no idea how to put images in here properly, so heres a lightshot pic
http://prntscr.com/4o6diy

Did you probe again after attacking, and if so, did the numbers update?

If an enemy ship has been under the effects of a krionus trap recently it will show the trapped attack level for a short while on spy probes. The attack in that picture looks to be about correct for Merc's ship when lightly buffed and under a krionus trap.

I have been encountering this a lot. I do a weapons probe on someone before I attack and the probe results have sometimes been off by a factor of 10. After I attack, I rescan and get a different result. I was thinking it was a cloaking effect, but maybe I am wrong.

If they set an attack buff and hit an elite their attack goes up. if they log off without doing anything their attack remains the same even after the buff has expired. when you probe, you see attack without tos and helmsmen, so it is already lower, and you see it buffed (if that happened). After you hit them once their ship recalculates and shows correct attack (still without crew).

Same with planets. first hit resets population to max (which is why you always click 1x before using bio-vaps - or they destroy phantom populations).

Spy probes return the attack or defense value that the ship you are targeting used during its last battle or the last time it was attacked by another player.

A few scenarios involving ship A
Ship A has 80,000 tactical officers
Ship A has 20,000 attack from ship modules
So collectively Ship A has 100,000 attack without any temporary buffs active.

You attack ship A and in the upper right side you see an attack value that says 20,000
You immediately use a probe and the probe tells you ship A has 100,000 attack.
Why? The value you see for attack and defense show you just the attack/defense from ship modules with buffs included.

Ship A has an obelisk currently active
You attack ship A and in the upper right side you see an attack value that says 20,000 * 1.1 = 22,000
You immediately use a probe and the probe tells you ship A has 110,000 attack.
You see they have an obelisk currently active so you can take the 110,000 attack and divide by 1.1 and see their true unbuffed attack is 100,000

Ship A is currently NPCing and has just a shockpulse charger active
You attack ship A and in the upper right side you see an attack value that says 20,000
Ship A is still NPCing and before you use an attack probe, ship A hits an NPC
You use a probe and the probe tells you ship A has 120,000 attack.
You are seeing their NPC attack because the last battle that ship was involved in was with an NPC where their attack is 120,000
If you manage to attack and probe before ship A hits another NPC then you will see an attack value of 100,000. The only way to spot this is to watch their battle count and make sure it doesn't increase between you attacking and you probing.

Same as above applies to bases.

Other scenarios to watch for.
Ships that are Xecti, if you attack and probe then you will see their Xecti bonus counted in their attack score.
Other bonuses that are strictly while under attack buffs are included in the probe values.
So if someone has trinity cores then when you attack and probe their defense, you then need to divide by 1.08 twice to find their unbuffed defense value.

All buffs and debuffs apply the same way as the obelisk scenario.

I actually just ran into a bizarre situation (in my opinion) this morning. I spy probed a ship several times that I could see no visible buffs or debuffs on in the Effects tab and it consistently reported one set of numbers for awhile. I kept spy probing them for awhile every 10 minutes or so so I could figure out their artis/hr numbers. After awhile, maybe 30-40 minutes, I got their arti/hr number. Then a few minutes later I re-probed them yet again and their attack/defense number changed significantly (basically attack went down 15.76% and defense went down 22.81% -- not a trivial change by any means). But I looked at their Effects tab and there were still no buffs nor debuffs visible. They were still the same race and profession. It left me totally scratching my head and this is the closest thing to a relevant post I could find. So, my question is, does anyone know if there are any buffs that affect the result of spy probes but do NOT show up on the effects tab of an opponent (or any explanation for the bizarre change in returned results from spy probe - weapons and spy probe - defenses)?

When you spy probe, you get their "last" attack/def for awhile; I don't know how long it takes for it to reset to normal. I suspect the player you were probing tapped a base or something with Tetra-Seeks/Shuttles installed, so you were getting their base attack/def numbers, then when you probed them later, you were getting their updated, current (or "real") attack/def.

Thanks. If that's what happened, it would help explain the mysterious change in ship strength. I guess I would never have noticed it before since I can't recall just holding a ship long enough to find out what their arti income was and then actually re-using the weapons and defense probes. Kind of nerfs the probes a bit though if you tap a guy who looks he's offline (no buffs anyway) and it returns inflated numbers temporarily -- but I learned not to take those results as gospel! Maybe it'll get fixed sometime so it returns the correct numbers sometime....

I wonder who you were probing?