Not sure how many people already do this, but as a suggestion…
I put two box-launchers on every geo/grav survey ship. In each launcher is a missile with a slow and efficient engine, a range of about 1B km, and a minimum size active, EM and thermal sensor.
When I jump into a system with a body that looks like a great colony world (or likely to contain ruins, NPCs, or spoilers), I drop a waypoint on the body, launch the missile at it, and wait until it gets there. This has saved my survey ships from getting smoked by aggressive NPCs multiple times. It can also be used to scope out known NPC homeworlds without aggravating them as much as a full sized ship showing up on their sensors, or get details of a fleet camping a jump gate (if you came in via another gate).
You could also accomplish this by having a small boat bay and a scout ship, although then you’re putting crew (usually 1 or 2 people) in danger, but same effect.
Hope this helps newer players, both with a specific technique they can use and by highlighting the crazy and awesome flexibility of Aurora to do cool stuff.
I often will have an entire class of grav survey ship with several launch tubes that deploy geo survey satellites into orbit around promising worlds ahead of the geo survey ships.
Hostile forces tend to shoot at those if they’re present, although I also usually send the military in first to conduct a sweep. Thought I’d share my analogue to this.
I do something a bit similar, but in my case it is a buoy dropper to lay buoys on newly explored jump points.
For checking planets, at some point it becomes more economical to use a small fighter as a “rock checker” instead of expending a missile on every potentially hostile body.
Buoy layers are also a dedicatel class in my fleets, because they need much more runs - I tend to lay buoys on some planets, sometimes small bodies, to control movements on systems I have no array coverage, and with very high-tech Raiders and other spoilers I need fast ships, so they cannot be very fuel-efficient. That’s why I use squads of relatively small, specialized scouts and surveyors.
I generally go towards one of two design archetypes. One is minimum-size disposable survey ships specialized for grav and geo, usually ~1-2k tons with nothing but a single sensor, engine, jump drive, 50t thermal sensor, and fuel. I will churn them out by the dozen and toss a handful into every new system without worrying too much about losses. Obvious upsides are that they are cheap, fast, and tend to stay around the same tonnage so they’re easy to refit as better tech comes along. Downsides are also obvious, they’re easily lost, only good for the one specific thing, and not great at noticing alien traffic.
The other is survey cruisers approximately similar in size to same-TL light cruisers, with multiple of both grav and geosurvey sensor, diplomacy module, ELINT, decent active + passives, a little PD, a little armor, a few missile launchers, very long deployment time, &c. That way they also fill the role of deploying sensor buoys and mines, chasing down enemy commercial shipping, picketing remote systems, and so forth instead of having dedicated ships for each role. Once higher tech stuff is available they often also get cloaks and reduced-sig drives.
I have a class of fighters I classify as “pinnaces”, basically long endurance jump fighters with short ranged res 1 sensors that face check every major moon and planet while the survey ships are still finishing their previous survey missions. I shoot for a minimum range of 60 billion km, up to about 100 billion, and sufficient crew and maintenance endurance to reliably last that long. Their speed is crap, but they are cheap, and they are available in numbers so that they can go in the instant a jump point is detected. Their “defense”, such as it is, is that they are unlikely to be detected at a long range, and therefore won’t reveal the location of the jump point by their use.
RP wise, they serve as mobile messengers and communications relays.
I like the idea of using recon missiles, but they are so slow that to use them on the survey ships themselves enforces a significant idle time on a more expensive platform. A pinnace with a reduced sized launcher and a magazine can check systems while the survey ship is finishing the survey of previously scouted systems while jump scouts check the newest discoveries.
The cheapness of the jump scouts means they are always available, and I don’t care if they are idle for many months as a system is surveyed.
I put one reduced size launcher and a 2HS magazine on my geo/grav survey ships. The grav ships are mostly loaded with scanner missiles, and the geo ships are mostly loaded with geo survey missiles. Both types are 2 stage, carrying a buoy payload. The survey missiles are intended for the odd distant comet or planet orbiting a non-primary star but can also be used to pre-scout worlds where I’m concerned about hostile presence. Later on I’ll have dedicated scout carriers, each carrying 3 scout fighters. One thermal, one EM/active, and one <100t 300% engine single-seat fighter for jump point scouting - on the theory that if it is fast enough it will have at least a chance of surviving until jump shock wears off. After the jump fighter checks the jump point the other two fly by likely planets. Usually they will see the signature of fleets or colonies before being detected, but if not they are much cheaper than a survey ship.
You could remove the jump drive from all but one or two and use the remaining one or two as a jump tenders until they are the last left to jump. The saved space on the jump-less ones can then be used to improve them, keep them smaller and more stealthy or maybe have more of the jump-less ones.
I do use this doctrine currently. A jump corvette, wich is also a probe carrier, with squadrons of fast gravsurveyours to follow, and geosurveyours if there are any bodies in this system.
Jump corvettes do not need as much expencive and innefficient engines - they are moving from JP to JP relatively rarely (I do play with extremely impeded survey - 1% of the default speed), usually it’s a month or two between, so the probability of being intrcepted far from the JP is low, they don’t need much speed or stealthyness, so they are small, cheap and efficient.
Surveyours are much bigger and times more expencive, because with my campaign options survey is extremely dangerous job, and the ships need to be fast and equipped with a range of sensors.
There are also tankers and sometimes small supply ships to follow the expeditionary flotilla.
The downside is - it needs a lot of your attention.
I alternate between survey ships that deploy buoys as they explore jump points and small, dedicated buoy deployment ships, usually with larger buoys in the latter case.
The former would work fine if I remembered to actually deploy the buoys, which I usually don’t so then I change back to deployment ships.
For survey ships to check planets for life from a safe distance, I alternate between long-range probes and carrying 250-ton shuttles.
so then I change back to deployment ships.