Every planet has been scanned (therefore, by extension, every Dyson has been scanned). With tens of thousands of players performing thousands of scans over the course of 4 years, it's a pretty safe bet that every planet has shown up on someone's planet list at some point in time. A given planet may have "0 other ships scanned", but that's because it got purged who knows how many times over.

Look at it this way: There are 5 million planets. GL has been around 4 years; if 1,250,000 planets were scanned each year, they'd all be scanned by now. Dividing that by 10,000 players (and Facebook used to report more than that), you get 125. That's right - 125 planets in a YEAR, and we've hit 5,000,000. Is it unreasonable to conclude that a player scans 125 planets over the course of an entire year? I do more than that in a single mini scan run.

This is why you can do a scan run and not get anything better than Very Large Rich. All the decent natural planets have long since been scanned and occupied. Most players are building, buying, or invading the good planets they have.

As a new player i find this thread a little disheartening.

When I first started I saw the 5 million planets and thought wow definitely a lot. But 4 yrs and so many people scanning 1000's daily, chances are the vast majority of planets have been seen at least once. Maybe they could have a survey team explore new galaxies every year and add to the pool?

Assuming there is no mechanism we don't know about that recycles garbage planets (i.e. uncolonized, unscanned, low production, recently purged), it's a good bet that most of them have been picked up.

That being said, I know several people who have scanned unoccupied or stolen them over the last 9 months. Admittedly, most have been research and mining, and even some of the artifact Dysons haven't been mind-blowingly impressive... but unless the last one was found just a few hours ago, there are still definitely a few out there.

Every planet has been scanned (therefore, by extension, every Dyson has been scanned). With tens of thousands of players performing thousands of scans over the course of 4 years, it's a pretty safe bet that every planet has shown up on someone's planet list at some point in time. A given planet may have "0 other ships scanned", but that's because it got purged who knows how many times over.

Look at it this way: There are 5 million planets. GL has been around 4 years; if 1,250,000 planets were scanned each year, they'd all be scanned by now. Dividing that by 10,000 players (and Facebook used to report more than that), you get 125. That's right - 125 planets in a YEAR, and we've hit 5,000,000. Is it unreasonable to conclude that a player scans 125 planets over the course of an entire year? I do more than that in a single mini scan run.

This is why you can do a scan run and not get anything better than Very Large Rich. All the decent natural planets have long since been scanned and occupied. Most players are building, buying, or invading the good planets they have.

F A I L bud


When i found a 7x vl exotic on my last blitz it had not been scanned... Anyone who had would have colonized it. quitters if they had found right before quitting without resetting or deleting the game would have still had it on scan...

ergo your logic is wrong mi amigo or your math.

Actually, there is a GREAT chance that every planet have been scanned by someone at some point.
That does not mean, however, that every planet that is on nobody's list was purged.
At this point in game, I'm willing to bet well over half, if not over 90% of all the good but not awesome planets are generated when players reset. Due to the GP cost and likely limited supply of GP, if any, only awesome planets can be semi-guaranteed a transfer. A good planet, like the 7x mentioned, might have not made the cut whereas a dyson is much more likely. So the evidence of a 7x VL doesn't prove anything in any fashion.

That said, there could be dysons generated in this fashion as well, if the owner had no friends and/or is a cheapstick.

Math I don't do to be honest. BUT the assumption inherent in yours and Plurv's logic is that the number of scans can be averaged... I'd say you're wrong as you don't know how many scans have been done vs planets. The other issue you guys are not addressing and to be fair I don't see how you could mathematically... is the concept of re-scans... whether purged or not, as planets are scanned by more than one player on occasion that has to factor in...

my saving grace - I didn't say a lot were not scanned, I just said I was sure not ALL were scanned at one point or another.

is it possable that every planet that has 0 scans on it is infact a placeholder for a random planet based on a logarithm?

the real question is how often does "Planets In Galaxy: 4,905,495" change.

that would be a good thing to know as well

I'm almost certain that in all my time of playing that said number has never changed.

Give us better planets, Dan!

As a new player i find this thread a little disheartening.

I'm almost certain that in all my time of playing that said number has never changed.

Give us better planets, Dan!