Having searched the wiki and forum, i have found many interesting people saying many interesting things, however, there appears to be no applied theorycrafting that mathematically describes the relationship between scanning power and number of planets in a players database.

My question for the community is thus, what is the formula for scanning power to scan a new planet with regard to total number of planets already found(planetary cloaking aside)

ie: x scanning power = y maximum in database.

I don't think anyone but Dan knows.

I can't really remember, but last 2 times I did a scan blitz I think I saw it as follows:

"planets" means total planets scanned
"scan" means scanning power

If planets > scan/10, then chance = 0%
If planets < scan/20, then chance = 100%

I actually have enough energy with a cube that I could reach "grayed out" scan button by scanning repeatedly at like 5200 scan. I have 473 planets after that. It's actually a diminishing % formula, in that once you get under 100% it drops rapidly, then starts to drop more slowly until you get to under 5%, somewhere under 5% before, it would not allow you to scan anymore. The higher the scan, the more planets you can drag out of this low % portion. At smaller scan values like up to 500 or 1000, it may look more like that formula, scan/10 = max planets. That might be a good rough approximation. I actually prefer the % chance we used to have, and not the "good/fair" buckets which are just for each 20-25% increment. What needed to actually happen is when you fail from cloak, it said "You scans could not lock on to the planet's flux" or whatever. Since that never got fixed, ppl were still confused why it was failing; obscuring the % is basically because ppl didn't realize that 99% (really 100%) means 100% chance of getting phase 1 right, and phase 2 MIGHT be a cloak check that fails.

From my other post:

I observed right after the planet count increases, usually 50-100k adjustment, go do a scan run. I have found most of the scanned planets were 0 other ppl scanned, suggesting it takes from the pool of new planets at least a % of your scans. The failure message was still wrong last time I did it, in that it doesn't say the cloaking is blocking you, but there's no other explanation. Higher scan should result in less failures from this cause; it was 10-15% at 5700 scan @ 99%. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q40VVv7vIhM for a scan run video; "Scan failed to find a new planet." was the message for cloak failure (I guess). I'm not sure if it's really supposed to calculate "almost 99%" and drops off or something before it shows that it drops. The other solution is a % of scans are (if not already) find/create a random new world, something like 25%, but I know there is a planet/active player balancing going on as well. The planet distribution is unlikely to change for the newly generated planets in the pool.

-- I will try to actually use this video to get an approximate algorithm. Assuming it hasn't changed (and I don't think it has other than to cover up the exact %), and you can see how many planets I get at that scan exactly before it drops < 99% , and how it tends to drop off in % chance on the old system in that video link.

See also : viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3449

5719 scan:
planet/chance

345 = 100%
368 = 50%
385 = 33%
399-400 = 25%
411-412 = 20%
428 = 15%

So were suposing there to be a scaling element involved as that explains the % sucess rate and varying values of each %, from my own experience i have done scans at 99%, finding a planet made it 95%, the next planet made it 80% and so on.

So then, does this "scaling value element" relate to player rank, scanning power directly, or number of planets in the whole galaxy, or number of planets in the players database list.

ie; scanning power - (or / ) "scaling value" = total number of planets that can be held in list before being unable to scan further.

some numbers ive been getting from asking around are

rank 359 : scan power 6097 : 450 maximum planets
rank 466 : scan power 5098 : 469 maximum planets

so as we can see there is definately a difference according to rank, in these 2 real examples the lower ranked player has higher scan but roughly equal total planets. if we presume the scaling value to be according to rank then its reasonable to state that scan values are worth more to lower levels. this tracks from what we see with new players who are able to scan 20-30 planets with basic non researched scanner equipment.

scan power affected by x = maximum planets ,using the above data this formula comes within a 5% error

(((scan - rank) / current total)* rank) /10 = current total [-+5%]
(((6097-359) / 450) *359) /10 = 457.8
(((5098-466) / 469) *466) /10 = 460

while this is pretty, it doesnt tell us anything, the 5% error marjin is unaceptable, the division of 10 at the end comes from nowhere, and the formula requires the maximum value already being a known figure(which was what were trying to determine in the first place lol )

possible other factors, total number of planets in galaxy, rank*4, current planets found

I don't think rank factors into it, only scanning and amount of planets scanned.

5719 scan, complete run:

% and planetcount

BinaryMan

Thank you so much. My last scan was December and I complained. The very next day or two the planet count increased by 100,000+
My legion mate did and scan and got a successful run.

DAN you really should have the program constantly add planets rather than 50-100K at a time. I would imagine easier said than done.
I'll have to watch for the next planet increase to do my next scan; need to purchase one more expensive scanner.

No, I don't think that matters; when the "new never scanned" planet pool gets low, either automatically or Dan manually adds a batch of planets generated randomly to it. Everyone seems to pull a certain % of these planets so that they are not all overlapping all the time with already scanned planets. So it doesn't necessarily matter if you scan right after these are added, I just always felt that it couldn't hurt

Has anyone had any new thoughts on this subject?