypoint on the planet, you can fire this from two billion kilometres away.
Moreover, on your scout/intel ship, if you install (i) a cloaking device and (ii) engine(s) with reduced thermal emission, you can reduce the probability of being detected from far away.
JSC-03 Titan (Saturn class Jump Scout) 7,643 tons 207 Crew 1,894.4 BP TCS 153 TH 1,350 EM 0
8832 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1-34 Shields 0-0 HTK 41 Sensors 14/14/2/2 DCR 3-3 PPV 1.32
Maint Life 3.85 Years MSP 3,042 AFR 133% IFR 1.9% 1YR 324 5YR 4,863 Max Repair 675 MSP
Magazine 8.8 / 0
Commander Control Rating 2 BRG AUX
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months CDE 10% Morale Check Required
Corellian Engineering Corporation CEC J10000(3-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 10000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Rolls Royce RR MMFD 1350/150/45 Mag Fusion Drive (1) Power 1350.0 Fuel Use 64.95% Signature 1350.00 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 1,250,000 Litres Range 45.3 billion km (59 days at full power)
BlasTech Industries Size 4.4 Box Launcher (2) Missile Size: 4.4 Hangar Reload 104 minutes MF Reload 17 hours
BlasTech Industries Missile Fire Control FC (28/14/3 R100) (1) Range 179.6m km RES 100
Sniffer Sensor Drone (2) Speed 6,818 km/s Range 3,684.6m km WH 0 Size 4.40 TH: 682 / 1,364 / 2,727
Thales Group TG Active Search Sensor AS19-R1 (28/14/3/R1) (1) GPS 84 Range 19.3m km MCR 1.7m km RES 1
Thales Group TG Active Search Sensor AS52-R20 (28/14/3 R1000) (1) GPS 1680 Range 52.5m km RES 20
Thales Group TG Active Search Sensor AS89-R100 (28/14/3 R100) (1) GPS 8400 Range 89.8m km RES 100
Northrop Grumman NG EM Sensor (14/1) (1) Sensitivity 14.0 Detect 1000: 29.6m km
Thales Group TG Thermal Sensor (14/1) (1) Sensitivity 14.0 Detect 1000: 29.6m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
Electronic Warfare Jammers: Sensor 2
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 Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes
Firing:-
Missile Size: 4.40 MSP (11.000 Tons) Warhead: 0 Radiation Damage: 0
Speed: 6,818 km/s Fuel: 1,300 Flight Time: 150 hours Range: 3,684.6m km
Active Sensor Strength: 1.4 EM Sensitivity Modifier: 14
Resolution: 20 Maximum Range vs 1000 ton object (or larger): 6,779,993 km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.18 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 3,354,102 km
EM Sensor Strength: 0.18 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 3,354,102 km
Cost Per Missile: 3.566 Development Cost: 59
100% Chance to Hit: 682 km/s 50% Chance: 1,364 km/s 25% Chance: 2,727 km/s
Materials Required
Boronide 1.431
Uridium 1.76
Gallicite 0.375
Fuel: 1300
Unsure if ship is overengineered - have exited jump today and stayed stationary - fired the missile at the waypoint only to discover 6 enemy ships my poor scout blindly flew into
Bengal Tiger, Javan Tiger, Siberian Tiger and Sumatran Tiger enemy class ships
And while it travels, your ship has the time to move to another position.
I think so, IMO.
Because of my personal taste, I don’t like ships that try to do too many roles, and tend to specialise them to save mass. I think there are always new systems to grav survey so a grav ship has no time for geo survey, and viceversa.
Then, I feel a scout/intel ship should be small and stealthy. If the NPRs have developed high levels of deep space sensors I fear of being revealed as soon as I enter their system: a small ship (and possibly cloaked) try to reduce its visibility.
Your ship size is lower than Jump required, you could save some tonnage by reducing the size of the jump engine.
Since this is a Scout, you could go 2 directions, and you taken both.
Direction 1: All sensors on and active patrol duty
Direction 2: Stealth with only passive sensors and long range buoys deployment capability
As mentioned by others early, if a ship does everything, often doesnt do anything.
Direction 1 is perfect for an 8k ship such as yours, and I would probably refurbish the launchers to add some teeth instead of buoys/detectors. You may keep the Gravsurvey sunsors, but I would definetely lose the geological.
Direction 2 would probably be better for a 5k or less tonnage vessel. You may lose all the active sensors but the RES 1 (it will be most of the times off anyway) keep the detectors and perhaps the geological sensors as once everything checks clean, you may stop here and there to pre survey interesting worlds before your Survey fleet comes to party.
Either way, once fixed, you may still need a couple of extra engineering modules.
Eventually, your operational range is good but not great; you probably have too powerful engines. I feel like you could easily get down to a 7k speed and either increase range further or save fuel, as scouts and survey are always on the move with fuel consumption stacking up quite fast.
One mistake new players or casual players do often is to look at range as it is, in reality you have to consider half of it, as you’ll have to come back to refuel, unless you have a way to do it closer to the action. In your case your operational rage is 45 bkm, however, your mission range is 22.5 bkm (45/2 for your round trip), not enough for a scout a barely acceptable for a 3/4 jumps away survey ship.
Please, try to keep even numbers, like 8,000 tons, my OCD is kicking in hard and I am twitching.
It’s entirely possible this ship was designed in a mad panic at having the original anemic scout ship destroyed by an unknown contact and just wanting to develop something with a sensor suite that could at least see what has happened unaware there was a billion ships in this system!!
Thanks for feed back - men in lab coats and men in hard hats will rectify
If you are wanting more stealth you could always remove the jump drive to reduce tonnage.
You then replace it with a small commercial tender ship to sit on the entry jump point.
Or you could use a commercial carrier with a jump drive, it would act like a tender but also give you the ability to refuel, resupply, repair and rollback the deployment clock on the survey ships, you can also give the carrier very fuel efficient engines as speed is not needed for them. They would be slow boating to the next jump point while the grav survey is still going on (so long as you checked the planets for aliens before jumping the carrier into system).
Another idea is to remove the jump drive from only the Geo survey ships and use the Grav survey ships to act as a tender. That way Geo survey ship has better stealth for going near planets without adding ships to a survey task force.
In my current game I used a small commercial tender in the beginning. I have kind of switched to having a survey ship doubling as a tender now for my non-jump drive survey ships, but they are captured alien survey ships with jump drives lol.
I think it was your good self that recommended jump station tenders sat at the gates which I have used across the known galaxy - I can get in and out of all known systems without stabilising any gates apart from the this hostile system - if I put a commercial jump tender on the entry that’s fine but without one on the other side any ship without a jump drive is abandoned in hostile NPR hell
Its been a while since I played but I am pretty sure jump tenders work for two way trafic. So you only need a jump tender on one side of any jump point
I was going to build resupply platforms in each system but these commercial carriers sound cool
do you have the layout for one?
Nooooooooooo 
Here is the (modified) design from my current game of my first commercial carrier and the repair box (military carrier station) that sits inside it. The only modification from what I used is I added engines and jump drive for you, as I have been using tugs for them because I also park them in orbit of colonies to hold the combat ships protecting the colonies. No point in spending minerals on engines they will only use once right hehe.
Carrier
Repair box
With your current survey ship being around 7500t you could fit a grav and geo in side along with 5x 1000t FACs or 10x Fighters for defence actions. (With your engine tech you should have no problems reducing the design tonnage down, I just wanted to show one with low tech, though the CDE may have been updated at some point in my game, hence not being a round number on the Repair box.)
Do note, it is using a Commercial Jump Drive. You would need commercial engines on your survey ships unless you blind jump the carrier in, But you could simply have a small commercial sensor ship (or station, if the tender can do engineless - I can’t remember off hand, if think it can) you jump in ahead. Would only need passive sensors and maybe an active (but I would keep the active turned off until needed for intel).
If the carrier has engineering and MSP and fuel and a refuelling facility does the ship actually have to dock with the carrier or is it like a spaceport - do you choose overhaul and refuel from the menu
If a ship is in a military hangar then both deployment and maintenance clocks will rollback to 0 on their own.
You would need to mark the carrier as tanker and supply ship in the design as well as add the components that allow refueling and resupplying for ships to get fuel and MSP without landing in the hangars of the carrier.
The overhaul command needs to be on a colony and can not be triggered on a ship or station if I am remembering correctly.
When you land on a carrier, refuelling happens.
Apologies for questions - never used carriers before - do I need to designate the hangar like you have as the repair box or can it just be a hangar
and can a military ship land on a commercial carrier?
It can just be in hangar.
Military ships can land in a commercial hangar, but their Maint. clock will not decrease.
