At the start of a game you receive a survey-vessel. With this USS Enterprise (or USS Hero, or TAS Explorer or whatever you call it) you can explore anomalies which usually give you somekind of bonus.
What happens in each game is a 'race' by each civilization to "raid" as many anomalies a.s.a.p., thus excluding other civs from this anomaly's bonus. Result is that after say 20 to 30 turns there are no anomalies left and your survey ship is done 'boldly going where no one has gone before...'. (After that I usually keep it as a "mini-AWACS", but its prime reason for usage is gone)
I would really like the 'exploration of the galaxy' to be continuous.
This can be done in several ways (or combinations of them) :
- by the popping up of resources throughout the game.
- by "hiding" anomalies on moons and "class 0 planets". Each planet/moon has to be surveyed (which can take x turns each time)
- by opening up certain anomalies only when better sensors are researched. for example: if you have sensors mk 1 you will not "see" an anomaly when your survey ship is in sensor range, but it will see it when you have sensors mk2 and so on. This way, it will pay off to research sensors and to build more survey ships.
Tell me what you all think!
