EVE New Citizens Q&A

57% sounds very low when you sound like you know what your doing.

Assuming you are using a scanning Frig trained to level4,
and your 4 astro skills are trained to 3 at least,
and you rigged the ship for scanning,

I'd guess it is mostly about your probe pattern as you think it is.

Are you using 5 probes?

The best way to explain the correct dispersion of the probes is simply to direct you to the many scanning vids on youtube.

And practice practice practice!

Sounds like you just don't have high enough skills. First I would make sure you have Astrometrics trained to at least IV. That will give you seven probes to work with, and strength improves with every one used. That alone will not get you every site though(some are harder to scan down than others). You'll also want Astrometric Rangefinding to level IV. This increases the overall scan strength by 10% per level. The other astrometric skills make scanning faster/easier, but with some experience you can scan down sites very quickly using these two skills only. In the meantime, a cov ops/scanning frigate with rigs on it may help you with that last bit you need for some sites.

Huh, good point. It's just going to be the Rangefinding skill then it looks like, it's amazing how much of a difference that can make.

Also yes, you want them close to the site, but not right on top of each other as that will confuse it. Many times I've been able to narrow down from ~95% simply by scooting them closer together.

Let me clarify...

I use 7 Core Probes. an Imicus (Frig lvl 5), 2 10% rigs. Got Pinpointing 3, currently training rangefinding.

Mostly it works fine. In highsec no trouble at all. In Low Sec some sites I am only able to scan down to 60% then I have all probes at 0.25 range and no matter how I move them around the yellow marker the every scan just pops the marker around a bit lets say 58% to 62%.

From what I have read the deviation is the maximum distance the signal will show up from the actual location at a given signal strength. So when I hit the wall I can assume the real location (100%) is somewhere in a bubble of X diameter.

I tried moving my formation a bit in one direction to see if the signal strength goes up or down to find out in what direction the signal source may be in the imaginary deviation bubble but to me it looked like every scan just gave me a new randon spot close to the site. And that is my question, is there a strategy for triangulating or narrowing in on the target when you cant lower the scan range any further and every probe move seems to give a random result.
With proper skills and equipment you probably dont have to deal with problems like this. I'm just wondering if I hit a physical impossible wall or some mouse movement skills would make it possible somehow for my current weak setup.

Google:

Youtube probing EvE

You'll find many tutorials.... take 15 minutes and watch 3 or four of them.... then try again, and tell us what difficulties you are having..

Probe strength is equal in their entire spherical range.

That range is just the distance the probe will look for signals.
The overlap does matter. Each probe pings a signature and says it's "x" km from it, the bigger the general overlap the bigger the chance that there are multiple spots that meet the criteria of all the probes responses. Too small though will mean you might miss the signature in your overlap.

I do suggest to look up the probing guide on youtube. Even though slightly outdated (made before you could shift/alt rearrange your probes) the scanning method is still ghe same.

you should try to read the questions. I know the basics of exploration and I have read/watched many guides. but most are just the basic vanilla positioning guides. I am past that stage. thanks.

The answer I was looking for. Thanks.

great effort, so it is range dependent. thanks a lot.

You want your probes to be close in to the site, and all looking at the site from different directions. You do in fact get better signal if your probes are closer in, and better accuracy if your probes are all roughly equidistant to the site (the actual location of the site, which may or may not deviate significantly from what you're seeing depending on your skills).

There's a balance between getting close in enough to get a signal and getting so close in that the site is actually now outside of your configuration and your accuracy is screwed again.

Either way, more skills will always help and never hurt, so if you're doing a lot of scanning you might as well train 'em up. Lower deviation especially is nice.

(Entertainingly, scanning is significantly _more_ difficult than real-life quadrangulation in space. Go figure. Admittedly slower, since in eve you're sending signals significantly faster than light, but still.)