Teams

Teams allow to conduct various projects across the Empire. There are four types of teams: Xenology, Diplomatic, Espionage and Survey. Each team comprised of up to five leaders, from all areas of your officer corp - scientists, navy, ground and administration. Xenology is used when exploring and utilizing ancient alien ruins; diplomatic helps improve relations between you and another Empire; Espionage is used to increase your knowledge and understanding of another Empire and Survey is used to find more minerals, or increase the accessibility of minerals on a planet/asteroid/comet.

Mechanics

Teams assignments are accessible from the Teams/Academy tab located within the Population and Production window F2. When assigning teams only those leaders with the relevant bonus will appear in the list. Assigned 'Team rating' effects it performance in the field, and is equal to the sum of the appropriate bonuses of its members.

As teams go about their work, it is possible for individual members to drop out due to death, illness, or even a more pressing assignment, so periodic checks are recommended. If anyone dies or retires, you can replace them either by disbanding the team and reassembling the squad, or assigning officers to a team via the Officer Corps window. Teams WILL continue their work even when short a member but obviously their overall effectiveness score will have been reduced.

Teams can be transferred to their destination via ships. They do not require any cargo space and any ship can transfer them. When assigning leaders to Teams selecting a population location before creating the team, will cause the team to appear at that location. A time saver if you want to set up a geological survey at a prospective new mining colony. To move an existing team in this way, select it, disband and then create it again in the new site.

Teams may be assembled on your home world before they are assigned to less controlled, more hostile situations and may well improve their skills and thereby their likelihood of later successes.

There is no "lost work" penalty for disbanding a team and creating a new team at any point. e.g. Disbanding a geo-survey team with a combined skill of 80 that has been working for four months on a planet and creating a new team with a skill of 100 will actually INCREASE your chance of completing the survey sooner.

Types of Teams

Espionage

Espionage teams are led by Civilian Administrators and Officers. Used to gather information about the assets and capabilities of foreign empires. It represents everything from infiltration missions to signals intelligence to simply observing and investigating readily accessible information. Information such as: ship/missile designs, system maps, gravitational survey results etc. Espionage teams can be killed in action when operating on an alien world.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy teams are led by Civilian Administrators and Officers. They represent ambassadors, attaches, and other leaders who engage in diplomatic dialogue with foreign empires. Helpping to improve relations between you and another Empire; Diplomatic teams try to help your relations with other empires.(NPRs). Note, their location is not relevant to their assignment. Once created, they are activated in the Intelligence/Diplomacy window Ctrl + F5.

Xenology

Xenology teams are used to explore ancient alien ruins discovered via orbital survey. They study ruins until they learn enough about the alien species to permit recovery by construction brigades to begin.

Xenology teams are led by Scientists and Officers. The team skill is 'Xenology bonus', so you will need five team members with decent Xenology skills on site.

Geology

Geology Teams carry out more detailed survey of bodies which have had a geological survey completed. Trying to find any mineral deposits that might have been missed by the orbital survey. They may find new deposits of previously nonexistent or mined=out minerals, additional deposits of existing minerals, or even a way to increase the accessibility of an existing mineral.

• Geology teams may be staffed by Scientists and/or Officers with some degree of survey skill.
• The work in doing any geological Survey is meticulous, so five team members with at least some degree of survey skills are required.
• The higher the team's skill, the faster they finish the survey. (The chance of completing a survey team check during one year is based on a combination of planet size and team skill. The formula is (1000 / BodyRadius^(1/3)) * (TeamSkill / 100) )
• The team's skill has no effect on what is found, only on how quickly the survey can be completed.
• While involved in their surveying efforts, members of the team may gain a small amount of experience and survey skill regardless of whether new deposits of minerals are discovered or not. Interestingly enough it seems that when one member of the team learns something, generally all 5 do.
• Ground based Geology surveys are limited only to bodies that have already been surveyed from space.
• Failure to find anything from space does not preclude the ground based team from finding minerals on bodies previously thought to be barren.
• When the team finally completes the job, new minerals are rolled for the body (with 25% of the normal chance to find minerals). For each mineral, if the new quantity is larger than the original quantity then the original quantity is set equal to the new quantity, and if the new accessibility is larger than the original accessibility then the original accessibility is updated to be the new accessibility. If this results in any changes, the team will report them.

In order to survey the mineral resources of a system body, a geological team only has to be dropped on the body. Dropping a geological team on a planet will automatically create a new colony if this planet was empty. Obviously, gas giants are not a valid destination. The survey will take place automatically, you don't have to give specific orders to your team.

Once the survey is done, the Geological Team Survey Completed field on the Economy screen (F2 Summary tab, will be set to 'Yes'.

Because the chance of both generating new minerals and finding that those minerals are better than the existing deposits is quite low, it's probably best to send geo teams only to those bodies where the total accessibility is quite high; even if they find new minerals on a body where none were detected before, it's quite unlikely to raise the total accessibility to something you'd be interested in mining.

Backstory Babble

Said one Geo-Survey Veteran after his first success in over 100 tries. "Well, at least we never lost any minerals! And I've learned a lot that will help me when I finally qualify for a survey ship." The veteran "rock hound" went on to add "I don't know how the tradition started but you know many of us on the Ground Based Geo-Survey teams never actually GO to the bodies we are tasked with surveying. Most of the REAL work involves reviewing the mountains of data collected by the orbital geo-survey ships. Sure, some of the old school rock-hounds still insist on traveling to the bodies they're tasked with, but most of us younger folk are quite content to sit in a small office here in the capital. The bureaucracy humors the old school folks a bit too much I think. Did you know we're actually listed on the colony rosters just as if we actually were on the planets? I like tradition as much as the next guy but it has caused me some grief I can tell you. Have you ever been to the the inter-steller dead letter office? My mail seems to get routed way to the back of beyond on an almost weekly basis."