Just used a star chart and got an occupied planet.
I thought we were supposed to only get unoccupied planets?

That has never been an attribute of the Alien Star Charts.

So it's just a 100% chance of finding a new planet then? No special benefits like, for example, increased odds of finding a rare planet type?

People much higher in rank than I said that "Alien Star Charts" always give a 'clean planet' which is unoccupied and never scanned by someone else.

Dan how could people get this idea?

Here are a couple other tidbits about the Star Charts:

* Your scan chance has no effect on the result of the charts
* The planet found can be unoccupied, enemy controlled, or even occupied by a legion member
* [For occupied planets], the planet's cloak rating will have no effect on it being discovered by the charts

So Star charts are a 100% success chance completely random guaranteed planet?

Thats what it looks like. At least it isn't 99%. That would suck.

Why bother explaining when you posted in the "News" thread that they are being phased out. Why phasing them ? Do you realize that instead of balancing out the game you are actually attaining the contrary ? In the sense that the people that don't have problems and challenges in the game are the ones that basically used every bit of exploitable bugs, got terraformers from AP draws,got a shitloads of planets from the star charts and now that you're implementing more scanners will be the ones finding more planets to conquer from people that basically just started the game ? I mean do you expect people to pay for things that they can lose in a matter of days ? I've only played this game for 2-3 months and I must say I don't like a single bit where all this is going. Despite the fact that I invested time and a few dollars.

DMDMDM,

what you say is always a problem when players come in after the start. I did also. What I like about this game is that you can kinda catch up.

Something must be done to encourage new players to stay. Making great planets harder to get doesn't make sense to me. However causing the higher ranked players to have to install the scanners and scan just like low level players evens the odds more than you can imagine. When some people have 20,000/hr artifact production rate why even bother to scan when you'll get enough alien star charts. That's what many of the high ranked players have been doing.

Maybe a new chart needs to be created and the chance of getting it is inversely related to your rank -- ie say the chance is 1/rank thus a rank 5 person who accumulated enough artifact points would have a 20% chance of getting the chart. However I myself at rank 198 would only have 0.505% chance of getting this chart. Rank 400 would have the chance of 0.25%; so they would hit 1 time in 400. The Chart should be a planet formally occupied by the 'ancients' who created the artifacts and should be awesome to ranks below 50 but say ok-average to ranks up to 150 and nothing to talk about for ranks about 150. Maybe a small planet 5x mega rich in one item. Maybe it should only be for NPC battles and on a rare ship at that -- The ship normally gives something average for the rank (it scales/matches defense/attack/reward) with the Special Planet Chart generating a brand new planet that is awesome for that players rank provided the role goes their way.

Just an idea! What do others think?

I tend to agree with DMDMDM about the star charts. But Dan said there would be something new to take it's place...?

Also I've used 20-30 star charts and never once gotten an occupied planet, but I think that is because there are hundreds of thousands of unoccupied planets and probably not nearly as many occupied planets.

He said that the Continuum Beacon would be added to the game in the place of the Alien Star Charts. Well the Beacon has been added. I've got two of them right now. It adds 15% scan for 1 hour. So I would assume the Alien Star Charts will be phased out sooner, rather than later.

You should read "phased out" as "you get to use the ones you have but none will drop from now henceforth". And yes those, otherwise good artifacts, started dropping. Yesterday I think.

Oh I assumed that anyways. I've got 16 Alien Star Charts in my cargo at the mo. I wasn't planning on using them until I had maxed out the scanning techs and my scans were at 0%. Matress plans ahead like that.

...I would have gone on a using spree if Dan was simply going to remove them.

Until recently, I 'never' scanned a occupied planet with star charts and that is over 40 used. This had to be a change in the last 10 days.

On other terms -- Bubbasmith has NO modules other than the tier modules and is open to hacking/raiding at will since I officially scrapped everything on his ship and am leaving the game for good.

He has 1 dyson, 1 exotic, 9 terran and about 15 other decent planets for you to find/take.

The odds of finding an unoccupied planet go down as the average level of the players increases in the game. I found occupied planets more then 10 days ago.

Bubbasmith is gone! I mean his facebook account is gone! I also believe his GL account is also gone!

i used 18 of my left over alien star charts and got 14 occupied planet.. I hope this artifact is permanently gone right now. 10k per draw is not really worth it.. i have better uses for my artifact points.. say rescued prisoners, ship bot, xchargecells, durtainium and androids!!!!

I haven't seen rescue prisoners or shipbots for a week now. I can only assume that they went terraformer/hyper expander's way. Or close to that. 140 or so draws with none.