Exploration ships stop exploring, I think I know why.

[zebanovich]

I have 60 exploration ships, 27 of which are idle.

I did a bit of investigation to figure out why and they all have one common problem,
which is that none of them is able to refuel by using the "refuel" button.

However all of them are within refuel range and none is out of fuel completely,
I can manually order idle exploration ships to refuel at closest planet with no problem,
however they don't do this on their own.

I went on and figured out that planets within their range don't have caslon over storage limit,
ie. if planet is set to store 13K caslon but has only 10K then exploration ship won't consider it as refueling station,
and as a consequnce the exploration ship will enter idle state and won't explore.

I suppose this is so that automated ships don't drain caslon out of a planet?
Can anyoneone confirm or know if this is the case?

Btw. I think this is broken, I want my exploration ships to explore regadless of fuel stored at palents.

[Nightskies]

I think that is a bug. I've seen ships, under automation, take the fuel from a station when it is under stock targets- but I observed it at mining stations. Perhaps colonies function differently. I don't have idle explorers until everything within their designed range is explored.

[zebanovich]

Thank you, therefore it's not stock levels but likely bug or something else.

I see occasionally my exploration ships start exploring after being idle for few months or years,
I guess there is some other factor that wakes them up.

[Lunalis]

i noticed something else "weird" with my exploration ships in my last game in the early game.
i think after a retrofit (?) a lot of them conga lined to the same asteroid belts... as if they dont mark the location they go to -"hey i scan this place you go elsewhere" ... and all 15 or so out of 30 in total, all had the same asteroid as target then.



and once they were done with that asteroid belt they all went to a different asteroid in a belt in a belt in the right kixoses system. not like 2-3 of them could have scanned the first asteroid belt and then 2-3 head to the other belt... nope somehow they all had to do the same one and then all head to the next belt



even new reftitted ones coming from my capital were heading down there to the same asteroid as all the others.



and here they all arrived and did a "gold rush" to be th efirst to scan that one asteroid they were all after.