Missions & Complexes

After taking a couple of months off from plexing I thought I'd go have a probe around and see what I could find. After several days of frustration I have to ask; is probing heavily bugged at the moment or have the mechanics been changed?

Ship/Skills used: using a char with cov ops 5, astrometrics 5 other scanning skills at 4, an anathema, 2 probing rigs, expanded probe launcher and non-named probes. (could be better of course but used to do the job fine)

Scanner Filters: set up fine, yes i have the right stuff told to display.

Probing style: 5 probes, one in the center, the other four in a cross around it. (Can be done with more I know, however this has worked for me fine on all sigs before and after the changes which forced us to use more probes ages and ages ago)

The problem: vanishing sigs. (some days everything works fine, then the next I won't be able to get a warpable result on anything with docking/ejecting/re-logging/re-boarding sometimes seeming to fix it) It seems to generally kick in either around 24% sig strength or the transition from 4 to 2au. I'll find a sig, get the red dot, get the strength to 24% or so then reduce the probe size and zoom in a little (usually from 8 to 4 au or 4 to 2 au with core probesi think) and it will vanish completely and be completely unfindable. This is happening with sigs of all varieties, from easy to find military bases to 10/10 plexes.

Anyone else having this problem? It's driving me nuts at the moment.

Ah I see, so even though I only have unknowns selected the filter will only kick in and remove sigs when the strength is strong enough to display the race in the scanning window?

you know what? i have exactly the same problem.

and i have noticed that it changed after the crucible patvh. before that patch i found everything fairly quick. took a few weeks break and did it again after the patch.
I have asked around if anythinhg changed after the patch but couldnt find any info. after the patch and had problems finding sigs, i fitted 2 rigs but same result. then trained rangefinding to 4 had a bit more luck but often lost the signal after 20-24%.
so with the rigs an better skills it should be easier to pinpoint the sigs - wh's, radar and mag sites was easy to get and slightly better chance of getting ded and unknown combat sites. before patch i used 7 probes in the same pattern, after the patch same pattern no luck i played aoundwith various patterns but same result

i scan in low sec and did before in the same systems, before the patch i scanned all sigs to 100% after the patch, even with better skills and rigs icant pinpoint all of them.

edit: and yes i checked filters also

Have had more than one convo about that point during the last weeks. I am not sure what is wrong, but i dont have problem at all. As a result from the convos and from some experience i tried to find out what is going on. Here is what i ve found out:

A thing that influences dramatically the results is the overlapping of the bubbles. Some use it with like 10% area where all 5 probes overlap, some use it with like 25 or 50 or even 80 percent. The best results you get are between 50% overlap and 70%. How to measure that?

Placing 1 probe centered and placing 4 on the outline of the center bubble (assuming that all probes are set to the same AU) equals in a 0% overlap.
Placing the 4 probes at half of the radius of the center probe equals in 50% overlapping.
Placing the probes at the inner quarter of the radius of the center probe equals in 75% overlapping.

Between 50% and 75% overlapping you will get the best results.

Placing the probes at the outer quarter of the radius of the center probe equals in 25% overlapping. This often enough leads to the situation that a single signature delivers more than one response - or it might vanish from it. Why vanish? The lower the responding signal of a certrain signature is, the wider the variation of potential places within the space of the probe bubbles is - or the more far out from the center the signal can be. If this is outside your bubbles, the signature vanishes.

You can assume, that a signal is very hard to track down, the more it jumps around in your bubbles while you following down the scanning procedure to smaller and smaller AU distances. If you get a dual answer of a signature this is an indicator that the signal strength is reaching its limits to the setup you are using (skills, ship, rigs, equipment). By loosing a signal, you have finally reached a situation, where the signal is weaker than what your skills can compensate - the signal lies out of your range.

So what to do now?
- Check your settings (filters blabla) and rescan.
- Get better equipment to compensate.
- My choice: Use a 6th probe, placed right at the center but setting AU distance OVER all 5 existing probes. That way you reinforce the responses of signals a little bit. This helps sometimes, not always but it never failed me. Though i have to admit, that i had not any problems with vansihing sigs since a long time. The last time it was a very weak radar signal in the null sec drone regions that forced me to use the 6th probe, but then pinned it down quickly.

Just mind, that it dowsnt help much to use 5 probes on 1.0 AU and set the centered 6th probe to 32 AU, because the measured strength of the weak response is depending on the smallest AU distance, not on the biggest. In that case a 32 AU couldnt find any signal since its scan density is too weak.

Also sometimes a problem - but dont ask me after logics behind: Most of us look at the scan bubbles from above and somewtimes forget to adjust height (which COULD be the problem hehe) but when turning to the horizontal view position u will find out, that you simply still using a FLAT bubble system. the 6th bubble in center overlapping all 5 probes then also set a higher vertical bubble, which sometimes solve the problem of a vanishing signature.

Maybe this helps a bit.

Cheers

The real problem lies in the fact that the filtering system cannot be pre-emptive.

When you enter a system with, let's say, 6 signatures, your filter set can't apply itself to any one of those signatures until you have scanned it down to the type threshold signal strength, which is 25%.

As soon as you have scanned a signature to that strength or above, your filter set can then apply. So, if it's a ladar sig, and you have ladars UNselected in your current filter.. the filter dutifully removes the sig as your scan completes, giving you the impression that it's vanished. It hasn't. It's just that the sig type is now temporarily known, and the filter has (un)helpfully removed it from your scan results.

If you then move the your probes away but one of your probes is still covering the ladar sig's location, and if the signal strength has once again dropped below 25%.. you will see the signal with no type again.

This is what causes all the confusion, and has resulted in the majority of scanners simply not bothering with the filter system except to have one filter with all signatures checked.

The feature was brought in with Crucible in Nov/Dec last year. It was poorly thought out and poorly implemented.

This has been driving me nuts. Thanks for all the above info guys - I can now see the reasons behind my nonsense scanning results.

But can anyone explain why the filter system works like this? What exactly is it supposed to achieve?

Seeing that the issue crops up pretty flequently and confuses people, it might just be a troll on ccps part. :S

Pre-Dominion, Astrometrics IV was a prerequisite for launching probe, quest, sift & comb probes as well as the multi-spectral. It was also required before you could train the supporting scan skills. Level 5 got you Deep Space & Gaze Discovery probes.

Now? Sure, it gives you an extra probe; but that's a secondary bonus and I suspect just a throwback. Level 5 Astrometrics is really only for training Jump Portals (Black Ops & Titans).

Edit: Strangely enough, I really miss having 21 different probe types...

Still gets you DPSs though. And that's a very real benefit.

Train and get DSP