Exploration ships stop exploring

[franky12321]

Is there a way to automate exploration ships once I already explored the whole map? For some reason, my exploration ships all seem to stop doing anything once i know the entire map, which makes it hard to find the pirate bases in the later game.

Thanks

[joeyeti]

Could you not order them to patrol a sector/system for instance? I am shooting from my hip here...

[Nedrear]

If they are automated they will spy on the enemy at war. Apart from that you could really send them to spy on enemy nations manually. Just stay out of sight or you get diplomatic frictions.

[franky12321]

In my present game, i have never noticed this happening. Even when in times of war, they all stay idle at the same location (even though theyre supposed to be automated).

[Bingeling]

Probably not in legends (I have not played that so much), but I have seen all explorers parked in one general corner of the galaxy where the last explored system were. At the same time I can visit a random, somewhat distant system, click on a planet, check the ruin and get "unexplored". Which is a bit annoying.

I don't think traveling explorers annoy anyone not at war with you, and I believe they can even refuel anywhere. They are not military ships.

Once tech is no longer basic, I love monitoring stations. I make sure at least enough space ports have long range scanners to cover the close area, and I want a station at "entries" towards clouds and nasty places where pirates appear. Even better is the scanning explorer, that both can work as a monitoring station, and shift its position if needed. They can also run away if attacked...

Information is king.

[twinkypillow]

Aren't people playing Legends more than the other previous games?? I have all 3 but all I every played from the start was Legends.. Is there something in the return shakur? and Vanilla orignal game that I need to play them for if they are both in Legends???

[Bingeling]

You only need to play the oldies if you want to see how the game was. The stories are available, and Legends improve of the others.

The reason I mention it was in rots, is that the AI is updated in patches, and what was behavior then is not necessarily true anymore.

If you read old AARs you will see issues that are no longer issues. For instance the AI used to never build anything if cashflow was negative, no mater how much money was on hand. Now there are regular (yearly?) checks where the AI builds for a fraction of the cash on hand. If you have suggestion on new ships on, you can see these if you run a bit negative cashflow, but earn money by bonus income and get steadily richer. Once in a while the AI suggests to build ships, but if you wait a bit and click the offer, it is all 0s. This is because the offer was from special rules, and has "expired" (pressing the ship build tool always recalculate the suggestion, but the special offers do of course stand for a little while).

In the game I have abused by fast forwarding now, I sat at 4 million on hand, and saw regular ideas with "build ships for 2.3 million". By the time I noticed them (I was not paying much attention after all), the suggestion was always 0, though.

[franky12321]

Does anyone know of a fix for my problem?

AFAIK I explored every system, and now my exploration ships just stay parked in a corner of the galaxy. I would like for them to keep exploring in order to find newer pirate bases, etc.

[Bingeling]

As far as I know they won't do anything useful if automated. You can try tell them "explore sector", but I figure they will just think they are done and do nothing.

If it is pirates far away, let them kill AI belongings. If they are near you, build a long ranger cover across their area, and they are quite easy to spot as they appear on the map. Not the least because there are limited areas for them to appear in once the galaxy is well settled.