sounds like a reasonable and simple solution to me. (subtracting the cloak from the scan power for cloaked planets). so do an extra pass for adding cloaked planets to the larger pool.

For now, planetary cloak structures have been given a major boost.

Small note: If you have cloak structures on your planet(s) already, please visit them to make sure the new calculations kick in.

Doing a follow up on this. How is the math working out now? I'm running 100 cloak on an exotic and I am a lucky noob. What kind of defense is this atm? I'd hate for another noob to scan it down and take it from me

Still, I think the calculation is just able to find it using a scan or not.
Cloak > scan = can't discover the planet. Scan > cloak = can discover the planet

Although I like the boost in planetary cloak, it is still flawed in a sense that "Reduces the chance the planet to be discovered during scans" does not apply to people which has installed higher tier sensors. I doubt that any unguarded planet has like a thousand cloak. It just makes it cannot be scanned by some people. Do still look into cloak/scan calculation if the planetary cloak system is still the same.

I doubt that hardly any planet has their % of being scanned reduced if the person scanning is using advanced sensors like 4-5x Subdimensional or Tachyon. It just hides the planets away from those lower levels who has yet research good sensors.

/concur
I have around 1500 scan when I go all out, and I highly doubt an planet has over 100 cloaking so that sorta makes cloaking obsolete......completely.....

How about requiring the current level of scanning to be higher than the planet's cloak to be able to see it. Someone who stacks a ton of scanners just to find planets would be able to find it, but then when they take off all those scanners to go back to their normal setup the planet would go into a different list indicating that you know about it, but you can't pinpoint where it is anymore until you have high enough scanning again.

Kinky.... I kinda like that. It would force people to balance scanning vs weapons. But I think I still prefer the idea of scanning vs cloak giving a % chance.

I find it funny that I have tier 3 or 4 tech tree in scan and cloak..

Cloak has +50 and max 2 cloaks on ship.. Scanner max is 5 and supports +100..

For that tier, scanner max can go is +500 while cloak is only at +100. That means maxed out scanner module ship can always detect cloaked ship of similar technology level no matter what.. Then what's the use of cloak then? Scanning is overpowered in my opinion..

you forgot that scan devices takes twice as much space as cloak devices in the ship ... And cloak is not 2 max devices, it's 2 max jammers and 2 max cloaks (panels) ...

so If your ships is well cloaked, there's little chance someone finds and fights you (unless you've been agressive to someone who shared your ship to his legion), and if a ship has enough scan power to find you, then there's high chance he doesn't have enough space for enough attack / defense power to fight you.

I don't think a huge change has to be done in order to deal with the planetary problem. I think a small boost in cloak would be fine as the planets aren't meant to be unfindable. I realize that people want to keep there exotics and dysons and terras and oceanics all safe but from what I understood the possibility of an invasion was supposed to always be an imminent threat. That is why Dan added defensive structures at such a cheap spacial cost. I am all for keeping my planets, but I like the aspect of suspense and fear that someone will find my planet, I think that is one of the best part of this game. It makes it a lot more fun when I can scan a dudes planet and formulate a plan to take it over. I like how this FB game is different because Zynga games seems to all cater to a player in that he can't attack anyone he wants there is a limit, or everything you get is safe and no one can steal it. I think this game pulls what it does off really well. Like I said I am for a slight increase in planetary cloaking but making them completely invisible isn't the best route to go.

im really starting to think a 2 pass system is the best. if they are scanning at 70% then your planet more likely then not to be included in the pool of available planets anyway. right now cloaking is more protection from newbies. i have 300 cloaking on my planets. my 2 shroud sats got a big boost and i do like the fact that no one under 300 can scan me. its just that once you hit say level 25 or 30 or whenever you do your second planet scan blitz you will be over 300 or your not finding any planets anyway. then cloaking is useless as you get no benefit. although i dislike real world comparisons take stealth today. stealth does not make you invisible but lowers your cross section, eg from the radar signature of a plane vs that of a bird which the f 117 supposedly has.

Right now ingame cloaking is an all or nothing proposition, either your invisible or cloaking has no effect at all. it seems that the concept of cloaking is a little flawed and needs a better definition. unless im wrong about the overall impact of a second or pre pass to determine if a planet is available to be scanned that my suggestion. i never herd what your view on this was dan, i dont mean to make trouble or anything, just trying to contribute..

Perhaps something like...

If - = Tech
Every 10 cloak = 5% scan chance needed on scan window to block with a max of 100 cloak = 50% scan chance or less blocks.
Every 10 cloak over 100 adds 1% to needed scan chance on scan window above 50% to add the planet to pool.
Every 5% chance on scan window above 50% counts with a max of 25% chance to add to the pool.
If - =>Cloak and cap.
100 cloak = 50% scan chance or less is blocked
100 cloak = every 5% higher then 50 = +5% chance to find = 25% max chance to add to pool and an additional 1% / tech level higher then the owner's cloak level.

So when scanning you should try for the highest % chance on the window, to include cloaked planets.

Example: Planet has 100 cloak and you have 500 scan, well your 500 on the scan chance window shows as 63% chance. That gives you 10% chance to find that hidden planet.
If : Planet has 25 cloak and you have 500 scan, and on your chance window you show 30% chance to find a planet, you would still have 5% chance to find the planet.

**On the scan chance window, <5% is dropped off the =. So if you show 63% above, then the 3% doesn't count towards a 5% bonus to your chance to add to the pool.

I don't think that comparing scan to cloak directly will be fruitful when looking to make it balanced. With this system, shooting for a cap of 100 cloak would mean that anyone who scans and nothing else will eventually not be able to flag anyone's cloaked planets to his legion, only to be handed the planet later for nothin'. This also allows newer players to hide their precious common planets, or by chance a random rare they find from other noobs, and gives some kind of defense against some big dawg cleaning their clocks early on. It also takes into consideration on the top end, with 100 cloak, your planet still has the potential to be found, just not always at will, especially if you beef your cloak up. This would include a balance naturally to points invested in cloak over research because likely, you won't be able to find too many planets if you are cloak heavy. This same system could be applied to finding cloaked ships to battle.

Do I make sense or do I need to drink more coffee?

I see what your going with here and I think its a pretty good idea, my only concern is that Cloak will continue to become better on planets as people invest more research into it, so eventually 100 cloak wouldn't be hard to obtain at all. Because of this I think JC's idea is overall best.

The problem I have with it is once your planet is found the cloak is useless. If someone with a large legion finds your planet and shares its location your best move is to sell all your cloaks to free up space for offense/defense structures. It is pretty much inevitable that your planet will be found so the only thing cloaking does is waist money and (maybe) increase the time until it’s found.

If you equip enough scanners to qualify for a mission then take those scanners off, the mission is no longer available to you. Why not do the same thing for planets? If this is too powerful then maybe you need scanning>cloak to find the planet then only half that amount of scanning to keep the planet available. It forces people to trade space on their ship for scanners but this is fair because you are trading space on your planet for the cloaks. And if you like the 50% scanning to see the planet idea then you can add to that and say at 75% you can see the defenses and attack and at 100% you can see remaining population.

same problem, I put on all of my scanners after taking almost everything else off, I see everything i need to know then take my scanners off and take the planet. As for the % ideas, I like requiring scanning to see the structures but the rest of the idea dosnt really accomplish anything.

I explained it better in a previous post. If you take your scanners off you can't see the planet anymore. There should be something telling you that you have found it before but just can’t see it right now, like being in a different list or being grayed out. If a planet has 100 cloak you need at least 100 scanning to be able to attack it. This would go for anyone you share the planet with. Everyone trying to attack the planet would need enough scanning to see it and attack. Then I said maybe this would unbalance the game too much so instead of needing 100 scanning to see and attack after it has already been found maybe you just need 50. And for the 75% seeing defense and offense, sure you saw that when you found the planet but that doesn’t mean the owner hasn’t changed anything since then.

but how does this top me from putting on 1 scanner, and then ALL of my weapons and defensive modules?

Planets in list = location known. So I don't think its suitable to need scan to find it. If it is implemented, any planet guarded by a extremely high cloaking will make the planet almost impossible to target.

Cothordin: Let’s say there is a planet with 100 cloak. You put 100 scanning on your ship and start looking for planets and by luck you find this planet. Then you take off all your scanners except one that gives you 20 scanning. Now you cannot attack the planet because your scanning isn’t high enough. You can’t do anything to it at all. You need to put enough scanners on to defeat the cloak before you can do anything to the planet. So you stack your scanning back to 100. You don’t have to search for the planet again because you’ve already found it once and knew where to look. Now you can attack the planet. If you take those scanners back off, you can’t attack anymore. The only things I would allow is for you to disable the ships guarding the planet, assuming your scanning was high enough for them.

Baracuda: I thought it might be too hard to keep enough scanners on to match the cloak, that’s why I suggested that maybe after the planet is found you wouldn’t need 100% of the scanning to see it. Like after you know its general location you don’t need scanning as high to find it again. For an example I said 50% but this number could be changed to anything. After a planet is found cloaking is useless, and Dan said himself people run around with on average 20 scanning. This would give two aspects of the game much needed bigger roles.

Things don’t have to make complete sense. As long as the mechanics for the game work, that’s good enough. If you want to have everything make sense, then it doesn’t make sense to cloak a planet at all. Right now we can detect a planet by observing its gravitational affect on the star it goes around. The planet causes the start to “wobble” and based off this we can tell the approximate size of the planet and distance from the star. We do this without ever seeing the planet by looking at the star from earth through a telescope. If you really wanted to hide a planet you would need to cloak its star too. And I’m guessing by the time you have the technology to cloak an entire star there has already been enough time to create and extensive database of planets and it may not be practical to try to hide any. Sure you might be able to find one newly formed or go really really far away from everything but the chances of finding one nobody knows about and cloaking its star before anyone else finds it too? Good luck. I’m starting to ramble. Sorry.

Anyway it’s just an idea. I think it’s been explained well enough especially considering this whole post has just been explaining things that have already been explained. Take it or leave it.

I think it's a pretty good idea. 100 cloak on a planet is still a LOT, and would require some advanced tech. It shouldn't be easy to take a planet, especially a low level player taking a high level planet. It's not at all hard to put 100 scanning on a ship, even with low to midrange tech, and still have plenty of room for weapons. It would also encourage more balanced rank point spending. You deck fiends might find yourself wishing you had some more tactical crew - a couple hundred combat with NO weapons installed would go a LONG way in an invasion.

If it were up to me, I'd like some combination of this idea, in ADDITION to cloaking of any amount having SOME effect on whether or not your planet is found in the 1st place.