As the anomalies are different and as some of them may be important for quests (like the discovery of the academy), I wouldn't really like to have it automated.

I have to disagree. This mechanic is as straightforward as any in this series, I think it's easy to use and makes it fun going from system to system. With Sophons, I upgrade my first tier ship with increased 'probe' module. I pop 4 of them out and create two fleets with 4 probes each. From that point I get so much loot just from exploring.

I don't know, I kinda like the current system. It gives scouts their place within fleets, whereas in the previous Endless Space, mixing them in to a fleet of anything other than scouts was a waste of potential. But making adjustments still sounds fine, so long as their purpose isn't undone.

Again, this is one of those situations where Stellaris got it right. Automate the humdrum stuff. Pinging anomalies which don't yield anything except bare resources? That should be automated.

If it returns something of importance such as the start of a quest chain or a decision that needs human interaction? That's the point where the automation should stop and the game should ask the player what they wish to do.

This is about sifting out the stuff that will get repetitive over time and "not fun" and keeping the focus on the things that matter, that are important and are going to impact the player experience. Automate stuff which isn't important, but retain control over the stuff that -is-.

I'm using one ship to explore the galaxy, using probes only when they are ready and just pushing forward. Then I have Seeker class hero with few more exploration ships (14 probes per fleet are plenty, double the movement points) to sweep curiosities behind my first ship.

And I find this process entertaining, and I don't want to be automated. I choose where to fly, and what curiosities to discover first. The rest are a job for Seeker.

I'd at least like an option for anomalies to be automated. 

When you've explored as far as you feasibly can (for example, you're cut off by an enemy empire destroying your scouts and you've explored all available star lanes), I should be able to automate my scouts to 'sweep' back through my territories picking up anomalies. As it is, I have to manually move them around to hoover up the anomalies I didn't consider crucial the first time around.

It sounds picky, but I love that I have to make the choice of whether to move on or stop and explore, but when I've explored most of the galaxy and picked up my first-choice anomalies, going around to hoover up the second-choice ones can be a bit of a bore.

Stellaris exploration(surveying) is my favorite at the moment.

Void2258 wrote:

The idea of anomalies is fine, but the current execution is not. Effort put into strategy, planning, and tactics should be encouraged. Effort created by making a system unnecesarily manual-control intensive when it's just busy work should not. The probde system is just busy work; there is no practical benefit to manually controlling it except where you have missions that invovles doing particular anomaly types, and a prioritization interface to the automation takes care of that. If there were something more to it, like having to balance a chance of failure or negative outcome, then it would be fine (although the interface still needs work), but as it stands there is no reason for it to be manual. All it does is slow turns down to no particular benefit.

There are a lot of benefits to keeping it manual. The most key mentioned above was the choice between exploring more/developing more/probing more, but in particular I'd like to point out that since probes regenerate at a rate, and are limited, what I normally do is move to a system, probe it to the max (which sometimes includes sending them out in a direction), then go to a new system, by which time some probes will regenerate. As has been said, there's no need to probe every single anomaly, and if exploration is the goal it can be a downside. 

Keeping that in mind, I can see how automation would potentially be attractive to people who literally want to completely scan a system before moving on, or who don't care which anomalies (with which %chance of results) they check could want automation. In that case there should just be a single system button that automatically uses all your probes, keeping a manual input so you have to make the decision, but speeding it up so you don't have to click individually a bunch of times.

The idea of anomalies is fine, but the current execution is not. Effort put into strategy, planning, and tactics should be encouraged. Effort created by making a system unnecesarily manual-control intensive when it's just busy work should not. The probde system is just busy work; there is no practical benefit to manually controlling it except where you have missions that invovles doing particular anomaly types, and a prioritization interface to the automation takes care of that. If there were something more to it, like having to balance a chance of failure or negative outcome, then it would be fine (although the interface still needs work), but as it stands there is no reason for it to be manual. All it does is slow turns down to no particular benefit.

Koranis wrote:

Some call it "busywork", I call it "exploration". The excitement of finally having a probe ready for launch to discover that "signal" of unknown orign beats sending my fleet on auto-explore like in previous game. The probe system is one of the best features of ES2 in my opinion.

I'm totally agreed with this. Explorations are made good enough for game's level and genre.

And not necessary to automatize all things in the game.

Some call it "busywork", I call it "exploration". The excitement of finally having a probe ready for launch to discover that "signal" of unknown orign beats sending my fleet on auto-explore like in previous game. The probe system is one of the best features of ES2 in my opinion.

Meedoc wrote:

Hello,

Right now you have to choose in a big way between either exploring the galaxy or finding anomalies or developing your systems and finding anomalies.

That's exactly the kind of choices we want to create. We'll improve the payoff thanks to your feedback and iterations :)

^This. Complexity is good and players should have to make decisions based on what they believe is the best way to grow their empire.

Hello,

Right now you have to choose in a big way between either exploring the galaxy or finding anomalies or developing your systems and finding anomalies.

That's exactly the kind of choices we want to create. We'll improve the payoff thanks to your feedback and iterations :)

Besides, to explore curiosities, you're not forced to select a specific fleet: by zooming on the system the action will be available as long as at least one ship still has probes.

In addition, you can increase both the maximum stock and the recovery rate of probes on the exploration ship thanks to module.

Still we're wondering if auto explore should explore curiosity but it might easily feel unsatisfying.

Cheers,

I think it would be fine if either

a- Probes recovered more quickly on scouts (could be a specialised module to increase recovery rate) OR

b- Expeditions on colonies were a bit cheaper, OR

c- anomalies had slightly higher rewards

Right now you have to choose in a big way between either exploring the galaxy or finding anomalies or developing your systems and finding anomalies. The payoff doesn't really feel worth it considering that events and event rewards are semi-random.

Don't waste all your probes on every single curiosity you find. Just probe the ones you think you'll need and move on, you can inspect them later when/if you've colonized the system.

The probe system is unintuitive and awkward. You end up with ships sitting in systems waiting for probes to regen for turn after turn, due to the high number of anomalies to investigate. There is no good way to automate this, and the interface is opaque as to the considerations behind regenning. The whole thing feels like busy work, especially since other aspects of exploring can be automated and are relatively fast (you can have a significant fraction of a medium galaxy explored by turn 20, but have hundreds of anomolaies that now need to be manually addressed). Also, you have to select the fleet and use the probe button, even though you can see the icons for the anomalies but not interact with them in several different view modes.

New player and I like the probe functionality. But one thing I haven't seen in any docs is... If I explore a curiosity on a system owned by an opponent, do they see the results of my exploration e.g. if I find titanium, can they mine it immediately?

SergeantSchultz wrote:

New player and I like the probe functionality. But one thing I haven't seen in any docs is... If I explore a curiosity on a system owned by an opponent, do they see the results of my exploration e.g. if I find titanium, can they mine it immediately?

Yes.