I find the scout ships auto explore feature to not work the way I would like.

Currently, the scout ships (collectively, if you have more than one) make a very shallow pass around the galaxy. ie only going 1-2 planets away from the star. This works fine if I want a general layout of the star system, or if the star system is small.

Where I feel it needs work is when I want to know _every_ planet immediately near my starting position in a large star system. For instance, i was playing a game with 57 planets 5 AIs. I had ~3-4 scout ships on auto explore at a given time. Left on their own, my scout ships found every planet 1-2 jumps from the star. But, given the size of the galaxy all enemy positions were 3 jumps out. It too much longer (no real time estimate, sorry) than I thought it should to explore everything right around my starting position. I missed out on a terrain world in a good position because it wasn't scouted.

Yes, I know I can scout by hand, and yes I know I shouldn't complain that I missed a planet because I didn't look my self. But, there is an auto explore button, and in a very large game I don't feel like micromanaging a bunch of scouts around. I have more important things to be doing, like squashing the AI.

I don't know the best solution, but I will propose two:
1) Adjust the scout behavior to be more balanced in scouting both thoroughly near home, but also covering the whole star system. (I expect that would be hard)
2) Add a second button for auto explore. 'explore closest first' and 'explore whole star system' -- I expect someone can come up with a more catchy sounding name...