posted 03-08-99 10:51 AM ET     

SOOOO... I ran a test...
parked a probe next to a Hive city. The city had defenses vs probes. And the "announced odds" prior to trying to steal tech was stated as "50%,34%".

Here's the test:

I saved. Reentered the game.
Did the probe attempt anyway. Of course the team was eliminated.

Reloaded the save game and repeated.
I did this 50 {!} times.

ALL 50 times, the probe attempt failed.

I would have suspected that about half of the time, I would have had some sort of success..