Survey ships automation

[fpg]

Following my comment on YouTube :
Sending drones is easy, knowing when they’re done surveying and picking them up not so much. I’d like to have the possibility of fully automated galaxy survey, that is to say Survey ships automatically pickup drones and move on to next system, either on auto mode or through a list of designed systems. I understand automatic FTL beacon placement, which should take place each time a survey ship enters a system for the 1st time, is not that straightforward.
At the very least I’d like high priority notifications :
-When a drone has finished surveying
-When it has not progressed for x days (stuck somewhere)
-When a ship is low on energy and needs going back home or on a colony.

At the moment I feel surveying consumes far too much attention. I have to note down what I was planning (drone fetching, …) or else I cannot quickly resume my survey schedule after a time consuming task, eg invading a planet (even a lightly defended one)

[Balthagor]

Some of the ideas here are beyond the scope of what we'll be able to do in the near future, but I have opened a ticket with some ideas to help with "drone retrieval". When we make progress on ticket 36651 I'll update this thread and we can consider next steps.

[fpg]

Great, thanks.