you can use a wormhloe once and you can't send a fleet but any thing that has a Survey module you can go thought it. and its randome one time i whent in to a worm hloe and it sent me bace two pcs.

I hate getting sent to opposite sides of the galaxy early game, it's a bummer and a waste of Survey Ship.

I personally decommission all my Survey ships, I wonder if anyone actually upgrades them, which is their intended purpouse in a way. To be upgraded into a slightly more powerful ship. Key word here is "slightly".

If anyone does actually upgrade those pieces of crap, please amuse me.

Eitherway I consider it idiotic to upgrade them.

Anomalies regenerate in TA, so keeping a survey fleet active is very worthwhile. The cash dumps can be vexing if you're trying to stay under but near to 20k treasury, but the regular ability boosts add up noticably over time, and, unlike resource mines, the computer civs can't take them away.

Re the flagship, I usually don't upgrade it until I'm several generations into medium hull warships and I have several dedicated surveryors in the field. By that point, the Flagship has encountered enough HP-boosting anomalies to be quite the little badass when I refit it for war. IIRC, I once had one start its life in the combat fleets with over 60 HP.

If you've fallen prey to any of the efficiency/scoremonstering arguments, every BC counts, so any time you get that >20k penalty is vexing. In larger economies, the hit can be tremendous. I usually don't get to more than 20-30k per turn (outside of economic boom events), but there are players who typically run *much* larger economies. The larger your income per turn, the more you lose by spending down to 19,103 and getting a 1,000 BC anomaly from an autosurvey ship. I think the last time I got bitten like that it was for about 15-20k.

On Gigantic and Immense maps, I tend to have 3-5 surveyors plus my Flagship (until I convert it for war). I don't bother managing them after my basic mapping phase is complete, usually after the first 50-100 turns. From then on, they go auto and I don't even bother to see where they when they hit a wormhole.

From the game version where the anomalies start to regenerate, your survey ships will go into "standby" mode when all anomalies are found, and will automatically start surveying again as soon as a new one spawns.

Okay now that my amusement is over (thanks LeddZerggelin).............

I still play DA 1.0, so my anomalies don't regenerate.

I'm finally downloading TA (at 200+ kB/s, yeah my computer's that good), after all these months of getting my ears tortured off by the "up-to-date" forum techies.

I'm also getting concerned about how it's economy works. Because I've been hearing that if you exceed 20K BC treasury at any given moment, your economy gets hacked to shreds. Please elaborate on this.

Eitherway I am looking forward to playing TA!!!

Now that I know that anomalies regenerate in TA, I guess there is a point to upgrading your survey ships.

What do ya know. You learn something new everyday!!!

Till next time........

ROCK THE CASBAH!!!!!

(by: THE CLASH)

@Extant

The 20k treasury income penalty is present in all versions of the game, at least after DL 1.1 or so, if memory serves.  If you haven't noticed it yet, you're unlikely to notice it in TA.

That said, TA's economy is tougher than DA's (which in turn was tougher than DL's), largely due to the fact that more ships have maintenance, and most planetary improvements have increased maintenance.  I believe there was also a slight taxation income reduction as well, but I'm not positive.

I have like 3 surveyors on my large maps and they all stay on auto-survey.

A nice little fact: The AI races will not build additional survey ships and will not replace their flag ship if it is destroyed. So, late game, yours may be they onl;y ones in the galaxy.

The respawing of anomolies gave some credance to building the Galactic Guide Book, which allows all ships to survey. That is, the survey module will have a size and/or cost (?? not sure) of zero bc. You will still need to have ships designed with the module. Personally i still have never build that thing.

As for wormholes... on other bit of information. It is likely, especially on larger maps, that after going through one your ship will not have the life support it needs to be where it is and you will have to head back toward you own space. This makes your survey ship useless for a few turns, untill it gets close enough to your space.

My early surveyors usually have an effective speed of 5-6. On early Gigantic and Immense maps, a wormhole can dump a ship out several tens of turns away from refueling range.

Man, good thread. I never knew this about surveying.

Ok, I see why it would be an issue.  I wasn't really envisioning an economy so large that the graft penalty would negate the 1000 bc in one turn.  That said, if you're running so much of a surplus that you have over 10,000 bc lying around I think you need to start finding nefarious uses for it.  Go bribe a few wars into existance or something.