EVE New Citizens Q&A

I recently started with probing, using tech I gear. Trained a few levels in hacking, salvaging and and archaeology.
I have been probing several high sec (0.8-1) systems with no luck. In a time span of about 90 minutes, all I was able to track completely was a wormhole, which I wasn't really interested in to begin with.

It seems like I have difficulties finding anything else than wormholes. I am really looking for magnometric and radar sites, but it looks like almost always when I try to scan a little red dot in more detail using a smaller probe scan radius, it disappears or appears elsewhere, leaving me with no signatures. Am I competing with other people to find signatures? First come, first serve?

As for highlighted: Yes and Yes


You will find more wormholes as there are more WH in high-sec then other sites.
Also once a site (Radar, Ladar, Grav, Magneto) has been cleared it despawns and respawns somewhere else in high-sec.
And as high-sec is the most populated place in EVE you will compete with other explorers.

Also higher skills in probing will make it possible/easier to find the harder sites. Wormholes usually are easier to probe out then high-end complexes.

And always check your filters.

If you have your filter to show unknown (WH or DED) it will pick up ALL sites untill you are able to know what site it is (e.g. RADAR site) at that stage your filter kicks it out of the list

Keep it going.

Exploration is chance based, move out of heavy populated systems. Maybe eventually go into low-sec / null-sec (those sites are harder but pay out better).

There will be days that you hardly find stuff / get income. But you will have days where you hit jackpot.

I don't get it. I'm in an area with 5 people, including me. I have filtered out everything but magnetometric and radar sites.
I get a signal, about 20% strenght. I reduce probe radius from 4 AU to 2 AU. The signature is gone. Expanding to 4 AU makes the signature appear again. I thought those little red dots were supposed to be the location of a site? What about those larger red circles?

^ This.

Also when you are online and there are only 5 people in the systems doesn't mean much. Could be that in other timezones it's much more heavily populated. Keep in mind we all play on same server, so you share your server with a total of 400k subscribtions.

I've been trying this red dot for about an hour or so, moving around 5 probes up and down, relative to each other, moving them to the new red dot that shows up, etc. But it didn't go beyond 24%.

Do I really need that high skills for a 0.8 system?

That's funny, when I did some scanning for wormholes everything but wormholes were showing up

How exactly am I supposed to proceed on a red dot? Should I place the probes further away relative to each other, closer, or what?

I watched a tutorial. It said that if I saw a red sphere, the site would be within the sphere. I search with a lower radius, which should increase signal strenght. Nothing of the sphere is outside the probe scanners' spheres. Still, the red sphere is gone and I am left with no signatures. It's all very confusing.

EDIT: Already watched that video. I don't understand why I won't get 25% signal strength!
Are radar and magnometrics sites harder to find than other sites? I only have Astrometrics II and Astrometric Rangefinding I, but shouldn't I still be able to make it?

Warp to a spot, many people warp to the sun but you can pick whatever you want. Once you're still (speed at 0), launch 5 probes.
Then you begin adjusting 4 in a cross pattern and keep the fifth in the middle.
You will want to have the radius of the 4 outer probes overlap each other. place them so the limit of the scan radius reaches the probe facing it, so that all 4 probes have the same zone covered around the fifth that sits in the middle of them.
To increase scanning radius of all probes at once (you don't want to play with probes having different radius), hold shift and drag the radius bubble of one, or select them all in the scanning window and right-click>range.
To spread the probes evenly, hold alt and drag one by an arrow handle.
Once you're feeling good with alt/shift, you can fairly quickly set your probes and adjust them on the spot you want to scan.

I will have to agree with Teabo though, perhaps your skills aren't very high yet and it's what influences scanning the most. But to help your process, a scan ship like a heron, magnate, probe, or tristan, is preferred. You can also get a fair boost with Sisters probes and if you have armor rigs skill, fit a pair of gravity capacitor rigs. You'll need to spend a little bit on this equipment, but if you recall your probes before 60min, you shouldn't lose them.

You can scan with just astrometrics skill, but I would highly recommend training it to IV, then the three other astrometric skills to III, that shoul be more than enough for almost any site if you use a scanning frigate with sisters probes.

I know how frustrating it can be to scan something and not get it to 100%, I've had troubles scanning some grav sites with astrometric skills 4-3-3-3, but I used a non-bonused ship at the time.

And there endeth the lesson.