One of the reasons people say they want a reset, is because old empires have a starmap with all systems explored.
This is only an issue because of how "explored systems" are handled. Once you have explored a solar system, simply by visiting it, you can forever and always see the current state of that solar system. If a new city is founded in an explored solar system two years after you were last there, you will instantly know about the new city.
To combat this issue I suggest that this "explored" status should be lost after some time without visiting it. System surveys should not be affected, only your real-time intel about the system.
Think of them as probes left behind from when your ship was there last, after some time those probes break down and need to be replaced. This also brings some interesting counter-intelligence options, for example allow your ship to remove all enemy probes from a solar system if it remains there for a vast amount of time.
In order to not make all space suddenly unexplored, the observatory building could maintain all probes in the neighboring sectors if it has power and a worker. Could even allow the observatory to slowly/randomly send probes to nearby solar systems, allowing you to gain some basic planetary information about nearby solar systems before reaching interstellar travel.
This is only an issue because of how "explored systems" are handled. Once you have explored a solar system, simply by visiting it, you can forever and always see the current state of that solar system. If a new city is founded in an explored solar system two years after you were last there, you will instantly know about the new city.
To combat this issue I suggest that this "explored" status should be lost after some time without visiting it. System surveys should not be affected, only your real-time intel about the system.
Think of them as probes left behind from when your ship was there last, after some time those probes break down and need to be replaced. This also brings some interesting counter-intelligence options, for example allow your ship to remove all enemy probes from a solar system if it remains there for a vast amount of time.
In order to not make all space suddenly unexplored, the observatory building could maintain all probes in the neighboring sectors if it has power and a worker. Could even allow the observatory to slowly/randomly send probes to nearby solar systems, allowing you to gain some basic planetary information about nearby solar systems before reaching interstellar travel.
