Actually I never agree'd with a planet going warpable before shields. L4 should be shielded, and L5 warpable would seem to me to be a better order of advancement.

i realize that we suspend reality when playing tradewars, but 'realistically' speaking, probes are not battle units. the day that my fighters can't destroy a probe without getting destroyed themselves is the day i hand them their pink slips and enlist new fighters. however, i would say this - perhaps it would be appropriate for the eprobe to report back what it saw in that sector before it gets blown up. right now the probe gets destroyed before it can report its findings. taking sci-fi as a reference, even in star wars empire strikes back, the empire finds the rebel base even though the probe was destroyed. what good is a probe if it can't tell you anything about the enemy?

this would, however, drastically change gameplay in TW.

Would it? I mean if it only reported the first sector it hit... that's not exactly info you couldn't get via holoscan.

Still, mebbe the probe is booby trapped w/ corbo or something . That's why the fig gets blown.

currently probing just tells you there were enemy units in a sector, not whose they are and what else is in the sector. so if i go probe 1000 sectors, i have to go investigate in a ship, using turns, to find a particular enemy. if probes showed the last sector's contents, then you could narrow your list down before you go spend turns, and if the probe results show your enemy's base, then the list gets really short.

also you could use probes as a remote holoscan to spot photon traps before exposing yourself to the trap.

... and drop a planet adjacent to the trap if figged, fire and be gone or attack.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Don't most people surround critical areas and the like to prevent pdrop scanning like prome mentioned?

If they are smart

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

a little late here..
but..

not a bad idea BigD.. although I would make the change of.. if a planet was in sector..maybe fig should not be destroyed. Thinking that (esp unlim games) credits are usually unlimited... so I could buy loads of probes and kill and the sector figs at a base and make invading easier.