Make auto-survey tech available earlier for Hyper Drives

[Robotkiller]

Also agree that auto survey should not be a tech. You are a spacefaring race. How do you manage to not have already developed a computer algorithm to put into your ship's navigation computer to auto survey systems?

 

[Adamsrealm]

Autosurvey shouldn't even be a tech, it should be available from day 1.

I don't buy their justification because all but the most careless players will be manually surveying for the first decade or two anyways, since you want to prioritize certain systems over others.

It should be, paradox is using gimmicky features as fillers for things they don't know how to fill and aren't willing to spend the time developing for, it's really sad actually...

That is a normative statement, not an argument. You could just as well say that genetic engineering should be available from day one. And you might find people who agree, but it would not help the discussion anymore than this does. Which is not much.

In gameplay-terms, it is a comfort-function that detaches you from the science ships: shoot and forget. You could argue that comfort functions should always be available to increase playability. (In "realism"-terms, it is justifiable.)
I would reply that making the first steps into space is not comfortable and that the micro-management attached to it is intentional. When you choose to use three science ships you also choose to have the effort. And while I normally argue against micro, it has a purpose here: your scientists are supposed to be special to you, not just one modifier on one of the ships that are out there somewhere doing ...what actually?

You might disagree with this design-decision, and it might be reverted as the game matures, but in my experience, it is a relevant aspect in the current status.

Just because you don't want it doesn't mean others don't, the point is as you state is that it's an option to "increase playability", an auto survey system that avoids threats is a good feature that shouldn't be over looked.

Genetic engineering should be available from the start of the game, however earning new trait points should be harder than simple tech options, I'd like to see trait options be gained through researching the traits of other species in research project (projects are not the same as techs). This makes it available fromday one but not overpowered or broken and acrually gives xenos you don't want some use, despite the ethical and possible diplomatic consequences of... researching their traits...

Things like this may actually make the game feel more colourful as opposed to the "filler" content we have now.

 

[Zaltys]

In my latest game I had already fully scanned the tiny galaxy I was playing in by the time that tech became available.
Fat lot of good it did at that point...

So yes, it should at least be available earlier.

 

[kalauer]

You can control. You can stop it. And I wanted a pratical difference, not something that no one cares in a game.

I do care. And maybe you misunderstood me: Whenever you enable auto-survey, your science ship is at risk to enter systems that have not been visited before and thus faces potential insta-death. This is NOT something you can control, unless you demand some more restrictions to it (e.g. "only survey pre-scouted systems" which would put the micro on the scouting part...) OR unless you just don't care.

Not caring might be a viable option for some players (obviously the more casual ones but there is nothing wrong with this). But it is (to my interpretation) not an option for the developers, as they want you to care for the leaders. As stated before, whether this goal is achieved or not is another question (even if you say "no, it isn't", abandoning a feature that supports this idea will not improve the situation).

So if you are in this situation that you potentially kill your scientist by enabling auto-survey, in each and every starting phase (which I claim is true); and killing him (or taking strongly increased risks) is not an acceptable option, then why introduce a feature to do just that?

But we know why they don't give auto explore in the start, it's exactly what romothecus said. "The problem is that if you didn't have to "micro" your science ships in early game, there would be a long stretch of time with little or nothing to do. Of course, that means there's a problem with the early game. There isn't enough to do"

It's simple a gimmick to keep the player busy with a clicking game to distract him that he don't have anything to do in the start of the game other than see his Minerals go Up to make the colony ship. But this is simple the newest game design the developers use: The psicological manipulation. The same with free to play games and his daily quests, gamble systems, etc... that now plagues AAA games.

I would say this is a viable interpretation. IF you just look at the game as it is and not at the external information available, which, I believe, support my point. Please have a look at the dev-diaries (the first one, especially!) and my idea on the how this vision/concept is linked to this very feature we are talking about. On an even wider scale, I would argue that PDS is not known for not caring about their games and I would the reject the idea they just include a game mechanic to eat up time. They might abstract things that we don't like ("defense in depth? we don't care" in HoI4 will be an everlasting shame imo), but for a reason.

This does make me sound biased; but just because I am. It is possible my interpretation is based on my wishes, but I still believe the points I make are valid.

In my latest game I had already fully scanned the tiny galaxy I was playing in by the time that tech became available.
Fat lot of good it did at that point...

So yes, it should at least be available earlier.

I feel that is rather an issue of scaling numbers (like research) to galaxy size. Because you might also experience that you have colonized all planets and then wait for the next colonization-tech to pop, which also is not fun. But that's not an issue (or maybe a side note) on the topic of auto-explore being a tech rather than a comfort option.

 

[Tim_Ward]

But it would make a big portion which is part of the "early game experience" obsolete.

If repeatedly pressing 'right click, survey' is a 'big portion of the early game experience' then maybe the early game experience isn't actually as good as they initially supposed?

Putting a quality of life feature behind a tech is absolutely insane. I cannot understand what they were thinking. What's next, unlocking a tech to be able to use waypoints?

I can say I almost never research that tech when it comes up. Like, what would I rather have: something that materially benefits my empire, like new reactors or weapons, or something that's going to save me from having to do a few more clicks on an activity that is fundamentally pointless by the time the tech even appears?

I cannot fathom this decision. They stuff they've done post release has almost universally been smart and good, but this particularly decision is just... baffling in it's wrongness.

 

[dskod1]

This thread was, thankfully, brought back on topic. As a reminder though, as I have just deleted 3 posts. Please stay on topic.

This is not an overall improvement discussion thread. This is a thread to discuss having auto-survey on day 1. If someone does post off topic then don't respond to them, if anything you should report them for off topic.

Thanks,
Dylan

 

[Scourgeclaw]

Speaking as someone who plays with auto-survey as an unlocked feature on game start (thank gods for mods): It does nothing to diminish the early-game. Really.

All of the notifications still pop up, I still have to tell the vessels to get back to work once they've fled a system after seeing 1/10th of a centimeter of a space-nasty's tendril somewhere on the opposite end of the system, I still get the all-important sense of exploring a vast and unmolested galactic playground, and I still have to manually tell science ships to explore specific systems because the pathfinding AI still needs tweaking

That isn't diminished by the lack of 200+ annoying clicks. It allows me to focus my time on other things, and takes away scores of tedium otherwise pumped into the experience by pointless unrewarding micromanagement. The choice to make it an unlockable tech most people don't even see until they can't explore anymore because they've been boxed in is frankly, bizarre.

If quality-of-life improvements are at all a priority on someone's to-do list, this should probably be somewhere near the top, because I cannot for the life of me see the logic in keeping it where it is.

 

[kalauer]

Speaking as someone who plays with auto-survey as an unlocked feature on game start (thank gods for mods): It does nothing to diminish the early-game. Really.

I think this is a valuable experience report in terms that it shows that for once one can already have what is proposed here at low cost. But also showing that my interpretation on how a concept is supported by this feature is certainly not universal. However ,what is your feeling on the general idea of the early game as stated in dev diary #1? Would you agree that in general, Automatisation is prone to contradict the vision? Or do you think those two can be combined?

If quality-of-life improvements are at all a priority on someone's to-do list, this should probably be somewhere near the top, because I cannot for the life of me see the logic in keeping it where it is.

Not even that when automated, you get more detached from the leaders?

 

[Zaltys]

It wouldn't be as bad if scanning systems (and construction) weren't so terribly awkward to use. Way too many clicks.
First you need to click on the ship, then click on the next unscanned system (which are tiny and require precision to hit), and then on the 'survey system' (which is also tiny). ...and then repeat that after thirty seconds for each science ship.

Here's how it should work. You get a popup saying 'scanning finished'. You click on 'go to ship' link, which autoselects the science ship. Then you click on any unexplored system, which defaults to 'scan it with this ship'.

 

[mindlace]

A compromise could be that from day 1 you can paint a "region of interest" for surveying, and the research ships would auto-survey those. Then, with later tech, you could pick larger areas for surveying, and some sort of ultimate tech (approx where autosurvey tech is now) that just goes to any unsurveyed system.

A non-painting variant would be to have the area of interest based on your own borders - priority 1 would be inside your borders, then priority 2 would be the area "around" your borders, and the size of the priority 2 area would be based either on other tech or existing border tech.

Then if you wanted to scout "far away" you'd have to do it manually - perhaps indicating more planning for the trip or something - while if you just wanted to see what is around you you could do it semi-automatedly.

 

[mindlace]

Though tbh the lack of auto-survey would be way less acute if the research ship could not totally forget the 80 systems you wanted it to survey the first time it retreated from an "enemy".

 

[Derp]

It wouldn't be as bad if scanning systems (and construction) weren't so terribly awkward to use. Way too many clicks.
First you need to click on the ship, then click on the next unscanned system (which are tiny and require precision to hit), and then on the 'survey system' (which is also tiny). ...and then repeat that after thirty seconds for each science ship.

Here's how it should work. You get a popup saying 'scanning finished'. You click on 'go to ship' link, which autoselects the science ship. Then you click on any unexplored system, which defaults to 'scan it with this ship'.

Also it's impossible to distinguish intel levels from the map alone. Which makes both scouting and surveying more obnoxious than it should be.

 

[Airowird]

Things I would need to 'settle' for an auto-explore feature:
* To have it come up earlier, possibly once some form of AI has been researched
* For Science ships to not stop exploring if they encounter 2 farts in a jar in some random system. The AI can path around systems with known threats, surely they could just skip one once they are the ones seeing the threat?
* Having some sort of directional control
* If none of the above, atleast make "Survey system X" a single order to do, whereby entiring said system simply frontloads all objects in said system to the start of the queue. That atleast will let me tell my ship what to do for the next 50 years and I'm not too fussed about having to babysit it.

 

[Everstill]

I do care. And maybe you misunderstood me: Whenever you enable auto-survey, your science ship is at risk to enter systems that have not been visited before and thus faces potential insta-death. This is NOT something you can control, unless you demand some more restrictions to it (e.g. "only survey pre-scouted systems" which would put the micro on the scouting part...) OR unless you just don't care.

Not caring might be a viable option for some players (obviously the more casual ones but there is nothing wrong with this). But it is (to my interpretation) not an option for the developers, as they want you to care for the leaders. As stated before, whether this goal is achieved or not is another question (even if you say "no, it isn't", abandoning a feature that supports this idea will not improve the situation).

So if you are in this situation that you potentially kill your scientist by enabling auto-survey, in each and every starting phase (which I claim is true); and killing him (or taking strongly increased risks) is not an acceptable option, then why introduce a feature to do just that?

That's the beauty of being a option, if you care about some behavior, you can manually control the Ship. But you know what for most people the Scientist Leader are on a Science Ship?? They are only two things:

- A bar that needs to fill up so you can Research some Anomalies.
- The Ship that have the Careful trait so this is the guy that will research the anomalies after the bar fill up.

The rest really don't matter. The leader in a Science ship is nothing more than a influence cost. That's why I don't know why you are giving so much weight to "Whenever you enable auto-survey, your science ship is at risk to enter systems that have not been visited before and thus faces potential insta-death". Who cares? I literally don't pay attention to my science ships after the star phase and simple Shift click in a lot of systems. The science ship dying is very rare, and would die anyway if I send manually or by auto survey. If I click the button i'm full aware that I will not be paying attention to where the ship is going. If it dies... well, 100 minerals and some influence and voala, a new one.

In the start of the game, of course there will be the basic scout and then your basic survey. You don't want to waste resources (that's what the leader is, just resources). After the cost turn to be neglegible, no one really cares if the Science ship die for a monster, you will have like 3 and you will build other anyway. That's why you press the button to auto survey.

I would say this is a viable interpretation. IF you just look at the game as it is and not at the external information available, which, I believe, support my point. Please have a look at the dev-diaries (the first one, especially!) and my idea on the how this vision/concept is linked to this very feature we are talking about. On an even wider scale, I would argue that PDS is not known for not caring about their games and I would the reject the idea they just include a game mechanic to eat up time. They might abstract things that we don't like ("defense in depth? we don't care" in HoI4 will be an everlasting shame imo), but for a reason.

This does make me sound biased; but just because I am. It is possible my interpretation is based on my wishes, but I still believe the points I make are valid.

I admittedly don't have too much personal experience with Paradox to say that 'they don't care about their games', but it's really not my intention to say this in any form. Including a game mechanic to eat up time is not just a simbol of 'don't care about the game', it could be a lot of things. The most reasonable for Paradox case, is that they needed to Rush the release of Stellaris and just put a barebones mechanic to fill the gap (like a lot of things, for example, planetary invasion). What is the best filler mechanics nowadays? Psicological tricks. Just like how AAA games add things like "collect the feathers", add tons of 'perks' to unlock, crafting for new equipment ("to increase your ammunition from 5 to 6, collect 7 tiger skin"), repeteable side quests just to increase the game time and add "things to do" in the easiest way possible and tons of archvements of course.

The quintessence of this is coockie clicker, a non-game that is just a psicological trick to make the player addicted (Just like Farmvile and etc) rewarding him for clicking stuff.

If they want that we care about the scientists in a ship, they must create mechanics that we fell they are important and unique, not a click reward based minigame.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Just because you don't want it doesn't mean others don't

Then mod it.

Making auto-survey a starting tech would be trivial.

Also agree that auto survey should not be a tech. You are a spacefaring race. How do you manage to not have already developed a computer algorithm to put into your ship's navigation computer to auto survey systems?

The gameplay answer is that the player would be bored not clicking things in the beginning.

 

[Adamsrealm]

The gameplay answer is that the player would be bored not clicking things in the beginning.

Then perhaps paradox should implement some more "interesting & functional" content that has an effect on the game in the long run, be it good or bad, instead of "right click to wave flashlight at system X"

 

[Zaltys]

Another problem with scanning is that in larger galaxies it gets difficult to spot systems that haven't been scanned yet.

I often end up in situations where my science ships are sitting idle, but I have to eye the map for minutes before I find anything to scan. Which is far from fun. There should definitely be a mapmode for that..

Oh, and then there's the lack of auto-pausing. Each time the manual scanning finishes, I scramble to pause the game so I can direct the ship to the next system. ...and often instead end up unpausing it when some event happens to pop up at the same time. Which is rather infuriating.

 

[Cagliostro]

Kalauer, your argument seems to depend on the idea that because some people may enjoy or find meaning in clicking on dozens of systems, the original decision - to allow automation, but not early - is sensible.

This is not a good argument. Period. If many people are not finding the meaning you describe, and the functionality to automate it is already there (which it is), there is no point in enforcing the idea on a large section of players that they *should* be enjoying it. There is absolutely zero change to your personal game if they allow automation from day one - you can still go on with your preferred gamestyle. You have not explained exactly how this change would influence the game negatively for you and other people who enjoy this sort of thing. And if later they *do* implement things that make micromanagement necessary and/or enjoyable in the early game, they can always re-enforce it. They could also easily offer it as a game start option.

Let me offer a counter-argument. Many people find absolutely zero meaning in the process, but just a lot of pointless clicking. Personally I was so happy the moment I found out there was a way to automate it in my first full game that i researched it immediately, even though mechanically other techs were more useful (and cheaper). One poster early on in this thread called it 'soul-crushing'. This is not a good feature in a game.

You seem to find refuge in the idea that this enforces some feeling of exploration in players. I have never gotten the slightest feeling of exploration by telling my scientist which system to explore. You also seem to have the idea that somehow forcing people to do repetitive stuff they do not enjoy is good game design. It is not.

There is no valid in-game reason why you cannot tell scientists to explore on their own. How is this a 'roleplaying' argument? Scientists on actual Earth do not wait for actual direct orders from the head of government for every exploratory action.

Also, as to the 'insta-death' argument, let me offer a counter-example from my most recent game. When I set a ship to auto-explore, it actually avoids threats. However, recently I set a ship, pre-tech, to survey the worlds in a system. I did not notice, because I was clicking on twenty frickin' systems, that there was a small pirate station there (strength 64). My science ship, because it was not automated, sailed cheerfully into the small pirate station and self-destructed.

At the very least if the goal is to make one do, say, a certain number of system surveys before unlocking auto-survey, one could easily make a quest to survey a dozen systems to unlock it. But to give meaning to these initial surveys one would have to go farther. Here are some suggestions off the top of my head:

a) make the player explore their own system first, and have at least one event trigger while investigating one of the planets in your home system. So you, like, care what's on Neptune.
b) disallow your other ships warping until your science ship has traveled to another system, to make sure it is 'safe'.
c) give the player a few starting quests, to survey particular systems, for particular reasons. Like 'we think that x planet circling y nearby star might support life - go have a look'.
d) finally, have a quest that unlocks automation when you have surveyed the worlds nearest your home, you have surveyed at least, i dunno, 10 systems (possibly change that based on galaxy size), and completed at least one or two optional quests from c above.

That kind of thing would *actually* make early life more meaningful, and wouldn't feel like punishment (which to me forced micromanagement does).

I tend to trust Paradox decisions also. They are a good company and have a lot of good ideas. This was not one of them.

 

[treb]

One of the main reasons I cant stomach playing the early game without mods is the tedium of manual exploration. Its not fun, It does not create a sense of exploration and it drags my attention away from more pressing things like acctually managing my empire. It only creates a needless, tedious time sink.

and why in the hell does an species far in advance of us not have even the most basic ability to code a computer to manage basic systems and feed that info to a pilot/overseer, or simply say "Just go and explore all you can, ok?".

 

[kalauer]

Who cares? I literally don't pay attention to my science ships after the star phase and simple Shift click in a lot of systems. .

And I guess this is the point we will not agree upon, with everything else just being the consequence: I want to care and I believe the game is designed that you ought to care. As I repeatedly stated, it does not do a good job to make you care. But this means, maybe in part as the posting I quoted below suggests, adding features to strengthen the idea, not remove them.

Kalauer, your argument seems to depend on the idea that because some people may enjoy or find meaning in clicking on dozens of systems, the original decision - to allow automation, but not early - is sensible.

It might seem that way to you, but it does not. I do not enjoy the extra clicks, in fact in other threads here, I argued strongly against unnecessary micromanagemant. Thus here I am not defending the feature (forced manual exploration in the beginning) but the concept (close relation to science ships). Most of the arguments I heard here are more geared towards making exploration (and possibly other stuff too) just one more background-mechanic. I can understand this when looking at the pure strategy-part of the game: you want added value for your empire, grow, expand, conquer etc. And you want it fast. But the early stages of Stellaris are designed to be different. On purpose, not by chance (if this statement is contested, please someone say so). In most of the argumentation here I see no respect to this (what I believe to be) fact.

Thus I would argue that anyone who dislikes this design decision has the (->) option to use the mods giving him what he wants.

If however, you support the general idea of a different (in respect to other 4X) early game, then I believe there are indeed better possibilities of creating a connection to the science ships than the manual exploration. But they must be included first. Your proposal of a quest line towards automated exploration does not sound bad to me, although it might still lead to a state where everyone just rushes through it. Maybe a new, more involving game mechanic is needed instead of "just" events that get old after three playthroughs anyway.