Sure, you can make the arguement, but it fails radically when subjected to even rudimentary scrutiny, and as such is irrelevant. If you need additional communications technology, then the ships need to return to base between missions. Otherwise, how are they getting your new orders? Since they don't need to, you have sufficient communications to tell them what they need to know. As for the organizational infrastructure, just how complicated is a list of known stars, their locations and some dude tasked with making a checkmark next to the finished locations?
That's why I said that the "realism"-arguments are not going anywhere: What is the easiest thing to do in your opinion, is a difficult task in other's opinion. There are people out there who want to get rid of sectors; and realism-wise, they can field the same argument: it should be possible to govern 6 planets when you can govern 5 etc. ... When you put elements of the game to a test, there are many reasons why they could be different, looking from a "realism"-point of view. But they are not. Because they have a purpose. Neglecting that just means argumenting towards the self-desired outcome, which is understandable but not helpful.
And even if we agreed that it would be possible to do automated efficient communication; and that is the actual point of my previous post, not the example; it would not influence the gameplay-argument. And what we have heard a lot in this forum: gameplay beats realism every time.
Again, this does not mean that automated survey must always stay a mid-game tech. But in the current state, it is an important part of the mentioned game concept.
As for the starting positions you mention, explain to me how allowing group 1 to have what they want is in any way actually a problem for group 2 or 3?
You mean that even when automatic exploration was available from the start, those who like to auto-explore would still be able to? This is obviously true. But in my experience, people are lazy. And as stated above, this is a comfort-function. So what could happen is that everyone uses the auto-exploration and by this misses the experience the designer intended to convey. Note that this also means that we might need better means to strengthen this game concept.
By following the dev diaries, I have the impression that Stellaris is not meant to be just another 4X game, but to add another layer of stories. Until that changes, I would rather put the auto-exploration from day one to the mod-requests, as unsatisfying this might be. Actually, it is not even a request, the mods are out there. And no, I do not accept achievements as argument against using these.
Who ever said remove manual survey? Please show me one. Allowing automation is not the same as preventing manual control. Even those of us who want auto control from the start will generally chose manual for the first 10-20 systems.
The statement was targeted at the forced manual survey in the early years, which does, in my perception, increase the relevance of the scientists, their stories and discoveries.
.png){kind=avatar}
.png){kind=avatar}
.png){kind=avatar}
