ships
buildings
basic research
probes
troopers
deep scan probe
deep scan probe
Can detect fleet signatures. On contact, it sends out com relays to the ships in that sector. It can also detect cloaking signatures

Scanradius: 5
speed: warp 10

Researchtime: 2 h
Buildingtime: 7 h


Needed research:
improved field theories

Following researches:
  pyramid-device - 24 h

  —> Forum Topic about this ship
redzed333: Once this probe has reached its destination and reports back will I lose that information if I destroy it?
al12: Yes, the information isn't saved anywhere so you loose it.
Robert Roy: You can save it by sending a message to yourself with the dsp data in that message.
Thus you can allways look at what somebody had. Be carefull, that person might have changed his fleet setup when you attack him later on, but I can tell you that the majority of the people use the same setup for quite some time.
admin: only if you found the base fleet of a player by accident, then this players coordinates will be stored in your com-list
colinthecorgi: Here is suggestion for new players:

If you are investigating your surroundings, use the investigation probe. Send it 16 sectors away along some axis or something. It has a nice range of 10, so it will cover 8 times more space than a DSP for investigation purposes. However, it is useless as an aid for battles other than finding coords.


The DSP on the other hand is very useful for two things:
- Keeping an eye on fleets close to your base (put a DSP one step from base)
- Looking at targets. Leave a DSP at target, and you can follow the target area and yours and anybody elses incoming or existing fleets at the target area. You get a nice view of the enemy "fleet signature", which is the spread of enemy ships across the classes (c1, c2, c3 and c4). You can't see exactly what ships there are, but you can guess by looking at the enemy race, and calculating some MP (everybody has about 5000 except a flag commander who has 2500 extra locked to defensive duties).

The fact that a DSP also does some investigation work is just a bonus. DSPs are for battle, investigation probes and wide scanners for discovering enemy coords.