Scanners, Cloaks & Intel

Accurate as of v2.0.18 (August 2026).

StarNav 2002

The passive scanner. Once installed it runs continuously, costs nothing, and takes no turns.

Range is min(level, 3) hops. Level 4 and 5 do not see further — they see better.

Detail resolves per hop distance:

• empty — the sector exists and is linked; nothing else resolves.
• POI — points of interest: ports, planets, landmarks.
• full — everything the sector holds.

Sectors the device cannot fully resolve show as unknown, not as empty. That distinction matters: an unknown sector is not a safe sector.

Deployables — mines, drones, turrets, buoys — are only reported at StarNav 2 or better, by kind and quantity, never by owner.

Active scans

A deliberate sweep of a radius around you, costing 1 turn per ring, radius 1 to 3. It reports sectors and hazards, plus deployables at StarNav 2+.

Use active scans when you’re standing somewhere and need to know what’s one jump out. Use StarNav for the ambient picture.

Cloaks

Ship cloaking devices

Bought at any blackmarket service for 2,500 cr, up to 5 at a time. Activating one hides your ship for a fixed 2 hours from activation.

This used to run “until the next 4-hour world boundary”, which meant activating at 03:59 bought you sixty seconds. It’s a fixed window now.

A cloak breaks on action. Trading, moving and warping all drop it. A cloak is for sitting still somewhere dangerous, not for travelling invisibly.

While cloaked:

• You cannot be attacked. A cloaked ship reads as not present to an attacker.
• Limpets waiting in a sector cannot newly latch onto you.
• Limpets already attached keep reporting. A cloak fools sensors, not a device bolted to your hull.

Seeing through cloaks

StarNav 4 is the threshold. At effective StarNav 4 or better, cloaked ships are visible and attackable.

“Effective” because some hulls add to it for cloak detection only:

Your actual StarNav data is untouched by these. They only move the cloak threshold.

The Cartographer’s Dream also reads the passive sweep one level deeper than your installed drive — a level-4 drive resolves like a 5.

Goods cloaking devices

A different item entirely, and not a ship cloak. A Goods Cloaking Device (750 cr, blackmarket) reduces a customs scan chance by 50 percentage points — and is consumed by the attempt whether or not it worked.

See Smuggling.

Cloak fields

A sector-level deployable, not a ship system. 5,000 cr, one per sector, two per player, expires after 48 hours. It contributes no attack and no defense; it is area concealment.

Paid intel

Ports running the tavern or research service sell intel for 2,000 cr.

It reveals the five nearest unvisited sectors and marks them visited — and since v2.0.14 the reveal names what’s actually there: real ports, planets and landmarks, not just “a stretch of space”. The visited part is the important bit: warp only reaches visited sectors, so intel is how you extend your warp network without flying the hops.

It pays no exploration XP — you didn’t go there. If the galaxy is fully explored you get NOTHING_TO_REVEAL and pay nothing.

The price board

The Merchant Exchange’s exclusive service. Live prices and stock for every port in every sector you have visited, nearest first, up to 200 ports. Free, no turns.

It is the best intel in the game and it costs nothing but knowing where the Exchange is.

Advanced Sensors

The tech module (15,000 cr) is not a scanner. It is a combat counter: it cuts a stealth attacker’s first-strike bonus from +12 percentage points of win probability down to +6.

The Federation patrol line’s sensor-edge signature counts as Advanced Sensors for this purpose, on top of its cloak-detection bonus.

What nobody can see

• Who owns a deployable — from a scan. Scans report kind and quantity only. Detonations are another matter: a mine that hits you names its owner in your report.
• Exact player balances. Leaderboards stopped exposing them in v2.0.8.
• A limpet on your hull. Attachment is silent. The only way to find out is a 10,000 cr shipyard sweep.