Probes are a late-game mechanic that occur during the Third Stage.
Summary
Probes will be used to explore and conquer the universe. Probes have several variables (listed below), which you can allocate with Trust. This Probe Trust is bought with yomi, and is first limited to a Max Trust of 20 until you buy Name the battles, then you will be able to improve it with honor
Caution: Value Drift increases with Probe Trust (the game log warns of this).
Note that Harvester and Wire Production Probes are not affected by the Swarm Gifts slider and will still make drones at maximum "thinking". Despite this however, the drones they produce do continue to be affected by this mechanic. Like in Stage 2, no matter how high the Probe setting is, no production can be made without some degree of "work".
Glitch
For some reason, Harvester Drone Production resets to zero when you reload or close the tab.
Variables
| Type | Effect |
|---|---|
| Speed | Modifies rate of exploration |
| Exploration | Rate at which probes gain access to new matter |
| Self-Replication | Rate at which probes generate more probes (each new probe costs 100 quadrillion clips) |
| Hazard Remediation | Reduces damage from dust, junk, radiation, and general entropic decay |
| Factory Production | Rate at which probes build factories (each new factory costs 100 million clips) |
| Harvester Drone Production | Rate at which probes spawn Harvester Drones (each new drone costs 2 million clips) |
| Wire Drone Production | Rate at which probes spawn Wire Drones (each new drone costs 2 million clips) |
| Combat | Ability for combat, unlocked through the self-named project |
Hazard Remediation
The Base Rate on Hazards is 1%. Every time it's evaluated, your total number of active probes is multiplied by it (you lose 1% if not protected). (Based on the source code this occurs 100 times a second). Hazard remediation, after a calculation, becomes a Protection Level which divide the Base Rate. So Protection 1 implies the rate of hazards is 25% of base rate (you "only" lose 25% of your probes from hazards) and this improves like this:
| Remediation | Protection | % of base rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 25% |
| 2 | 10 | 10% |
| 3 | 18 | 5% |
| 4 | 28 | 4% |
| 5 | 40 | 2.48% |
| 6 | 54 | 1.86% |
| 7 | 68 | 1.46% |
| 8 | 85 | 1.18% |
| 9 | 102 | 0.98% |
| 10 | 120 | 0.83% |
| 11 | 140 | 0.71% |
| 12 | 161 | 0.62% |
| 13 | 183 | 0.55% |
Trivia
- The name "Von Neumann Probe" is a reference to brilliant computer scientist and mathematician John von Neumann, best known for his work in early computer science and his development and proposal of game theory with Oskar Morgenstern.