System Scanning
System scanning received a big revamp during Kali, making it more of a mini profession rather than just a backburner skill you always have had and never really used. Don’t get me wrong, you can still use the normal probes, which will probably become known as recon probes as they fit in the nice new, fast recon probe launcher. I believe these are only useful for finding ships these days. You wont go finding hidden deadspace complexes with them.
Kali saw 17, and as of today 18 new probes, and a few new skills to boots your astrometrics skill. The probes come in 4 main flavours, each available in 4 strengths. You have Gravimetric, Magnometric, Ladar and Radar, each type being split into Quest, Pursuit, Comb and Sift models. These 4 probe models cover different ranges from 4AU down to 0.5AU, becoming more and more accurate as you reduce the scan range.
To start scanning a system you need to 1st pick a suitable target system, you want to look for a system with a few planets within 4AU of each other, as you will be able to cover more space in less scans. The new complexes and deadspace regions are all to be found within 4AU of a planet. So you pick a planet and fire out a Quest probe when you arrive, you must ALWAYS have a probe of the same type in your probe launcher as they one that is scanning for the results to work. A system scan takes a LONG time, but this can be reduced by flying a decent covert ops ship and training some advanced astrometrics skills. Choosing the flavour of the scanners you use is pretty much a guess to start with, but a good starting point is to use the same probe as the type of native rats ships use. I mean use a LADAR probe to scan in regions owned predominantly by races that pilot ships using LADAR sensors.
When you run your 1st scan you want to pick Cosmic Signatures to scan for (or whatever its called), this should only find your new complexes, asteroid belts gas clouds etc. If you get no results from your 1st scan, try a different flavour of Quest probe. The ‘wrong type’ of probe may still pick up a signal, but it will be much weaker and have a greater margin of error. If you get a long range hit with a probe and its of a good signal strength, this is the time to warp to this spot and start with the short range, high accuracy probes. If you pick the correct type again you should get 1 0m margin of error hit and be able to warp right to your newly discovered complex. It may not be a good idea to warp to this spot with your scanning ship, as some of the areas have no gates and just drop you right in the action. Another thing to bear in mind is you get no difficulty rating, as you do with standard complexes, so warping in with a shuttle or a disposable frigate is the key.
I found a rouge drone complex last night in a high sec system, had a peek with a shuttle, and everything looked easy, a dozen or so drones. I decided to take my Hawk in for some rocket related carnage, oops! sums up this decision…. There were a couple of drone types in there I had not seen before, and the ones I had, appeared to be a fair bit tougher than usual. My hawk was down and out in under a minute webbed and scrambled within seconds, the dozen or so drones that I spotted on the 1st shuttle based encounter turned out to be a few more than a dozen. I would say it was on par with a hard level 3 or easy level 4 mission and this was in a 0.8 system… So be careful or take a buddy with you to get shot 1st….
As of todays patch things may have changed. There is to be a multi-frequency scan probe added, I guess this will scan all types better than the ‘wrong type’ of probe but not as good as the ‘right type’. It will probably make an ideal ‘primary scan probe’ discovering the 1st general signal. We shall see……….
Kali saw 17, and as of today 18 new probes, and a few new skills to boots your astrometrics skill. The probes come in 4 main flavours, each available in 4 strengths. You have Gravimetric, Magnometric, Ladar and Radar, each type being split into Quest, Pursuit, Comb and Sift models. These 4 probe models cover different ranges from 4AU down to 0.5AU, becoming more and more accurate as you reduce the scan range.
To start scanning a system you need to 1st pick a suitable target system, you want to look for a system with a few planets within 4AU of each other, as you will be able to cover more space in less scans. The new complexes and deadspace regions are all to be found within 4AU of a planet. So you pick a planet and fire out a Quest probe when you arrive, you must ALWAYS have a probe of the same type in your probe launcher as they one that is scanning for the results to work. A system scan takes a LONG time, but this can be reduced by flying a decent covert ops ship and training some advanced astrometrics skills. Choosing the flavour of the scanners you use is pretty much a guess to start with, but a good starting point is to use the same probe as the type of native rats ships use. I mean use a LADAR probe to scan in regions owned predominantly by races that pilot ships using LADAR sensors.
When you run your 1st scan you want to pick Cosmic Signatures to scan for (or whatever its called), this should only find your new complexes, asteroid belts gas clouds etc. If you get no results from your 1st scan, try a different flavour of Quest probe. The ‘wrong type’ of probe may still pick up a signal, but it will be much weaker and have a greater margin of error. If you get a long range hit with a probe and its of a good signal strength, this is the time to warp to this spot and start with the short range, high accuracy probes. If you pick the correct type again you should get 1 0m margin of error hit and be able to warp right to your newly discovered complex. It may not be a good idea to warp to this spot with your scanning ship, as some of the areas have no gates and just drop you right in the action. Another thing to bear in mind is you get no difficulty rating, as you do with standard complexes, so warping in with a shuttle or a disposable frigate is the key.
I found a rouge drone complex last night in a high sec system, had a peek with a shuttle, and everything looked easy, a dozen or so drones. I decided to take my Hawk in for some rocket related carnage, oops! sums up this decision…. There were a couple of drone types in there I had not seen before, and the ones I had, appeared to be a fair bit tougher than usual. My hawk was down and out in under a minute webbed and scrambled within seconds, the dozen or so drones that I spotted on the 1st shuttle based encounter turned out to be a few more than a dozen. I would say it was on par with a hard level 3 or easy level 4 mission and this was in a 0.8 system… So be careful or take a buddy with you to get shot 1st….
As of todays patch things may have changed. There is to be a multi-frequency scan probe added, I guess this will scan all types better than the ‘wrong type’ of probe but not as good as the ‘right type’. It will probably make an ideal ‘primary scan probe’ discovering the 1st general signal. We shall see……….
posted by Bambi at 11:20 am
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