[ Colonization ]

The galaxy is really big. Each sector is roughly four billion cubic light-years in size, featuring more than a hundred-thousand star systems, with countless rogue objects flying about. Even with the most advanced surveying technology, it is not economical to fully map a sector.

Instead, you can send out Survey Fleets to explore a particular sector and find the site type you are looking for. There are several types of sites to survey for: Space Habitat sites, Outpost sites and Settlement sites. In all cases, you choose which sector to survey and what type of site to search for. You may not survey in a sector where another player has their home system without their permission.

Surveying is always done with a purpose:

• When you survey for a Space Habitat site, you must choose a raw material to indicate the type of the site. Once colonised, your site will start producing that resource.
• When you survey for an Outpost site, you must choose a product, which will be the product produced by the first cluster.
• When you survey for a Settlement site, you must have a system designed and validate that will be the settlement system.

Surveying costs time and money. The amount of time it takes to find a site depends on the type of site you are surveying for and the number of other points of interest in the sector. The table below lists the base survey time for each of the three types of site in an empty sector. The base survey time is further increased by the amount of Realspace already in use in the sector.

It is not allowed to survey in empty starting sectors. You are free to survey in any other sector, though surveying in a sector where some other faction has Sovereignty can be blocked by them as usual.

Note: You may choose what your site is like. Some examples have been provided for your convenience. Confer with the Storyteller when in doubt.

The cost of surveying depends on the number of turns and is listed in the table below. You do not have to actually pay the listed cost per turn each turn. The regular rules for construction apply. However you must survey for at least the indicated amount of turns before you can complete the surveying project.

For example, suppose you survey for a Space Habitat Site in your home sector, you would spend 3 turns as a base survey time, plus an additional 7 turns because your home system is there, plus an addition 1 because of the presence of holonet, or 11 turns total. The total cost for surveying for the Space Habitat Site would be 11 * 500 (tax) = 5500 .

Site	Cost per turn	Base survey time	Example
Space Habitat Site	500 /	3	Nebula, Black Hole System, Hyperspace Anomaly
Outpost Site	750 /	4	Rich Asteroid Belt, Gas Giant, Volcanic Planet
Settlement Site, basic	1500 /	20	A dying system, well hidden eden world, world with remains of extinct civilization
Settlement Site, extended	2000 /	+10	Careful analysis of gravitational wobbling, rare gasses sweep

Note, the base survey time for a Settlement is the 20 plus the sum of all necessary extension durations. So a Settlement with two extended requirements has a base survey time of 40 .

If two players are surveying in the same sector, the one that finishes first causes an increase in the survey time and total cost for the other. This means they will have to spend more time and money than they initially planned for.

Adding additional survey fleets to the search reduces the cost of the search. For every two fleets added beyond the first, you may reduce the survey time by one turn (which lowers the cost as well as the time limit), but this may never reduce the time below the base survey time plus one. Thus, it is effective only in sectors where other sites have already been discovered.