[JonnyBGood]

Personally I'd still include scanning on the tech tree. What I would do is alter the way it's laid out.

Snapshot-unit-planet-surface-tech-news-fleet-jumpgate-advanced unit (with a relatively similar, probably slightly shorter overall research time as the current scan tree).

Snapshot is a jgp of a planet you're attacking only on the tick you're attacking. This has the added bonus of getting rid of that ultra-faggoty start of round desperation search for a jgp for a fairly negligible investment. At least if people refuse to do the 8/9 tick research or whatever they only have themselves to blame.

There are some slight problems as this gives a little bit of an edge to xan but I'd suspect it'd be relatively minor. Obviously this still leaves distwhoring as a feasible approach and requires hardcore scanners to scan them but to be honest I don't really see this as a terrible thing. Most players who scan for a round these days are scanning so they can take a break from playing normally. The number of people who actually sacrifice their planet is, in my opinion, comparatively low.