Scouting 101

From UniWiki

Contents 1 Class Information 1.1 General Information 1.2 Notes for the Teacher 2 Class Contents 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Scouting Certification (TBC) 2.3 Types of Scouts and their Ships 2.3.1 Role of the Fleet Scout 2.3.2 Types of Scouts 2.3.3 CovOps Frigates 2.3.4 Skills for Covops 2.3.5 Fitting a Covops 2.3.6 Flying Your CovOps 2.4 Bookmarks 2.4.1 Naming of Bookmarks 2.5 Situation Awareness 2.6 Directional Scanner & Probing 2.6.1 Directional Scanner 2.6.2 Combat Probing 2.7 Maps & Intel 2.8 Communication 2.9 Class Wrap-up

Class Information

This chapter contains the standard information of this class pertaining to scheduling and class contents. The General Information should be sufficient to create a proper class topic for scheduling on the Eve University forum. Additional information relevant to the teacher is listed under Notes for the Teacher.

General Information

Illustration link for class description on the Eve University forum: http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/9630/26335normal.jpg

This class is a brief introduction to the role of scouting for Uni fleets and will provide an introduction to the following topics. It is an essential class for budding scouts, +1s and FCs

• Duration: 2 hours (Teachers Note: can easily over run if not disciplined in delivery)
• Location: Mumble

Class contents:

• Scouting Certification (TBC)
• Types of Scouts & Their Ships
• Covert Ops Frigates, Skills and Fittings
• Bookmarks
• Situation Awareness
• D-Scanner & Probing
• Maps and Intel
• Communication

Student requirements:

• Mumble registration and access - make sure you have Mumble sorted out and operational well before the class begins. Use this guide for set-up: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Mumble
• Access to the Class.E-UNI in-game chat channel

Additional information: This class is primarily lecture delivered in the Class.E-UNI channel in Mumble, followed by Q&A.

Notes for the Teacher

Required materials:

• Class.E-UNI chat channel, to receive questions and post relevant links
• Link to Wiki Scouting Page
• Link to Wiki Bookmarks Page

The class is a broad introduction to scouting so that students can go away and learn. Remember that there are specific classes on most of these topics. If the teacher gets caught up in detail then the class will run massively over time and be confusing for students.

Class Contents

Introduction

Welcome to this class on Scouting!

This course is designed primarily for budding scouts, fleet commanders and anyone who wants an understanding of scouting role in Fleet PvP

Over the next 128.3 minutes or so, we shall cover......

• Scouting Certification (TBA)
• Types of Scouts & Their Ships
• Covert Ops Frigates, Skills and Fittings
• Bookmarks
• Situation Awareness
• D-Scanner & Probing
• Maps and Intel
• Communication

(Instructor should then introduce himself or herself - covering relevant experience level and background.)

We have a few ground rules for this class:

• Please put your Mumble settings on "Push to Talk" if you have not already done so.
• Feel free to type any questions in the Class.E-UNI chat channel as we proceed - I will try to answer your questions as they come during the class. [At the end of my lecture, we'll open Mumble for any further questions or general discussion.]

Everyone ready? OK, then - let's begin....

Scouting Certification (TBC)

•  Under Uni WSOPmembers must be certified to fly a covops ships during war time
• Currently, no requirement to be certified exists, but experience in moving cloaked is expected.
• Outside wartime there are no restrictions

The requirements for scouting certification are given on the Scout Certification wiki page.

Scouts will need to have:

• Attended this class
• Attended the D-Scan Class
• Attended the Life in Null Sec Class
• Minimum Skill Requirements
• Practicals - Contact Task Force Security Liaisons
  • Basic - D-Scan, Bookmarks, Navigation, Probing skills, WH Scouting, Communications

• But remember that Covops ships are not the only (or necessarily the best) ships for scouting

Types of Scouts and their Ships

Role of the Fleet Scout

Scouts come in many different flavors with differing purposes but all share a common role.

• Scouts:
  • Gather information about what is going on in space
  • Relay information back to the Fleet

That is a very vague definition and as we'll see scouts of all types need a wide spread understanding of Eve, its mechanics, PvP and their own fleet.

Types of Scouts

• Roaming scout
  • Flys roams ahead of a fleet 5+ jumps looking for targets.
  • OOC and Covops only (OOC Covops the best)

• +1/+2 Scout
  • Flies a short way ahead of a fleet looking for threats and targets of opportunity.
  • Covops, Recons, Interceptors, Tackle frigates, OOC alts.
  • Obviously interceptors and frigs are fragile, need very good piloting skill and cannot easily provide continuous and detailed information
  • Emphasize Fast align T1 tackle frigs as a good way to get into scouting

• -1 Scout
  • Defensive position to check if something is following
  • Covops is best for this role, as they often have to linger
  • Hard role in empire space with busy systems

• Picket scout
  • Just watches gates or stations
  • Simple T1 frig with prototype cloak
  • OOC best

• Skirmish Scout
  • Variant of +1/+2 Scout almost exclusively interceptors
  • Highly aggressive role, flying 1-5 jumps from a gang, finding and tackling targets
  • Requires Very skilled player to be effective
  • Particularly effective for small gangs in null sec

• Bait
  • Most wouldn’t consider bait a scout
  • But requires many of the same skills,
    • Situation awareness,
    • D-scan
    • Communication skills

CovOps Frigates

This Section is specific to covops frigate

List Frigates:

• Anathema (Amarr)
• Buzzard (Caldari)
• Helios (Galente)
• Cheetah (Minmatar)

Each race also has a stealth bomber, but they make poor scouts as either a normal Covops or Interceptor is better at everything related to scouting

Key features of CovOps Frigates

• Pros
  • Can fit a CovOps cloak allowing it to warp whilst cloaked and allow scout to linger in hostile space reporting intel (other ships will have to warp off)
  • Has 13 AU/s warp speed and fairly low align time allowing it to travel quickly
  • Bonus to probing making combat probing much easier
• Cons
  • Tissue paper tank (the cloak is the tank)
  • Poor agility and speed (for frigate sized hull)

Skills for Covops

Covops is an advanced role do not skimp on the skills. To properly fit and fly a covops you will need as a minimum the following key skills

• Cloaking IV
• Covert Ops IV
• Astrometrics IV
• Astrometric Acquisition III
• Astrometric Pinpointing III
• Astrometric Rangefinding III
• Evasive Maneuvering III
• Warp Drive Operation IV

• General Support skills (Very Important)

Fitting a Covops

The cloak is a covops frigate's tank, but they have very poor agility (worse than many cruisers). This is their weakness, and a poorly fitted or poorly flown covops frig can be quite easily caught.

• Essential items:
  • Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
  • Prop Mod (MWD usually best)
  • Expanded Probe launcher
• Fit for agility and speed (except where you need fitting mods)
• Keep signature radius Low
  • No Shield extenders or i-stabs
• Buzzard & Cheetah can have power grid fitting problems
• Cheetah has capacitor problems, leading to a limited warp distance
• Cyno and Fuel (Optional, not much point in Uni)

Flying Your CovOps

Your cloak is your tank, so never be seen

• The decloak radius is 2000m.
  • Almost everything in eve can decloak you! Including: Stations (interaction range of stations), corpses, asteroids, cans, drones, gas clouds, other cloaked ships.
  • a very few gates have gas clouds around them, very annoying
• Warping to standard distances from standard directions is a good way to get killed
• Set a non-standard warp to distance (Do Not use one of the menu options)
• Be very careful at asteroid belts and space stations

getting through a gate camp

• stay calm, don’t panic, relax, you have 60s of gate cloak
• Do your job, gather & report intel (hit printscreen)

In highsec or lowsec you should just warp off

Bubbles

• find best exit path out of bubble aligned to a celestial or bookmark
  • see what's around you
  • who’s orbiting
  • will their orbit take them into a path where they could decloak you as you sneak out
• Decide whether to burn out of bubble or burn back to gate
  • Start moving, activate cloak, activate MWD
  • Burning out of Bubble: Then once cloaked change direction
  • Burning back to gate: Spam Jump and pray

Bookmarks

Back to all ship types, no longer covops specific

• Midsafes
  • Drop a BM midway between two celestials
    • Very quick and simple to make
    • Don’t stay too long, easy to find
    • Due to quirks of game mechanics can be found without combat probes
• Unaligned Safe Spots
  • Create a bookmark between two Midsafes
    • Much safer
    • Ideally over 14AU so that outside D-scan range
    • Take longer to form
• Instant Undocks
  • Bookmark in-line with station undock vector
    • Allows (near) instant warp when undocking
    • About 2000km is a good distance
• Observation BMs
  • Bookmarks for watching gates, stations, asteroid belts, POSes...
  • A good distance is 300km
    • Allows to be on grid with gate
    • can warp to within 100km to allow 'look at' to check fittings etc, and still warp back
  • Can never have too many,
  • Ideally surround a gate in all directions
  • Should have at least one on every gate on out common routes
  • Keep out of alignment with celestials
  • Best place for observation is outside transit routes.
    • Or just get within 100km of gate at 'look at' the gate
• Off-Grid BMs
  • Typically within a few 10s of thousands of KM
  • Allows you to check gates even without a cloak

Teachers Note: Direct Students to the Bookmarks Class

Naming of Bookmarks

It is important to make BMs understandable at a glance BMs are stored on the server, but folders are stored on your computer, when you lose folders (and you will) the BM names need to allow you to reorganize quickly. Exact method of naming is not too important so long as it's clear. BM names should contain:

• type of BM
• nearest object
• alignment
• distance

Examples:

• UNDOCK [E-UNI: IX-PTS @2500M]
• UD PTS 9 2500km
• GO Eygfe Low 320km
• SF PTS 9 (E-UNI HQ)

Situation Awareness

Understanding what is going on around you starts with the LOCAL Channel. With the exception of W-Space the local list is one of you most powerful sources of info:

• Tells you how many people in system
• At glance you can see GCCs and Standings
• Can ID corps and sec status from character sheets
  • Double click so you don’t convo
  • Important to know which corps/alliances are in system and how many people for each group
  • Pen and paper is very useful

Flashies are War Targets, GCCs and those with Sec Satus <-5. The first two can be seen from the local list, the latter is only visible from character sheet

Directional Scanner & Probing

Directional Scanner

• Needs no in game skills of equipment
• Has a range of 14.355AU (14.4AU) so is your primary means of seeing what ships are in space and where they are.
• Very powerful, can tell you
  • Ship Type
  • Ship Name
  • Direction
  • Range
• Can’t use it to warp to targets
• Use it to find targets and to spot threats
  • First thing you do when you enter a new system should be click scan to see if there are ships in space
• Simple to use but difficult to master
  • Practice by finding mining ships in highsec
  • Solo lowsec
  • WHing
• Important to know ship types

Teacher Note: Direct Students to D-Scan Class

Combat Probing

• Used to perform surveillance of systems and to warp to targets
• All covops pilots are expected to carry probes and be able to do this
• Needs expanded probe launcher and combat scanner probes
• Need lots of practice! Good ways to practice are:
  • Work with a friend
  • Find mission runners in highsec
  • Exploration
• Punting
  • Where a scout is in squad commander position for tacklers, and can warp them directly to a target

Teacher Note: Direct to Combat Probing Class

Maps & Intel

Use maps to gather info about systems, and understand where you are in relation to the systems around you.

• In-game map
  • good for looking at in-game statistics
  • Difficult to use whilst flying around
• Dot-lan
  • http://evemaps.dotlan.net/
  • Provides access to system stats and direct links to KBs
• Ombeve
  • http://www.ombeve.co.uk/
  • Not interactive like dotlan, but formatted for printing
• WHs
  • http://www.staticmapper.com/
• Killboards
  • http://killboard.eveuniversity.org/
  • http://eve-kill.net/
  • great source of info, can search for specific pilots
• Locator Agents
  • These are agents which can tell you where another pilot is
    • L1 = Constellation
    • L2 = Region
    • L3 = All space (slowly)
    • L4 = All space (quickly)
    • L5 = Even quicker than L4s, but only found in LowSec
  • Will need sufficient standings to use (so get missioning)

Couple of useful links for locator agents: [1] [2]

Communication

Info is pointless if you can’t communicate it effectively, So a microphone is essential!

• A fleet typically has the following channels
  • Command Voice Channel
  • Fleet Voice Channel
  • Command Text Channel
  • Fleet Text Channel
  • Squad Text Channels
  • Intel Text/Voice Channel (for lots of scouts)

• Scouts along with the FC the roles that have to communicate the most
  • Info immediately relevant to fleet should be communicated by voice
    • E,g, status of next system
  • Info not immediately relevant consider giving by text
    • E.g. status of system 6 jumps away
  • Text channels are very useful for linking names and systems
    • Drag from local (teacher provide an example)

Calm and clear communication is the key. Be concise and accurate, but do not overwhelm FC with detail

• Uni Comms Standard is:
  • State name of channel
  • State who you are
  • Where you are
  • and then your intel

E.g. Command - [Teachers Name]- On Lamadent gate in gate Otou, Eyes on two drakes and a Myrm from 'negative ten' in OGC, two other neutrals in system. Talk through the structure of the statement

Post the following links and ask for someone to report intel according to Uni Standard

• http://i56.tinypic.com/zsqwzo.jpg
• http://i51.tinypic.com/2mgkosh.jpg

Different corps have different styles, and often Uni fleets are not so formal.

Teachers Note: Direct students to the Comms Class

Class Wrap-up

• Thanks for attending this class!

* Remember For certification send 1isk to instructor

• • I would appreciate any feedback from people on how to improve the class
• Questions ?