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In my current game I encountered a strange issue with Exploration ships. I had been a bit bothered with the stream of colonizable planets of continental type having died down for a while in my recent game. I didn't inspect my explorers for a while because I was occupied with some war and my progress in the game had slowed because of that and my empire expanding.

When I finally looked, almost all of my active explorers where on the move to one location, a moon in a remote system, lower right of the map, that belonged to an empire I was at the time at war with. Most of these explorers had an order of "wait at moon C606", approximately, a lower number of them "wait at moon?/cloud? Fsomething".

There was still plenty of the galaxy left to explore, not even another empire in sight in some directions (I am located pretty centrally).

About how I am handling the explorers: because the 'explore system X' command didn't work, I typically send my explorers off to a particular system or sector and then either give the command "explore sector Y" or set them on auto. I want to make sure my explorers don't all go off in the same general direction (which I had observed early in my first game).

I had run into a war on two fronts where one was quite hot, with a lot of my explorers running into patrols of the enemy and being chased away (or just a few explorers having run-ins with the enemy several times?). I left these fleeing explorers alone most of the time. In some cases I tried to send them further in the direction where I hoped to find colonies of the enemy. I hadn't managed to steal a map from them yet.

The direction this treck of explorers was finally heading was to the other enemy who wasn't so ill-disposed to me. (He had been paid to attack me and we had made peace intermittently, but right now, on his second attack I want to take a couple of his colonies as punishment).

I might still have a save file with all these explorers acting strange.

Edit: Savegame uploaded to the FTP server:

ExplorersActingStrange.zip

The behavior of the explorers is explained, if not why they are ganging up on a few targets like they show in this instance. See the discussion below.

If you have a save that shows them doing that, it would be most helpful. Please upload it if you do.

i think the explorers which are waiting at some outer planet in an enemys system is a feature. It ensures that you get visual access to their systems and so can see their moves. The AI does this also.

What's definetly is a bug: Multiple exoploration ships waiting in the same system.

ORIGINAL: Cheet4h

i think the explorers which are waiting at some outer planet in an enemys system is a feature. It ensures that you get visual access to their systems and so can see their moves. The AI does this also.

What's definetly is a bug: Multiple exoploration ships waiting in the same system.

This must be it. Actually none of those streaming to moon CC606 had already arrived. I remember one incident where one of my explorers was chased away from, maybe, one of the systems in question.

I think the AI should still try to be more economic about it. Ten or so explorers to one system and four more to another looks like overkill. It causes me to fight this AI in order to get my exploration going again. Currently I don't have a single Explorer on automation any more, because these invariably are sent to systems I know enough about.

My enemies were probably doing the same with me.

I can still look through my save games (will take till next week, though).

Was this with 1.0.3 or 1.0.2? We fixed one issue with explorers getting stuck in 1.0.3, but it was still around in 1.0.2. In general, seeing them heading to the same system is not a problem, unless you see multiple explorers actually sitting there and not moving on. They will often start by exploring a single system with multiple explorers (makes exploration faster) before branching out.

It probably started in 1.0.2, but I finally noticed it directly after my upgrade to 1.0.3. At least, this is what I think.

It still happens with explorers I leave on automated. Like Cheet4h mentioned, it is probably standard wartime behavior for them.

There weren't many targets to spy on for them, I think. For a long time I knew of only one system belonging to my main enemy, as my spies took their time stealing the map. The other, smaller enemy had only few systems, and the one where most explorers were headed contained their capital planet.

I got something similar to add to this

I still run 1.02

My exploration ships will end up sitting right on a main star in a system and when i click them to automate or explore closet unknown system they wont do anything.

i have to physically find another system to send them to and the process genrally repeats itself with me having to do this with all my exporation ships.

I have uploaded a savegame illustrating the problem to the FTP server. The name of the file is

ExplorersActingStrange.zip

ORIGINAL: D.W.O.H

I got something similar to add to this

I still run 1.02

My exploration ships will end up sitting right on a main star in a system and when i click them to automate or explore closet unknown system they wont do anything.

i have to physically find another system to send them to and the process genrally repeats itself with me having to do this with all my exporation ships.

This is one of the bugs fixed in 1.0.3. Now, if you tell an explorer to explore a system, it only goes idle after having finished that system (or being disrupted by a threat and having fled?).

When an explorer sat on a star the way you are describing in 1.0.2, it was still possible to get it out of idling. The most straight-forward way was to send it exploring an entire sector. But something like sending it to an asteroid or the like and switching it to automated should also work.

I think getting an explorer to automated in 1.0.3 is less fiddly than it used to be. But right now, because of the problem described above (arguably it isn't a problem, as the AI for explorers trys to assign them to something useful in wartime), I do not have many explorers on automated. FWIW, I recently found an automated exploration ship that actually did some exploring instead of being on the move to spy on an enemy.