Warfare & Tactics

It's not easy, if you are hunting a particular ship, you can probe it while it is on grid with you (at gate or undock of station), any hit will register the ships ID on the scanner, let it warp away and then re-scan to find where it went.

Also if you pre-scan the system you can ignore all the sigs that are coming from the POSes.

Probe scanning for a particular ship in a crowded active system can be difficult. The best approach to that problem will depend on what your target ship is doing. Whatever he’s doing you should first try to get eyes on him. If he’s mission-running it’s pretty easy … just check the stations / agents until you find out who he’s working for. Otherwise you will probably need a combination of patience, care, and your Directional Scanner.

Assuming it’s a mission runner that you’re chasing ….
- Make sure your probe scanner interface is set to only ‘see’ ships.
- Deploy your combat probes, set to shortest range, and in a pattern focussed on the station he is working from.
- Wait until he undocks or warps back to the station and hit the probe scan button (and your Directional Scanner also).
- From the probe scan results identify the number-plate ID (e.g. ABC-123) of his ship and from the DS identify it’s name (e.g. “Failtard’s Machariel”). The number plate will not change, altho the name can be changed anytime he wants.
- If there are more than one of that shiptype in your probe scan result, note their IDs and rescan when he’s gone to identify (by exclusion) his ID. If there’s a bundle of that ship type you may need to make several scan runs before you can be sure you have the right ship ID.
- Set your probe scanner interface to ignore all other IDs, so next time you scan his is the only ship that shows up.
- Then, when he’s out and about next, set your probes up with a wide scan of the whole system ... and then gradually home-in on his location as you usually would. Knowing the name of his ship you can also use your DS to get a good idea of where he is, so you do not need to have probes within his DS range for a terribly long time.

If you cannot get an eye on him, to obtain his number-plate ID, you can still find him … but it’s a bit more fiddly. To do this I use a concentric-8 probe setup and whenever I identify a ship type that is not his I ‘ignore’ it and rescan … and gradually over time I will end up with only the target ship type showing up in my scan results. Then it’s just a matter of checking them all out and obtaining both his number-plate ID and his name as mentioned above. In a busy system this can be additionally difficult because of the continuous flux of other ships into and out of the system.

If you do not know what he’s flying then it’s even tougher, you have to literally check every ship … so use your DS first and hope he has actually got a ship name that allows you to know it’s his (“Failtard’s Machariel” etc being ideal).

Use celestials as bearings. When you get used to it, you will find it quite simple!

When you narrow him on D-scan to 15-30. degrees, just take note of any celestial. If he about 90 degrees to your right and up a bit when you are looking at the sun.
Just place your probes to right and up a bit from you when looking towards the sun on your star map.

You will amaze your self how simple it is to locate and isolate your target in a crowded system when you get your head around it all.

You cant find him on scan any where?!?

Simple!

Probe sigs that are far off and out of d-scan range from Any celestial. Most cases it would just be the one sig that would stand out, far away from all the others, it's quite rare for missions to spawn so far out of scan range, unless the system is massive.
In which case warping celestials that are far apart or cover an area of the system you can't scan unless you are in warp to one point to another, smashing d-scan at the same time. I suggest saving locations in warp so you can warp back if you picked his ship up during the warp.

Still nothing? He is probable cloaked or the ship your were chasing was not him.

In which case you should sit you prober ship at the station he is most probably going to go back to eg a Lvl 4 agent, or a gate to the system he is most probably going to warp to after he is done with his mission.

Can you tell i love probing out targets?

Too easy, i kinda rushed all that on my phone during my break., Have any questions, mail me in game.