Will milscans be in next round?
 

Hi, I maintain an IRC bot called Munin that does some scan parsing. I haven't written a milscan parser for this round, but it's obvious that this would be useful. I don't know if milscans were meant to be a permanent addition, but I'd very much like to know if it's worth me writing a parser at this point.

I ask in part because I feel milscans have made the game less fun this round, so I'm harboring some hope that they'll be out for next round :\

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I second that!

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I think that militaryscans have been a nice addition to the game. So I hope it stays.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I hope they burn in hell.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

They're making the battles way too easy to predict, so I'd say out with them :)

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

as long as xan are fully cloaked milscan are very much needed

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

Thank you Captain Obvious :salute:

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

i agree, it has made calcing a tedious task this round, ou can pretty much predict the battle 100%

edit- i also hate the fact scans are so accessable, i preferred it when they had to be ordered etc

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

Bump.


Get rid of mil scans.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

Hated Mil scans

Made the game too predictable - too easy to sort defence.

As a terran it completely ruined faking as it was obvious when i had de fleets with one cruiser. And wasted a fleet slot cos I had to have BS fleet of same number.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I think everyone here is pretty much in favour of milscans staying then, right?

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

If kargool is everyone, then yes.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

mil scans are essential

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

They're essential when it comes to predicting a battle with 100% accuracy. Boring? Fu** yes.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I would like to add that they are neccesary with xan cloaking in it's current state aswell. Being able to predict what a zik is sending with pinpoint accuracy is a nice bonus.

But maybe adding some sort of inaccuracy would be nice to spice things up a little.

I also think a scan should be dropped, since it's retarded to have the entire former scan tech tree and then added the military scan, this made the scan tech tree really long in comparison with the other tech branches.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I can see both sides of the story here.

In favor for Millitry scans

It makes it easy to DC a defence call because the millitry scan basically tells you which ships are being sent rather then taking your time working out what is being sent.

Defence is sorted out quicker.

Easy job for Defence Commanders.

This scan is essental if Xan are staying cloaked.

Not in favor for Millitry scans

If your attacking a target, it makes a DC's job far too easy and defence is sorted out quicker then previous rounds.

You cannot fake fleet.

Personally, i'd like to see millitry scans stay in for round 20.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

Mil scans are far more powerful now than they were in round 9.

Reasons:

1) The combat engine is a lot simpler now. In round 9, a Xan could build mostly FI and, due to Sentinels having T3-all, they could be able to defend against any incoming with a large enough Sentinel fleet. Now, Xans have to build FR and DE, which means that the old '3 fleets of FI' trick doesn't work. This is a somewhat subtle example; the main point being that Xans can't fake easily as it is, and mil scans make it less rewarding.

2) Mil scans favour active, well-connected players. Fleet analysis scans are personal, they're down to your own ability to do something. Mil scans are about knowing people, possibly people you can phone in the middle of the night, to do mil scans for you. This is an advantage almost exclusive to the elite and completely unavailable to the average player.

3) Mil scans further favour the elite by removing the disincentive to build finance centres. FCs only work for players who can hold a roid count of >800 (I think); that is, they are only cost-effective for such players. Smaller players don't need to care about FCs because they would never pay off for them; instead they build other useful things, like amps. Mil scans make it possible for an elite player to build the maximum 60 FCs without ever having to worry about getting unscannable incoming - because the alliance scanner(s) can do their scans for them. In past rounds, people who went for 60 FCs were always vulnerable to attacks from players with a decent number of distorters. Now they are much less vulnerable. (and don't get me started on how bad FCs are, causing, as they do, an increase in the amount of resources without an equivalent increase in the number of roids).

A brief couple of examples: in round 14, as a top 10 planet in the #2 galaxy and the winning alliance, I was still roided in the final week or so by a Terran with a significant number of distorters. He (and a friend) repeatedly attacked me with fleets which might have been either DE or BS; having no way of knowing which, my defence became very inefficient and ultimately he was able to roid me. This, of course, was my karmic payback for having done the exact same thing to eXilition and LCH when they were the winning alliances in r13. Mil scans make such attacks much more difficult, because they require the attacker to commit at least two fleets to the fake, and they reveal the possibility of the fake much more readily.

The point: mil scans favour those who have good scanning resources and available defence fleets - in other words, the people who are probably already winning. They remove the one last way in which a losing side can land a blow on the winning side.

4) Scans are easier to pay for now. In past (pre-PAX) rounds, scans/amps used lots of eonium, which was always in short supply. Now, scans use equal M/C/E and scans can be paid for from the alliance fund. Of course, that advantage is only available to those in an alliance which has a fund with anything in it.

I can't see any real positive benefit of mil scans, except for their necessity in dealing with the new Xan cloaking, itself an experimental feature which has not demonstrated any real benefit to the game.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I think I was the one who rallied up the return of "proper" Xan cloaking, so consider myself "served" :p

Old-school cloaking and mil scans can go to the scrapheap...provided Xan ships aren't the utterly useless little flies they have been in previous rounds, and have FI pods back ;)

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

it was still easy to fake mil scans didn't make faking to hard just had to use your brain a bit

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

I'm sorry I haven't replied on this thread. I really should have. Anyway...!

I think that most Xans are happy with their Xan-ness.

I admit mil scans probably make the game more predictable. I think this is a good thing for DCs, as has been mentioned above, because there's fewer and fewer of them around, and anything that makes their task more easy is worth doing.

However, Rob was fairly thorough in listing the bad features. So, I've tried to come up with a way to get rid of mil scans but to keep "real" Xan cloaking. It's different, it keeps things interesting, I don't think there's a huge need to remove diversity.

Remember, pods are NOT cloaked for Xan.
To this end, I suggest changing the end of the scan tree as follows:

Planet-News scans as before

Fleet scans, as before, don't show cloaked ships - but they do show pods This is a bit of help.

Fleet scans would also have a "total number of ships" thing at the bottom. The ships are slightly randomised, so it's mainly for ease of use + comparison with the actual ships incoming.

However, if it also showed that for the cloaked ships, you'dbe able to guess the number of ships heading your way. It'd also make it easier to detect if a Zikonian was sending along a few cloaked ships you couldn't see :D

Optionally, we could have a more expensivie unit scan (7k of each resource as opposed to 4k) that would show cloaked ships (and may be paid only?)

Then, finally, we'd have the JGP scans as the last scan on the tree. It might be fair, I guess, to swap the advanced unit scan and the JGP around, if they're both going to be paid only.

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

So, a Unit combined with a Fleet scan would result in you being able to more or less guess what was coming, but without absolute certainty?

For some reason, there is something with that setup that is nagging at me, but i've just worked another 12 hour day and cant seem to see it right away. Perhaps i'll think of it at another inappropriate time.

Btw, thanks for the reply appoco :). Its always nice to see members of PA team trying to address the concerns of players and improve the game in a realistic fashion.

<3

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

The whole point of a fleet scan was that you could see what was coming.. I don't see your point :p

An advanced unit scan with a fleet scan would mean you *might* be able to work out what was coming, but you'd have to guess what all the cloaked xan ships were

Re: Will milscans be in next round?
 

the flip side of all this,.. is ATTACKING a xan (zik) also,..
with just the Fleet scan showing numbers and pods, u dont know what they have, making them FANTASTIC deffenders and undesirable targets.

And so the speicilsed expensive unit scan, would solve this, in so u could use that to show all the ships (within normal parameters) that they have, thus u could guess at what their using to deffend with,.. and also what u can attack them with :D


so,.. if u want to ditch mil scans and keep them cloacked, u need SOME way of a scanner finding out what ships they own. otherwize i'll be going xan next round :D telling everyone to do the same,.. :D