My OCD level of completionist thanks you for not making me survey every plant that I own every time I get a new level in the survey skill.
If systems will be at least partially random, will the hyperspace of these systems also be randomly generated?
Yep. Actually thinking of moving to an entirely randomly generated (and possibly dynamic) hyperspace, but we'll see.
If the hyperspace locations of some systems are randomly generated, will these locations be hidden on the hyperspace map?
Maybe some sort of one-off thing? In general, I don't really see stars being hidden.
I was more thinking along the line of the example just after but the initial idea was about a way to trade time for skills: if you didn't invest any point in survey skills, you could establish a "survey outpost" that would consume more resources to setup (although less than a full Outpost) and each week/month produce a survey report automatically. And you wouldn't have to really check on them since their findings would appear on the planets screen.
In a way, it could be as efficient as skills once you established several of them, but much more expensive, and probably time limited (or you could remove them to get back your crew and some of the resources invested)
Right, that makes sense. ... you know, I think that's why I was thinking about this myself at one point - if survey skill can't affect effectiveness, perhaps it can affect speed, but don't want to make the player wait with a progress bar, so maybe they just get something started and leave, and then you just kind of naturally end up with "survey posts" etc. Ultimately just felt like it was too involved for something that happens often, but I think I totally see where you're going with this and why.
Though perhaps it'd work if it was something like "deploy some probes in orbit and never come back" - wouldn't be bad in terms of "extra bother level". I still don't like disconnecting action from result unless it's really necessary though.
Well, if it is negative permanent conditions not discovered with the initial survey, you could always have ways to mitigate them. You missed "Frequent seismic activity" before establishing the outpost? Not a trouble if you build the "Dampened foundations" upgrade to the colony. But I can definitively see temporary ones too, "Millennial dust storm" could lower your industry output and kill the food production for a year, but "Sand screens" could mitigate that, and "Underground colony" completely negate it. That kind of things.
It might be a little more interesting for the player if (as mentioned above) some 'things' could pop up later after the outpost/whatever has been in place for a while, like "Oh, hey! Look at this seam of rare earths next to this fault. No wonder we missed that on the flyby" kind of thing.
So additional resources, or quantities thereof. Weird weather/tectonics etc. that effect the way things work.
On the flipside, it could also degrade stuff you've already found.
Not removing a resource entirely - that would be pretty irritating/harsh. But maybe degrading the quality/quantity of a resource in a "We mined all this stuff, and now the rest is super hard to get to." sort of thing.
Neither of these would be particularly common events, but just something to remove the absolute certainty of having a planet be 'worth' x, y or z.
Definitely interested in this though.
Getting a very Starflight vibe from it, and nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Yep! Not part of the core "surveying" mechanic in my mind, though, more outpost-related.
Also on the surveying skills topic. Would it not be better it have an officer that does the survey for you? It would totally make sense too, one man does not manage everything. Have you considered adding a "special" officer type. Ones that could participate in combat, with certain perks, but gets no exp from it. But they could do stuff like comm(intel) management, outpost management, and survey management. The guys wear scientist or settler outfits etcetc...
As far as outposts, been thinking about that, yes, but on general principles
As far as surveying specifically, the thing to watch out for here is if you can hire someone to do it, it can easily render "getting the skill yourself" useless. I have thought about "staff" officers at various points, though. Mainly it feels like very much an "extra" rather than anything core, so there's not much justification to complicate things tremendously (which it seems like it would, or at least might) on that account.
Well, it will be nice if the survey game is like minesweeper. 
;-\
Stellaris style thematic exploration element.
Could you elaborate on that?
I keep meaning to play Stellaris, but 1) time issues and 2) I'm on the fence about whether I want to see it and be influenced by it.
Okay, the usual questions:
And mostly the usual answers
1) Will buying survey data or commissioning a separate survey fleet be a thing? (It's the sort of thing you'd expect to exist, but it might also render the skill pointless.)
Maybe - as you say, don't want it to be pointless. But I could see, say, survey data for one specific system being available for sale somewhere. Depends on whether there's a point to doing this, or if that's just a random unconnected
thing.
2) *looks at all the GreekLetter RandomWord star names* We'll be able to rename planets after settling an outpost on them, right?
... probably. Most likely, even. Possibly only if it doesn't already have a special name, but maybe it'll just always be editable.
3) Do the lines in the last screenshot have any particular significance beyond signalling that the stars are connected in a constellation? Does grouping stars together in a constellation have any (other) effects?
At the moment, no. In the future, perhaps yes. I could for example see faction AI, pirates, etc take star groups into account, and using constellations as a shorthand for that. Or bounties. So for right now, it's just a new thing that has some cool factor, but it may end up being used more extensively.
