EVE New Citizens Q&A

Im a new player in EVE and i would like to start with explorations.
I did missions about explorers with the amarr agent and i learned somethigs about it. But I'm struggling to find sites using the probes. In the most part of time i can't find anything, and when i found something is an unknown site with many npc's. I already tried to warp to another location and the same thing happens.

i wanted to find radar sites because this is the part that I intend to specialize.
hope you guys help me :)

The Astrometrics skills tend to have higher Rank multipliers, so expect to invest some significant time. If you've mapped your Attributes to train support skills, you're also mapped for these skills. You should get by for a while with everything at 4, but I think the serious sites will not be scannable.

Hacking, Archeology, and Salvaging at 4 to start as well.

Jonny Pew has a good series of videos on YouTube regarding aspects of Exploration.

Finally, don't neglect your combat skills, or you may find you cannot close the deal on a site even if you scan it down.

There's your problem.
Even with this:

Enigma Machine
Buzzard
Covert Ops Cloaking
Light Missile Launcher II
2x Micro Auxiliary Power II
Codebreaker II
Small Shield Booster II
2x Small Gravity Capacitor II
Sisters Core Probe Launcher
Analyzer II
1MN MWD II
Multispectral Jammer II

...and I still need to jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-ump-jump-jump-jump-jump-jump-....

If you are not prepared to jump, then you need to log off and come back in a half hour or so for a refresh. Look at the chat channel, if there are 80 people there, it's probably not a good spot to probe ;)

First off, what systems are you scanning in? If you're in low-sec or null sec, you're in for a lot more fighting against a lot more nasty NPCs (as well as people blowing you up for lulz).

I've found that the hardest part of exploration is wrapping your head around the 3D space you're scanning in. It's very easy to get turned around and wind up moving your probes the wrong way because you were at the wrong angle and didn't realize.

My preference is to launch one probe set to 16 AU. Move it around and keep scanning until the sphere turns red. That means something is in that radius. At this point, it will probably just list as a Cosmic Anomaly.

Launch a second probe, set them both to 8 AU and have them occupy the space the previous scan dinged. There's a chance you could miss it completely (the two spheres won't fill the exact same area as the one big one), but often at least one of them will still turn red.

This is where 3D space starts to mess with you. Overlap the spheres about where you think it's reading something. If you're right, the intersection will turn into a red ring. Toss in a third probe. Rotate your view so that you're looking on-edge, as if you were holding a record (I feel old now) and looking at the thin edge. Move the third probe up enough it'll overlap half of your original two spheres. If it hits a signal, great! If not, try moving below the plane, then to either side of the two probes. By this point, you should have the results showing what kind of site you're locating.

Pay close attention to what type of site it is in your results box. Gravimetric (mining asteroids), magnetometric (wrecks) and radar (satellites to hack) will usually have NPCs to fight off. Cosmic anomalies & "Unknown" are JUST NPCs to fight, possibly several groups through acceleration gates. Ladar sites are gas clouds, which probably aren't terribly useful unless you want to dedicate yourself to gas mining & booster production. If it's a site your not interested in, or not equipped for, move on to another region of the solar system, or another system entirely.

If you like what you found, start dropping your scan radius to 4 AUs and moving them tighter until you get one or two yellow triangles. Launch a 4th probe. Set it to overlap at least one of the sites, if not both. This should narrow it down to just one triangle. Drop your scan radius, scoot all the probes to overlap on top of that site, and you should get the green triangle. If not, keep making slight adjustments to their positions, trying to get as much overlap between the scan spheres as you can around the site.

Once you've got a 100% lock on the site, right click the triangle in your map and bookmark it. Unless you're in a decent combat ship, you'll want to park your scanning ship and bring your combat vessel back. That's what the bookmark is for: it'll be in your People & Places window when you want to return to it. Expect to at least fight a few NPCs when you get into the area and find the actual item.

My very first hit was a small Gneiss deposit. There were a few other large asteroids, so it took me a couple minutes flying around to find the actual Gneiss asteroid (much smaller than the rest). It was guarded by a pair of Rogue Drones. I brought back my Catalyst, fought them both and won, though I was well into armor damage by then. Triumphant, I started mining the asteroid.

Then some guy in a battlecruiser warped in, one-shot me, then blew up my pod.

After the initial shock, I had to laugh about it. The sheer randomness of the gank was kinda funny. Especially when I came back in my rookie ship to find he was gone, and hadn't bothered to loot the wrecks or mine the asteroid. Wound up salvaging my own wreck (and the drones) and then mining what I could into my hold before going home and buying a new Catalyst with the insurance money.

I guess what I'm saying is: take your time, don't let it frustrate you. Play with looking at your probes scanning from different angles by dragging the map around. And when you do find your site, be prepared to get jumped while you're in it. Oh, and have fun.

All I have to say is this:


Watch your damn directional scanner.

AT ALL TIMES.