Scouting

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Scouting (Class)

Scouting in EVE involves gathering information around or ahead of the current location of a group of other players, to help the group succeed in their goals. Often a scout ship is also equipped to tackle targets and start fights. Almost all PvP fleets and gangs in EVE have at least one scout, and some PvE fleets also use scouts.

Scouting can be demanding and dangerous, but basic scouting requires minimal player experience or character skills, and can offer a lot of satisfaction in helping fellow players succeed. The role has a high ceiling for skilled play and good scouts are a welcome asset in many player corporations.

The skills and knowledge developed in scouting cover many aspects of PvP, and therefore synergize extremely well with both solo PvP and fleet command.

Since scouting is by its very nature a gang/fleet role, very new players should also consult the the Rookie's Guide to Fleet Ops. They should not, though, hold back from trying scouting out if they are curious! Scouting is one role where even a novice player can make a big difference, and some of the ships used have relatively low SP requirements.

Scout roles

Some scouting is purely defensive: a group of players is doing something or travelling somewhere, and need one or more scouts to check how safe the space around the group is, and to warn of incoming threats.

Some scouting is defensive and offensive: a fleet needs one or more scouts to warn of threats, but also to locate weaker or even opponents. In some cases, offensive scouting will also involve tackling a target ship to hold it down and start a fight.

The ships and tactics used can vary a lot depending on which of these goals a scout has, and which kind of space they're flying in.

Picket

Picket scouts watch and wait in one location: one system, and often just one point in space, such as a gate or wormhole. Some example uses for picket scouts:

• a group of players in high sec run missions during wartime in a pocket of systems, with a picket scout on a chokepoint gate leading to their location to spot incoming enemies
• the residents of a wormhole system keep a cloaked ship on-grid with each wormhole in their home so that they can see any interlopers
• a jump freighter pilot has friends watching movements in a low-sec transit system that is on their jump route, so that they can pick a safe moment to move their freighter through
• a small nullsec alliance has a picket scout in their local rivals' home system, so they can tell when their rivals are running black ops fleets
• the FC team of a major coalition keep cloaked alts in the staging systems of their opponents, so that they can track capital and supercapital movements

Medium- or long-term picket scouting is often provided by alts. In high security space an alt in an NPC corporation can sit in a system or on a gate safely in a corvette; in other types of space, even a basic Tech 1 frigate with a prototype cloak works perfectly well, and requires minimal skill training investment. In nullsec, an interdictor with a prototype cloak makes a surprisingly good picket scout for a gate, as it can rapidly uncloak, warp to the gate, and drop a bubble to close the way.

+1/-1

Travelling fleets are very often preceded by an advance scout moving one system ahead of the main fleet, commonly called a "+1" or "plus one".

Jumping through a gate is one of the most vulnerable moments in a fleet's journey, as the jump mechanics scatter fleet members physically around their in-gate whenever they spawn into a new system. Having a +1 scout should at minimum guarantee that the fleet doesn't slam into a hostile gang without warning. In space with an automatically-populated Local Chat member list, a +1 also makes for a much less obvious presence than the whole fleet appearing in Local at once.

For PvP fleets, a +1 also often needs to hunt, and a typical sequence of actions on system entry for a hunting PvP +1 scout might run as follows:

1. check that grid around the in-gate is clear
2. check numbers in Local and note any important players (e.g. war targets in high security space)
3. check the directional scanner at full 360 degrees and maximum range around the in-gate
4. report immediate status of the in-gate, Local, and first d-scan to the FC
5. warp to any other parts of the system not covered by the initial d-scan, while assessing the corps of the people present in Local
6. if nothing else is discovered, proceed to the out-gate, report out-gate status to FC, and move on

A "-1" or "minus one" scout performs essentially the same role, but secures the system behind a fleet instead.

Interceptors and covert ops frigates make excellent +1 ships, and interceptors in particular are ideal for the hunting +1 role. A Tech 1 tackling frigate can do quite well. Moreover, any ship can be pressed into service as a +1 scout in an emergency, and an FC who has lost all their scouts should pick an experienced pilot with a working mic in the fastest and most agile ship available.

In wormhole space, which prioritises stealth and probing more than known space, covert ops frigates and covert-configuration strategic cruisers can offer advantages over other options.

Interdictors can work well as -1 scouts, because this role synergizes well with their ability to slow down pursuers by bubbling gates.

Roaming hunter

A PvP fleet can field one or more roaming hunter scouts, who will move with more freedom of initiative through systems on or near the fleet's route, seeking incautious pilots in vulnerable PvE ships or hostile gangs.

Although roaming scouts provide additional security and can warn of approaching threats, their actions tend to be more purely focused on finding and developing fights. The distance which they can roam away from their core fleet depends on the fleet's speed, travel direction, and purpose: some fleets will pause on a journey for incidental targets of opportunity but will not chase fights, while other fleets might be in space solely to find PvP.

Roaming scouts typically report less detailed information to their FC, to keep comms clearer and avoid information overload. PvP threats and targets definitely deserve mention; that you are transiting an entirely empty system that doesn't lie on the fleet's route is probably not useful info. An FC and any roaming scouts must both work to make sure they understand how far the scouts might roam, to make sure they share a sense for what kinds of PvP opportunities the fleet will take, and to make sure that the FC has a working knowledge of roughly where the roaming scouts are.

Interceptors are ideal ships for roaming scouts in known space, as their high warp speed and short align times let them cover a great deal of ground, while their high survivability compared to other frigates gives them a better chance of holding a target or keeping a hostile gang interested until allies can get to the scene. Strategic cruisers have more limited range, as they warp more slowly, but they can use stealth to their advantage, can probe, and can fit reasonable tanks, so they can also have their uses. In wormhole space, cloaking ships of all kinds see more use.

Cyno hunter

Almost all ships which can fit a covert ops cloak can also fit a covert cynosural field ("cyno") generator, which lets a Black Ops Tech 2 battleship bridge and teleport other stealthy ships into battle while circumventing the normal gate network. Force recon ships and Black Ops battleships can fit a normal or "hard" cyno generator, which lets a Titan bridge any ships into battle. Some industrial ships can light an industrial cyno, and Black Ops battleships can bridge to these too. Specialized scouts can fly these ships not for a nearby fleet, but for a fleet "staged" and ready to bridge to a cyno.

Scouting as a cyno ship uses many of the same skills as other "hunting" roles, but can often emphasize cunning and stealth over raw speed. Force recons and covert-configured strategic cruisers can fit reasonable tanks and can have special abilities which make them very powerful cyno hunters: the Minmatar Loki and Rapier, for instance, can use very long-ranged webs to pin a target in place as their allies arrive. Other ships, such as the Venture and Prospect, offer attractively cheap "throwaway" options which might look less threatening if opponents spot them at gate transitions. Stealth Bombers have the unique ability to begin target-locking immediately on uncloaking, though this must be weighed against their paper-thin tanks.

Typical ships

T1 tackle frigates

Each of the four main factions has one Tech 1 frigate with a high base speed and a role bonus which cuts the capacitor use of tackle modules by 80%. They all also have a higher base warp speed (8 AU/s) than other frigate hulls (normally 5 AU/s).

• Amarr: Executioner
• Caldari: Condor
• Gallente: Atron
• Minmatar: Slasher

These ships lack the survivability of the true interceptors, but they are nevertheless very viable as basic scouting and tackling ships for newer characters, able to move swiftly through systems, point a target for crucial seconds, and move around fast on a combat grid to create warp-ins.

Fleet interceptors

Interceptors are Tech 2 versions of the Tech 1 tackle frigates. They keep the tackle capacitor consumption reduction and high warp speed from their Tech 1 base hulls, but are much faster and do not have their signature radii bloomed nearly as much by using a microwarpdrive. Fleet interceptors get additional bonuses to the range of tackle modules, making them ideal tacklers.

Fleet interceptors can also be fitted with an interdiction nullifier which can make them temporarily immune to bubbles, at the cost of a permanent halving of their targeting range. This loss of targeting range is a significant trade-off, and many fleet interceptor fits do not use a nullifier so as to have better tackling abilities.

The fleet interceptors are:

• Amarr: Malediction
• Caldari: Crow
• Gallente: Ares
• Minmatar: Stiletto

Fleet interceptors are very popular as +1/-1 scouts and roaming hunters in known space.

The other four interceptors, combat interceptors, are not as good as pure tacklers, but they get huge bonuses to the effects of overheating propulsion modules, which can make them handy for catching and killing other small ships, and for burning new bookmarks or warp-ins very quickly.

Tactical destroyers

Tech 3 Tactical Destroyers ("T3Ds") are small, fast, highly flexible ships which can align like an interceptor, and can fit an expanded probe launcher, tackle modules, and a meaningful tank all at once. These qualities make them popular tools for probing down and catching targets which are at safe spots or are in mission sites, because a T3D can probe like a covops frigate and then immediately warp to the target and go for tackle. A T3D can also punt (see below) very effectively, landing both itself and one or more other scouts on top of the target at once.

However, T3Ds cannot fit a covert ops cloak like a covert ops ship, and nor can they warp as fast as an interceptor or tackle at extra-long ranges as an interceptor can, so they are less ideally suited as +1 scouts or general hunters. Often a T3D pilot will travel with the fleet core, only following a +1 or roaming interceptor into a system when it becomes clear that a target must be probed.

The T3Ds are:

• Amarr: Confessor
• Caldari: Jackdaw
• Gallente: Hecate
• Minmatar: Svipul

Covert ships

A striking variety of ships in EVE can fit a covert ops cloak and warp while cloaked. This extremely powerful ability means they can be anywhere in a system watching while unseen, though the pilot will be present in Local chat's member list if they are in known space; they only have to break cloak and become visible on-grid and on the directional scanner when they enter a system and transition from post-jump gate cloak to covert ops cloak.

Covert ships make excellent picket scouts. They are also extremely popular scouts in wormhole space, where the shifting geography, the lack of automatic Local chat memberlists, and the need to probe most places of interest down all emphasize stealth, cunning, and the ability to probe over the high-speed surprise tactics used by interceptor pilots.

Covert ops frigates ("covops") warp at 8 AU/s like interceptors and have strong probing bonuses, making them excellent for rapidly assessing systems, and for scanning down targets or wormholes. The Buzzard and Anathema have bonuses for precise probing, while the Cheetah and Helios have bonuses which let them move faster on-grid when cloaked, which is handy for getting good warp-ins. All covops frigates have very weak defenses and cannot fit strong tanks: they can function as tacklers if they absolutely must, but they will not survive long against a target with any kind of damage capacity.

Stealth Bombers have the unique ability to lock up a target immediately after uncloaking, which gives them a niche role—besides their main purpose as grouped damage-dealers—as surprise tacklers. They, too, do not tank well and cannot be asked to survive long in direct combat. They are also slower to align and slower in warp than covops frigates.

Strategic Cruisers ("T3Cs") can be configured to use a covert ops cloak and bonused scanner probes, while also having decent tanks and dealing meaningful damage on their own account. They therefore make powerful probing scouts, and can take initial tackle and stand a decent chance of surviving in combat until allies arrive, or even of defeating weaker targets solo. Since they are slower to align than frigates and warp at half the speed of interceptors and covops frigates, they are slower to get to target locations and have smaller functional roaming ranges. They are also more expensive and, being slower, more vulnerable to gatecamps.

Force Recons are the smallest and cheapest ships which can light a normal or "hard" cyno, to which a Titan can bridge any ship. As such, they are a popular option for hunting with a hard cyno. They can fit meaningful tanks, and most of them have powerful abilities which can help them survive: the Pilgrim has strong capacitor warfare, the Arazu can tackle from long ranges, and the Rapier can hold a target still with very long-ranged webs. Compared to T3Cs, Recons have only limited DPS capacity, but this matters less for scouts anyway. Their main drawbacks are that they are relatively expensive, that they travel and lock more slowly than smaller ships, and that opponents may assume a hard cyno and pre-emptively escalate if they spot a force recon travelling or hunting.

Some other ships can use covert ops cloaks and have niche uses as scouts: the Prospect can work well as a BLOPS cyno hunter, and it would be possible, if wasteful, to scout defensively in a blockade runner.

Other ships

In some circumstances, other ships can be useful scouts, or can be used as scouts in the absence of anything better.

As noted above, almost any ship equipped with just a prototype cloak can be an adequate picket ship for an expendable alt character. In warfare in high security space, where gathering intel while blending into busy systems can be useful, an out-of-corp alt in a PvE, mining, or trade ship typical of the local area can do good work. If a roaming PvP fleet loses all of its designated scouts, the smallest, fastest ships present can be pressed into service as +1 scouts.

Tools

Local

In high-sec, low-sec, and known null-sec space, the Local chat window lists everyone present in the system. Pilots still appear in Local even if they are docked up or cloaked. This makes Local a vital intelligence tool for making the most basic assessment of a system: "Is anyone else in here with me?"

Make sure that your Local chat member list is visible at all times. Many players like to stretch it from the top to the bottom of one side of their screen.

If you are flying as +1 you will typically report Local's status as one of the first pieces of information you send back to the FC. If a system is empty or only has blue-standings pilots in it, you will say something like "Oicx [or, better for clarity, Oscar India Charlie] is empty / Oicx is blue / We own Oicx". If there are others present, give the number of members listed in Local chat, minus one for yourself: "Oicx, seven in Local, in-gate clear, initial d-scan clear".

If Local has other people in it but only a few then, while moving around a system checking for targets or threats, you can also be assessing who those people are, by double-clicking on them in Local's member list and checking their corporations, alliances, and employment histories. If there are five other people in local, three combat ships on scan, and three of the five people in Local are in the same alliance, this is obviously significant information to pass on!

If the rest of the fleet is not immediately busy in combat, you can ask to have someone run one or more characters from Local through zKill and report back on whether they are primarily PvE or PvP pilots, what types of ships they regularly fly, and even details of recent ship fits. Drag the character name from Local into the fleet chat window to create a link your fleetmates can use, then add the request on comms ("Can someone run zKill on this guy, please?"). An organized hunting fleet sometimes designates a player for this purpose, and in a large fleet the scouts and FC might use a separate intel text channel to deal with this.

Potential threats or targets will probably, of course, also be watching Local, and are likely to spot you, which is one good reason to be as fast and efficient in checking a system as possible.

In Pochven and wormhole space, Local only lists members when they say something in Local that you see. Naturally, people do not normally say anything in Local in these systems, and so Local will not normally have anyone in it and can be ignored. On the plus side, this means that people won't necessarily know that you are in-system, either.

D-scan

Main article: Directional scanning

The basic mechanics of d-scan are covered well in this wiki's directional scanning article. EVE University also runs d-scan classes, and YouTube hosts numerous useful videos showing helpful techniques.

Once you have grasped the basics of how d-scan works, the key to getting better is simply lots and lots and lots of practice.

Maps

Having a map open, on a second screen if possible, hugely enhances your ability to do basic navigation.

In known space and Pochven, this is likely to be Dotlan or another third-party mapping site. Use your map to spot chokepoints, pockets, and pipes which might present opportunities or dangers for your fleet. Your FC will be making similar judgments and in a small- or mid-sized fleet you can confer with them and with any other scouts about potential places to hunt or check. Dotlan can present various types of data, of which the most important a lot of the time are:

• NPC delta, the change in the number of NPC kills recently: this helps you spot areas where potential targets might be doing PvE.
• Ship/pod kills: this lets you see where combat has recently been happening.
• Jumps: this lets you quickly see where people are travelling, and it helps to highlight well-travelled chokepoints.

Refresh Dotlan to make sure you catch data updates. The in-game map is less clear, and will take up part or all of your main screen, but does have more up-to-date data, so it is also worth checking intermittently.

In wormhole space, you will likely be flying with your group's chosen wormhole mapping tool. The EVE University Wormhole Community uses Pathfinder; other groups might be using other tools, such as Tripwire. Whatever tool you're using, pay close attention to any information recorded such as:

• Hole size: this has implications for what kinds of threats and backup can get to you.
• Hole age
• Hole status: holes disrupted by traffic indicate, obviously, that there has been traffic.
• System bonuses/penalties
• Recent kills in a system
• Any information recorded about structures and residents
• K-space connections: for example, high-sec holes near Jita often have high traffic and attract j-space campers.

Bookmarks

Main article: Bookmarks

Bookmarks are an extremely powerful tool. If you spend any significant amount of time scouting in an area, you will want to make yourself some bookmarks in the local systems. If you are roaming in unfamiliar territory, you might want to bookmark as you go, whenever opportunities come up.

Off-grid bookmarks

Your FC may ask you to quickly create a safe at which a fleet can gather after fleeing a combat grid. It is good if such a rapid safe is at least not on an obvious gate-to-gate route, but in a hot system an imperfect mid-safe which exists now can be much more valuable than a "true" safe spot not on a line between any two celestials which exists in two minutes' time.

Your FC might want to have a rolling safe in which you keep burning at high speed in one direction and the fleet warps to you whenever you travel more than 150km away. This makes it significantly harder to get a good warp-in on the fleet by probing it down. Your role in a rolling safe is very simple: just burn at top speed in a consistent direction. Check with the FC whether they would like that direction to be aligned towards anything in particular.

Finally, bookmarks can play a role in short-term trickery. If you are hunting PvE ships, for example, and one gives you the slip, you might find it useful to bookmark where the target was, which might mean bookmarking an MTU or an asteroid. If you return to the system after a short pause (5 or 10 minutes), you can try warping straight to this bookmark; sometimes unwary targets let themselves get caught this way.

On-grid bookmarks

In nullsec, wormholes, and Pochven, where bubbles can be used to suck people out of warp near their destination, "ping" bookmarks come in very handy. These are bookmarks on grid with key travel points such as gates, but far enough away that it's safe to warp to them, avoiding any catch or drag bubbles set up at the location. If roaming in an area where the group doesn't have these set up, you might be asked to create new ones using your high speed on grid. These are particularly important near any gate or other point of interest (e.g. a wormhole) which has nothing else within d-scan range, as without pings or off-grid scanning bookmarks it's impossible to get close to such a place and check whether it is dangerous.

In any area where you spend any significant amount of time, having at least a few "tactical" on-grid bookmarks near everything of interest—gates, stations, hostile structures and friendly structures—makes a huge difference.

For picket scouts, non-aligned bookmarks on grid with but at a nice long distance from whatever you want to picket are very helpful.

Remember, re: bookmarks around gates, that people spawn about 15 km around a gate, measured from the edge of the gate rather than its centre, and that some gate models are themselves quite large. If a tactical is too close to the gate from the point of view of someone who spawns on the relevant side, it might not be much use.

In combat, the fleet might need you to burn new bookmarks rapidly on the battle grid. This topic crosses over with that of warp-ins, and is covered further below.

Ship and weapon recognition

You do not need a strong grasp of the current combat meta to begin scouting, so don't let that hold you back. Your piloting and your grasp of what intel to prioritize will, though, improve as your knowledge of typical PvP ships and their typical fits improves. There is no easy shortcut to this knowledge, but some things which can help are:

• reading ship entries on the wiki
• watching (up-to-date) PvP videos on YouTube
• asking questions and talking to more experienced pilots

Experience is the greatest teacher, and getting out there and involved in PvP fleets will do the most to teach you. With time, you will be able to guess how many PvP gangs are likely to fight on-grid as soon as you see their ship composition on d-scan.

Weapon recognition presents a more rarefied challenge. The different weapons in EVE have different models. When you are on-grid with an enemy ship, it is possible to right-click on it, select "look at", and zoom in to see the models. Very experienced PvPers are sometimes able to recognise what kind of weapon a ship has fitted by doing this, and this is of course very helpful tactical info which can help you and the FC assess whether your fleet can take a given fight, and what kind of flying will be needed to snatch victory.

Again, new players need not feel a pressure to develop weapon recognition skills immediately. If you enjoy scouting, though, it might be something to study in the medium term.

Paste services

Tools such as dscan.info and localthreat can process the contents of parts of your EVE client when copied from your computer's clipboard.

dscan.info will add up and summarize the ships and classes found in a d-scan return. This can save you a lot of time recalling and reporting ships. localthreat will sum up the affiliations and PvP records of every member of Local chat.

Both services provide outputs which you can then link in in-game chat.

Techniques

Warp-ins

Scouts are often used as warp-in points, as members of the fleet can warp to you.

In its simplest form, this happens when you're close to a target and people warp at 0 to you.

You can do subtler things by keeping at roughly the right range from a target with the target on a straight line between you and the fleet's location, and calling for the fleet to warp to you at that range.

It is extremely important that you communicate clearly about what range the fleet should warp at. There is a big difference between being at 0 from an enemy and being 70 km from them.

You can give a fleet warp-ins within the same grid, if they're more than 150 km away from you.

If a fleet warps to you at 100 and you are 155 km away from them, they will only warp 55 km. Sometimes this trick can be used to surprise enemies with very short on-grid warps. For example, if there are enemies sitting 80 km off a gate, and you get to a position about 180 or 190 km off the gate and behind the enemy in turn, your gang or fleet can come through the gate, warp to you at 100, and stand a decent chance of landing near the enemy.

Remember that it is not possible to warp to fleet members in deadspace, either from outside the deadspace area or from within it.

Probing

Main article: Probe scanning

When a target is at a safespot, in a mission, or at a place which would need to be probed down (e.g., a wormhole, an exploration site), it is necessary to probe down their location. Probes can also be used to set up on-grid warp-ins.

The basic mechanics of combat-scanning for targets as a scout are very similar to scanning for sites in exploration. However, time presses much more acutely, as a target might see the probes on their own directional scan and then flee.

You can work something about the right area of the system in which to probe by using your own directional scanner. If you're in a cloaked ship and the target is not yet likely to have been spooked by, for example, your ally in an interceptor appearing on scan, you can warp to different locations and triangulate. If the system is large enough, you can then

1. warp to a location out of d-scan range of the target
2. uncloak and drop your probes there, where they can't see you on d-scan
3. (optionally: cloak and head back towards something nearer the target, so as to be near for the warp on top of them)
4. run a probe scan centred on the target's location

With good luck and precise judgment of the target's location, you can pull off a single-cycle scan. A soon as you have the signature resolved, pull your probes, so as to give only the minimum time for the target to spot them on d-scan.

If you're working with another scout who entered the system before you, ask them to convey what they can work out from their own d-scan about the target's place in space. You can then work from that information to try to single-cycle the target. If you and another scout are at different places and have the target on d-scan, you can communicate triangulation with them. If you have allies in system, beware of the risk of probing them down too. Stay alert to their likely locations and remember their ship types.

If your FC asks for an on-grid probed warp-in on an enemy gang which is over 150km away, drop probes, click the button which centres them on your location, and run a cycle at minimum range. This should resolve 100% signatures on the enemy ships. You can use ship type to be sure that you have the right target.

Punting

A pilot in a command position in a fleet can initiate warp for every pilot who is below them in the fleet hierarchy, A common use for this ability is to have a scout who has probed down a target warp themselves and other fleet members onto the target. This is "punting".

To punt, you must be above the pilots you wish to send into warp in the fleet hierarchy. A typical solution to this problem is to make a fleet's probing scout the nominal fleet commander in the in-game fleet hierarchy, so that they can warp anyone around if they wish to.

Punt checklist

1. Punter is above punted pilots in fleet hierarchy
2. Punter is on grid with punted pilots
3. Punter and punted pilots are both more than 150 km away from warp target
4. Pilots to be punted are not invulnerable from, e.g., gate cloak, post-warp or post-undock invulnerability, or tether

Punting advice

Make sure that the other pilots you wish to punt are on grid with you. Call for them to warp to you (at range, if you are cloaked) if they aren't. While finishing the probe scan, give the members to be punted the best instructions you can about where in the system they should be aligned to. If in doubt about whether the FC wants you to punt immediately on probe completion, speak up and clarify while the probes are running, not when they finish.

If you are punting in a cloaked covert ops frigate, you probably don't want to arrive at 0 on the target yourself. Make sure you're not aligned towards the target signature, initiate the punt warp, and then press ctrl-space to cancel your own warp. You can then warp to the signature at range if you want to. If you are punting in a scouting T3D, you probably do want to arrive at 0 on the target ship, to tackle it. You can roughly align, initiate the punt warp and go along for the ride.

Sometimes an FC will ask you to punt just other scouts and tacklers. You want to send them to the target at 0. If you are punting the whole fleet, you might be asked to initiate two punts, starting with an "at-zero" punt for tackle and any close-range damage ships, and following it up with an "at-range" punt for EWAR ships, logistics, and ranged damage-dealers. Your fellow pilots will have to stay alert and cancel the first warp if they want to arrive at range. The desired range for an at-range punt varies, though 50 is common.

Whatever type of punt you are engaged in, clear communication with both the FC and the pilots you are going to punt is essential. Don't be afraid to repeat questions and seek clear confirmation for key details.

Communication

What to say

During fleet movement

As a +1 scout, the FC should at minimum be hearing from you about the status of the next system's Local, d-scan evidence, and in-gate / out-gate grids.

As a roaming scout, personal judgements need to be made about what you're watching when, and what you pass on up to the FC.

However, two things are key:

1. if the FC tells you to be somewhere, get there; and
2. if you see something that needs investigating and move off your last instruction, clearly inform the FC.

The FC cannot make good decisions on faulty intel. Make sure they understand the environment around them as best you can. That includes making sure they're not assuming you're somewhere you're not.

When tackling

When going in for tackle on a target, call "point" as soon as you have the target pointed, or "scram" if you are using a warp scrambler. You should be on everyone's watchlist, but it doesn't hurt to type "www" in fleet chat so people know who to warp to.

If the fleet will have to take one or more acceleration gates to get to you, say so on comms. If the fleet will be coming in from a system next-door, it is useful to let the FC and fleet know roughly what length of warp they must do to get to you ("20 AU warp"). If the fleet is going to have to travel from several systems away, it can be helpful to drag the system name from the top left of your screen into fleet chat, so members can right-click on it and set it as destination.

If the target presents a threat to you then, while waiting for the fleet to arrive, communicate with your FC and any other scouts about whether they want to cling on and if necessary sacrifice your ship, or whether they want you to get out if you are in serious danger. This depends on many factors, including the fleet's travel time to you, the value of the target, and how easy it will be for you to re-ship. If the target is hurting you, ask fleet members to indicate when they have secondary tackle ("Please call secondaries when you land"), which will let you know when you no longer have to keep the target tackled.

In combat

If you decide on your own initiative to go in for a scram pass, announce the fact; if you hear the FC call for a scram pass, attempt it, and call if it succeeds.

In a mobile gang-versus-gang fight, you might find yourself flying a "screening" role between the two gangs. If so, communicate clearly when you see something coming in ("ramming") towards your own gang, and call if or when you scram it to hold it off and, potentially, to hold it down while your allies kill it.

In a gang-versus-gang brawl, the FC might ask pilots to spread tackle. With the mobility of a scouting ship, and potentially the very long tackle range of an interceptor, if you're flying an interceptor, you might find it useful to stay in the fight and consistently point one type of target in the target-calling sequence ("FC, Stiletto will be pointing secondary targets as you call them").

You might decide to, or be asked to, burn new tactical warp positions on the grid. If so, communicate clearly when you are at a desired tactical warp position. You can, again, put "www" in fleet chat.

You might also decide to, or be asked to, return to the intel-gathering part of scouting. If so, move out of the fight or even totally off-grid, and return to using d-scan and Local to monitor the surrounding space. Combat comms can be busy, so triage the information you pass on to the FC: a new gang spiking Local is significant and must be reported; a single newly-arriving damage-dealing ship at or below the size class of the existing enemies might not be crucial if the FC is busy communicating a tactical move; a single potential hard cyno definitely requires a call-out ("FC, hostile Pilgrim just jumped in from Agoze").

After combat

The moments after a fight, whether victorious, disastrous, or somewhere in between, are often some of the most dangerous in a fleet's life. Stay calm, look at d-scan, Local, and the map, and communicate with the FC about your next steps, whether those are hunting, extraction, or something else.

How to say it

In almost all fleets, scouts have a near-total license to speak up and talk over people when they have intel to report: this is one of the privileges of the role. You are the eyes of the fleet: feel able to cut in if necessary. If cutting in, say "break-break" or "check-check" at the start of your report to get everyone else to shut up.

Voices on voice comms do not always come with labels: different programs have different overlay options, and inevitably some people can't get their overlay to work. If there is any chance of ambiguity about who you are, refer to yourself in the third person.

Corporations and alliances in EVE often have members with very different accents; some people will be communicating in a second language, and variation among first-language speakers can also be a problem (differences between British and US accents, for instance, can be quite confusing!). You can use the NATO phonetic alphabet to spell out any crucial information which might otherwise be hard to grasp. System names, for instance, can be stated naturally and then phonetically: "Local spike in emm aitch see, seven new neuts in Mike Hotel Charlie."

Stay alert to easily-confused words. The Ares and the Eris, for instance, sound very similar in many accents: an FC needs to know about both ships, but they present different tactical problems. It helps to say "An Ares, interceptor" or "An Eris, bubbler".

In larger fleets, in EVE Uni or elsewhere, there will probably be multiple nested voice channels, so be careful about your use of whisper/shout keys. In larger fleets with many moving parts and multiple scouts, a private conversation channel shared between scouts, or shared between scouts and FC, can be an excellent halfway house space, where info which is valuable but not immediately pressing can be linked or typed. In such fleets communication must become more formalised.

Different groups have different protocols but one formalised way to report information on comms is to name the sub-channel to which you're talking, then name yourself, then deliver your information: "Command [=name of sub-channel], Uryence [=name of speaker], Uniform-Mike-Tac thirty-six in local, Caracal gang with logi sitting on MHC gate, d-scan linked in intel chat [=information]."

Further reading

• The Rookie's Guide to Fleet Ops
• Tackling
• Directional scanning
• Bookmarks
• Safe spots
• Probe scanning
• Cloaking
• Manual piloting and Advanced piloting techniques
• Wormhole Community Scouting Guide
• Jump drives
• Topology