Scans

Radar tells you something is there. A scan tells you what it is. Scans are active intelligence: you spend energy to point a probe at a target and get back a reading. The trade is always the same one, more energy buys you a sharper picture. No scan is perfect, and learning to read deliberately fuzzy numbers is part of playing well.

How scans work

Every scan targets a specific colony or outpost and costs energy from your stockpile. The result is not exact. Each scan has an accuracy band, and the values it returns are intentionally off by some margin. You are reading an estimate, not a ledger, so plan around ranges rather than treating a single number as truth.

Scans come in two tiers. Basic scans are cheap and rough. Advanced scans cost more, read deeper, and come back tighter.

Basic scans

Basic scans cost about 10 energy each and return values within roughly 50% accuracy, so treat the answer as a ballpark and not a count you can bet your army on.

• Military scan. Reads the hostile squads sitting at a target right now, broken down by chassis. Use it to judge whether a place is defended before you commit an attack.
• Incoming scan. Reads hostile squads heading toward a target. This is your early-warning tool, the difference between bracing for an attack and being surprised by one.

Cheap as they are, basic scans are the bread and butter of staying alive. Running an incoming scan on yourself before you go idle is one of the simplest good habits in the game.

Advanced scans

Advanced scans cost about 20 energy and come back within roughly 25% accuracy, so the picture is meaningfully sharper than a basic scan.

• Advanced military scan. Goes past raw counts and reveals the weapon mix and percentages at a target, plus its unit counts, including trained units not assigned to a squad. This is what tells you not just how big a force is but what it is built to kill.
• Colony scan. Reads a target colony's worker population and resource stockpiles. Use it to find soft, resource-rich targets, or to time a strike for when an enemy is low.

When an attack actually matters (you are about to spend a real army, or pick a conquest target) the extra energy for an advanced scan usually pays for itself.

Why a scan can come back empty

Squads that are still traveling can be deliberately delayed and hidden from view until they arrive. A military scan only reads what is present at the target, so a force that has not landed yet will not show up there. An incoming scan is the counter: it is designed to read approaching squads, and a well-timed one can catch movement that a military scan would miss entirely. If a target looks suspiciously empty, scan for incoming before you trust it.

See also: Intelligence and Radar for the passive coverage scans build on, and Spies and Agents for intelligence gathered from inside enemy lines.