Introduction

VA's Overview Guide is a step-by-step guide, designed to teach new players how to set up their own overviews in EVE Online.

The guide contains a full walk-through of how to set up a complete overview from start to finish, with the following presets:

PvP
PvP + Drones
PvP Travel
PvP Travel without neutrals
Missioning and Mining
Fleetmates Only
Pod Saver
Wormholes!

Setting up your overview is compulsory for uni fleets. People will get angry at you if you don't have your overview set up properly. Your overview presets are your eyes in EVE. Playing the game without setting them up properly is like not wearing glasses. You don't need glasses, you say? Trust me, everyone wears glasses in EVE. Knowledge is power. Even if you think you know it all, you don't.

Getting Started

What is the overview?

In EVE Online, the overview is the only practical way to organize and view stuff. It is a powerful, (almost) fully customizable list of interactive items. It is one of the most important parts of EVE’s interface, and will help you in PvP, running missions, mining, traveling - practically every activity in EVE requires use of the overview. It is vitally important that you set up your overview in a way that is not confusing, and will allow you to easily see whatever you want to see at any given time. The consequences of not setting up your overview properly could range from not being able to see a war target and subsequently getting destroyed, to ﬁring on your own ally because he appeared as a hostile, to being destroyed by NPC pirates that didn’t even show up on your screen.

Organizing your screen layout

Before you even touch the overlay itself, however, you should organize the rest of your interface. EVE is a game of communication and numbers - your screen layout should reﬂect this.

Undock and ﬁnd a safe place to sit. You will be sitting out in space for around half an hour. The POS in Aldrat is a good place to do this - ask another player in corp chat if you don’t know where it is. Alternatively, do this on an alternate character on the same account. The changes will carry across to all characters on that account on the same computer. This is preferable in wartime.
Click the fleet button (on the Neocom panel), then click Form Fleet. Click through the loot logging screen, and you’ll see that you’ve formed a fleet.
Open the Scanner window (button located to the left of the capacitor readout).
Drag the Fleet window on top of your Scanner window until the window glows, then let go of your mouse. This creates a window with two tabs. This is useful, because the list of fleet members is generally quite large, and you don’t need to refer to it very often during an op. You should always have your scanner window open, as directional scan is invaluable.
Make your overview nice and big - it is your main source of information. I like to have mine running from top to bottom on the right side of my screen, with my Selected Item window just above it, and my Fleet/Scanner window just below it.
During a fleet, you’re going to need to have chat windows open. You generally have two windows open at once - fleet and squad chat. I like to keep them on the left side of the screen in separate windows.
Another window you should have separated is Local chat. Local is very important in ascertaining who is in system with you.
You should also leave space for your watch list, but you can only get that when you have other people in your ﬂeet.
Press escape and go to the General Settings tab . Under the Windows subheading, check Lock windows when pinned . This will ensure your overview and other windows don’t go anywhere.
Pin your overview and any other windows of your choice. This will allow you to see through them.

Remember that your interface should be set up the way it is most convenient for you - feel free to change your windows around once you work out what you want.

Hint - You can move your ship and modules display to the left and right by holding shift and clicking on your capacitor and dragging. You can even move it to the top of your screen: Click the white arrow below the speedometer, then "Align Top" at the bottom of the menu which appears.

Another hint - You can move your targeted objects around your screen as well. Notice that near the upper-left or upper-right corner of your targeted items (you will have to target something to see these), there is a very faint cross-hair. Click and drag that cross-hair around to change the location of your targets.

Now go to right click the white triangle on your Fleet tab and select Leave ﬂeet . Your screen should be mostly set up for the next ﬂeet op. Next time you go on an op, don’t forget to separate your squad and ﬂeet chat windows and to add important ﬂeetmates to your Watch List.

Now that we’ve gotten that down, let’s get onto the overview itself.

The Overview Settings

Viewing Overview Settings

To view all your overview settings, do the following:

Right click on white triangle on your Overview tab.
Click on the third last option, Open overview settings.

You should now see your overview settings window, complete with six different tabs.

NOTE - This guide will cover optimizing overview settings in the next chapter. For now, follow along in your own overview and learn.

The Filters Tab

Types

The types tab is where you select what you want to see on your overview. You can use this tab to select specific things - if you’re a veldspar miner, you might only want veldspar asteroids and NPC rats. If you’re a PvPer, you might only want ships on your overview, or maybe even just specific types of ships.

Asteroid: Pretty self explanatory - all your different types of asteroids.
Celestial: All your large celestial objects - planets, moons, wormholes, and so on. Also contains beacons (cynosural ﬁelds), biomass (corpses), stargates and wrecks.
Charge: Contains bombs, which can now be deployed by stealth bombers, but only in 0.0 space. These are very dangerous - always good to have them on your overview.
Deployable: Mobile warp disruptors, otherwise known as bubbles. These are the deployable type that get anchored in space. The other type are used by interdictors and heavy interdictors, and don’t show up on your overview.
Drone: All your various types of drones. Useful if you want to target drones of any kind, especially ﬁghter drones.
Entity: All your mission rats (NPC enemies), as well as a few useless things like billboards.
NPC: CONCORD, and non-mission rats.
Ship: Player-owned ships. Usually you’ll have all of these selected, unless you want to target speciﬁc types of ships.
Station: Pretty self-explanatory. Structure POS structures and modules - you might use these if you were attacking one, or living in one.

States

In the States tab, you can further define what you want to see in the overview. Whilst the Types tab is pretty straightforward, some care has to be taken with the States tab.

IMPORTANT - EVERYONE READ THIS: States doesn’t let you say what you want to see, rather it lets you say what you don’t want to see.

If a player has an attribute that you haven’t selected, they won’t show up on your overview.

Example: You want to see a war target, so you select Pilot is at war with your corporation/alliance. You would think this would give you war targets on your overview, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Suppose that player also has a bounty on him. Since you haven’t got bounty checked, he won’t show up. You need to select all the attributes that a war target could possibly have in order to see war targets.

Additionally, the States tab and the Types tab interact which often leads to problems and confusion for newer players. For example, if you are setting up a drone preset where all you want to see are drones and nothing else [i.e. no ships, no rats etc.], many newer players will deselect everything in Types except for Drones and then deselect everything in States thinking that those attributes deal only with showing pilots - which is what you don't want in your Drones preset. The problem with this is that you will not see your Drones in the Overview because Drones belong TO pilots; in order to see your own drones, you must select "pilot is in your alliance" in the States tab. If you want to see the drones of your enemies, then you will also have to select "pilot is at war with your corporation/alliance" etc. Feel free to test this out with your own drones, you will be pleasantly surprised. The same principle applies if you're mining with jetcans, if you only select "Cargo Container" under Celestial in Types and deselect everything in States, nobody's cans will show up in your overview because by deselecting everything in States, you are not allowing your Overview to show cans that belong to pilots - and since all cans invariably belong to a pilot, none will thus show. This same principle applies to other objects like wrecks etc. because the States tab doesn't just show pilots, but it shows what those pilots own. To keep things simple, I select everything in the States tab for all my presets and use the Types tab to filter what I do/don't want to see in my Overview presets. NOTE: This paragraph was not written by Varius.

This is the trick to the overview, and (apart from bugs) the most common reason why players can’t see all the things they want to see.

The Appearance Tab

Colortag

Colortags allow you to set which tags appear or do not appear, and which tags have priority. Setting colortags correctly is important because they dictate which state you see. For example, if you have Pilot has a bounty on him set higher than Pilot is at war with your corporation/alliance, you will only see the black skull bounty colortag rather than the red star war target colortag. The consequences of this could obviously be very bad.

Also note that colortag settings also affect chat and space.

Another thing to remember is that changing these settings won’t dictate what you can and can’t see in your overview - you will still see all the things you dictated in the States tab. The only thing you’re changing here is how said things are displayed in your overview, in chat and in space.

Background

The Background tab allows you to change the background of items in your overview, as well as the background of icons in space. It doesn’t affect things in chat.

You can change the colour of the background of any pilot state. Generally, as backgrounds are quite distracting, I might only have a few selected at any one time.

You can also toggle ﬂashing backgrounds. This is where the term “red ﬂashy” comes from - players generally have war targets and outlaws set to a ﬂashing red background. This is useful for highlighting certain pilots in your overview.

Like in the Colortags tab, backgrounds have priorities. If a pilot fulﬁlls two or more criteria, the highest ranked one will take priority.

EWAR

The EWAR lets you modify which electronic warfare notifications are shown on the overview. For example, you might only want to know when you’re being warp scrambled, so you would only check that box.

The Columns Tab

Columns let you select which columns you want to see in your overview. Some of them are pretty useless, so you obviously don’t want those columns cramping your style.

Icon: This is the object’s icon, useful for quickly seeing the difference between a stargate and a station, or a war target and a corp member.

Distance: The object’s distance from your ship.

Name: The name of the object, be it a player name, the name of a station, or the name of a stargate or another item.

Type: Shows what type of ship a pilot is ﬂying, which is a very useful thing to know.

Tag: The tag that a ﬂeet commander (FC) has assigned to an object. Useful when primary and secondary targets are called, although an FC will usually just shout out the name over Teamspeak. Mostly used for shooting rats, where the FC wants pilots to destroy enemies in a certain order, but doesn’t want to have to call out each target. Also useful for exploration, where cans in archaeology or hacking sites need to be marked as completed.

Corporation and Alliance: A pilot’s corporation and alliance.

Faction and Militia: Used in Factional Warfare.

Size: The object’s size.

Velocity: The object’s general velocity.

Radial Velocity: How fast an object is traveling, and whether it is traveling towards or away from you.

Transversal Velocity: How fast an object is traveling perpendicular to you (its orbital velocity). Very useful for gunnery pilots in gauging whether a target can be hit or not, and valuable for frigate and interceptor pilots trying to avoid being hit by guns. An object with a faster transversal velocity will be harder to hit, and vice versa. Angular velocity is, however, more useful. Angular velocity is the most valuable tab for gunnery pilots.

Angular Velocity: is an object’s speed relative to you, measured in radians per second. This means that angular velocity takes distance from a target into account, a very important factor when trying to hit something. Even if a ship has a high transversal velocity, it may still have a very low angular velocity because it is far away; meaning it might still be easy to hit. Basically, if the number in the angular velocity tab is lower than your tracking speed, you can hit your target - or the other way around.

The Ships Tab

The Ships tab lets you customize what you see when you mouse over an object in space. It also lets you customize the order information is shown in, and the brackets used on either side of each bit of information. Again, some bits are useful, and some bits are not. Ship Name, for example, is rarely useful, whereas Ship Type is very useful.

Since I generally use the overview to look at all of this information, this tab is not so important to me. It can, however, be useful when you are looking at a battle from long range in Tactical Overview mode, and you want to see all pertinent information when you mouse over different ships.

The Misc Tab

The Misc tab allows you to reset all of your overview settings and start from scratch. It also has the option of moving objects that are mentioned in broadcasts to the top of an overview. This can be useful in ﬂeet operations when the FC broadcasts an align command, or the like. The relevant stargate would then move to the top of the overview.

The Overview Tabs Tab

This tab allows you to set up to ﬁve different tabs, with ﬁve different overview and bracket proﬁle presets. This lets you easily switch between different proﬁles for different situations. Brackets are the icons you see in space for an item, such as squares for players, circles for planets, etc..

The next section will show you how to set different presets and optimize your overview for different situations.

Setting Up Your Overview

The following section will tell you how to set up your overview for Eve University ﬂeets. Please follow the instructions carefully.

Setting Up Columns

In your overview settings, go to the Columns tab.
Make sure the following boxes are checked:
- Icon
- Distance
- Name
- Type
- Tag
- Corporation
- Alliance (Corporation and alliance are useful to see who is around, especially in low security space.)
- Radial velocity
If you are a gunnery pilot or tackler, check Angular velocity. Use whichever one you are comfortable with.
Sort your overview by Distance , so that the closest items are at the top. This is the most logical way to sort your overview.
Make sure your overview is wide enough to easily see the information in all these columns.

Setting Up Ship Mouse-Overs

Go to the Ships tab.
Make sure the following boxes are checked, and move them into the following order: (I ﬁnd that his helps to separate all of the bracketed information, which can get confusing.)
- Ship Type
- Pilot name
- Corp Ticker
- Alliance Ticker
Select Hide corp ticker if pilot is in alliance at the top of the tab.

This removes irrelevant information - if you’re ﬁghting against a Privateer, you want to know he’s in the Privateer Alliance, not which corp he’s in.

Setting up Broadcasted Entities

Go to the Misc Tab.
Check Move entities with broadcasts to top.

Setting Up Colortags

Go to the Appearance tab, and then the Colortag tab.
Change your colortags to be in the following order:
- Pilot is at war with your corporation/ alliance
- Pilot is at war with your militia
- Pilot is in your ﬂeet
- Pilot is in your corporation
- Pilot is in your alliance
- Pilot has excellent standing
- Pilot has good standing
- Pilot is in your militia
- Pilot is an outlaw
- Pilot has terrible standing
- Pilot has bad standing
- Pilot has security status below 0
The last three items should be unchecked, unless you really want to see who has a bounty, which is pretty useless information.
Please double check your settings against the setting order above.

Notice that the colortag for Pilot is an outlaw is an orange skull. This is because we’re going to be changing the background for this state in the next section.

Flagging in High Security Space In high sec, you usually can’t be attacked by anyone without CONCORD attacking and destroying them. However, if you commit the following actions in high security space, CONCORD won’t interfere if someone attacks you.

These are:

If you steal from someone.
If you aid someone who is ﬂagged to someone else.
If you attack someone.

Setting Up Backgrounds

Go into the Appearances tab, then go to the Background tab.
Uncheck everything EXCEPT:
- Pilot is at war with your corporation/ alliance.
- Pilot is an outlaw
Pilot is at war with your corporation/alliance should be at the top, with Pilot is an outlaw below Pilot has good standing.
Right click on Pilot is an outlaw and select Toggle blink. Both the items that are selected should now be blinking.
Right click on Pilot is an outlaw and change the colour to orange.

This last step is to distinguish outlaws from war targets, since allies can sometimes appear as outlaws. Be aware that some ﬂeet commanders (FCs) refer to outlaws as red ﬂashies. With the above settings, orange ﬂashy and the traditional red ﬂashy are both shootable targets - you won’t get CONCORDed if you ﬁre upon them.

Outlaws and war targets are the only two types of players you can attack in high sec space. The above settings will remove background from everything except the most important targets, allowing you to instantly see who to attack.

You have now set up all your general overview settings - we’ll move onto setting up individual presets now.

Setting Up a PvP Preset

Go to your Filters tab , and go to the States tab.
Make sure ONLY the following items are checked:
- Pilot has a security status below 0
- Pilot has bad standing
- Pilot has bounty on him
- Pilot has neutral standing
- Pilot has terrible standing
- Pilot is an outlaw
- Pilot is at war with your corporation/alliance. This removes all friendlies from your overview.
Go to the Types tab.
Click Deselect all (at the bottom of the window).
Right click on the Ships folder and click Select all. Everything in the Ships folder is now selected.
Right click on the Charge folder and click Select all. Everything in the Charge folder is now selected.
Open the Celestial folder and select Beacon, Covert Beacon, Warp Gate andSun.
Open the Drone folder and select Fighter Drone and Fighter Bomber.
Open the NPC folder and select Pirate NPC.
Follow the “ Saving a preset ” instructions below.

This preset is for seeing only war targets and other very important things. The idea with this preset is to not be able to shoot at anything that might get you CONCORDed. When you’re sitting in a gatecamp with your modules running hot, and you accidentally target a gate instead of the war target, you could quickly ﬁnd yourself in a pod. Please note that this preset will show people with bad (orange minus) and horrible standing (red minus). These people CANNOT be attacked in high sec space. Only attack people ﬂashing red on your overview.

Note about neutrals: In the past, there has been a bug that prevented a player from seeing important things like stargates when Pilot has neutral standing wasn’t checked. I’m pretty sure that this bug is still present, based on recent information from people who have used my guide.

Note about neutrals and remote reppers: According to EVE Online Support article: “ Player A aids Player B who is aggression ﬂagged towards everyone = Player A gets aggression ﬂagged towards everyone. ” So even if you don’t have neutrals on your overview, remote reppers should show up as red ﬂashies once they start repping the war targets. This is my interpretation, but it has not been tested. If you don’t want to take the risk, put neutrals on your overview.

Saving a Preset

In your overview settings, in the Filters tab , you should see Presets: not saved, and a little white triangle next to it. Right click the white triangle. You can also ﬁnd the same white triangle in your actual overview, on the tab that says Overview (not saved). Clicking on this will do the same thing.
Once you have clicked on the triangle, select Save current type selection as…
Type in 1 - PvP and click OK. You have now saved these settings as a preset.

Setting Up a PvP with Drones Preset

Click the white triangle and select Load 1 - PvP.
In Filters > Types, go into the Drone folder and select the following:
- Cap Drain Drone
- Combat Drone
- Electronic Warfare Drone
- Fighter Drone
- Logistic Drone
- Stasis Webifying Drone
- Warp Scrambling Drone
Save the preset as 1a - PvP + Drones.

This preset is useful if you are being jammed or warp scrambled by drones and want to destroy them, or want to help out a ﬂeetmate who is being attacked by drones.

Setting Up a PvP Travel Preset

Click the white triangle and select Load 1 - PvP.
Go into Celestial and check the following, in addition to the stuff you’ve already selected:
- Stargate
- Wormhole
Go into Deployable and select Mobile Warp Disruptor.
Save the preset as 2 - PvP Travel.

The PvP travel preset is designed as an all purpose travel mode. It shows you neutrals (so you can see whether WT alts are following the ﬂeet), cynosural ﬁelds (so you can see when someone’s about to hotdrop a capital ship ﬂeet on top of you), wormholes (for those wormhole ops), warp bubbles (for those occasional times when we’re in 0.0 space) and stations (for when you need to dock up). I use this preset most of the time. The only time I use the general PvP preset is when I’m in a ﬂeet that’s actively chasing war targets.

I don’t tend to have stations checked in this preset, because it just clutters you up. Some solar systems have a crapload of stations, so it’s better not to have these checked. If you want to travel to a station, right click in empty space and just select the station from there.

Setting Up a PvP Travel Without Neutrals Preset

Click the white triangle and select Load 2 - PvP Travel
In Filters > States, uncheck Pilot has neutral standing.
Save the preset as 2a - PvP Trav - Neut

This is a useful preset to have for those times when you have to make a shopping trip to a busy system like Jita, or an FC takes the ﬂeet into a really busy system. This preset will eliminate neutral pilots from the overview, reducing lag. Please don’t use this all the time, though - seeing neutrals is useful, and ﬂying without them on your overview is dangerous.

Setting Up a Missions Preset

For setting up a missioning preset, I loaded the Standard preset, then ran some missions. I removed the things I didn’t really need to see as I went - you can do this by right clicking on the item in the overview, then selecting Remove *item* from overview. Eventually I had a preset I was happy with.

I always add and remove Large Collidable Object as needed, as sometimes you need to see them, and sometimes they just clutter up your overview.

Whether you want to include wrecks or not is up to you. Some people like to have special salvaging and looting overview presets with only wrecks and cargo containers. Whatever you do, make sure you can still see enemy players at all times. The pod saver overview is the only overview you shouldn’t have enemies on.

Once you’re done creating a missions preset, save it as 3 - Missions. If you never run missions, you obviously don’t need this preset. If you don’t run missions, but like to go mining, you could create one called 3 - Mining with just asteroids, belt rats, enemy players and anything else you need. It’s up to you

Creating a Fleet Members Preset

Click the white triangle and select Load 1 - PvP.
Go to Filters > States and select the following (in addition to what was already selected):
- Pilot has excellent standing
- Pilot has good standing
- Pilot is in your alliance
- Pilot is in your corporation
- Pilot is in your ﬂeet
Save the preset as 4 - Fleetmates

This is a very useful preset for seeing where your ﬂeet is in relation to the enemy. It is also very, very useful for ﬂeet, wing and squad commanders to quickly see where their squad members are so as to do a headcount. It will also show anyone who is ﬂying with the ﬂeet, but isn’t actually in the ﬂeet. Sometimes people disconnect and need a ﬂeet re-invite - you can quickly see who needs one with this preset.

It’s also very useful for seeing what ship types you have in your ﬂeet.

Setting Up a Pod Saver Preset

Click the white triangle and select Load 1 - PvP.
Go to Filters > Types and click Deselect All.
Go into Celestial and check Planet.
Save the preset as 5 - Pod Saver.

This preset is used to get yourself out of tricky situations.

These are the times where you should switch to your Pod saver overview:

The FC calls a scatter or just says to get out.
You’re being targeted (you see yellow reticules on your overview) and you are in no position to take any ﬁre.
You’re in danger of getting destroyed or know you’re about to get destroyed.
You get destroyed.

In any of these cases, do the following:

Click on your Pod saver tab .
Choose a random planet and click on it.
In the Selected item window, start spamming the Warp to 0 m button (just keep on clicking it).
- If you’re not warp scrambled, you will warp to a planet. In that case, either meet up with the ﬂeet again or dock at a safe station. Listen for instructions by your FC.
- If you ARE warp scrambled, you’re not going anywhere. You should, however, keep on spamming the Warp to 0 m button. This is because when your ship is destroyed, you will appear in your pod. If you’re spamming that button, your pod will warp out as quickly as possible (usually almost instantly) and save both your clone and any implants you’re carrying. If you do this correctly, you should never lose your pod.
Switch back to your PvP or PvP travel tab before you drop out of warp, so you can see any enemies on the other side.

When you get destroyed, a session change is initiated through you going from your ship to a pod. This can cause lag, and if you’re already spamming the Warp to 0 m button BEFORE this happens, your pod will warp out despite any lag that may occur (a chain of commands was built up before you got destroyed by the spamming).

The reason we use planets is because there usually isn’t anything dangerous at planets. Enemies could be waiting at stargates or stations, and big enemy POSes could be sitting near moons, so we warp to planets.

Also, you could have an aggression timer. Aggression timers stop you from docking or jumping through a gate for exactly 60 seconds after the timer begins. When the timer reaches 13m 59s (shown in-game when the timer says 13 minutes, you can dock up or jump).

Setting Up a Wormhole Preset

Wormholes are unique places that require many different different things to be visible on your overview.

Click the white triangle and select Load 1 - PvP .
Go to Filters > States and check ALL the boxes. You want to see every player when you’re in a wormhole, whether it be friendlies so you can repair them, or enemies so you can destroy them.
Go to Filters > Types and click the Select all button at the bottom of the window.
Open the Asteroid folder and deselect Veldspar .
Open the Celestial folder and deselect Large Collidable Object, Moon and Wreck.
Right click on the Drone folder and select Deselect all . Then check Fighter Drone .
Open the Entity folder and deselect Large Collidable Structure .
Save the settings as 6 - Wormhole .

The above settings will let you see all you need to see in a wormhole. Obviously, there are a lot of extraneous things selected, but you’ll never see any of those things in a wormhole, so you needn’t worry about them being selected.

Don’t use the above settings in known space. There’s a lot of crap on there that will clutter up your overview. Switch to the PvP settings when you get back into K-space.

If I get to a gravimetric site and want to mine veldspar, I simply go into my overview settings and recheck veldspar until I’m ﬁnished mining. Otherwise, I keep it unchecked. If I want to loot and salvage, I have another overview preset that has wrecks on it. I personally like to use my missioning preset.

This overview setting is pretty generalized, but you’ll need to tweak it every now and then.

If you get into combat with other players, you may want to change to your 1 - PvP setting, depending on the circumstances.

Remember that wormholes are 0.0 space. That means you can ﬁnd anything inside, from capital ships, to bubbles, to bombs. Be extremely careful when entering wormhole space.

Adding Probes to your Presets

Currently, if you want to see scanner probes on your directional scan, you have to uncheck the Use active overview settings

Now, it's possible to add scan probes to your overview. This will allow you to keep the Use active overview settings box checked on your directional scanner and still see probes when they're within D-scan range. This is extremely useful, as it'll allow you to quickly and easily work out whether someone is trying to scan you down.

This method will require you to exit EVE and open up your exported overview settings in a text editor, but trust me - it's worth it.

1. Click the white triangle and select Export overview settings.

2. Leave everything checked and type in a filename, eg. Overview Oct 2010.

3. Now, either quit EVE or change to windowed mode.

   4. If you are on a Windows-based workstation, navigate to:
            C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\EVE\Overview\
        or, for newer Windows versions:
            C:\Users\<username>\Documents\EVE\Overview\
        For OSX-based workstations (Macs), navigate to:
            <username>/Library/Preferences/EVE Online Preferences/p_drive/My Documents/EVE/Overview/

5. Once you have navigated to the correct folder, you should find an XML file named whatever you entered in step 2. Open the XML in your favourite text editor (eg. Wordpad, NotePad, TextEdit).

6. If you scroll down a bit, you will see profiles for all your different presets, each of which should look something like this:

<profile name="6 - missions">
			<groups>
				<group id="324"/>
				<group id="419"/>
				<group id="27"/>
				<group id="898"/>
				<group id="883"/>
				<group id="29"/>
				<group id="547"/>

				etc.

7. Scroll down until you find the 1 - PvP preset. You can use your text editor's search function to find this. Note that if you want to have a setting that ONLY displays probes (and nothing else), make an overview setting in Eve that doesn't display anything, then proceed with step 8.

8. Scroll to the bottom of the group IDs for your 1 - PvP preset. At the bottom of the list, just above where it says </groups>, add the following three lines:

				<group id="479"/>
				<group id="492"/>
				<group id="548"/>

9. Make sure the spacing is correct and lined up with the rest of the group ID entries.

10. Now, find the 1a - PvP + Drones, 2 - PvP Travel and 6 - Wormhole presets in the document and add the same three entries to the bottom of the group IDs for both. If you run missions, you may want to add the entries to that preset as well, as low sec mission runners will often find themselves wanting to know if they're being scanned down.

11. After you've done that, save the document. Go back into EVE.

12. Click the white triangle and select Import overview settings. When EVE asks you if you want to replace your current settings with the new one, say yes to all.

You've now added probes to your PvP, wormhole and mission overviews. When using any one of these overview presets, check that you've got the Use active overview settings box checked, and bang - you should be able to see probes both on your overview and on your directional scanner.

If you see Combat Scanner Probes on your directional scan and they're not yours, you'll know that someone is trying to scan you down. If you see Core Scanner Probes, someone may be trying to scan down any anomaly or signature you're in - this will only apply in certain cases. Still, if you see probes, be careful. Note that they'll only show up on your overview if they're on grid with you, which will pretty much only happen if someone's put them out and hasn't used them yet.

With the editing, remember that you are manipulating XML, here, so the distinction between <groups/> and </groups> is important. The <groups/> tag, with the slash at the end, indicates that the "groups" set is empty. However, a <groups> tag followed later on by a </groups> tag (with the slash at the beginning of the word) indicates that the "groups" set is not empty. Confusing <groups/> and </groups> will cause the XML to be invalid, and EVE Online will simply say "File not valid" when you try to import the Overview settings.

Setting Up Bracket Presets

Brackets are the little icons you see in space, depicting different objects. Sometimes having too many of them can cause lag, but they are often useful.

There are occasions on which you might want your brackets to show different things than are on your overview. I most commonly have bracket settings with drones selected, where my main overview settings do not show drones. This is because there are often swarms of drones about, which can quickly clog up one’s overview.

One example of a time you might want to see drone brackets in space is in missions. You want to warp off, but you don’t know whether your drones are still out. If you have drone brackets set, you can easily see when your drones are no longer in space. Additionally, you can see when someone has drones attacking you in PvP. This can be very useful.

Again, bear in mind that brackets cause a lot of lag - use them at your own risk.

To create a bracket setting:

Load the particular preset you want to create bracket settings for. For example, you might want drones on your wormhole setting, so you would load 6 - Wormhole .
Add or remove items you do or don’t want to see in space (eg. drones).
Save the setting as something you’re going to recognize as a bracket setting. For example, you might save your setting as6 - Wormhole B .

See the next section to see how to set assign bracket presets.

Assigning the Tabs and Brackets

Go to theOverview tabs tab .
Under the Tab name column , enter the following ﬁve items:
- PvP
- PvP Travel
- Missions, Mining or Wormhole (choose whichever one you use)
- Fleetmates
- Pod Saver
Under the Overview proﬁle column , assign each tab its respective overview proﬁle, i.e. assign 1 - PvP to the PvP tab and so on. Keep 1a - PvP + drones and 2a - PvP Travel - Neuts in reserve, and switch to those presets manually when you need to.
Under bracket proﬁles, do the same ( 1 - PvP to PvP tab and so on), unless you want to set your bracket proﬁles to something different . If you have set up bracket proﬁles as per the previous section, assign them here (eg. assign 6 - Wormhole B as a bracket proﬁle for 6 - Wormhole ).
Click Apply at the bottom of the window.

You should now have ﬁve different tabs with ﬁve different overview presets. During war, I generally switch the Missions/ Mining tab to the standard overview. You can do this by going to: White triangle > Load Default > Standard. I use this tab for emergencies when the overview bugs up, or I just can’t see something I want to see.

Using the Tag Column

The Tag feature allows you to assign a number or letter to individual ships or objects in space which will be visible in the Tag column of the overview. The tag will remain assigned to the object until it is destroyed, you dock in a station, or enter a jump gate. This is useful for marking trigger ships during missions, prioritizing PvP targets, marking NPC convoy ships for attack (see Eve Wiki Attacking Convoys Guide for more details), or any other activity for which you may need to quickly identify specifics objects.

Tagging Process

The Tag option is only available while you are a member of a fleet, and in a command role (i.e. FC, WC, or SC). If you are alone, you may simply form a fleet with yourself (your default role with be FC).

To tag an object, simply right-click, select "Tag" from the context menu, and you will be given a choice of numbers or letters. Pick the number or letter you wish to use and you are done.

Conclusion of the Guide

Congratulations! You’ve (hopefully successfully) set up your overview.

If you use my overview settings and ﬁnd that you can’t see something you should be able to see, please send me a message in-game (Varius Arcturus) and I will change this guide.

Please keep an eye out for newer versions - I will be updating this guide.

Please read on for a few advanced tips for more experienced players that I’ve picked up. New players shouldn’t bother about this stuff until you get the basics down.

Advanced Tips

Using all brackets

EVE isn’t a very system-intensive game, and people often have computers that can easily handle the game on max settings.

In the past, using all brackets wasn’t recommended because of the lag it created when large fleets were on the field. However, after a couple of years playing EVE, I think the benefits of having all brackets on far outweigh the drawbacks.

To turn on all brackets, press Option + Z.

So why would you have all brackets on? Well, simply so you can see everything that’s going on around you. Using the overview settings I’ve detailed above, you probably won’t be able to see if someone warps off toward an asteroid belt or a moon. With all brackets on, you will.

Also, you’ll be able to see fleetmates in space. This is especially useful for working out where you are in relation to fleet.

For me, it’s gotten to the point where I’m always zoomed out with all brackets on so I can get a really good idea of what’s happening on the battlefield. I only zoom in when I need to do some fancy manual flying.

No PvP Travel?

I now only use one PvP setting. I don’t use PvP and PvP Travel separately. I have stargates and stations on my main PvP setting, as well as the sun and mobile warp disruptors (aka bubbles). However, I’m not sure having stations on my overview in high sec would be feasible, as there are so many. I live in 0.0, where there are generally only single stations in systems.

So why don’t I use two PvP tabs? Mostly because I’m often flying around systems or between systems very quickly. I don’t have time to be switching back and forth between two overview tabs, so I just use the one.

In my second tab, I have PvP + Drones, which I use when I’m out soloing and wanting to kill someone’s drones off.

Radial velocity column, no transversal

I’m always using this column to determine the speeds of things in relation to myself. And yes, I have removed the transversal column from my overview.

PvP in the heat of the moment isn’t about numbers, and I don’t have time to be going, “Well, 0.00243... is that faster than my guns can track?”

I still think transversal is useful to new guys for them to get an idea of how guns hit targets.

Additional Information

Download Links for the PDF Version

Although the formatting in the PDFs are nicer, they aren't up to date, so please just use the wiki above.

Click here to download the guide via EVE-files.com. (3.1 MB PDF)

Click here to download the guide via RapidShare. (3.1 MB PDF)

Overview Setup Summary

A one-page PDF summary of the Overview Setup Guide, for people who have already worked their way through the guide once and need to replicate the setup on another computer, is available here on the Uni Forum.

Posting Feedback

If you have access to the EVE University forums, please take the time to visit this page and post your thoughts.

A Note on .xml Export File Requests

Please don't ask, it's never going to happen.

Besides which, the XML file only has part of the necessary configuration contained within it. This is problematic if you wish to replicate your overview setup between two computers, or two EVE instances on the same computer, because you have to do a lot of manual configuration after the XML file import anyway.

"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; you have fed him for a lifetime."

Varius Arcturus' Overview Guide

Contents