Science & Industry

Just started exploring a few days ago. I've been playing about a year and have dabble in missioning, mining and a little Manufacturing. Exploring was next on my list. So yeah, got me a Heron with Cald Frig IV, using 6 probes, and all my science skills to at least 3 if not more.

So, I've scanned and gone to probably 40 sites, focusing mainly on hacking and Arch since I dont' understand WH's and they scare me a bit. I hate losing ships. While I can afford to lose my Drake and Noctis and Heron, i'd rather not. Every once in awhile if I get bored, I have my 2nd account clear some easy stuff out. I'm exploring within probably 7 jumps of Lust, all high sec till I get used to it. Out of all the sites I've visited, I've only found one site that I could actually Analyze anything in. All others where NPC's or WH's. In total I've made about 3 mil, which sucks.

First question, why am I not seeing more sites where I can hack or analyze?

2nd, every once in awhile I come across a site called a Demonstration that has an Angel base in it with a tons of NPC's there. I can run a few lvl4's in my drake, but when i come across this site, I can barely dent any of the ships, and they pretty much destroy me if more than a few get on me. Is this place meant to be cleared?

Also, just looking for more suggestions on how to have a little more success at this. I'm liking the Scanning aspect so far, pretty fun for now since it's a change of pace from running missions.

What are in Wormholes? I think i'll take your advice and hit up low-sec with my heron. I'll fit a cloak and maybe that will help keep me a little safer. My Heron exploration kit costs probably 200k including the ship so no big deal at all.

Site distribution is random. Sometimes the sites will pile up in one system ( happens mostly in lowsec ). Quite often you will travel through empty systems. The more systems you scan the better the chances of finding more interesting sites.

In high security space you are interested only in radars and combat sites ( both rated and unrated ). You can safely ignore magnetometric sites ( salvaging/archeo ) as they are worthless. In nullsec however, the mag site are very profitable.

Special sites ( like the one you are referring to ) are part of epic arcs or COSMOS missions ( those are found in COSMOS constellations like Ani, Alginatal and few more ).

Wormhole systems contain combat anomalies where you fight Sleeper Drones. They drop so called blue loot ( a kind of tags ) that can be sold to NPCs in certain stations. They also should be salvaged as the salvage from Sleeper Drones can be quite profitable ( melted nonoribbons are the best ). Outside of anomalies you can also find Radars and Magnetometric sites here. Those sites contain Sleeper artefacts, decryptors and datacores used in T3 production.
Wormhole systems are not solo-friendly ( you can solo c1-c2 quite easily but the profits are not that impressive, c3's are also soloable to certain degree ). Wormhole systems are treated as nullsec. There are no neutral stations, sentry guns or CONCORD here. Anyone can shoot you anytime.

As far as scanning goes :
1) use 7 probes in 'diamond' formation
2) train supportive astro skills to level 4 ( rangefinding and pinpointing are very important here )
3) train astrometrics to level 5 to get Deep Space Probes ( really helps with scanning, especially in hisec )
4) Use SOE ( Sisters Of EVE ) gear - Probe launcher and core probes
5) using scanning implants also helps but is not necessary :
- Poteque 'Prospector' Astrometric Rangefinding AR-806 ( for scanning strength )
- Poteque 'Prospector' Astrometric Pinpointing AP-606 ( for reduced scan deviation )


If you are really so risk averse then ignore lowsec, nullsec and wormhole exploration and just stick to hisec. Even in hisec you will have to compete for the sites from time to time.

Let me share an exploration story. I am also fairly new to exploration, altough I did have some good probing skills before I started (did combat probing back in the old days before this character went dormant for a few years).

I'm doing exploration in Khanid low-sec using a Vengeance. With 4 Arbalest Rocket Launchers it's doing roughly 100 DPS. The ship easily takes care of all Radar / Magnetometric sites without breaking a sweat. Gatecamps are also easily avoided, as most gatecamps aren't able to catch a lone frigate. The only thing you need to make sure to do is to watch local and use the D-Scan if other people show up. Other Core Probes means potential problems (or just some friendly competition) - Combat Probes means they're out to get you.

Just the other night I found one 0.2 system with tons of signatures. After having spent half an hour scanning them all down, it turned out that most of them were drone complexes, a few were wormholes and there was also 1 x Radar site as well as 2 x Magnetometric sites. I ran these three sites. The Mag sites dropped almost a dozen 2 run BPC's for T2 rigs, half of which were medium sized and half small sized. I am expecting that building these rigs and marketing them will net me about 450M. All for two-three hours work in total.

Now in all fairness the actual ISK/hour is far lower than it appears, as I've spent quite a few hours searching fruitless systems and systems with less profitable Radar sites. But this is what is really great about exploration; it's kind of like fishing. You have periods of low profitability but then suddenly you hit the jackpot! The feeling of doing that is just so great compared to a steady grind of predictable ISK (such as mission running), even though that kind of activity will give more reward in terms of ISK/hour.