And the best early game investments are ...... <drumroll> survey ships.

Does auto survey have them cross sector boundries? I never used this .

Auto-survey sends your survey ship towards the closest visible anomaly on the map, even if it's in the fog of war. It's not as useful early on as it is later when you've explored the map thoroughly however.

I kinda like just having 1 survey ship that ends up being a 25/41 with 200 HPs by the end-game.

The first twenty or so turns you move your first survey ship manualy to find habitabal planets etc. but soon you'll find a free scout or sensor drone which you send out to explore the map and you can put your survey ship on auto.
Also I found that the auto setting is more productive than doing it myself, especialy once you have more things on your mind, and in average with two or three of them minding their own business I get about six or seven explored anomalies per turn.

Za01phod
- I rather create a scoot on Turn 1: It is faster than a Survey ship. IMHO you should not rely on survey ship for early exploration (except turn 1 and 2)
- Playing on Huge/Gigantic galaxies, there are plenty of anmalies which can end up in providing a ton of bonuses. Kind of unbalancing IMHO especially because the AIs often lose/trade their initial survey ship and never bother to build a new one. I've just finished a game on Gigantic/Crippling and reached Beyond Human before I could collect all anomalies.


~SDC~

Viandox: That is yet another reason why I generally play Normal or smaller. IMO, there aren't enough enemy civilizations to fill up the biggest maps. Sure, the indies help a little, but it is unbalanced. I like my games to be short and difficult .

I also build a scout on turn one. It just makes sense. It's 50% faster, which means a lot in the early going. But the survey ship is important in the early game due to its extended range, on the larger maps at least.

"But the survey ship is important in the early game due to its extended range, on the larger maps at least. "

Granted

~SDC~

I have Earth pumping out colony ships from turn one - every turn counts in the expansion phase IME; Several times I've colonised a choice planet just one turn before another race managed to get there!
The colony ship you start with only has 100M people on it, so isn't as useful for building colony ships, so I use this' colony for building my scouts.

I actually build a bunch of them around the middle of the game, when I'm fairly sure the lack of some more clearly military ships won't hurt me. Get around 10 of them, all set to auto-survey, and you start bringing in the bonuses very rapidly. Can be handy in extending a lead, as well as just overall improvement of your civ.

~SDC~

Viandox I only use the survey ship for scouting (picking up goodies along the way) until I have a scout our sensor drone after that no more. In the beginning I have my first planet produce colony ships but after population has dropped too much a survey ship is a real good investment. And yes I don't forget constructors.

OK, I'll ask the silly question: how do you put the ship on auto-survey? I don't remember ever seeing that key or option. (I wish I'd heard about this sooner!)

hit the info button (the round button with the i in the middle)


~SDC~

Or double left click on your ship.

Auto survey, well bugger me. Another great undocumented feature. Will some one please update their copy of the manual and post it back to the website. I would love to do it myself but I obviously haven't dicovered all these amazing features yet.

I find it useful to get two survey ships on a larger map, yes. Just make sure that they auto-survey in different directions so they don't chase after the same resources. Because they are likely to be mad defenders with high hit points, I like to use one of the ships to run diversions and scout missions during war time. It also has some use in defending stacks of reinforcement transports running up the battle line. It seems like I never have enough loaded transports when a war is on, so I always have some being thrown together and shipped to the next invasion spot.