Planetary Census (ct.lab arti)
Removes all unoccupied planets from your scan database.

Costs to create: 2500 flux probes, 500 android scientists, 100 star chart purgers, 100 energy

Costs to use: 1000 * [planets occupied] research points, 1 * [planets occupied] blue badges, 10 * [planets occupied] energy

meh

it's way expensive and way OP if you're the right rank with the right sort of AP.

expensive was the idea given the benefit.

i was trying to address the OP with the inclusion of blue badges for use ... would double or triple the number of blue badges work for that ? at 3x occupied planets ... that would be 666 for me ... and i have Blue Badges: 3713 ... so 5 uses for me until i hack some more blues.

How many people could honestly use this once a month?

It would be a slap in the face for a legion to get this and have no one in legion who can afford it.
Sorry, bad luck getting this when you've been trying for months to get the polaron emitter.

Variable costs aren't practical. Too much coding effort to do and too much hassle finding a balanced cost.

would be <1800 blue badges for me

just seems like a way to make scanning easier for low > mid rank players & possibly people with few planets but high AP.

I don't think this fits well in CTL, because it is only useful to a few legions and not others(much more so than any other artifact).
Thou something to the effect could certainly be useful, maybe a repeatable mission?
250 flux probe, 50 android scientist, 10 purger, 10,000 research, 200 energy per round, 10 rounds per completion sounds reasonable to me. In theory it can take badge too but I haven't seen any mission that cost badge yet so I'm not sure if it'd work. But badge are in same category as CTP so I don't see why not. Alternatively there can always have something for sale in Battle market for say 50 blues each and that artifact can, in turn, be used for the mission.
Well... purger count might be a bit low considering the potential AoE effect it can have. Ah... the science of balance....

But anyway, -1 to CTL, decent concept otherwise.

-1

Sounds like you want something implemented specifically to suit your individual play style.

Totally useless for low ranks due to the energy and research requirements (and lack of access to the ct lab for many), totally useless for the high ranks because the number of badges relative to the number of targets is prohibitive. This suggestion is ideal for just a handful of people who spend a lot of their time focusing on the hacks leaderboard.

bzzz. wrong. i *hate* hacking, and it pains me every time i burn off a null to wipe out a QFT effect, but i do it to be a well rounded PvP player. i have 3813 blue badges in cargo and there are over 25 players with even more hacks than i do who must have thousands of blue badges stockpiled waiting for something new. this suggestion was just looking for some way to use some of those up.

Uy23e is probably on the right track to suggest that this idea might work better as a repeatable mission instead of a ct.lab arti ...

So....your own individual play style.

I''d like to hijack this and ask why we even have a qft? It should either prevent hacking, much like a halc prevents attacks when tripped...or should do something more heinous. It goes off AFTER the fact. Some people, if not on a hack spree, per se, wouldn't even care. I could make some level of plausible argument for the other traps, but this one is outdated imho. For a low rank who may not have a lot of nulls and IF everyone or most everyone had a qft on, which i doubt, then it would have a minimal purpose.

As for mass purging, maybe just a possible drop for a mega purger (lets you do 10 at once, randomly from your non-owned list). That would be a real dice roll for people who want to keep certain legion planets or enemy ones on scan, but for the scorched earth scan for the hills player it would be nice. Just a thot. Mega could be npc drop, reg drop from arti pull or ct lab item?