No, he was specifically talking about me pinging a planet. Twice I've done it and he's said that the enemies can see it. He said that he read it in the readme document that came with the game. I was extremely skeptical of this myself until during that same game, I saw pings on planets suddenly appear without getting the notification that an anlly had done so.

I have not yet tested it in game as I've been more focused on simply playing.

Does anyone know with absolute certainty how the pinging system works?

Seriously? Wow, that's interesting. Do you happen to know in which manner they appear? Is it like every 1000th game where all pings are shown, or is it more like every 1000th ping is shown? What I mean is: does it happen randomly, or does it always happen if some conditions are fulfilled and the rest of the game is "screwed"?

Are we talking about locked or unlocked teams here? I might understand if the enginge gets confused when alliances are formed/broken all the time, but seeing pings with locked teams sounds rather serious to me. Anyway, without explanation most pings aren't informative at all, so I guess the issue ain't that important. Still, good to know. Won't ping on crucial spots anymore