i find this tech INCREDIBLY! useful on the gigantic map(only one i play). it will show ya where all the corner planets are that you might not even think about exploring.plus it saves a heck of alot of explore time going over the starless or uncolonizable sectors. i wouldent mind a tech that showed the purple planets on minimap too.perhaps it should be a pre-req. for sensors?

To elaborate on what Jaime Wolf said at #2: It's a cheap tech to research. If you sell it for 50 credits to all 5 major civilizations you will make $250. I haven't tried selling it to the minors yet, but if they will bite, you could make even more. I know that 250 isn't THAT much money but could be a godsend in some situations, especially the beginning game when money is scarce.

~SDC~

I thought Majors start off with Stellar Cartography or equivalent powers? So why would they want to buy it?

The question is whether you would want to spend valuable research points going up that route at the start of the game when there are loads of other cheap and very useful techs around. By the time we get some spare research, it is often no longer useful.

RayChua, the Majors do start with equivalent powers. They will also buy Stellar Cartography tech. Try it.

Wasn't the question about whether Stellar Cartography was useless? If so, it's not completely useless if you can get back some $ now, is it?

I'm not advocating this as a strategy since IMO it borders being a cheese tactic, since you're selling useless tech to the AI. I'm just making the point that you can get some additional use out of Stellar Cartography other than the ability to see which stars are yellow.

~SDC~

Maybe if Stellar Cartography gave some bonus (+1 sensor of something) it might be more useful.

I've researched it once, but only because I was, for some reason, trying to research *every* tech... can't remember why, though.


~SDC~

AIs don't like to buy any techs now, at least on higher difficulty levels. You'll be lucky to get 5 BC out of a minor race for Stellar Cartography, or any early tech for that matter :notsure:

I just a played a quick tiny game on Genius, and I still found selling tech to the AIs useful. Of course, I had about +120 to Diplo from various bonuses...so I can't really comment on how stingy they are if your Diplo skill is weak. They most definitely ARE more stingy then before if they are low on cash themselves. They won't pay what they can't really afford anymore, and that's a good thing.

I use it to ID minor civs. I look at the map, look for white stars that don't have a production overlay, and send my scouts or sensor drone fortune over to take a look. Sometimes I find unclaimes yellow stars, other times minor civs, other times major civ's I haven't met yet. But I do play Huge galaxies. It's never been much use in Large galaxies.

i definately think it shouldcome earlier in the tech tree. i have used it on some of the larger maps to point me towards the good stars, but it requies sever prerequisites. I think it should be a first or second level tech.

I tested it earlier on the tech tree last night, and found that it did not change my strategy one bit. Like I said, maybe I need to get on the clue bus, but on every size map I used it on, the information it gave me was irrelevant to a couple of my basic playstyles. Either the information was echoed and amplified by having scouts and sensor drones all over the map anyway (IMHO, modders should FLOOD the library with anomaly mods so the distribution gets spread out more -- one game I had like 12 free ships) OR when I tried a couple tactics shown above the information was of no use to me. I didn't care where the Minors were because Trade was a long way away, and I didn't care period about the opposite corners of the map because I wouldn't be able to get a colony ship out there in a reasonable number of turns to make my efforts to get Stellar Cartography earlier worthwhile.

My analysis: The tech Stellar Cartography is of use ONLY in a gigantic galaxy with very rare habitable planets such that the information of SPECIFIC locations of these planets is of critical concern because I might lose a planet and thus the game. Otherwise, I can be sure that each cluster has a yellow star, and send my herd of colony ships out accordingly.

M

Just had an idea... why not let Stellar Cartography also show you the location of all anomalies on the map, perhaps even identifying the type of anomaly too? This would make it a valuable tech for those trying to beef up their survey ships or pickup free ships from asteroids. It would even be useful for the AI since they just put their survey ships on auto-survey but don't actively scout around to reveal the location of anomalies, which often resulting in their survey ship just sitting in space doing nothing.

I think if the tech is Stellar Cartography and not Yellow-Star Cartography it should do a little more than it does now. Wouldn't it be cool if the dots on your mini map would change color to the color of the actual star it represents? White Dots, Yellow Dots, Purple Dots, etc. That would make it a little more useful, and if not it would at least be cooler to have. But as it stands now, no AIs research it, so it makes good trade fodder, which is why I always research it anyway. I've never found it useful for anything else, but it's come in somewhat handy to grease the trade wheels very often.