Re-working planetary information

Great work guys on the latest patch. MANY improvements both small and large. I would have left this game last week if it weren't for your commitment to solving these problems quickly and effectively.
On that note, I was hoping to see an improvement to planetary information but didn't so... here are my 2 cents

Probes and/or planetary information needs to be reworked. Ideally, when a ship enters a solar system, or if you have a planet in that system you should be able to see who owns each planet in that system without having to go to each individual planet. This information should be remembered, but update only if you still have a ship or planet within that system. Besides the unnecessary discomfort to exploration and intel that the current system causes, it also produced one of the most odd circumstances in gaming memory:
I was at war with a player and entered a new solar system full of planets I didn't own. I wanted to know which planets if any, were his but I couldn't get info on a planet without having ships there, and I couldn't land ships there without auto attacking which destroys the planet before I could even see who's planet I was destroying... I looked at my list of players with war status to try to sort it out but had many players to choose from... crazy...

Hopefully the new notification system will help but there is NO reason a ship or planet within a solar system shouldn't be able to see who owns another planet within that system... is there??

Actually this was brought up in the dev meeting the other day. We have it in the plans to provide more information to the users in a future update. We need to rework a few things client and server side to allow that.

I can say it will be in the near future, maybe even 1.0.8. It didn't make it in to this last push because we were so focused on trying to work out the major issues with the bigger problems people were encountering. Most of which are resolved. Now we are starting to work on some of the information displays, and systems that will allow people to flag things, as well as better information displays.

Seeing planet details from the sun is one of the things we are looking to add. Thanks for the input. The more we hear about a specific topic helps it move up the priority list.

+1 for seeing all planets in a system if you have a ship or planet anywhere in the systems.

I'd like notifications seeing as push isn't working maybe a message every time I am attacked or lose a planet.

One thing I would like to see is that when you are at the lowest zoom... the whole galaxy zoom, you end up in the far left corner and I have to zoom around to find the sector again. Any way to make it so when you zoom completely out, you are at least in the galaxy?

+2 for Planet info from sun. And definitely notifications if attacked, even when Push is activated.

That's a nice demand on having more information available, but it's very one sided. If I was the guy with the planets, I wouldn't want any joe shmo be able to see my planets information. And game is actually designed around that...

If anything I'd advise to ether add a new ship "spy probe" that is invisible to other players and can see and record information wile positioned at the sectors star.
1.This unit should also cost like 1mil CO and 10k RO.
2.Maybe have ATK 150 and DEF 100.
3.this unit would be able to have a special assassination attack that would have 500 ATK and would be on 1 hour cool-down.
4. You would need some type of tear 4 skill to build this unit.
5.The only time this unit is visible is if he attacks first or if other player has the same unit.
6.hostile aliens will not be able to see this unit.
7. During an AI flight, the ship will also uncover information 1 sector around it (the information would be basic, kind of what you see now after a sector has been explored).



If new "advanced exploration" ship is too much. A new skill could be added that would allow you to see more information about planets without landing on them.
Conversely this skill could be trained to block/hide planet information from other players.

Forget the idea of a special unit (especially with those stats, that's ridiculous). At the very least, you should be able to get an estimate of the forces in orbit of a planet without actually going in to orbit. I think this information should be available by default from the star, but if it has to be a probe's "active ability," fine. What is becoming increasingly difficult to stomach is the deathtrap nature of enemy colonies/fleets. By stacking your ships and orbitals correctly, you can make it very difficult to tell if a planet is even a colony or an outpost, and what kind of fleet is there. It doesn't make sense that you can have a pile of 100 dreadnoughts in orbit, and then stick a destroyer on top, and the only thing anyone sees is the destroyer.

I suppose some of this will be fixed with actual battle reports implemented, but I'm getting really tired of playing the "guess what's at this planet" game as far as combat goes. With super-powered colonies, entire fleets can be wiped out instantly.

When you have enough trained skills, you get a limited version of see everything in the system. You can see all the ships, but you can't get the planet details.

Yeah, I'm in 100% agreement that seeing planet owner, planet orbitals, outpost or colony and detailed ship count at planet should be a default ability if you have either a ship or a planet of your own in that system. Supamand, this wouldn't be one sided. If my fleet comes into a solar system you have a planet in, at least now you could see the size and owner of it.

Well at the very least you could suicide a scout drone into the planet and just read the combat report. I haven't seen it yet, but assuming that the combat report gives you the ship/orbital count.