Scouting

Notes on Covops Operations and Scouting

This page gives some information for scouts and budding scouts. It is a distillation of lessons learnt by a fleet scout while in the Uni.

What does/doesn't this cover

This page concentrates on covops scouting - that is, covops ships (tech 2 frigates) with proper tech 2 covops cloaks, or to a lesser extent stealth bombers with tech 2 covops cloaks. Those wanting to get a feel for scouting may start in frigates with tech 1 cloaks - these allow for sitting still cloaked and are OK for picketing gates (ie. sitting still watching a gate) but little beyond that, and this page does not really cover their use. Anything larger (recon ships, black ops, etc) is out of scope of this document.

This page also covers high-sec scouting only - points in here may or may not apply to 0.0 or Wormhole space. Bubbles, lack of a "local" comms channel, and other things will change how you scout in 0.0 or Wormhole space, but we assume that you've had some experience in high and low sec before venturing into them.

Finally, this page focuses on fleet scouting, and doesn't cover general intel, except in as much as intel crosses over with scouting.

Fittings

Fittings for covops frigates are generally fairly straight-forward. The highlights are:

• Covops cloak - a tech 2 cloak so you can warp while cloaked.
• Microwarpdrive - this is used for "bursting" - getting some speed up before cloaking.
• Probes - part of a scout's job is sometimes probing down the enemy, and these ships get bonuses to probing, so best to equip for it in case you need it.
• No guns. Covops ships don't fight - the first rule of scouting in a covops is "if you're not cloaked, you're doing it wrong". Note, there are some exceptions to this rule (as to any) and there are some tackling covops fits out there, specifically for gang action - but again, it is assumed that by the time you're flying something like that, you know what you're doing. ( During wartime, tackling Covops fits are only allowed in the uni if you have clearance from the intel department )
• Lots of cap - the more cap you have, the further you can warp in a single jump.
• Fast cap recharge - means you can jump again a little more quickly if you're bouncing around a system.

Beyond that, the fit will be somewhat determined by your ship. For example fits, see (these are just the best from battleclinic for each ship at point of writing):

Cheetah: http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/6978-Cheetah-Deep-Space-Scout.html

Helios: http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/8481-Helios-Paranoid-Scout.html

Buzzard: http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/4583-Buzzard-Spyship-EVE-v4-10-45943.html

Anathema: http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/3650-Anathema-Tonto-s-Exploration-CovOps-IV.html

I'm cloaked!

Congratulations! First thing to note - undocking is dangerous to everyone, and especially dangerous when there's war targets in local. So the easy answer is never undock. If you're in a covops ship and intend to fly it repeatedly, consider logging out in space while cloaked.

When you do this you get warped off to a semi-random place in the system. When you log back in you'll be de-cloaked, but will immediately warp back to where you were. During this warp you have time to re-engage your cloak.

Suggested places to logout are mid-way through a warp to a safe spot, or at a safe spot. Don't do this near anything as you run the risk of fumbling and appearing uncloaked near someone who can see you.

One other point on this - when you logout, close anything non-essential. In particular do not leave a market window open, or any other window that takes a while to refresh. This is because you'll have a moment of frozen client while these refresh as you login and that's frankly terrifying

During wartime the above is not allowed unless you're in the Intel dept - if you're not, then you must dock when not in a fleet.

I've been decloaked, what happened?!

There are a number of ways you can be forcefully decloaked.

• If you get within 2Km of anything you'll lose your cloak. This means don't get too close to other ships and don't hang around at a warp-in point (ed: one of my most terrifying moments was sitting on a 100Km warp-in on a gate and having a larger ship warp in exactly 3Km ahead of me).

• Stations have a range around them that's nominally 2Km, but can be deceptive due to "pointy bits", so be very careful near stations.

• Cargo cans will decloak you and are sometimes easily missed. Gate guns are extremely dangerous - they're very small, usually not in your overview, and scattered around the gates. Very easy to run into by accident - be aware of them. There are some notes on overview settings below.

• Passing ships appear able to decloak you if they're coming out of warp near you. I'm not 100% certain on this one because I've seen cases when it hasn't happened so it may be a myth, but for safety's sake (and for general sneakiness) any time you warp in you want to move either up or down off the plane of movement, to be well out of the way of traffic.

• Your own probes - if you're launching probes, keep a close eye on your cloak, as your probes can decloak you while you're moving them around - very easy mistake to make, and very easy to be looking at the map view reorganising your probes and not realise it.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks are a significant part of what scouting and covops is about - at least in areas where you can bookmark. You'll slowly collect a large number of bookmarks around any system you frequent and they are your lifeblood - the difference between scouting a system with no bookmarks and scouting one you know your way around is immense, and will change how you operate.

So, what to bookmark? There's a handful you'll want:

Gate Warp-ins

A bookmark at warp distance off a gate. You want a few bookmarks that are more than 150Km and less than grid size off each gate in each system you go through. You want to be further than 150Km because you want to be able to warp in and that's the minimum distance. Further away is better so long as you can still see ships coming through the gate. You'll spend a lot of your life at these bookmarks watching gate traffic.

There's two ways to get these. The first is to warp to 100Km off a gate then turn in a random away-from-the-gate direction and move (while cloaked) until you're out far enough. This is a great thing to do if you're doing other things, like watching traffic through the gate, or talking with FC.

Alternately, warp to 100, bookmark that, then warp to something else at 100 and bookmark that. Then warp back to your first bookmark _at 100_. Presto, you have a spot close to 200Km off the gate. If you do this still move a bit to be off the plane, and don't do your two warp-ins in-line with each other. Also, don't jump between gates to do this, as gates are the most likely place other people will warp from.

Incidentally, note that when you come through a gate you come out at 15Km away from the gate - 150Km is your minimum warp distance, so your bookmarks should ideally be more than 165Km away, 170Km+ to be safe.

Try to move off the plane once you have your spot - that's directly up or down - as that'll make you less likely to be found.

Note, bookmarks are dropped when you hit the final "OK" after naming, not when you first hit the "bookmark" button.

Note also, if you can, try and make sure that multiple bookmarks around a gate are far enough away from each other that you can warp between them - that makes hunting down an enemy for a warp-in point much faster (more on that below).

A small tip: If you hit "F10" and toggle the map to the local solar system view, you'll be able to see the layout of the celestial bodies. If you can get your bookmark on the "outside" of the wormhole (ie. put the wormhole between you and the sun), then your field of view should encompass many of the planets, moons, and stations. This will make working out where pilots are heading to when they warp away much easier.

Station Warp-ins

Same rationale as the gate bookmarks, same basic practice - try and put them "behind" the station, so you can see people warp off.

Safe Spots

You want these to be as non-obvious and non-easy-to-find as possible. Between objects (ie. inline from gate to station) is bad but better than nothing (and can have some uses as they're deceptive to an enemy watching you warp out, assuming you're not moving cloaked). Out at scanned down locations - cosmic anomalies and the like - can be good once they're empty. Use safe spots to generate new safe spots by dropping bookmarks mid-warp between them. Keep creating new safe spots - if you or any of your fleet members turn up in them uncloaked you may burn them and have to throw them away.

Note, if you're closer than ship scanner range to other celestial objects you may be spotted (if uncloaked) by any ship using their shipboard scanner. This can happen very quickly so don't assume that just because the fleet stopped in your safe spot for only 60 seconds it hasn't been scanned down. Ship scanners have a range of 14.4AU, so that far from the nearest celestial would be great.

Off-grid

These are like the warp-ins for gates and stations, but just off-grid. Off-grid means far enough away from the location in question to not be able to see ships on the overview (typically near the 500Km mark from your location). These are useful for a couple of things - they're great hiding places and they're very close, so if you want to (for instance) setup an ambush, you can bring a fleet to the off-grid position then move yourself closer to watch the gate or station, get a warp-in point, and bring the fleet in quickly. See below for more info on getting warp-in points on targets.

To get these, you can either warp and drop a bookmark while warping (this can get you out 1AU or so if you can time it right) or you can simply point away from the station and travel - if you do this at a gate, switch brackets on and watch the gate guns - when they disappear, you're off-grid for ships (which means you can't see ships and they can't see you, but you can still see the larger structures). A little further will take you off-grid for the gate itself.

Quick note on warping in - some bookmarks, particularly safe spots, you may want to warp to at 100 or 70 or similar every so often just so you're not always coming in at the same place. Some bookmarks this can be dangerous for - if you have a bookmark at 160Km on a station and you warp to it at 100Km from the other side of the station, you place yourself at 60Km from the station, which if it's camped may not be what you wanted. Always think about where the bookmarks are in the system - use the map (F10) to get a feel for this.

Some more notes on bookmarks: http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Safe_Spot_Bookmarking

There's an excellent article on bookmarking on the Agony site (assuming it stays accessible) http://www.agony-unleashed.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.17

Bookmark Organisation:

As you build up your bookmarks, organisation of them will become important. You can leave them all in the main folder, but that folder will take longer and longer to load - and a delay on getting to your bookmarks may be an issue.

A better approach is to create the following folders: stargates, stations, celestial objects, POSes, safe spots, people - that's six folders. Then, as you bookmark, move the bookmark into the relevant folder (I use the "people" folder for bookmarks near other people's warp-in points or supposed safe spots). That way, your right-click drop-down of bookmarks has a nice organisation and is easy to quickly get what you want - it will only ever present you bookmarks in your system anyway. This scheme also means that bookmarks you want to treat as temporary, you can just leave unfoldered and clean up later.

Note, however, that while bookmarks are stored server-side, the folders are stored client-side. At some point during your career, you are very likely to lose your folders - at which point everything reverts to one big mess. So, in your naming scheme, include a marker for each type of bookmark - SS for safespot, SG for stargate, etc. That way, if/when you do lose your folders, you can re-create them.

Incidentally, a folder per system looks appealing initially, but it suffers similar problems to not foldering at all - there's too many systems out there, your main folder ends up cluttered. Because the right-click drop-down menu already filters for you on system, it's also a bit redundant.

Come up with a naming convention that suits you - something that makes it clear where the bookmark is and what it's for. Ideally also include some info about how far the bookmark is from other objects of interest. Keep your bookmark names to within 24 characters, for readability.

Moving around:

Obviously, your goal is always to stay cloaked, but to position yourself where you can see what's going on with your potential enemies or "neutrals". To that end, it's worth understanding how grids and on and off-grid positioning work - there's a nice write-up that goes through the more in-depth mechanics of "grid fu" at http://will.neoprimitive.net/grids/gridfumanual2.pdf - very useful to understand when you find yourself 100Km off a station but unable to see anyone.

Moving through gates rates a mention - if you are fitted with MWD's, there's a sequence of "double click a direction, hit the MWD, hit the cloak" that gives you a short burst of speed while still cloaking. This can be useful for putting some space between you and the gate or any watchful eyes. If you use this, it's best to also change direction once you've triggered the cloak, just to be sure the prying eyes aren't able to work out where you've gone.

Warp-in Points:

You'll sometimes be asked by your FC to try and get a warp-in point on a target. This basically means staying cloaked, and maneuvering into a position that's a warp-in distance away from the target (ie. a number that appears on the "warp to at..." drop-down) and also in-line with somewhere the fleet can be. In other words, you ideally want something like this:

Fleet ------- Target -- You

Where the fleet is some distance away, out of sight, and you're about 50-100Km away on the other side of the target. Distance from enemy is at your discretion, you ideally want it to match up with the warp-in distances so the fleet can drop directly on top of the enemy (or at appropriate range - that bit's up to the FC to organise ). You don't want the fleet to have to warp through the target, is the only note here, as that gives the target time to see them and run.

This is one of the trickier things to do, mainly because the target will often keep moving. One tip, if the target's warping in and out: Note the distance to the target, note your move speed, and double-click right near them to move toward them. If they warp out, keep moving - time yourself to try and position roughly where you want to be (remembering it's better to be too far away, than right on top of their warp-in point, otherwise they may decloak you). Drop lots of bookmarks while doing this, you can always go clean them up later, and they mean you can warp out and back and resume where you left off.

If you do find an enemies' safe spot, or a warp-in point for a popular location for an enemy, make sure you've bookmarked it - they're valuable so long as the enemy doesn't realise you've got it.

One other small note on this: If you're scouting for a sniper-heavy fleet, you may actually sit between the target and the fleet - the idea is if you're 30Km from the target toward the fleet, the fleet can then warp to you at 50Km and they're perfect sniping distance away. Depends a lot on the situation though, and not likely to be done in a Uni fleet.

Overview:

The overview requirements for a scout are different than for normal fliers. Your job is to see as much as possible, rather than only the enemies. First of all, switch brackets on - that gives you a clearer view of things like gate guns that are otherwise tricky to see. Include neutrals and war targets - neutral may be out of corp repairers or alt scouts. Take your corpmates out, but everything else should show.

Create a second tab that just shows war targets also, so you can quickly and easily identify all war targets and get that information out to your FC, in case a fleet is travelling past you.

http://www.eve-ivy.com/wiki/index.php?title=Varius_Arcturus%27_Overview_Guide has more information on general overview settings and how to set things up as per above

Fleet Ops - X'ing up

Uni policy is that scouts do not X up with the rest of the fleet. If you see a fleet forming, directly convo the FC and ask if they want a scout, Nine times out of ten, they will, and they'll drop you into a separate wing so you don't get ninja warped around with everyone else . Likewise, scouts don't get listed on AAR's. Secrecy is important to being a good scout - if people know your name, they'll notice you in local easily.

If you're in a covops ship and a fleet is around, or you've logged in after fleet has formed, don't be afraid to convo the FC and ask if they'd like another scout - scouts are about the only type of pilots that can usefully join a fleet mid-op depending on where the fleet is and where you are. I figure it's better to offer and be turned down than not.

Scouting:

Most Uni fleets will look for a forward scout and a rear scout, and any number of floating scouts. Forward and floating should be covops ships, rear can be a prototype cloak ship in a pinch, but covops preferred. You may also see or hear reference to "+1" and "+2" scouts, and sometimes "-1" - these are just another way to refer to forward scouts (staying 1 or 2 jumps ahead of the fleet), or rear scouts (one jump behind).

The forward scout's role is to check each gate before the fleet warps to it. As a forward scout, you want to be able to warp to a gate bookmark, check that the gate is clear and give the go-ahead, then warp to zero on the gate and jump through to check the other side. If you don't have bookmarks, this process gets tougher - you're reduced to either travelling uncloaked (bad), travelling cloaked to the gate (slow), or bouncing off a remote celestial to do a warp to zero when you want to go through the gate. So bookmarks are valuable here.

Rear scouts watch the back of the fleet, to make sure no-one's following. They'll typically stay one jump behind the fleet, and need to watch for neutrals or suspicious behaviour. This is arguably tougher than forward scout, as you'll need to be watching not only for obvious war targets, but also for neutrals who "happen" to be following or showing up often.

Floating scouts have a slightly freer job - depending on your FC, they'll either be carefully positioned by FC instruction to watch different gates and/or neighbouring systems, or they'll be free to move around and look for WT's. Floating and forward is pretty much interchangable depending on FC decisions.

Reporting war target sightings - do this as calmly as possible, and as clearly as possible. Good reporting would be "command, darius, I have one cerberus on the korsiki gate in osmon, jumping through to you now". Bad reporting would be "hey guys, there's a war target coming at you!". TS discipline in the uni at least is always lead with the channel name (that's "command" in the above example) and your name so the FC knows who's talking where, then provide the ship type and location, optionally war target name and any other details you might have.

A note on TeamSpeak operation - as scout, you are perfectly within your rights to overtalk someone if something urgent comes up - typically you do that by saying "check check" in the command channel, people should then stop and listen. Obviously you would only use this for really urgent information, like a war target incoming to a fleet position.

Use of Local

While you're scouting, you're looking for certain things. First of all, valid targets or threats - during war that's any of our War Targets, outside of war it's anyone who's "red flashy" (sec status below -5). You're also looking for high concentrations of a single corp (particularly if you're hunting pirates and see a bunch of one pirate corp in channel), and/or anyone that appears to be an out-of-corp alt for a target or potential target (that's neutral pilots following you or hanging around on gates looking suspicious).

Your best tool is the local channel. Squash it width-wise, and extend it out length-wise on your screen - you usually don't care about what's said in local as much as you care about the list of people in there.

Be aware that the symbols (red minuses etc) will sometimes not show up in the local list. Ideally, you need to be checking info on pilots in local as you travel. A quick hint: Don't use the right-click drop-down for "show info", as the "start conversation" option is right next door. Instead, double-click people in local - it goes to info by default and is less risky.

Often you'll be asked to jump into a system and check what's there. Typically this will be jump in, move and cloak, and work your way through the people in local noting down any who are potential targets. Then report back the number of targets and whether you can actually see any or not (ie. are they all on the gate you just came through waiting ;) Typically, if there's anything of interest you'll then be asked to try and track them down - get eyes on them. That's a mix of jumping around the stations, and probing - covered elsewhere in this doc.

Scanning down the opponent:

If you can fit an extended probe launcher, then it's well worth getting some practice at using probes. The Apocrypha scanning system makes one particular type of probing well worthwhile. It goes something like this:

• Warp to a safe spot, decloak, and launch 4 probes. Cloak up again.

• warp back to where you want to keep some eyes on. Be sure you're still cloaked - I've had issues with being decloaked as I warp off after launching probes, still not sure why (may be the probes themselves decloaking me).

• Hit F10, switch all your probes down to 0.5AU, and move them to a nice neat small circle around whatever you're monitoring - typically a gate or station.

The goal here is to provide enough scan strength in 0.5AU around the location to find any ships that have warped off-grid nearby. With half-decent skills, you should get a fix on anything cruiser and up pretty much straight away. So, you just keep hitting the scan button every so often. If you get a hit on something just away from your location, bookmark it, and warp to it at 100. You can then scope out the area, see if it's a worthwhile target, maybe get a warp-in point - all hopefully without your enemy knowing.

Note, this also works for bookmarking people's insta-undocks, and their safe spots around gates. That also means that if you're helping an uncloaked fleet around, be aware that even just off-grid they may be visible to enemy scouts now. Also, be aware that your probes show up on people's ship scanners, so if they suspect you're out there, they may pop their ship scanner, see your probes, and run.

There's an excellent guide to scanning generally at http://www.eve-ivy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15856 There's also a wiki page on Scanning & Probing

Be aware that if you're doing this, anyone clever (anyone using their ship scanners) will notice the probes and high-tail it out quickly. But if you can catch their warp-in or warp-out points, it may help you track them down next time they warp through the area.

Probing like this may also be a distraction - I've had fleet commanders that specifically ask for the scout to probe down targets for them, and I've had fleet commanders that would rather keep you on the move, so it will depend on the type of fleet, purpose of fleet, and whim of the FC as to whether this is a serious part of your duties. It's worth getting some practice in on, imnsho, as it does get asked for, and some FC's will assume you are capable of doing this.

Quick small note - if you're looking for a POS, remember that POSes must be on-grid with moons, so if you stay cloaked and warp from moon to moon, you may find POSes faster than if you try and scan for them (they'll show up in overview when you warp in) - assuming there's not too many moons in system. Beware of warping into the POS, though.

Freedom and Rules:

There is some personal style that comes in here, as scouting can be a freer role than some others in fleet - personal judgements need to be made about what you're watching when. However, two things are important: If the FC tells you to be somewhere, get there, and if you see something that needs investigating and move off your last instruction, clearly inform the FC you're about to do that. 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.

I've personally found a combination of both command channel on TS and a text chat channel in game provides a good balance - if your FC + WCs + other scouts are in a text chat channel, low priority notes can go there without interrupting voice chat. I've also had a few fleets where the scouts have setup a channel amongst themselves only, to discuss where they are and what's happening - that can also be useful, think of it as squad chat for scouts.

One more note: As at time of writing, covops scouts are under the same restrictions as other pilots - that is, they are not allowed to move around unless they are attached to a fleet or have direct allowance from an Intel co-ordinator. So you cannot unfortunately stay undocked unless you're a member of intel.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. I'm sure I've missed things, and bear in mind I'm only a new scout, so I'm looking for feedback from more experienced scouts. Best thing to do is get out there in your scout ship and practice, set up bookmarks around gates and stations in your common hunting areas, and don't be afraid to volunteer to scout for fleets as they setup - everyone loves an extra scout