What I have noticed is that going tech is almost too important in this game. Because of the x × y relationship of tech and infrastructure you almost always want to spend your money trading if possible. If you have less in Banking, Manu, or Exp. than you have of the coresponding infrastructure, then you generally get more of a gain by trading for the tech. Since tech starts snowballing, like you said Jay, it seems I’m spending all my money on trades now and nothing else. I don’t know the best solution, but I think maybe a full multiplier is way too much.
What if combat inside scan range gains Weapons +1 or +2 ?
Then combat outside scan range is Weapons +0.
Ohhh, I like that idea!
edit: although you are almost always fighting in scan range.
what if WG are unusable outside scan range ?
what if carrier experience is +0 outside scan range ?
what if with scanning you can build probes (limited somehow maybe by having x amount per level available to be built) that you can send off, and the higher the skill the farther it can go in one jump. An added bonus to this would be it would have a scanning range around the probe its self so you wouldn’t need to take a star to know whats going on and would die if it landed on a star with a carrier on it or if maybe if they crossed paths in flight (with reading that carriers cost a lot i am expecting there wouldn’t just be one sitting on every planet) that way you can learn things about the combat strength of your enemy but not directly affecting combat.
I feel this could also make it so you could go a more knowledgeable tech build where you would know what people are doing and counter them with wits and strategy or go more of an overwhelming force of strength build
I agree. Now that all the techs are relevant, this will reinforce the need to be in a trading cabal. And I’m not sure I like the idea of selecting your own characteristics. It may encourage groups of players to join a game each selecting at least one of the big three: weps, manu, exp. Perhaps the strengths/weaknesses are randomly assigned? Trade scanned only would be a must.
I am skeptical of the need to do anything. Scan will become important to fight as the game progresses. It current unpopularity has more to do with how unbalanced the other techs are.
Ooh, Victreebel’s idea sounds really cool. I like it.
But I do think Scanning’s problem is the low return. It just doesn’t grow fast enough. Maybe if it just doubled in what it gives, that might be enough. As it is, Cuddy, Scanning is, and has been in Triton, the least of Techs. The one that nobody gets unless it’s absolutely critical, and even they often just don’t bother and focus on something more relevant.
So I disagree that scanning will be more important later. It’s never been more important in the past, it’s just been “there” for people to get for convenience. It needs to be something of great value that players NEED to get.
So right now we have suggestions of: Interfering with enemy Scanned Stars, Probe Droids 
, and weapons bonuses.
Hmm… thinking about it, I now realize that the idea of giving weapons bonuses to stars within Scanning Range is actually pretty good. It automatically makes that unsettling jump into the blank blue/green/red etc. all the more scary, because you’re disadvantaged. Also makes Scanning even more militarily offensive, politically speaking.
What if carriers outside scan range fly slower at 0.2 LY/tick ?
I think that scanning is one of the most underrated techs for early to mid game. Differences in scan level can be exploited to great tactical advantage, or even strategic surprise. By late game, yes, typically everyone has plenty and it no longer matters. But for a semidark game like the current one, its value is even more important.
Would love to test the new rules out, but from what I’ve gathered reading this, here’s my two cents.
Firstly, I’m not really a fan of carrier price increasing. My personal view is that a lot of people buy too FEW carriers.
I really don’t see much looping, especially among less experienced players and I almost always see a distinction between how well someone plays and how much money they’re willing to spend on carriers. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have people being more discouraged.
Secondly, I agree with the last hero about early attacking. I know you’ve been keen on reducing early attacking for a long time, Jay, but I don’t see the point.
A slow start leading to a burst of action does sound interesting, but I feel like this will just make games last longer unnecessarily. I understand why you feel there should be more strength to the defenders early on, but +3 instead of +1 seems to high. I think that’s what’s going on anyway. Correct me if I’m wrong.
That’s really it, would love to test them in game though 
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Here my second proposal (as faster speeds inside scan seems to have caused trouble in the past).
It’s based in other ideas already exposed here.
Scanning do what it does now plus:
- gives you one probe each X ticks (X is lower for higher scan level)
- the probe has Y points of impact (Y is greater for higher scan level)
- you can “materialise” the probe in any of your stars for free, if you received one, and send it to whatever star you want
- the probe travels following the carrier travel mechanics: hop from star to star, always maxed by Hyperspace Range, but may travel Z * the speed of the normal carriers (Z is greater for higher scan level)
- when the probe reaches a star, the defending ships attack him, but the probe doesn’t have ships nor weapons. The attack decreases the probe points of impacts Y in defending ships * defending weapons.
- on the next tick, the probes continues the travel to the next hop and so.
- if an enemy carrier with ships arrives to a star where a probe is “stationed” (not travelling, just staying), the probe is destroyed.
- what the probe scans is recorded in your map, so you need to send probes to the same places from time to time to avoid having outdated maps (the area inside your stars scanning range works as usual)
For example:
- I have scan level 10, so each 5 ticks receive a probe with 1000 points of impact, which travels twice as fast as carriers.
- Send that probe from my star to some unexplored in my range.
- The probes arrives there 2-3 ticks later.
- There were 100 ships of my enemy, with weapons lvl 3, it decreases 900 of the probe points of impacts.
- Start of next tick, probe continue travelling to next star.
- This repeats until the probe is destroyed or whatever.
It introduces three variables “X” (probes per time), “Y” (probe points of impact) and “Z” (probe speed), but the model would be simplified just to Y. Letting “X” as “2 probes per cycle” and “Z” as 2xCarrierSpeed
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I have some ideas,
For the weapons, please do not add +3 weapons JAY… theres better ways to solve the problem lol
So +3 weapons is to just stop early game rushes which I personally do not believe is a problem as it makes the opening of the game really exiting to play as it adds more depth to the game in terms of strategy.
At the moment we get +1 defender bonus which means the defender is already at an advantage in the early game meaning this should be enough to deter early game rushes however, it is still possible to do an early rush against an unsuspecting opponent which makes it interesting… I dont believe its a good idea to do early rush because you commit your entire fleet before probably you even sorted out any diplomacy lol and then other people are going to see your weak number of ships even if you succeed in the rush, your not going to have many ships lift afterwards.
Also +3 weapons will slow the entire game down not just the opening but I have a different idea which can achieve the same thing but without slowing down the game.
Instead of adding +3 weapons to the defender, why not just add a peace cycle, where no one is allowed to attack for a set amount of cycles when the game stars. So maybe the peace cycle at the start of the game is just 1 production cycle where no one is allowed to participate in combat.
This would change the game in several ways:
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Problem in coding where two players arrive at the same star at the same time, or they both scout a neutral star but someone has to get there first, how would this be handled…
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Early game scouting would go un-contested because if you scout the stars first the opponents can not go any further than that even if the stars are undefended due to attacking being disallowed.
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And obviously attacking is impossible during this period so it significantly reduces the game depth.
May I point out something else also, if you add +3 defender weapons JAY, this is going to encourage players to team up against just one person lol how do I know because this is exactly what I am going to do myself to solve the problem ;p
To be honest I do not like my own idea either of adding the peace cycle. Its a complex game, and complex games are fun games I believe… Id rather it to be just kept as it is for the early game.
Maybe a bigger improvement would be simply to just add distance between player star scatter… So each player has there own group of stars but they need to research a hyperspace tech to actually reach other players… you could use a formula where the game gets the starting hyperspace level and adds distance between the players accordingly so that they need +1 hyperspace to reach other players, however the higher the hyperpsace range start of at the longer its going to take to research and end the peace era of the opening game.
I really like how it is at the moment, your scouts could accidentally run into other players, it keeps you on your toes. But maybe +3 weapons is the most easiest and probably the only way to solve rushing in the early game but it comes with its own set of problems… the fact that people are going to want to team up against just one person more, I mean some people do this anyway, but I personally dont and I would if the defender had +3
Instead of getting rushed by one person you will end up getting rushed by two people. This is what id rather happen, for everyone in the game to be put into the same formal alliance for a set amount of ticks, this is exactly the same as the peace cycle thing but it makes use of the already built in game formal alliances so it reduces coding for JAY.
This would affect the game in the same ways we probably all know how formal alliances work and its already a long suggestion so I am not going to explain that, but you will be able to see everyone’s carriers during the opening of the game while we are at peace which could make diplomacy interesting.
Or a more complex way to do it, add everyone into a formal alliance at the start but dont ban attacking, still allow attacking but when you attack it automatically puts those two players at war. So this would mean the only thing deterring an early game rush is that everyone can actually see it coming.
Weapons Tech also starts at 3 too, so the combat result for the first day is exactly what we have now. 2-1 for the defender.
Tech may unlock faster, and ship production is very fast, so it very likely that tank rushing is just as possible in Proteus right now.
I see, So am I right to believe that the changes in weapons means that when you research weapons 4 in proteus it is less useful than researching weapons 2 normally? because when you get weapons 2 it negates the defenders bonus completely. So in proteus level 4 weapons early doesn’t make it 2-2 on weapons? If that is the case I would agree it is probably better.
yep, that right.
I do kind of like that if a neighbour gets weapons 2 when you don’t, you have a real problem.
With faster ship production, we might find that just out spending a neighbour on industry might produce a similar effect.
Cool, how does scanning currently work? I read there was something different and people coming up with ideas, maybe I will get one ;p by the way it would be useful to have a sticky thread with all of the update notes or something or planned updates.
Scanning is kind of cross between a dark galaxy and standard game where you can see all the stars, but not who own them (until they are in scanning range.)
OHH sounds awesome, so could I accidentally jump onto a neutral star which is not actually neutral? if my hyperspace is further than my scanning?
I wish i had put my thoughts on probes in this form, so sexy, and i love the points of impact idea but I personally think it is a bit too much extra math for the defenders side when shifting forces to intercept it. May also have the negative affect of giving the probe to much combat value this way by causing you too pull X amount of forces to destroy and enemy probe in an awkward part of your space, or maybe that would be a good thing so that everyone is not always shifting every ship they have to their outside borders?
another thing to mention is that probes would be fantastic if wormholes where added as mentioned in another thread because that would be the first thing i sent through one instead of a carrier full of ships that could unintentionally start a conflict on the other side 