Missions & Complexes

Evelopedia has some Rogue Drone sites listed.

UniWiki has some good guides such as Hacking 101.

Usually the reason for not finding sites is due to competition. Try increasing your search area or scanning at a different time zone.

Other than that, good luck to you.



DMC

I've spent a few days post Phoebe running sites through multiple regions in the north & south and have found exactly 1 data site. Compare that to the 30+ relic sites and I get the feeling that the balance may be somewhat off…

This is a copy and paste of a reply I posted to a different topic. This information was current from just before Phoebe, I'm not sure if anything has really changed in the Drone Data sites.

"I was actually going to make a topic about the drone region data sites, since they are quite a bit different than the rest of New Eden. I ended up not posting it yet, simply because of the upcoming changes to Data sites in Phoebe. However, since people are asking questions... here's a quick summary of what I found:

Each region of drone space only drops one race's particular set of drone BPCs.

Malpais - Caldari
Oasa - Caldari
Kalevala Expanse - Minmatar
Etherium Reach - Gallente
Cobalt Edge - Amarr
Outer Passage - Amarr
Perrigen Falls - Gallente
The Spire - Minmatar

I did roughly 100 sites over the course of 3 weeks, and this held up.

Cans typically drop drone parts and Integrated BPCs.

Etherium Reach was the only region I found Augmented BPC's in. I ended up with 2 Hammerhead and 2 Hobgoblin total. The reason I bring this up, is because drone data sites are the only ones to escalate. There's a video link on Reddit of some guy escalating a site, and ending up with a couple bil worth of Augmented BPC's (similar to the poster above). I unfortunately didn't know about this until I was almost done researching, so I never actually had a site do this. The important piece of info to take away from this, is that Etherium Reach data sites seem to be the only ones to drop Aug BPCs without an escalation. All the sites I did in the other regions never dropped any. I originally went out to the drone regions to score a couple Aug Valkryie BPCs to use with my Gila (wanted to try them out after the drone changes).. if you've checked the market lately, only Aug Hammerhead and Hobgoblins are available.

My guess is that the loot drops for Aug BPCs aren't working properly. Either Aug BPCs are only supposed to drop from the escalations, and Etherium Reach is borked... or they are supposed to drop everywhere, and only Etherium Reach is working properly. The 4 BPCs I found were 10 run only, the ones from escalations seem to be much higher runs.

The data sites contain 3 cans. Two High Security Containment Facilities, and one Research and Development Lab. The Lab can is the one that can cause the escalation. I'm guessing the reason most people don't know this, is because the Lab can is usually empty. I say usually, because out of the ~100 sites, two of them actually had loot in them. Both had one Integrated BPC each. Nothing else. If you do a search on the forums, most people say that the Lab cans are always empty, and just don't hack them.

My goal was to post a topic about this, and see if anyone could fill in any blanks or mistakes I may have made. Once that was done, I wanted to submit the info to the Wiki, since there's basically zero info on there about Drone region data sites. Of course, all this could change with Phoebe... so we will see what happens.

Link to the escalation video: http://www.twitch.tv/falnar83/c/4282691

EDIT: And yes, rats do spawn if you fail a hack. I never failed any of the Facility cans, so I'm not sure if they spawn rats too. But the Lab can absolutely does spawn rats when you fail it. It's also significantly harder to hack than the other two, having a "red" core. The spawns were always two drone frigates, at least for me."

I figured this would get more exposure being in a topic specifically about Drone Data sites.

The original post and topic, for complete context - https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5140007#post5140007

I went on a run through a long run through multiple drone regions before Phoebe was released. It seemed to me that data sites are quite rarer in drone space compared to sov space. The rarity appears to be balanced by the payout. In the few sites that I ran, I obtained two 10-run augmented drone bpcs that were worth just over 100 million isk each. Also, as others like Shadoron Criste have pointed out, there is also a chance for an escalation that should payout much bigger than that, though I haven't been lucky enough for that so far.

Most of the time I just avoid drone space. It is difficult exploration terrain. Expect lots and lots of bubbles, aggressive locals, long warp distances, and gates out of d-scan range.