Suppose I have a ship with a jump drive, as well as geological and gravity sensors — can I order it to automatically explore nearby sectors? Is it possible to automatically stabilize points in those sectors?
Why don’t you find out…
Why don’t you answer the question… I know perfectly well that you can auto-explore a single system — the question is, can you then automatically send the ship to the next one? Although, considering that orders get reset when returning to refuel, instead of just inserting refueling into the queue — I highly doubt it. But you never know, maybe somewhere in that interface this option has actually gotten lost.
Because it is a game, there are tools, and you keep asking questions which are easily answered by actually playing the game. Though the answer may not be one you like.
Play more…
Then read…
Then ask…
To answer the actual question: there is a standing order to move to the nearest system requiring a survey, or at least there used to be. I haven’t checked to confirm that this is still there.
To those who might respond, I’d like us to keep in mind that the Aurora UI is often quite opaque. Even if a feature can be found by exploring the interface, not everybody wants to spend 45 minutes checking every tab of every window to locate a specific option they are not even sure exists. It may be worth keeping this in mind when answering these kinds of inquiries and being a bit slower to bite folks’ heads off.
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It’s still there in the standing orders section.
MV: Geosurvey System
MV: Gravsurvey System
?
P.S. I don’t know why Pedroig even writes anything if he can’t say anything useful. Too bad you can’t block a user…
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I think if a person asks something, then he have a reason to ask the question. Please answer, if you know the answer.
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The game allows you to set a Fleet Waypoint when conditional orders are triggered. I use them and the move to Fleet Waypoint order to automate the system exploration.
At first, I used “MV: Geosurvey System”, but my ships just jumped endlessly at the nearest jump point between surveyed systems. That’s why I started using Fleet Waypoint, so I can be sure that the ship will finish exploring the system even if it lacks one Deployment Time cycle to do so.
The game also has a standing order “Jump at JP” or something like that, but I didn’t use it. I think it means “jump at nearest JP”, so I don’t think there’s any way to make the ship automatically jump to an unexplored points only. I can’t check it in the game right now.
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Thank you for the answer. It seems that such a feature doesn’t exist in the game. After all, creating a waypoint already requires manually sending the ship to a new sector. And that defeats the whole purpose of such automation, because with enough fuel and operational time, the ship would explore everything on its own anyway.
Alright, I’m probably going to give up on the game — too many workarounds are needed to perform the simplest actions. And yet, on the code level, all these problems could be easily solved, like the example I gave about exploration being interrupted when refueling the ship. In fact, my last two questions were an attempt to find out whether the game is even playable in a somewhat comfortable way.
The game really needs a manual, because the developer clearly overestimates the responsiveness of his community, insisting that all questions be asked here.
I really don’t want to spend 45 minutes figuring out the existence of each mechanic. The ratio of time spent to gameplay payoff simply isn’t worth it.
Each person has their own understanding of what is comfortable. For example, I like to look for different ways to make things in the game, it’s quite comfortable for me. 
All right, after all, Aurora isn’t for everyone, don’t worry.
We are in the process of writing the manual, it is only 578 pages, we are almost there, we will ping you once it is done, just wait for our ping.
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My method, and I suspect it’s a very common method, is not fully automatic, but automatic enough to feel comfortable to me. I build a few 4000 ton explorers with 6-8 years of deployment time and enough fuel and msp to last the entire deployment (this part requires a bit of experience or trial and error but its not difficult to achieve).
Then I use 1 standing order and 1 conditional:
SV: Three SB/Locations
Deployment Exceeded, LG: Replenish Overhaul
Send them into a new system and they will go to work. When they finish the system you’ll get the interrupt for “Orders Not Possible”. Manually choose the next gate you want them to jump through and the process repeats. This way, the mapping process is automatic and I get to choose the direction of expansion, which is exactly what I want.
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Guljaca has been a little aggressive and rude during his time on the forum, so I think people who are normally very polite are becoming frustrated with him and responding accordingly. As he apparently won’t be playing any more, that should no longer be an issue.
I’ve muted his account for a couple of weeks, so if he changes his mind, we can try again.
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I believe there are sufficient automation options in this regard. Exploration is part of the game, and you don’t always want scouts to explore randomly, or jump gate vessels to stabilize every JP they come across.
It’s a design decision with some thought behind it. It may not be according to everyone’s tastes, but that’s to be expected. It’s not an objective issue to “solve”. The game has a certain flow, and if it doesn’t flow the way a player wants to, it doesn’t necessarily mean the game’s at fault.
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I was going to post something similar: having no auto-explore is a design decision, not a missing feature. Auto-explore is for games with massive system counts or where the individual details of each system are unimportant - Aurora has relatively fewer but highly detailed systems with hundreds of bodies. Once you have taken a look over the system, then you have the automation options for surveying it.
I’m confused by this question. The surveyors do in fact autoexplore with the standing orders. They require a wee bit of babysitting but I’ve always found that system to be easy to use and fairly well rounded. I just send the ships off and if they happen to get blown up, well surveying isn’t for the faint of heart…
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As someone else said in another discussion, Guljaca demands seem generated by an AI or an automatic translator. I can imagine that plain questions in his/her language can be turned into rude English. So, muting him/her it’s maybe a bit too rude as well.
About the question: I use almost the same standing and conditional orders of Isotoxal.
“SV: Body” for geosurv, “SV: Survey Location” for gravsurv as standing orders, and the same conditional one. I use single type of survey ships, don’t install both the sensors in one ship: when one survey type is ended, its sensors become death mass on the ship.
For stabilisation: “MV: Stabilise JP”, and refuel and resupply as conditional.
All of these ships continue to move until there are unexplored items.
It’s obvious after the number of posts he has made that he is using machine translation but it’s also likely that whatever his native language is, he is not writing in a polite manner either.
To echo Shadow and Jacen, not being able to fully and completely automate surveyors is a design choice and, honestly, I don’t understand the obsession certain players have with automating absolutely everything. Yeah, automating mineral transport between colonies makes sense, it’s a boring chore and you don’t want to do multiple times. Surveying however is a big part of the eXplore part of the genre and not only do I want to make sure that any unexplored JPs get explored in a specific order, but I often also fiddle with the order of surveying instead of just always using the standing orders as well as using sensor missiles to scout out suspicious planets.
He reminds me of that one guy from (few) years ago who seemed to hate Aurora but kept playing for some reason, trying to turn Aurora into something it wasn’t, and was constantly posting on the forum how the gameplay should be changed and so on and so forth.
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To be dead honest I wouldn’t want survey/exploration to be completely automated. One of my favorite parts of the game is the interrupt when a survey ship reaches a new system and I get to find out what the RNG gods have delivered - an empty system? a new Terran world? a new threat to battle? The current orders deliver just the right amount of automation and manual order making for my tastes.
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This is my go to as well!