Exploration and Bomber changes

There were a couple of announcements over the last few days. The first, a devblog from CCP RedDawn about upcoming changes in Pheobe. I've heard varying opinions about this but the general consensus seems to be "meh"

Personally I think the changes seem to be fairly positive and anything that brings data site's loot more in line with relic sites is good from a selling point of view although maybe not be from a lore perspective. Surely ancient sites with technology from the golden age of man would be worth more than data from pirates. Well, I guess it depends who's buying but that's how it is for another 2 weeks anyway. The loot volume of common high volume drops like Positron Cords is also also being lowered meaning you'll be able to carry twice as much crap as before but I think most experienced explorers will still leave or trash these items, especially in high sec sites as they're still pretty worthless and will probably be more so now that it's easier to cart more around.

Higher faction POS BPC drop rates and "Optimised" BPC drop rates are another change which I guess is a good thing although obviously more supply = lower prices but I doubt there'll be a massive influx of these items into the contract market. We won't know more until the patch hits though so maybe they'll tweak the rate too much and we'll be flooded with BPCs.

Lastly on the subject of just data sites; the addition of new faction materials is interesting. I expect the price to be astronomical (excuse the pun) to begin with until the market flattens and people realise they can't sell the finished products in which these materials will be used for more than the materials. Then again this hasn't exactly stopped drone or ammo production so why should it stop this.

All those wormhole changes from Hyperion are starting to make sense a bit more now with the addition of null sec data and relic sites appearing in class 1-3 wormholes. It seems CCP wanted to clear people out of low class wormholes or something so they can add in fun stuff for the average player to do and I expect the level of ganking will be through the roof for the first week or so. The fact that local is no indication of a wormhole's residents will probably make covert ops players godly as they gank all the intrepid explorers in search of their fortunes. Either that or people will realise they're easy targets and not bother in the first place. My money is on the former though... too many people just aren't that careful. 

There was more to that announcement but escalations and career agent changes are a story for another day. However there was another announcement, this time on the forums (I'll update with a link once I find it again.) Stealth Bomber changes are coming and the community is pissed. Now I've only just gotten myself into an SB so can't comment much but it's relevant to what I'm doing at the moment so I'll throw in my 2 cents (although neither the country in which I live, nor my country of origin use cents as currency so that could be an indication of the worth of my comments) 

So bombs will now take 12 seconds rather than 10 seconds to hit. This change seems to benefit people who are semi afk and will give them 2 seconds longer to tab back into the game and watch as their shields disappear. Is there actually any point to this change? It's not major but 10 seconds seems to me to be plenty of time for someone who's actually paying attention to get out of the way or shoot it. It's probably tied in with the second change of bombs having less hp meaning one smart bomb can take them out so the extra 2 seconds gives smartbomb users time to release their own bomb before yours is too close...maybe. 

The change people are whining about most is stealthed ships will now decloak each other when within 2000m (including people warping through you)which makes organising bomber wings a pain in the ass. Or at least a pain in the ass for anyone that is a real person. It's been pointed out in the replies that this change is because of multiboxers using programs to run stealth wings, but the program can actually warp all of the accounts in at different ranges with no mistakes. Real players on the other hand make mistakes. And one mistake from just one player can mess up the entire warp and get everyone killed. Now of course it's not impossible to organise but it seems like a lot of effort especially when you can't see your fleetmates while they're stealthed. Personally I'm not convinced this change is a truly needed one. If stealth bombers are so prevalent why do I only rarely see them? Oh right... they're stealthed. 

Well, that's it for now. Time to go fly a bomber while it's still viable (yes that last part is sarcasm) 

Spaktula's Scanning Guide

A lot of information on scanning on the various eve wiki sites is outdated at time of writing so I thought I'd put together a quick guide on how to scan down cosmic anomalies. Some of the methods I use might not be the most efficient but once you've been scanning for a while you get to know where the anomalies will likely be so I take a lot of shortcuts. This guide is written primarily for someone just starting out so I've left the shortcuts out :)

Firstly you'll need a ship with at least a Core Probe Launcher I or better and some Core Scanner Probes or better. A ship with bonuses to scanning strength might also be useful such as a T1 frigate (Imicus, Magnate, Heron or Probe) but if you're scanning for combat sites those ships won't last long.

In your ship, open up the Probe Scanner window:

If you're in a system with scannable anomalies you should end up with a window that looks like this:

Next, get in the habit of flying safe. If you end up scanning in low or nul sec space you're generally an easy target in an exploration ship as you have paper thin defences and are likely too preoccupied with scanning down sites or hacking cans to notice other ships flying in.

There's a process I go through when I enter any system in my exploration ship. I always have the probe scanner window open so I know if there are any worthwhile sites to scan for a start. If there are, I pick a spot in the solar system, usually a planet or the sun and hit "warp to 100km."

As my warp drive kicks in which disables the "recently jumped through stargate" cloak I launch my probes. This is just a time saver and it helps in high sec as well as nul or low where time efficiency is your best friend (that and warp stabilizers.) In low and nul, once I've hit the scan button (most left hand of the buttons in the picture above) I close the map quickly and choose a planet, asteroid belt or stargate directly away from where I just warped to and hit "align to" and then activate my micro warp drive (or afterburner if you don't have a MWD) to put some distance between me and where I warped so anyone warping to the same spot will end up several hundred km away.

Of course you can skip that step if you have a cloaking device but still, launching your probes as soon as you arrive in the system and warping to another location means you won't get decloaked by your own probes getting too close.


Onto the actual scanning. I use the pinpoint formation almost exclusively. I find it's just the easiest to use for me although I'm sure there are other ways to do it. Your probes have already been launched by now so open up the solar system map (button on the far right of the previous picture.) With pinpoint formation up it should look something like this:

The process changes somewhat as your skills increase as you can take more shortcuts and still scan down a site. Things like Astrometrics, Astrometric Rangefinding and Scanning Rigs for when you've learned Jury Rigging help immensely.

Essentially you need to centre the cluster of probes inside the red sphere you're aiming at (this can be difficult if there's a lot on top of one another) and enlarge or occasionally decrease the radius of the scan by clicking and dragging the side of one of the blue spheres which should change the scan size of all of them. The best way to centre the probes is to level out the camera horizontally and move the cluster up or down until it's on the correct plane as the middle of the red sphere. Next move the camera directly above the probes and slide them across until perfectly centred.

*pro-tip* double click on the white box to centre the camera on the probes or, once you've gotten to the "red dot" phase, double click the anomaly to centre the camera on it. I honestly didn't figure that out for 3 days and it would have saved a lot of hassle.

Hit the "Analyze" button and something like this should appear:

Centre on the red dot, decrease the scan radius by one size by clicking and dragging the blue spheres. Scan again and the signal should increase, hopefully even high enough to show what kind of anomaly it is.

Obviously ignore any sites that aren't of the type your specifically looking for and move on to the next anomaly.

Sometimes you'll get 2 red dots for one anomaly. This means only 3 of your probes are in the right place and so it gives you 2 possible locations. Generally speaking, the one closest to the orbital bodies is going to the be the right one to scan, but sometimes the game likes to confuse you. Just use the above method on your dot of choice and scan, if there's no signal then move to the other one with the same size scan radius. Either way you'll pinpoint it eventually.

Red rings on the other hand are bad in all senses of the phrase. Getting a red ring on a scan means 2 of your probes picked up the signal and you'll have to move the probes over, usually with the same size radius, and scan again until you get a red dot.

Occasionally you'll come across a site that seems impossible to scan down. For this you'll need to move each probe manually. To do this, from the pinpoint formation zoom in a bit and hold down the shift key. This lets you manipulate each probe individually. You need to, for want of a better word, "squish" the pinpoint formation. There has to be some slight overlapping otherwise the scan just wont work but aim for something that looks like this:

You can save this formation as you'll need it more than once even at higher skill levels. In low and nul sec space there are some pretty difficult sites to scan.


Well I hope this helped any budding explorers, and don't forget to check out my other blog posts.