EVE New Citizens Q&A

The red dot (and even the yellow symbol) have built in signal errors, and what this means is that the dot is NOT where the site actually is. The server knows where the site is, and displays dots for you AROUND the real location (some at quite a distance from the real location). Every time you re-scan, it tricks you with another dot location that is NOT the site, within the margin of error. Which means, if you center on a red dot, you're not centering on the location, and you could reduce the probing volume to the point where the actual location is outside your probes, so your signal disappears.

You cannot go to the smaller and smaller probe sizes if this happens to you. The only thing you can do is increase the scanning strength by using a specialized exploration ship, use higher grade probe launchers and probes (Sisters version, T2 version), train up the Astrometrics skills for a better signal and the ability to use more probes at the same time.

In general, the listed % accuracy for the dot, in your scanner, is also indicative of the margin of error. If your probes are currently set at 4 AU and you're getting 50% on your signal result, that's 2 AU of error in any direction. You're really only pinpointing the actual site if you're yellow at about 85-95%. You can kinda watch the dot and where it keeps jumping, and figure out the center of that space, but you won't get a warp bookmark until you hit 100% and some of the rare sites require high skills trained and a ship with bonuses, modules, and rigs installed.

Anyway, the other reason for a disappearing signal is someone else found the site and completed it, which makes it despawn and disappear.

See my profile for 3 easy steps to get through that tutorial.

Going smaller scan radius is not always good. If you lose track don't move anything and go back up a size to get signal again. You can increase the signal strength without decreasing the scan radius by moving the probes even closer togeather. Hopefully enough to make that red dot turn yellow then you can go down a size. Its not only about going smaller but also how close your probes are. To close though the signal will start to decrease but you really have to get right up in there for that to happen. I'm using 6 probes. 4 side and a top and bottom.

Like Oraac said you need to check the boxes for lad, grave, and radar in the filters section because mine were disabled by default. So whenever I tried to scan something beyond 25% I lost signal. I think they go from unknown to a known type that gets filtered. With only astrometrics lvl 2 I was locking down 80% of everything I found. Being that these are training ones you should be able to get them easily. Check filter settings for sure.

Thanks for the replies. I managed to finish this after a lot of trial and error but eventually moved on to other careers until the said exploring remake happens. probably won't take long until I have another noob question for this forum, haha