EVE New Citizens Q&A

basically it acts like radar and shows you objects in space within set range and angle according to d-scan settings. Youtube should have some nice tutorial movies about it.

Overview just shows you objects located on grid with you (like ships, wrecks, cans, asteroids) and celestials like planets, stations, gates and such. D-scan acn show you all that overview is showing + ships/wreck/cans/probes that are not on grid with you.

Search for tutorials about those things, proper configuration for you overview and knowledge how to use d-scan with/without overview settings will save you from getting exploded. Or will help you find targets.

Thank you!

It seems really helpful. So usually people utilizes it to know what's happening in the whole system (if not the whole, a good part of it), ships and everything?

I can go to a lowsec and scan to find preys? (never went to a lowsec, too scared and noob LOL)

Lowsec is scary only till first explosion. After that you either get hooked and keep coming back or cry tears on forums about ebil piwates and never step outside of hisec again.

Just don't go to lowsec with your most precious ship and all your stuff in cargo. Go in cheap frig and have a look around.

Scanning at 360 is a great way to get an initial impression of what is in a system. In busy highsec system you get too much information. but in low or nullsec when there are only a couple of people in local it really helps to see what ships they are in before you make contact. (Note: cloaked ships do not appear on d-scan)

You can find ships with combat probes and a probe launcher. the normal probes only allow you to find exploration sites and wormholes.

I suggest looking on youtube for some probing tutorials.

Fly what you can afford to lose. That's a general rule in Eve. And by afford I mean replace it easily when you go boom. So if ship costs X and you have 2X money usually it means you cannot afford to lose it.

I personally fly frigates, cruisers, occasionally BC. But it doesn't mean those ships are completely cheap, all depends how you fit them. And it is kind of BRRC thing to fly small ships, some corps undock in nothing below T3. Our neighbors quite often roam in BC/BS hulls, Machariel is not so unusual view in their fleet.

Beside, small frigate can be just bait or it can have alt boosting in system so not everything is always so squishy squashy as it seems :)

As for scanning ships with probes it is done in same way as scanning sites but you have to use combat probes for it. All skills and techniques are exactly the same.

Don't agree with that you can replace it on the spot.

Don't fly what you can't afford to loose means that you agree with the possibility that it can (and usually will) go BOOM.

You don't have to be able to replace it on the spot. But you agreed with the possible loss and agreed that it was a risk taking.

I have ships that if I loose them atm, I won't be able to replace them straight away. I however know that I have an income that will let me replace them in a normal amount of time.

As always you are right. I took a mental shortcut here, sorry.

As a new player, I'd recommend that you start using d-scan defensively at first, then start practicing with it offensively once you have covops ships. It's relatively difficult to get things to stay still long enough to actually pin them down with dscan unless you're already pretty fast, and you can't get fast without having things that stay still to practice on, so invisible ship is sorta the solution for working that out.

Defensively:
-- Keep your scan at 360 degrees
-- Set your active tab to ignore structure, moons, etc. Basically you only want your overview to see ships plus things that don't show up on d-scan
-- Make sure your active tab includes scanner probes, or at the very least combat scanner probes
-- Set your d-scan ordering to sort by distance, so that things off-grid (distance '--') appear at the top of the list
-- Scan every 20 or 30 seconds. As you get used to it and aren't annoyed by the clicking as much, move this down to 5 or 10 seconds. In high sec you can usually be lazy and stick with like once every few minutes, since even if someone finds you what they can do is mostly just annoy you, not kill you.

In a pocket/mission/FW capture point/etc, basically anything that involves going through an acceleration gate, gates never send you much more than a couple hundred clicks. So if you set your scan distance to 1 million meters, when you see someone show up at -- distance, you know that they're in one of the rooms of your mission and you should warp out or otherwise prepare to be jumped.

When doing sites, set your distance to 2 or 4 au (300 million m and 600 million m respectively). When you see a scan probe appear at that distance, someone is about to find you in the next minute, maximum. If you see 4 or more scanner probes, they're about to find your site. If you see combat scanner probes, they're hunting you specifically. This is a good distance for watching your back during missions, too, since people have to scan you down with combat scanners to find high-sec missions.

Offensively:
-- You have something that you're hunting. Make sure it's on the overview you're using, and not much else. Usually, player ships.
-- Start at 360, then narrow your angle and range to limit the slice of space sampled. It varies a lot form person to person and situation to situation, but it boils down to basic geometry. Any further explanation is sorta beyond the scope of a newbie post.

Generally:
-- Know the ship names of the people in your fleet and any friendlies. You can't set overview to ignore them, so you just have to know to ignore them.
-- Don't focus on d-scan to the exclusion of your other tools. Watching the scanner window to the point of not noticing the local channel member list is a good way to get stealth bomber'd in the face, as stealthed ships don't show on d-scan. Also, if you're looking to prevent being found yourself: stealthed ships don't show up on d-scan.
-- D-scan becomes a lot more useful if you do other basic safety stuff. for instance, if you have a nice old mission point way out on a vector perpendicular to the system accretion disc that you're using as a safe spot, it's going to be a lot easier to narrow-angle scan celestial objects in the system to see if a particular enemy is there.
-- When you're on the other end of it (worried about being d-scanned), just bounce form warp point to warp point for a few minutes, you'll pretty much annoy the person hunting you into giving up.