Waves

Description

Waves are used to gather information on other planets through the use of scans. You must have built at least one Wave Amplifier on the Construction page to be able to use scans. The more Wave Amplifiers you have, the better the chances of your scans getting through. Similarly, the more Wave Distorters you build, the lower the chance of scans getting through on your planet.

For those who have played Planetarion before: Wave Amplifiers are no longer used up with successful scans, and there are no Asteroid Scans this round either. You can initiate roids directly from the Mining page.

Another new feature is the use of stored scans. Any successful scan your results will be stored (max. 50 shown on waves page) on the PA server, and can be accessed for the next 24 hours through the Waves Page. You can share the scans with other people by giving them the URL of the saved scan.

Initially, you will only be able to use Planet Scans. You can have your planet's scientists develop new scans on the Research page.

Scans available

Planet Scan

Returns general information about a planet. This scan costs 1000 of each resource. This is useful for the following things:

1. To see how the target's asteroids are divvied up by resource type
2. To see how many spare resources the target has (useful for finding targets for 'Hacking:Resource Transfers' covert ops)
3. To see if you opponent built a lot of ships between launch and landing. (Planetscan around the launch time. Then planetscan a few ticks later. If resource counts drastically decreased, the player probably ordered a lot of ships in preparation for your attack.
4. If you are unsure whether you'll be able to scan a target, planetscan them first. That way, if the scan doesn't work, you've used up a smaller amount of resources.

Surface Analysis Scan

Reveals the amount of constructions that a target planet has, broken down by type. This scan costs 2000 of each resource.

Useful for:

1. Finding out how many amps a target has (to see whether he'd be able to scan you)
2. Finding out if the target has a large percentage of Security Centres (useful when scouting for covert ops targets)

Technology Analysis Scan

Identifies the Research Technology present on a target planet. This scan costs 3000 of each resource.

Useful for:

1. Working out ETAs (the scan will tell you how many Space Travel techs the target has)
2. Finding out what covert ops techs the target has
3. Find out what classes of Ship Hulls that the target can build

Note: The Tech Scan is often more useful early in a round.

Unit Scan

This scan gives you an overview of all ships that a certain planet has. This scan costs 4000 of each resource.

1. Unit scans are the most important scan type in the game, it seems- you would unitscan a potential target to see whether the ships he has fits well with what you plan on attacking with. Unit scan results are often plugged into battlecalcs. it is good advice to get a unit scan whenever you are attacking.
2. Conversely, unit scans are also useful if you're being attacked- they can tell you what ships your attackers might have.

Unit scans are somewhat inaccurate, giving numbers between 20% more or less than the target actually has for each ship type. In game terns this is explained as 'random inference'. If such a variation might make a big difference in your plans, try doing 2 or 3 unitscans and then averaging out the results.

News Scan

The News Scan will try to intercept news transmissions at the target planet. Due to the rate of news becoming available at another planet, it will not show any news entries from the last 4 ticks. This scan costs 5000 of each resource.

Useful for:

1. Checking whether your target has his fleets out (if you see recent 'launch' messages)
2. Checking to see how active your target is, or when he is active.

Jumpgate Probe

This scan can only be used if you have a fleet travelling towards the planet you are trying to scan. It will reveal any other fleets travelling to the same planet, both hostile and friendly. This scan costs 6000 of each resource.

Useful for:

1. Checking to see whether your target got defense. A jumpgate at ETA 4 or later will confirm whether the target got in-galaxy defence, and a jumpgate at ETA 6 or later will confirm whether the target got alliance defense. (On this note, you might want to jumpgate a few minutes before the landtick, to see if the defense fleets pulled)

Fleet Analysis

This advanced version of the Unit Scan can only be used on another planet when it has sent a fleet towards you. This will show the exact compsition of the fleet heading towards your planet. This scan costs 7000 of each resource.

• A fleet analysis scan on a Xandathrii player will fail, since Xan ships are 'cloaked' and thus immune to fleetscans. However- *unit* scans will still work on Xan ships.
• Note: if a Zikonian player has stolen some Xan ships, and included them with his attackfleet, the cloaking rule still applies. Subtract the total of ships that are shown in the fleetscan from the known size of the fleet to get the amount of Xan ships that are included, and the unitscan the player to see what those Xan ships might be.

Scan Success

For a scan to work, you must have more Wave Amplifiers than your target has Wave Distorters. In mathematical terms,

The following statement must be correct:

your_amps - their_distorters >= 0

As a new r15 feature, you can scan any galmate or any member of your alliance, regardless of the number of Distorters.

Alliance scanners

Oftentimes, one or more members of an alliance are 'scanners'. They build a lot of Wave Amplifiers (meaning their scans would be more likely to succeeed) and focus their research towards the waves branch of the tech tree. 'Scanners' generally distribute scans to all alliance members. You can often request a specific scan from such a person via the alliance's IRC channel. As a new PAN feature, 'scanner' will be an official alliance position, and such a person's scans will be paid for out of the alliance fund as opposed to from that player's personal resource stash.