User:Arin Mara/Sandbox
The goal of probing is to increase a Signature’s Signal Strength to 100%. Your system has a few Cosmic Signatures listed, and you’re well versed in what could possibly be out there. Let’s probe one down in this video, or as follows below.
- You already have the scanning panel open, but let’s hit F10 to open up the Solar System Map. This is a “wireframe” representation of the system you are currently in, complete with all the major celestials, like planets, moons and the sun. Since you have your scanning window open, there should be some green and/or red dots and spheres on your map. These represent the Anomalies and Signatures currently tracked by your scanner, as well as their general location. Green dots indicate areas that you can warp to, either an Anomaly or a Signature you have scanned down. Red dots or spheres represent the general area in which your ship’s scanner is detecting the signal of a Cosmic Signature. We’re going to have to narrow that down in order to warp there.
- The bottom left of your scanner window has an icon that looks a bit like an atom. That’s the shortcut for the “Pinpoint” probe formation. Press it, and your ship will launch its payload of probes and automatically arrange them in a Pinpoint formation. Neat!
- You should now notice that some blue spheres have appeared on your Solar System map. That’s the general area that your probes can currently scan. The center probe in this formation is represented by a white box with arrows sticking out of it. You can click and drag those arrows to move the probes around: by default, dragging that center probe will move all the probes together in formation. This is useful. Now, in order to start tracking down a Signature, you will need to drag your probes so they are centered over one of the red Signature dots or spheres and then press the Analyze button on the middle left of your scanning window. This will scan that area more thoroughly with your probes, and will take a few seconds to complete. If the signature’s red sphere is larger than the area your probes’ blue spheres cover, hold alt and expand the sphere size. This will increase the range of your probes so you can scan the whole red sphere. If all this is done correctly, the scan will complete and increase the Signal Strength of your chosen Signature. This is listed on the far right of your scanning window.
- The goal of probing is to increase a Signature’s Signal Strength to 100%. As you continue to increase the Signal Strength, you will begin to learn more and more about the Signature: first, what type of Site it is, followed by the specific name of the site, and then finally, the Signature’s actual location so you can warp to it! Obviously, this is why we’ve picked a ship and equipment that raises the scan strength of our probes: it makes it much easier to get this number to 100%.
- Now, it’s unlikely this first scan got the signal to 100%. In order to further increase its Signal Strength, we’re going to have to give our probes more power by reducing the range of their scan. We do this by clicking and holding the outside edge of one of the probe’s blue spheres and then dragging it inward. This will decrease the size of your scan. Now, re-center your probes on your signature’s dot or sphere and hit the Activate button again. If done correctly, your smaller scan area should still catch the Signature and will end up increasing its Signal Strength.
- Most Signatures can be probed down by repeating this process: reduce your scan range by a step, re-center your probes on the Signature, and scan! It’s just that easy.
- Once you’ve raised the Signal Strength to 100%, the Signature’s Signal Strength will turn into an arrow you can click to warp to the newly located Site. Congratulations! You’re exploring!
Probing Tips and Troubleshooting
- You may occasionally come across a Signature that refuses to hit 100%, despite the fact that you have your probes centered on it at their minimum range (0.25 AU). If this happens, there are a couple things you can try before giving up and resolving to raise your probing-related skills.
- Holding the SHIFT key down will allow you to maneuver individual probes, rather than your entire formation. If you are using the Pinpoint formation as recommended, you’ll notice that five of the probes are along the same plane, with four hovering around the outside of the center probe. Shift these four probes around the center probe so that they form a cross, with one probe at each cardinal direction. Activate your scanner again: this in and of itself may be enough to make the Signature warpable. If not, move the four probes closer to the center probe. You’ll want to get them pretty close, without having them overlap. Zooming your view in using the mouse wheel will help here. Alternate shifting the cardinal point probes closer and activating your scanner to see if this raises the Signal Strength enough.
- If the above isn’t quite enough to get the Signature to 100%, you can try shifting the entire formation of probes in a single direction a very small amount and then re-scanning. Since the dot that represents the Signature’s location isn’t 100% accurate until its Signal Strength is 100%, you can sometimes squeeze out an extra percentage point or two of Strength in this manner. This can be a bit tedious, however, as the margin for error is so small. It’s recommended that you only try this if you are painfully close to 100% Signal Strength!
- Note that as a new explorer, sometimes you’ll just plain be unable to scan a Signature all the way down to 100%. This is very unlikely to happen in high-sec space, but if it does, don’t let it get you down. Just remember, one day your skills and equipment will be good enough that no Signature will be able escape your grasp!
- After you’ve probed something down, you may notice that your scanner used to have a bunch of Signatures on it, but now does not. This is because launching probes and reducing their range has removed those Signatures from your scanning region. This is easy enough to remedy, however. You can either expand your probes’ range to their maximum and re-scan, or temporarily switch the Spread formation and re-scan a larger area. In both cases, make sure your probes are covering as large a space as possible: the entire system, if you can. That should find those missing Signatures easily!
- While scanning, once you have a signature down to a single dot, double-click the signature in the scanner window. This will center your star system map on the signature, and, more importantly, make the camera rotate around it (instead of around the sun), which makes moving and aligning your probes much easier.
Collaboration
Combat sites
- Main article: Combat sites
Combat sites can be found in many flavors. They all share the common element of killing rats for rewards. Combat sites are generally split into two categories, anomalies and signatures, depending on how they are found.
The most commonly found combat sites are combat cosmic anomalies. They are visible in scanner window as soon as you jump into a system and require no specialized scanning equipment. They are always ungated pockets in space with multiple waves of rats.
A specific type of cosmic anomalies is besieged covert research facility. These sites are found in low security space only and are harder than the normal anomalies. The rats in these will attempt to shoot into your lowest resist so omni tank is needed.
Combat cosmic signatures are harder to find. They need to be scanned with probes and are generally rarer than anomalies. They are made up of several “rooms” of deadspace connected by Acceleration Gates, and they frequently have containers filled with great loot. Of course, they are also guarded by large numbers of NPC ships. These combat sites are further divided into unrated and DED rated complexes. The differences between the two are mostly cosmetic.
Relic and Data sites
- Main article: Relic and data sites
Relic and data sites require hacking to gain acces to the goods. They are found by scanning with probes. They can be divided to groups based on what challenges they contain.
Pirate relic and data sites do not contain any dangers. You just need to scan the site down, hack the containers with and grab the goods. This is usually done in defenseless frigate in lawless space so watch out for other players. Drone data sites are similar but failing the hack spawns hostile drones. The drones are weak and even T1 scanning frigate can handle them. Pirate relic and data sites are found in normal space and class 1-3 wormholes. In drone regions only drone data sites are found.
Ghost Site are more dangerous data sites found in normala space. In them you have limited time to hack and failed hacks will blow up the container and damage your ship. These sites can be identified from "Covert Research Facility" in their name.
Sleeper caches are the most complicated data sites. They contain traps and environmental hazards, single mistake can get poorly fit ship killed. The come in three flavors: Limited Sleeper Cache, Standard Sleeper Cache and Superior Sleeper Cache. The limited sleeper cache is for frigates while the other two require more powerful ships.
Gas sites
Gas sites contain gas clouds that can be harvested for resources. The resources gathered in normal space are used for boosters while the resources in wormholes are used in T3 production.
In certain regions there are also gas site combat sites. These sites contain two waves of rats and containers that need to be hacked to get access to the rewards. They contain drug related commodities, blueprints, implants and skillbooks.
Ore sites
Ore sites are cosmic anomalies and do not require probes to be located. These sites are temporary pockets filled with either ice asteroids, which can be mined for fuel components, or regular asteroids of a rarer type not normally found in that system. You can tell what kind of asteroids are within the site by the site’s name: they’re pretty obvious.
Wormholes
- Main article: Wormholes
Wormholes are temporary gates that can take your ship from your current system to almost anywhere else in space. They are cosmic signatures and need to be scanned with probes. Some wormholes go to highsec, lowsec, or nullsec space, and are sometimes valuable shortcuts around the universe. Some go to dangerous “uncharted” areas referred to as “wormhole space” or “w-space.” W-space areas contain the most lucrative exploration sites in the game, but most of them are guarded by powerful Sleeper NPCs, even the Relic and Data Sites that are so tame in high-sec. (As of the Phoebe release in late 2014, nullsec Relic and Data sites with Sansha, Blood Raider, Guristas, Angel and Serpentis in their names are unguarded sites in WH space. So after learning more about WH's, if you have enough data/relic skills, you could consider running these.) For these reasons, at the start of your career, you should leave wormholes alone... but don’t forget about them! Later articles will go into how you can begin dipping your exploration toe into the vast, untamed pond of wormhole space. See the Wormholes information.
Sites in wormhole space
Wormhole space has its own sets of sleeper sites unique to each wormhole class. The sleepers defend these sites, for more information see Wormholes.
Lower class 1-3 wormholes also contain pirate data and relic sites. These are identical to sites found in normal null security space.
Reach out to teaching department manager or officers if you are interested in holding this class - we are happy to help - TODO
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