Bear-Tech: Scan-Probing Complexes for Profit

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A guide to finding complexes using scan probes, with an addendum on using scan probes to find ships

There are two types of scan probes: Recon probes, which are very fast and find ships in just about 30 seconds, and scan probes, which are mainly used to find complexes, but can find ships as well - it just takes longer.

Gear

You will want the following gear to find complexes:

  • Scan Probe Launcher - make it a "Sisters of EvE" faction one if you can, that really saves some time
  • A Cloak
  • A Ship with scanning bonuses - frig or covops if you can fly the latter
  • Multispec probes, around 20 of
  • Probes for the type of plex you are most interested in (say radar). A good load to take is 20 Quests, and 5 each of the more precise ones (Pursuit, Comb, Sift). In my experience, I need lots of Quest, can follow that up with Sift if I am lucky and Comb if I am not, and have never needed a Pursuit yet. Note that Sister's probes are stronger than regular probes. Using Sister's Quest probes can really shorten the time you need to get that first "hit". In my experience, I am likely to get a hit on the first scan with Sister Quests, as opposed to needing around 10-15 scan attempts with regular Quest probes. Most of your time will be spent on multispecs and then quest - Sister Quests are well worth it if you plex scan regularly.
  • If you are in a covops, a few Gravity Capacitor Upgrade rigs can speed up your scan time further.

Type of complexes

The types of complexes you may find are:

  • Radar: Hacking - need a hacker (skill Hacking to III or better and a "Codebreaker" module) to exploit, good money. As in, invention (T2) stuff. A couple friends in BS minimum to run, usually. Rats will respawn and trigger.
  • Magnetometric: Archeological / Salvaging - need an archeologist/salvager (skill Archeology to III or better, Salvaging to III or better, an "Analyzer" module in a mid and a "Salvager" module in a high) to exploit, can be good money if you find a good one, and definitely mediocre for the smaller ones. Has been reported to be soloable in a well-tanked BC. Some small Archeology sites can absolutely be soloed in an AF. No respawns - what you see is what you get.
  • Gravimetric: Carebears unite! Roid fields. Good if you're looking to run a mining ops. Your usual belt rats; nothing that combat support can't handle.
  • Ladar: Gas Clouds. Also for carebears.
  • Unknown: Rats, basically. This can be "escalating path" stuff with a phat reward (faction loot) at the end, usually triggered by a structure in the 2nd room. Note that "escalating path" is going to send you all over creation, possibly into the next region over. You have 24 hours to do each "step" in the escalating path. These can get as hard as 10/10, so bring some friends. They do trigger, and they do spawn a ton of BS - so don't go through that gate until you are good and ready.

Skills

You can start scanning with minimal skills, but a little extra "oomph" goes a long way. Here're the skills that are of interest - they apply to all types of probe scanning, plex or ship equally.

  • Astrometrics. Basic skill needed to use scan probes. IV is the level you want to be able to use all probes.
  • Signal Acquisition. 10% bonus to scanning speed. You'll want this at IV, really. You need, at a minimum, Signal Acquisition I or CovOps I to be able to scan before your probes expire.
  • Astrometric Triangulation. 5% scan strength bonus - means you're more likely to hit something. IV is the recommended skill level.
  • Astrometric Pinpointing. 10% less deviation - means you're more likely to land right on top of what you're looking for. Train after triangulation, and then to IV.
  • Covops. Provided you are scanning in a covops frig, not a T1 scan-bonus frig, this will help you cut the scan time down. Train alternating with Signal Acquisition until you are at "IV". Eventually, if you go the "dedicated covops pilot to find targets" route, you'll want it and Signal Acquisition at V.

The scanning part

You'll be looking for "Cosmic Signature" using your system scanner.

Your probes are specific to each type of signature and have these ranges:

  • Quest: 4AU (Astrometrics I)
  • Pursuit: 2AU (Astrometrics II)
  • Comb: 1AU (Astrometrics III)
  • Sift: .5AU (Astrometrics IV)

Start with a multispec. It'll hit 100% of the time and tell you what's in the system, as per the "Type of complexes" list above.

Now say you found a radar. Yay! Make yourself a handy safespot - not a midsafe if you can - and get to work dropping Radar Quest probes. Before you do, though, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

  • Your scan will continue if you warp - you can warp out and start the scan while in warp
  • You can start a scan and then cloak, to keep you safe(r)
  • Make yourself a safespot or two to sit at while you're scanning.
  • Pilots will often initiate warp to their safespot and drop a probe just before they go to warp, thus reducing the time they are in the vicinity of their probe. As they warp, they start the scan and cloak.
  • Find something to do besides scanning - it's so booooring. Maybe this is the time to finally finish reading "War and Peace".

System overview - F10 - is where you'll want to be to drop your Quest probes.

Probe ranges can overlap, but probes can't be dropped within the range of another probe. For a Quest, that means you need to be more than 4AU from the 1st Quest to drop a 2nd Quest.

Plexes are within 3AU of planets. That means you need to cover all planets and 3AU around them.

Start by looking at the system overview. The outlying planets that are more than 4AU apart are easy - drop one probe at each.

The inner planets are going to be a bit more tricky. You need to drop probes so that every planet is covered to "3AU out". Now, say you have a bunch of planets within 3.8AU of the sun, and you drop a Quest at the sun. You have now covered the planet at 3.8AU, but only extend your range another 0.2AU beyond it. You can't drop a Quest at it to cover it further out to your desired 3AU range. That's sub-optimal. To solve this, some careful probe placement is needed.

Open up your Tactical, which gives you a nice 5AU radius. Figure out probe placements so that every planet will be covered to "3AU out" or as close as you can make it, with all probes more than 4AU apart. This may need the creation of BMs in the middle of nowhere, which can take a while - save those BMs for next time you are in system.

Even if all you are doing is dropping Quests at planets, you'll benefit from BMs. Warp at range to a planet, ideally unaligned, and drop a BM there for your quest probes. You'll end up with BMs labeled "ROIR-Y @sun Quest #1" through "ROIR-Y @x Quest #6" (for example), which makes dropping quests in system next time so much faster.

I suggest this syntax for Quest probe BMs:

rdr-gy @iv quest #1

This would mean "1st Quest BM in system rdr-gy, at planet iv". Warping to planets "@50" seems prudent for these bookmarks, to reduce the risk should you be scanning with others in system. "@500" would be safer still, but more of a pain to create.

Alright, with BMs created and labeled, drop a quest probe at each one of them.

Once you got them all dropped, select them all, and start scanning for plexes - that's "Cosmic Signature" you're looking for.

You'll get a hit, or several, returned. Should you not get a hit, repeat the scan. Good Covops pilots need about 20-30 minutes to scan a plex out, BTW, as a time reference. When Yorick started out, it took him an hour+ to find anything - that's without the faction scan probe launcher and without faction scan probes.

Warp to each scan result and bookmark. Note the deviation in your bookmark - the scan result will tell you how close you came. So, for example, it'll be "rdr-gy gravi @0.8 AU".

If you just have one plex in system, you are done. If you have two or more, it gets a little tricky, depending on the type of other plexes. Quest probes have a primary base strength of 250 and a secondary base strength of 50. That means they are more likely to find what you are actually looking for, but it is by no means guaranteed. If you have a radar and gravitometric in system, your radar quest may just have found the gravitometric. "unknown" plexes respond to all scan types equally, which means you are just as likely to find the "unknown" as you are to find the "radar" you are after.

The Rells school of thought says that you are going to keep scanning until you found every single plex in system with quests or your first batch of quests times out, whichever comes first, and then you start narrowing it down.

The "God this takes forever" Yorick school of thought is more willing to take a gamble if there are no "Unknown" in system. If I have, say, a radar and a ladar, I am 5 times more likely to find the radar than I am to find the ladar. For this reason, once I have a hit, I am going to see what it is - that's quick and only takes 5 to 10 minutes or so, thanks to the hugely greater strength of Sift probes - and if I got unlucky and hit the Ladar, well, I'm gonna mark it and get back to my Quests. Signal strength and deviation may also give clues as to whether you hit what you are searching for. I don't have good guidelines to give at this point, other than to tell you that you'll usually be within 0.4 to 0.8AU of your intended target when you use Quests.

If there are "Unknown" in system, I am just as likely to hit that instead of my intended target, so in that case I'll take Rells learned advice and keep scanning until I have at least two hits or my Quests expire. Let's look at how to distinguish between multiple plexes in system.

So, I got a "Radar" and an "Unknown". I got a hit, I have no idea which one that is. Warp to the result, bookmark it, and scan again.

Next time around, you may get one hit again. Check how close it is to your previous hit. If it is close to your previous hit - that is, if its deviation includes the location of your previous hit (or, rule of thumb, it's less than 1AU away from your previous hit) - you found the same plex again. You'll have to repeat your scan again. If it's further off, you found your second plex. Bookmark that, and move on.

The next probe you use will depend on how close you came with your Quest scan. This is why you noted the deviation in your bookmark. You did, didn't you?

Choose the probe with the smallest scan radius that will cover your deviation. If there's still a Quest hanging around the spot you need to scan, right-click that Quest and delete it, so that you may drop your Sift. I am being optimistic here and hoping you get within 0.5 AU. If you have more than one plex in system, again, drop a probe at each bookmark.

Select all probes, scan. You may need several tries until you get a hit. Using the previous example again with one radar and one unknown, you will have to try and narrow both of them down to know which is which.

Once you have your results, you warp there, bookmark (noting deviation), and move on to a more accurate probe.

You'll continue this game by narrowing it down until you get a scan result "right on top" of your plex. At that point, warp again, bookmark - you can now clean up all your intermediate bookmarks - and get a bunch of friends together to help you take the plex. If there's a gate, don't activate it yet - you may "trigger" the plex and have a gazillion ships in there when you're finally ready to run it, instead of ships coming in waves. You can use the solar system map to get the name of the plex, which in the case of a mining plex will tell you its size, as well.

Appendix A: Fraile's guide to using recon probes to finding a ship inside a plex or mission

First, keep in mind that probing is chance based, so you might not even be able to probe down a dominix with a snoop(5 AU probe).

  • Snoop 5AU = 750,000,000km
  • Fathom 10AU = 1,500,000,000km

Another thing I've learned is that probing people in plexes is very easy. First of all, use snoops, fathom will severely lower the chance of finding the hostile ship. The easiest way to probe down the plex is to launch 2 snoops, overlapping the complex with both probes. Remember to probe for ships and drones, as they're easy to pick up aswell.

Must have skills:

  • Astrometrics III (for fathom probes)
  • Signal Acquisition III+ (faster probing)
  • Astrometrics III+ (higher chance of finding stuff)

Appendix B: Using scan probes to finding a ship inside a plex or mission

This is definitely do-able by scanning for ships and drones, not just cosmic signatures. You'd want to use the type of probe that corresponds to the race of the ship you are trying to find.

  • Gravimetric - Foo
  • Radar - Bar
  • Magnetometric - Bork
  • Ladar - Grok

Scan probes have very high strength compared to recon probes, but they are very slow compared to recon probes, as well. Overall, you are probably just as well off to use recon probes, particularly since that means you don'y have to refit if you are in a combat support covops. If you find yourself in a plex-finding covops and want to find a plex runner in system for your gang to descend on, by all means, use the scan probes.

Appendix C: YMMV's Mnemonic devices to remember probe ranges

Mnemonic device I've been using for remembering the sequence of exploration probes from largest to smallest (Quest -> Pursuit -> Comb -> Sift) is:

Quickly Probes Can Scan


We were discussing on vent, so I just made one up for the recon ones as well (Ferret -> Spook -> Fathom -> Snoop):

Ferociously Spotted, Fatally Sniped

Appendix D: Other sources

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