Fog of war#

Fog of war is a common strategy game tactic used to limit a player's knowledge of systems outside their immediate realm of influence. Planets displayed with the name "--" in the map are affected by the fog of war effect. This means that you don't know if the planet has a colony. You do however know if the planet has exium, but you don't know the exium percentage.

There are four ways to lift the fog of war.

• Any systems containing a planet you own, or have occupied, are visible to you at all times.
• Any system in range of the  scanners  of one of your not-occupied planets will be visible.
• Any system in which one or more of your fleets are located orbiting one planet will be completely visible to you until all fleets are removed from the system. The size and composition of the fleet does not matter.
• Any system in which a member of your empire or your alliance has either a fleet, a base or is in the range of one of his scanners will be visible to you as long as their fleet remains, and the member remains as member of your empire or alliance.

In order to gather information about systems concealed by the fog of war, you must move a fleet to a planet within that system or extend scanner coverage over it.