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[Shooer]

My geo survey ships usually have one civ engine.  More than enough to push 4+ years of fuel and a geo sensor or 3 around under 6k tons, which is the size of my grav survey ships.

[Duuvian]

My geosurvey ships at the start are size 50, 50% efficiency set to survey next 5 bodies and to refuel at 50% fuel.

For surveying other systems though, you might want to consider combining grav and geo survey ships into one. This is because you are much more likely to run into enemy ships and while the minor defenses you would put onto such a ship would only prolong it's death shortly, it might be enough to gather more thermal, em or active sensor data or get closer to the jump point home for an easier crew lifepod rescue.

[Bouchart]

Early on I'll build a ship with one cargo bay, cryogenic module, and a geological sensor.  That handles the inner planets nicely.  Eventually I'll build dedicated survey ships that have both gravitational and geological sensors.  Typically they'll survey gravitational points first and then go on to survey planets and moons and the like while the jump builder does its work at the jump points.

Don't neglect getting phased geological and gravitational survey sensors.  It's not a big priority, but they both work five times more quickly than the standard versions.  Each only costs about 100,000 research points so it isn't a huge investment either.

[Acperience]

Does intended deployment time apply to PDCs?

[Duuvian]

Not unless they are deployed on really small colonies. In other words not really.

[Acperience]

Currently stuck in a catch 22 situation where I want to terraform a planet, but the current population won't work in the terraforming installations because the planet isn't terraformed enough, so they're all working in agriculture rather than manufacturing.

[tryrar]

Currently stuck in a catch 22 situation where I want to terraform a planet, but the current population won't work in the terraforming installations because the planet isn't terraformed enough, so they're all working in agriculture rather than manufacturing.

Easily fixed, just send terraforming ships

[iceball3]

My geosurvey ships at the start are size 50, 50% efficiency set to survey next 5 bodies and to refuel at 50% fuel.

For surveying other systems though, you might want to consider combining grav and geo survey ships into one. This is because you are much more likely to run into enemy ships and while the minor defenses you would put onto such a ship would only prolong it's death shortly, it might be enough to gather more thermal, em or active sensor data or get closer to the jump point home for an easier crew lifepod rescue.

Wouldn't the ship have a bit of an issue, whether with fuel efficiency or being unable to haul itself fast enough to make a difference? Perhaps sticking a boat bay on it with a rather fast fighter oriented around area defense would be a good idea at giving some extra time, yeah. Perhaps two fighters, one that acts as a decoy and another which is consigned to rescuing those pesky pods?
I've personally noticed a good indicator of hostile civilizations tends to be piles of unknown class wrecks on specific planets.
As an offhand question, does anyone know if PDC colliers operate like normal colliers?

Currently stuck in a catch 22 situation where I want to terraform a planet, but the current population won't work in the terraforming installations because the planet isn't terraformed enough, so they're all working in agriculture rather than manufacturing.

Either increase the infrastructure or research Terraforming Module. Percent population dedicated to agriculture decreases as you get bigger populations, so infrastructure should cut it if you don't want to have those terraforming installations be wasted effort.

[Duuvian]

You can also use terraformer ships. That's what I'd do.

That's a good idea about the boat bay. Maybe you could use a geosurvey fighter so your gravsurvey ship doesn't have to go near planets.

[Girlinhat]

As an offhand question, does anyone know if PDC colliers operate like normal colliers?

As far as I'm aware, PDCs count as ships for all intents except they don't cost upkeep, they are stationary, and they get 10 free armor.  A PDC as a collier or tanker should function identically to a ship, because in practical terms of fleet operations, they're treated as ships that are on a planet.

[Mini]

As far as I'm aware, PDCs ... get 10 free armor.

It's 5.

[Flying Dice]

That's a good idea about the boat bay. Maybe you could use a geosurvey fighter so your gravsurvey ship doesn't have to go near planets.

TBH this sounds remarkably inefficient, even at higher TLs. It's already difficult to fit everything a survey ship needs into a 1,000t package, never mind trying to get it within the restrictions on fighter tonnage.

[Culise]

Really?  The ships are a bit slow, but you can manage to cram it into 500t.  I think I fit on one geosensor, a cheap fighter engine, a tiny or small engineering section, and basically not much else.  Assign two light craft per grav-scout, and let them putter around with tiny NPRs (or if I'm feeling really advanced, Ion drives) at around 500km/s while you also survey the system for jump points.  Nine times out of ten, they tend to attract hostile attention first - it's a lot cheaper to replace a tiny clipper and a dozen or so crew than it is to replace a 6k-7kton ship crewed by over a hundred.  I'm actually going with a more conventional design right now since they needed a bit of micromanagement, but my last couple games used them to fairly decent effect.  Early on, I can also use the base design, churned out of 25 or 50 fighter factories, to explore Sol on a conventional start while I'm still ramping up my technology and shippyards, then use them as shuttles afterwards (I try to avoid the teleporting teams behaviour, since it feels like a bit of an exploit). 

[iceball3]

Really?  The ships are a bit slow, but you can manage to cram it into 500t.  I think I fit on one geosensor, a cheap fighter engine, a tiny or small engineering section, and basically not much else.  Assign two light craft per grav-scout, and let them putter around with tiny NPRs (or if I'm feeling really advanced, Ion drives) at around 500km/s while you also survey the system for jump points.  Nine times out of ten, they tend to attract hostile attention first - it's a lot cheaper to replace a tiny clipper and a dozen or so crew than it is to replace a 6k-7kton ship crewed by over a hundred.  I'm actually going with a more conventional design right now since they needed a bit of micromanagement, but my last couple games used them to fairly decent effect.  Early on, I can also use the base design, churned out of 25 or 50 fighter factories, to explore Sol on a conventional start while I'm still ramping up my technology and shippyards, then use them as shuttles afterwards (I try to avoid the teleporting teams behaviour, since it feels like a bit of an exploit). 

Why not a slow, no payload sensor rigged missile? I can imagine you can get a much better look at things especially if you use active sensors.

[Girlinhat]

If your goal is to explore as much of a system as quickly as you possibly can, then a salvo of recon missiles is definitely the way.  A medium sized ship with a number of .25x size launchers and a sizable hold of geo and grav sensor missiles, can essentially explore as many missiles as you brought magazine size.  They can also do this very quickly, mostly by flying very close to the sun so that everything is at a sane distance from the ship, fire missiles away to do surveys, and then go through any available warp point before the missiles finish scanning.

On the plus side, missiles can have infinite duration sensor time now, so you can totally add a few points of Thermal or EM sensors onto the missiles, and have very decent coverage of the system that'll alert you pretty quickly if anything arrives.  If you build the very smallest thermal sensor missile you can, they're virtually invisible to all detected, but can still detect if a ship moves nearby or a planet gets a population.  Setting one on every jump survey point gives you pretty versatile coverage.