Probes
Probes are your kingdom's espionage arm. They gather intelligence, steal resources, and establish covert access into rival kingdoms. A steady probe operation can be just as valuable as a strong fleet - knowing what your enemy has is often the first step to defeating them.
Probe Facilities
Probes are produced by Probe Facilities. Each facility can hold up to 999 probes and generates approximately 99 probes per tick. Building more facilities increases both your capacity and your generation rate.
Without any facilities you cannot conduct probe missions, so securing at least one Probe Facility early is important.
Mission Limits
By default, you can send up to 5 probe missions every 5 hours. Once a mission is sent, that slot is occupied for 5 hours before it refreshes.
This limit can be increased through the Advanced Probe Ops research tree, allowing experienced kingdoms to run considerably more missions per window.
Mission Types
| Mission | Target |
|---|---|
| Steal Energy | Siphons energy from the target's reserves |
| Steal Mass | Raids the target's industrial stores for mass |
| Steal Credits | Hacks the target's treasury for credits |
| Steal Research | Extracts research data from the target's labs |
| Kidnap | Captures a portion of the target's population |
| Spy | Takes a one-time snapshot of the target's fleets and defences |
| Sabotage Shields | Weakens or disables the target's planetary shields |
| Infiltrate | Plants a hidden backdoor in the target's systems |
Sabotage Shields requires the relevant research to be unlocked before it becomes available. All other missions are available from the start.
Spy Mission
The Spy mission produces a full intelligence report on the target at the moment it is run. This includes:
- Fleet strength, fleet positions, and return timers
- Shield and defence emplacement counts
- Missile stockpile information
If the attacker's total fleet strength is less than 50% of the defender's, some defensive data will be obscured in the report. This intel threshold encourages players to build up before launching high-stakes attacks rather than relying on cheap reconnaissance against stronger enemies.
Spy data is a snapshot - it reflects the state of the target at the time the mission ran. A target can change significantly by the time you act on the information.
Infiltrate Mission
The Infiltrate mission is distinct from a standard Spy. Instead of generating an immediate report, it plants a backdoor into the target's systems. That backdoor can then be redeemed at any time before it expires, generating a fresh intelligence report pulled at the moment of redemption.
This means the intel is always current when you use it - not stale from when the backdoor was created.
Infiltrate backdoors can also be listed on the Marketplace and sold to other players. This creates a secondary market for intelligence, where the buyer chooses when to redeem and gets live data on the target.
Backdoors that are currently listed on the Marketplace cannot be redeemed by you until the listing ends. They expire if not used before their validity window closes.
Tips
- Build multiple Probe Facilities to reach maximum probe capacity faster and ensure you always have probes available when you need them.
- Use Spy before committing a fleet to a major attack. Attacking blind is a significant risk.
- Sabotage Shields before launching a missile strike to reduce the target's shield strength and increase structure damage.
- Infiltrate backdoors have value beyond your own use - consider listing them if you have no immediate attack plans.
- Kidnap missions can accelerate population growth when your own kingdom is land-limited.
