Wormhole scouting

This page is intended as a step-by-step guide to covertly scouting a wormhole for PvE/PvP Opportunities.

Things you need before you start

• A wormhole. Reference the Scanning and Probing guide for details.
• Recommended ships fit with a cloak and a probe launcher

1. T2 Covert Ops Frigate
   • PROS: CovOps cloak, scan bonus, fast, agile, inexpensive
   • CONS: Not very useful in ganking other than providing a warp in or hero tackle
2. T3 Strategic Cruiser with the Covert Reconfiguration, and Emergent Locus Analyzer subsystems fitted
   • PROS: CovOps cloak, scan bonus, very combat ready, great tank, can swap out electronic subsystem for recon-like e-war bonus subsystem, immune to bubbles with Interdiction Nullifier propulsion subsystem
   • CONS: Expensive, not as agile as a CovOps frig
3. T2 Force Recon Cruiser
   • PROS: CovOps cloak, combat ready, E-war bonuses
   • CONS: Mid range price, no scan bonus, hard to fit an expanded probe launcher, much less tank compared to a T3
4. T1 Exploration Frigate
   • PROS: Scan bonus, fast/agile, cheap!
   • CONS: No CovOps cloak, locals will see you, easy to be ganked

• Pen and Paper or notepad open.
• Open the following sites in a browser
  • wormnav
  • wormhol.es
  • google

So You Have found a Wormhole

Now it's time to start scouting, but before you jump...

1. Bookmark the wormhole
   • Bookmarks created from a scan probe result can have >5km variability resulting in warp to 0km not placing you in jump range
   • As such it is advisable to re-bookmark the wormhole while on grid.
2. Check the wormhole ID (if it isn't a K162) for max wormhole stats and system link type
   • Google the ID, first result is nearly always the right one
   • Type it in Wormnav
   • Reference the table in the wiki
3. Show info on the wormhole, reference this page for details: Wormhole Text
   • Make sure the wormhole is stable enough in both mass and time to move your fleet in
   • If it doesn't have enough mass or time remaining for a round trip plan on scanning your way out again, or find another wormhole.
4. Attempt visual identification of wormhole destination
   • Visual Wormhole Identification

Time to Jump

If all the above lends to the idea that this world be a fun place to visit, it's time to Jump.

1. Hold your cloak!
   • Bookmark the other side of the wormhole!
2. Time to get your bearings
   • Link the system's locus ID (the J#) to fleet members
   • Ping d-scan, 360°, max range, using Wormhole Overview Preset
   • Run a probeless system scan, record/report the # of Anomalies.
   • Evaluate your surroundings, and consider swapping gate cloak for your cloaking device
3. If you see nothing threatening, start moving, pulse your prop mod, and engage your cloaking device.
   • Consider changing your direction of travel so as to not be on a predictable path for those attempting to de-cloak you
4. Decide if this wormhole is worth checking out using the following considerations:
   • Class of wormhole (C1/C2 are soloable, C3's require very good skills and a good ship to solo or a gang with logi, C4's and up require a logi supported gang)
   • Number of anomalies (easiest source of PvE)
   • Recent NPC/Ship/Pod kills in system from wormnav (NPC kills imply it's been farmed recently, ship and pod kills may imply hazzards)
   • Signs of occupation (if PvP is of interest this might be a bonus)
5. Control your urge to launch probes
   • The main goal of wormhole life is never letting anyone know you are there until you are ready to, and probes are obvious, we will get to that later

Check for Occupancy

Now you are cloaked and somewhat safe away from the wormhole where your chances of being de-cloaked are lowered, and you've made the decision that time should be invested digging further, let's figure out who's home.

1. Pull up your pod saver tab and show info on the Customs Offices.
   • One of the most obvious indications of habitation is Player Owned Customs Offices (POCO's) as they are labeled with the name of the corp which set them up
   • Interbus is the standard NPC Customs Office and can indicate that the system hasn't been colonized.
2. Check wormhol.es to see if it's API digging agrees with current occupation.
   • wormhol.es and wormnav also both have links to public killboards for browsing recent activity
3. Pull up the system map and check system size.
   • Make note of any planets outside of 14.36AUs as they will not appear on d-scan.
   • If able to warp while cloaked, start warping to planets out of range to gather d-scan data (use both the Wormhole Preset to look for force fields, and the Looting Preset to look for wrecks)
   • While warping this is an excellent time to be making safe spots.
   • Make note of any planet you find an active force field and any ships nearby

Check out the POSes

By now you have several safe spots, and a list of the planets with active POSes on their moons, time to locate the POSes for monitoring.

Create a POS Finder Overview Tab

This tab is useful in quickly locating Moons containing POSes.

1. Open Overview Settings.
2. Click the 4-lined box and select Load 6 - Wormhole.
3. Open the Celestial folder and check Moon.
4. Open the Deployable folder and ensure that Mobile Warp Disruptor is selected
5. Save the settings as 6a - POS finder.

Usage instructions

1. Warp to planet and switch to POS finder preset, sort overview by distance
2. check tracking box in D-scan window, set 5° scan
   • If there are a large number of moons, this can be sped up by scanning 360° and narrowing down range
3. Highlight each moon of the current planet in the overview, press scan
4. Make note of any moons with active towers
5. D-scan the moon one last time, if there are any warp disruptors in d-scan that implies a trap has been set at the warp

Warping to Moons

When warping to a moon, with an active tower, where warp disruption bubbles are present, the utmost care must be taken. As such here's a quick quide of bubble mechanics from Azual Skoll at The Altruist.

• NOTE: This step may be ignored in the event there are no ships/probes/wrecks in system on d-scan indicating any pilots are active

Bubble Mechanics

A catch bubble on the left, and a drag bubble on the right

Key points relating to warping to a POS:

• Bubbles near a POS are used as catch or drag bubbles, and will pull you out of warp at the leading edge of the bubble provided that:
  • The bubble is on grid with your destination (regardless of distance)
  • A continuous line drawn from your start point straight through your destination would pass through the radius of the bubble (both in front, and behind the destination)
• Common alignments to be trapped are as follows in order of likelihood:
  1. The planet the Moon is orbiting
  2. The star
  3. Adjacent moons of the same planet
  4. Other stuff...
• The distance you will travel after dropping out of warp is inversely proportional to your ships agility.
  • Smaller more agile ships will end up at the edge of the bubble
  • Larger ships may drift all the way into the center of the bubble
• traps are often littered with anchored cans, abandoned drones, corpses, and other assorted space trash.
  • The disruption field itself will not de-cloak you, being within 2km of any object will
• While POS structures are scannable with combat probes, anchored bubbles are not, so warping to a structure from a bad angle still will drag you out of warp.

The Actual Warp

Now that you know which moon is occupied, you can hop on grid with it to check for piloted ships

• NOTE: It is highly suggested to only do this in ships fitted with covert ops cloaks

1. D-scan the moon one last time, if there are any warp disruptors in d-scan that implies a trap has been set at the warp-in from at least one approach
2. Review system map for ability to create bookmarks perpendicular to common approaches of the planet/sun, or moons and planets unaligned with common approaches
3. Warp to best location, select warp to moon at 100km
4. While in warp, have a celestial or safe available for easy access in case you need to bug out
   • If you are caught, don't panic, chances are you still have your cloak, plot your shortest path out of the bubble with the fewest obstructions and slow boat out to empty space
   • If you've dropped cloak, don't panic, you still have >10seconds depending on sig radius before the POS can lock you, plot your shortest path out of the bubble, light your prop mod, and hit your cloak the second you are clear.
   • If you are locked, a properly fit POS will point you. Make sure you are out of the bubble and spam warp to on something that doesn't take you back through the bubble. This way you can at least get your pod out.
5. If you wind up cloaked in empty space, take a second to gander at the bubbles.
6. Identify a good vantage point to bookmark if you want to come back and spy
   • Should be ~80km off grid with the tower so as to make the Look At option available to anything in the field
   • Should be perpendicular to any bubble traps, and aligned with a bookmark or a celestial so that it can be warped to without any bubble concerns
7. Hang out and gather intel
   • Piloted ships will be listed with their pilot on the overview and mouseover
   • Check what is online and what is merely anchored as far as defenses and industrial structures, more industry and less defensive online could imply carebear leanings of the occupants, though not necessarily true.
8. Repeat for any other possibly occupied POSes

Scanning Time

If all has gone well up to this point, the only time your ship has appeared on D-scan is the brief time when swapping from jump cloak to cloaking device (that is if you have a covops cloak). No reason to break the blissful ignorance of possible occupants by announcing your presence now! Thus, the goal of the following section is to get your probes out into space, out of range for d-scan, as quickly as possible so that you may re-cloak and go about your business.

• NOTE: This portion of the guide has been influenced by the musings of Penny Ibramovic of www.tigerears.org, specifically this page

Find an Empty Spot

You and your probes will be visible while launching, so you want a nice spot out of d-scan range of any active ships.

Things to avoid (in order of importance)

1. Active Pilots in space
   • Most likely to be regularly pinging d-scan
2. Active POS with pilots
   • Sense of security means less likely to be pinging d-scan
3. Active POS with no pilots
   • Possibility of new pilots logging in while you are de-cloaked
4. Points between an active POS and pilots
   • Possibility of someone warping by while pinging d-scan

If you can find a spot that is > 14.36au from all the above, super! If not, minimize your exposure to anything on the above list with the first 2 being the most important.

Launching Probes

Now, time to pop out some probes. Your goal here is to get your probes out, cloak up, and fling your probes out of d-scan range as quickly as possible.

NOTE: Always use combat scanning probes

• You can see ships
• 64au range is great for performing a blanket system scan
• At each scan range, they have the same scan strength and variability as core probes
• Core probes only benefit is the 0.25au range, but with Astrometric Rangefinding to 3 or 4 and a well fitted ship with a scan bonus, you will be able to resolve most sigs at 0.5au

Launch Steps:

1. Warp to your spot selected in the last section
2. Ping d-scan for active pilots
3. Open system map
4. Drop cloak, activate prop mod
5. Launch minimum number of probes for a good scan
   • Optional: adjust probes to formation while waiting on launcher cooldown
6. Re-cloak
   • Optional, only recommended when not hunting targets: reload probes prior to re-cloaking
7. Set range on probes to 16au
   • Gives a graphical representation of max d-scan range, anything in that bubble can see your probes
8. move all probes >16au from any celestial
   • Easiest to do by moving above or below the system plane
9. Select scan to cause probes to warp off
10. Ping d-scan to ensure probes are out of range
11. Set probes to 64au
12. Spread probes to cover the system, select scan

And we now have a list of every non-cloaked scannable object in system. From your results:

• Ignore all the anomalies, they are easy to find again
• Ignore structures as you've found all the POSes already
• Count and record the number of ships, this should agree with results from d-scan
• Record the sig ID's for the Cosmic Signatures that need to be scanned down

Now you have a choice, PvP or PvE? If there's no signs of threats, start scanning down sigs and making bookmarks for the fun to come. If there are juicy targets, move on to the next section and try and hunt them down.

Hunting Targets

So there might be something worthwhile in system to gank, this part of the guide will go over best practices of dropping in on someone unawares.

Finding Targets at Celestial Objects

• No probes required, to be performed prior to launching probes
• Most likely this will only be used to catch people working on PI
• Scan objects of interest with a tight beam until target is located
• Will require warping around in larger systems

Finding Targets at a Cosmic Anomaly

• No probes required, to be performed prior to launching probes
• Used for catching combat or salvage operations underway
• Perform a system scan with no probes
  • Note: system scan range is limited to 64au, you will have to warp to any planets outside that range and scan again
• Scan objects of interest with a tight beam until target is located
• Will require warping around in larger systems

Finding Targets at Neither an Anomaly nor a Celestial

• Requires probes, reference the combat probing syllabus for details
• Un-warped probes can be used as markers

Target types

Below is a list of the general types of targets to be found in w-space and how to best track them down.

PI Hauling

Planetary Interaction is very profitable in wormholes, as such it is a popular activity for pilots to be working on while you pop into their system.

• NOTE: combat probes are not needed to hunt PI haulers (unless you plan on getting them on a wormhole)

Opposition

• Ship: T1 or T2 industrial
• Fit:
  • Cloak and/or Probe launcher on the highs
  • Shield tank in the mids
  • Cargo expanders and/or warp stabs in the lows
  • Cargo expanders, agility, or tank in the rigs

Profitability

Low: most likely drop is an expanded cargohold. Any PI materials that drop are likely too large to fit in the hold of a combat ship.

How to Hunt

P-goo collectors are most often found warping between customs offices in their home system. Best ambush is to be at their next stop before they are. With skills to 5 they can only operate at 6 planets, thus you are time limited in tracking them down before they are done for the day.

1. D-scan planets with a narrow beam until target is located at a POCO
2. Warp to current location at range and start playing catch up until you land on grid with them
3. Watch them align and warp to your optimal of their next POCO
   • Industrial warp speed is 1au/s so chances are you will arrive first
4. De-cloak and wait to pounce
   • Stealth bombers can stay cloaked due to lack of recalibration delay

Risk

They may have friends in system, so do not linger around afterwards.

Rock Chewers

Gravimetric sites in wormholes have lots of very large asteroids of every type, which makes them a desirable place to mine.

• Note: probes are required to hunt down a mining operation

Opposition

• Ships: Venture, Mining Barge or Exhumer, Orca if you're lucky.
• Fit: Shield tank with mining stuff

Profitability

Low T2 strip miners are kinda nice, but the ore won't fit in a combat ship's hold.

How to Hunt

In w-space, gravimetric sites are where rocks are found

Gas Huffers

Opposition

• Ships: Venture
• Fit: Shield tank with mining stuff

Profitability

Low T2 strip miners are kinda nice, but the ore won't fit in a combat ship's hold.

Combat Operations

Combat ships and wrecks on d-scan

• If you have a fleet, consider hitting the combat ships while they are working
  • Possibility of some nice shiny ships and modules

Salvage Operations

• Sleeper loot sells well, why not let someone else pick it up for you
• If you have a fleet, consider ganking the salvager and bating combat ships in for defense, than warp your fleet in to counter them

Scouting Connecting Wormholes

<To be added in>