yup indeed, It's rather useless to actually research the survey thingy cause when you have researched they are all gone already. Except when you play with 2 on a galactic map but who does that?

playing the scenarios, the AI doesnt start with a survey ship and never builds one
so ALL anomalies are for the player (epic scenario: i built 3 additional survey ships each with >10 movement speed and all kept surveying until the end! no need to say all those 1% added up to a HUGE advantage and the AI had no chance to compete)
if anomalies start to pop up randomly, the AI should be improved to go for them

In addition if you every load a game, all unexplored anomlies seem to disappear.

I'm definetly for new anomalies popping up during the game. Especially when you're trying to avoid war, there's no turnaround when you miss out in the early game. I would even go so far and have no or very few anomalies exist at the start of the game, so the new ones appearing are the major part of it. The de luxe version would be if both rates (initial / appear) were adjustable, of course

There should be a notice in the news that a new anomaly has formed, by the way. The AI won't miss it, but a player will usually not notice a new spot on the map, so he's at a disadvantage.

yup indeed, It's rather useless to actually research the survey thingy cause when you have researched they are all gone already. Except when you play with 2 on a galactic map but who does that?

me