What follows below is the result of my scanning blitz today.
Now why did I get so many zero's (no planet found) at the start with 99%. (ones mean I found a planet) I should only be getting like 1 un-found planet in 100. Also with a scan power of 4694 and nearly 3/4 of a million planets I just can't believe I was scanning so many damn occupied planets with higher cloaks that my scan. It just doesn't make a any sense. I don't think scanning planets is random at all based upon my most recent scan. Dan do you improve the odds to find occupied planets? Can someone please direct me to the thread where the scanning of planets model/formal is explained/described. I was also surprised that it took so much energy; spent over 700 but then I did get rid of allot of planets too.

The poll is up forever (if Dan allows it) and should Dan change the formula of scanning planets do come back and change your vote.

Data for a mathematician to copy/paste into a spread sheet and play around with. Note that I included when the chance of finding a planet decreased. Also that at one point the scanning percent hit 100% just before dropping off.

Approximate Chance of Scan Success: 99%
1
0
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
Scanning Power: 4694
Planets Discovered: 222
Planets in Galaxy: 744299
Approximate Chance of Scan Success: 99%
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
0
0
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
Scanning Power: 4694
Planets Discovered: 292
Planets in Galaxy: 744299
Approximate Chance of Scan Success: 89%
1
Scanning Power: 4694
Planets Discovered: 271
Planets in Galaxy: 744299
Approximate Chance of Scan Success: 99%
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
canning Power: 4694
Planets Discovered: 289
Planets in Galaxy: 744299
Approximate Chance of Scan Success: 100%
1
Scanning Power: 4694
Planets Discovered: 290
Planets in Galaxy: 744299
Approximate Chance of Scan Success: 97%
1
Scanning Power: 4694
Planets Discovered: 291
Planets in Galaxy: 744299
Approximate Chance of Scan Success: 93%
1
89%
1
86%
1
83%
1
80%
1
77%
1
75%
1
72%
1
70%
1
68%
1
65%
0
0
0
0
0
1
63%
1
61%
0
Gave up found 3 nice planets that I'll occupy.

ODragon;
I understand that formula.

But so many damn "no planet found" with a 99% chance and the vast majority of the planets never scanned.

Maybe I don't understand the dynamics of the ratio of players, the number of scanned planets and the total number of planets in this game.

I hope someone can help me out.

Your confusing the 99% chance to find a planet with the chance to fail the roll if the planet has cloak. Those are 2 separate rolls. You might find the planet, but fail the cloak/scan roll, therefor resulting in nothing found.

He's not confusing it, he's saying that it's crazy he ran into so many well-cloaked planets. It does seem like the galaxy's getting pretty overpopulated. According to someone else, based on the amount of active players and amount of planets there are only 12 planets per person, so that would explain it. In an unfortunate way.

AN ANSWER!!!!!!!!!

I kinda wish I had done my scan before Dan improved the cloaking; although I would not want to have taken a planet that was paid for or took many months to create with artifacts from the owner. That's just a good way to be selfless and lose a bunch of good players.

It is interesting that the 3 planets that are good (in other words worth occupying) and empty have not been scanned.

According to this, with 99% scans, approx. 20-25% of the scans will fail, implying that they hit cloaked planets. I've found 140 of 360 planets in my list were found as enemy. I'd be interested to know if the failure rate changes based on scan amount. I tend to think a random planet from the entire list is selected to begin with, since low ranked enemy planets still show up (no rank filter). I also wonder if planets are created based on player count, active player count, or scan activity (so a certain % of scans actually cause a new planet to be generated, or perhaps at some threshold a batch of planets is created).

Yes, the failure rate changes on scan amount, because the higher their cloak is compared to the person's scan the lower their odds of finding, down to 0% if the cloak is higher than the scan.

I think they just create planets whenever they decide it's time, or at least have a program create them when they think it's time and have a batch of names, but that could be wrong.

Not sure what rank you are or what your scan is at, but give it time. Scan far out weights planet cloak at end game and finding a hidden planet won't be that hard. In fact most of any decent planets you will find will probably already be owned, as there's a reason why the rest weren't colonized, they're crappy.

Personally, I am rank 184 with around 4k scan with buffs. I just scanned about 200 planets since I have been purging for awhile and blitzed a couple scan trees prior. It cost about 350m to setup and switch after scanner salvage, which isn't too bad for me. At endgame based on current max tech I expect most people wouldn't really exceed 7-8k scan with buffs. That will make most planets except constructed dyson/exotic (10k bonus to cloak) *possible* to scan, but not necessarily probable. Although, I'd rather have an uncontested planet in most cases anyway.

I can see maybe with high tech someone having at most 2 Anti-Tachyon Satellites, with legion bonus being 2k cloak on a random planet of theirs (not their best, a good planet though). Most people probably don't even have that much. In that case it's about 75% success rate on scans with max scan tech, and that's the minimum average success rate I can think of for enemy planets. It's probably more like 95% of enemy planets, so the overall failure rate is something like 3%.

From what I've heard end game scan tops 10k. I'm assuming this is with all buffs. Even to get half that, you're looking at 30 planetary structures not including the new passive boosts, which I haven't seen many of. Yes end game scan far far out weights cloak, to the point cloak isn't realy even feasible any more as an effective deterent.

Yes, although I believe that includes the Protogrid Access Console, of which you only get one.

some of us (in a different thread) came up with nearly the same idea.
1) determine scan rate success = and if it is 99% then be sure the person will discover a planet 99 times out of 100
2) cloak vs. scan if the first rolled planet is cloaked successfully then just have the program re-roll until a planet is scanned successfully.
2a) for those with higher scan power they may continue to see nearly instant responses when they scan
2b) for those starting out it may take enough time that they notice a wait but at least a planet will pop up.
2c) I can not imagine how much energy is spent by newbies scanning at 99% and getting no planet because just about everyone puts up some cloak on their decent planets and massive cloak on their mega rich planets. The change would encourage newbie players.
2d) report to the player that a planet was scanned but during the scanning X planets where cloaked! That would give the player encouragement knowing that the planet was occupied and worth hiding to improve their scan power and continue playing.

just my thoughts.

30% of the planets I just scanned were occupied. I also failed to scan more then the indicated percentage, so that percentage should be skewed towards unoccupied planets. It looks like it is getting crowded in the galaxy.

Whoa. That's a scary thought.

Further complicating matters, I have a few planets in my databanks that are owned by players, under Rank 20, who have obviously left the game. One guy is Rank 7, and has been for months. And it's the third best planet in my database. Contributes to the shortage of planets to invade/colonize.

On monday 744299 planets,
right now 865953 in the galaxy!


viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2398

Ok Dan why after I just finished a planet scan on Monday the number of planets was 744299 and today 4 days later the number is 865953. Seems like I missed out on over 100,000 planets. Did some 10,000 players join the game?

Looks like I chose the wrong time to scan for planets. Wish I had star chart purgers and could do another scanning blitz's.

Brian

Well its difficult to say because about half of the ones I pick up that are enemy are inactive or no legion (and don't respond in any way). I'm not sure if there is "garbage collection" or whatever, for players that left the game. I would say though under a certain rank and say 30 or 60 days gone... usually means they tried the game and quit. Higher ranks, have invested time so past some rank threshold, or being in legion (if they will keep your slot when you go inactive), should not be cleaned out automatically (heh, other players might do it for you tho).

I did use the 3 star chart purgers I had. Maxed out my scanning.
Started with a 75% chance.
got about 20 planets (expensive energy wise) with 2 very nice planets that I will occupy.
That is incredible! Either I got lucky or a change was made! I quit at 41% chance after 6 fails.

Your quitting too soon.