Advanced Scanning

Advanced Scanning:

By: Petie ThePirate
Pwned Factor Graduate








For the purposes of this guide I assume you are already familiar with the basic mechanics behind probing, if not please watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heYfTA00Idg



More often then not I hear people saying how terrible they are at scanning, or how long it takes them to narrow down a signature, so in this guide I will be covering techniques to increase scanning speed, and efficiency.

Disclaimer:These are just the techniques I use and are by no means the end-all be all way to probe, it's just what works for me.


1)Probe formation: 6-7 probes

If you are serious about probing 7 probes is well worth the investment, it will almost double your speed from 6 probes. To start the formation launcher all 7 probes, then drag one probe at a time, so the tips of the arrows are just barley touching each other (one on each arrow from the center probe)
Example of a partially done formation:


Fully done formation:


The 6 probe formation is the same as above but you will not have the center probe.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that you do not zoom in or out while getting these probes into position or you will mess up the proportions on the formation and it will cause you a ton of grief later on.


2)Probe formations: 8 probes
Coming soon™


3) Probe Manipulation
There are two ways to re-size probes, either hold in shift and click and drag the edge of one of your probes scan radius, or select all probes in your 'scanner' window and right click, and change the size that way. I prefer the latter.
The next step is to re size your probes to the max range (32 for core, 64 for combat), and move them to cover the system you are in. Hold shift when you drag your probes, and it will move them all at once without messing up the formation.
To move all probes around the center point of your formation hold in alt then drag one arrow on an outer probe, it will change the spacing of the entire formation at the same time. This one thing will save you minutes off of the time it takes you to narrow down each signature.
Now, do a scan, and see if there are any signatures that need to be scanned.
Example:



4) Techniques
In my case I'm in a wormhole and there are an almost overwhelming amount of signatures to sort through. So, where do I start?
Simple, choose the inner or outermost planet, center your probes on them, set the range to 4 AU (signatures will not spawn more then 4 AU from a planet) and then position the probes so you have about 20-30% of the scan area overlapping in the center, as shown in the full-system scan.
Example:




Much better right? Instead of a huge list I'm left with just 5 signatures. Plus this method already produced a pretty good signal strength on a couple of them!

To narrow down signatures further continue shift clicking to center the probes on where the signature shows on your system screen, then alt-dragging them closer, closing the range a little, etc, etc until you have it to a nice pretty, green 100% signal strength.

5)Thoughts, reflections and miscellaneous tips
In time you will be able to look at a split signature (One that gives you two equal strength location for the same ID) and tell which is the real one. As you get a feel for what part of your probing formation gives you what kind of signal strength, and act accordingly. With everything in eve, and really life, the more you do it the more like second nature it will become.

Keep a look out for the next guide: Wormhole Hunting Basics.