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 Ether Probes give away your position? 
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Unread post Ether Probes give away your position?
I have heard that launching ether probes can give away your position. Can anyone elaborate on this for me?

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Sat Jan 24, 2015 12:36 pm
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Unread post Re: Ether Probes give away your position?
I'm sure someone might have a better answer; here's mine:

If I shoot out 100 probes to that farthest Deadends, from Dock, and 10 of them are blocked along the way, you can make certain deductions (for example: blocked path relative to game start, versus time it takes for planets to reach LVL4, etc.

Alternatively, if you send a probe to a sector that has a port, but no enemy fighter, and you check the Port-Report... on occasion, you might see port values bellow 100%, which could indicate that someone was recently there (non alien game).

Over and above all this, Probes help you hunt for enemy fighters using zero turns. Side benefit is that you also get CIM data which you could use in conjunction with a CIM-hunter script. Data-Mining in other words.


Here's a super secret tactic that I use in turn games (towards game start ie: 1st day): When searching out the universe, I'll send a probe out to a dead end, and I'll blind-warp to an empty sector, drop some figs, scout around a bit, and repeat. Not too many people are brave enough to use this tactic but it has huge benefits.

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Sat Jan 24, 2015 3:49 pm
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Unread post Re: Ether Probes give away your position?
Thanks for the information Lonestar. I did learn some things but maybe I was not clear enough in my question. What I was meaning, was, can someone figure out where the launcher is launching the probes from by somehow putting together the sectors in which the probes are destroyed according to the launcher's fighters.

For example:

You have some figs down throughout the universe. I am searching for your base so I start probing the largest bubbles and work my way down my bubble list. Some of my probes do not reach the targeted sectors because you have figs all over the place. You are alerted by your figs in which sectors my probes are destroyed. Can you figure out where I am launching the probes from by taking note of the sectors in which your figs destroyed my probes?

Maybe I misheard but I thought I heard once that you can give away your position by shooting probes from your base.

Hope this jibberish makes some sense to someone.

Thanks

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Sat Jan 24, 2015 5:18 pm
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Unread post Re: Ether Probes give away your position?
Yes, your Launch position can be found out, which is why it is usually a fed safe player that probes from fed-space.

There are a number of factors that you can use to determine where a probe came from. I would describe my 'technique' as Reverse-Mapping. If for example a Probe bangs into a fighter in a 3-way sector, you can usually determine the originating direction if, looking at the Map you can see that the probe could only come from one of 3 possible directions. It's difficult for me to explain, but you create a list of possible Area's by a process of elimination. If you're actively tracing hits, moving around and placing fighters in empty sectors, you can narrow down a origin. SWATH's map is an incredible tool for this type of 'work.'

I suppose this would be easier to imagine if you picture yourself sitting in your DeadEnd sector, firing off Probes... there's a limited number of paths that they can travel (branch out), before they bang into an enemy Fighter (sometime multiple times). Like the leaves on the stem of a flower.. all eventually bring you to Ground-zero. heh

Hope that helps

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-= QUANTUM Computing 101: 15 = 3 x 5 ... 48% of the time.
-= There are 10 types of people in the world: Those that understand Binary and those who do not
-= If Oil is made from Dinosaurs, and Plastic is made from Oil... are plastic Dinosaurs made from real Dinosaurs?
-= I like to keep my friends and my enemies rich, and wait to see which is which - Tony Stark (R.I.P.)


Sat Jan 24, 2015 7:14 pm
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Unread post Re: Ether Probes give away your position?
Yes that helps. At least gives me a way to think about it. I've been trying to wrap my head around it for a while but just couldn't come up with anything.

Thanks

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Sat Jan 24, 2015 8:34 pm
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