Makeover of scanning branch

[Marka]

Dunno if I am the only one - but I feel that the whole scanning branch has been hampered all over the few last rounds.
While ships are becoming ever so cheaper scans are becoming more and more expensive (useless AU - hello?).
I'd prefer a system where scanners can get all the info available but not unless they are putting in some effort.

First part: Restrict Amps/Distorters to 100 each
Finance, Security, Res is capped - why not Amps, Distorters. The number is high enough to prevent everyone from maxing out but there will be a considerable higher amount of value put into fleets - thus actual gaming. And it'll allow smaller alliances to support at least one scanner to quick 100 amps with taxes.

Second part: New waves branch
Overall 5 scan researches.

0. You start with No scans available

1. Basic Intelligence (24 ticks)
Enables Planet and Surface scan (scan cost 1k each for both)

2. Advanced Intelligence (36 ticks)
Technology and News Scan (scan cost 2k each for both)

3. Military Intelligence (48 ticks)
Unit Scan (Xan cloaked, shows exact amount of ships) and Jumpgate Probe (no fleet needed) (scan cost 3k each for both)

4.Advanced Military Intelligence (64 ticks)
Advanced Unit Scan (exact amount of ships on any race) and Engineering Scan (shows engineering settings on scanned planet) (scan cost 4k each on both)

5. Fleet Intelligence (72 ticks)
Attack Analysis: Retrieves information from any (launched) fleet attacking your planet or attacking your target planet - Shows cloaked ship types with random interference of 50% - anything else exact amount.
Defence Analysis: Retrieves information from any fleet defending your planet or defending your target planet - Shows cloaked ship types with random interference of 50% - anything else exact amount.
(scan cost 5k each for both)


So how is each of those scans supposed to work.
Planet, Surface, Tech, News just like this round.
Unit and Advanced Unit similar but without the interference (what is the point of this anyway except increasing cpu time?). If I think of gathering information on enemy fleets in a scifi universe I think of hacking into some database - not counting with fingers.
Jumpgate Scan shouldn't require a prelaunched fleet - why does my Intelligence need a ship from my military while they could achieve the same with some sort of probe.
Engineering Scan - The bit of extra information on resource horting planets you always wanted.
Attack Analysis - Alternative for the Fleet Analysis that has actually some use. Can analyze piggies too.
Defence Analysis - With this not every Xan can send fake defence - gotta build dist aswell. It ain't supposed to be able for scanners to determine defender information by prelaunching on your alliance targets and scan the defenders. Either it'll have to be restricted to defenders on your tick (scifi explanation - you can detect signatures of nearby ships) or you actually have to launch a fleet.
The interference on Xans on both last scantypes can be explained with their superior cloaking - even with best Intelligence technology you can only gather an approximate amount.

I think the suggested system would be better balanced. If you are Xan and don't want anyone to know about your military you gonna have to invest in Distorters - atm it is frankly too simple for Xans.
If you have invested heavy into your waves with lotsa amps and quick research you will be able to pretty much gather any information you need. It still isn't cheap - but you are no longer wasting half a dozen battleships on scanning one planet.

So what are you guys thinking about it?

[Makhil]

The branch looks really good.
The limitation on amps/dist would be welcome but doest it means a 100 amp can't scan a 100 dist ? If so i fear there would be a lot more people going for distorters rendering your good work on scan tree useless. If 100 amp can scan A 100 dist then what the point of building dist coz you know any ally will have the possibility to scan you.
The Amp/Dist system should be changed:
the success of a scan should be determined by a percentage ratio (not a simple +1 amp = yes / -1 amp = no). 30 amp vs 30 dist gives a 50% chance of success, in case of failure the target gets a warning in his News that ascan attempt has been made, in case of critical failure the coords of the scanner appear in the message. Failure on a target gives the scanner a 5% (?) penalty on his next attempt (same tick, same target). In any case the max percentage of success/failure will always be 99% (1% for the Hand of God).

[Allfather]

If there is a 1/1 ratio between scanner and scanee, the scan result should be random. Shouldn't be like if you scan the planet 2 times it should be successful. That defeats the whole purpose.

Hopefully next round will fix alot of things, like the scans and the covert ops section that is in my eyes, broken.

[Raging.Retard]

I think it would be interesting to have scans always work.... but have the values changed by the ratio difference between your amps, and their dists. 30 amps, vs 60 dists? Could equate to +/-50% on scan figures.. maybe more.

Though I've no idea how that well that would work for news / tech etc.

[Marka]

Atm you can scan someone if you have the same amount of amps than he has dist or more obviously.
Any serious alliance is having a terran scanner with 148+ amps so capping at 100 will only lead the amp/dist game down to a level of 100.
Bringing in a 50% chance when amps=dist seems like a nice idea. A little reward for those maxing out their dist.
However I am strongly against any other randomness in the scanning. It's just annoying and expensive to do a scan twice when you exactly know that you worked harder than your scan target in the amp/dist departement.

[Veedeejem!]

I like the idea of the new branch, the capping it to 100 amps / dists not that much but i'll live with it i guess
I agree most that scans should be lowered in cost, 8k of each res for AU, those galraids are killing my resources...

[Almeida]

i like Markas scan branch very much!

i'd even go further and totally remove amps and distorters from the game.

success shouldn't be dependent on waking up every 4 hours to build a new distorter or if u got a scanner awake in your ally 24/7 the time