Wormholes

LOL, I love comments like this.

Astro V = Deep Space Probe capable.

I virtually always use faction probe launchers on my scanner ships. They are better at their job and, hell, I live(d) in w-space so a few tens-of-million is chicken-**** iskies. It’s also very rare (altho possible as I have demonstrated) to lose your scanner ships. They’re pretty safe getting thru even the most heavily camped wormhole / gate and if you take just a little care you’re unlikely to warp into a bubble near your intended destination. Of course, if you also dual-role them as a tackler then you’re gonna be increasing their chances of getting killed.



Prolly not.

When I am scanning everything in a busy system I use a concentric-8 pattern … two concentric rings of four probes. This is, by far, the fastest method of getting bookmarks for a bundle of locations … or for sorting thru a bundle of site to find what you’re after. I’ve tried to ‘draw’ this pattern in a previous forum posting - https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1040229#post1040229
This pattern is very powerful and pretty easy to setup. In the past I was a denier, claiming that four was all you need, and I have also used 3D polygonal patterns, usually of 7 probes, in the past … but the concentric-8 is by far (IMO) the fastest.

When there’s only a small number of sites I often use five probes, a central deep space surrounded by four RSS core or Sisters combat probes. I know others do this also because I’ve seen similar patterns on DS when evil doers have been hassling us. The DSP, in this pattern is more to keep an eye on the ship count in the system than to aid with obtaining the bookmark.

When I am trying to be sneaky and just monitoring I use DSPs outside the system margins. When I am being sneaky and trying to BM ships in space I use drop-scan-withdraw-repeat method, assembling the probe pattern way out in deep space, which leaves probes in their DS range for only a few seconds at a time.

Yep, DSPs are great for sorting by strength, that being said the poor fellow only has 10mil SP. Get em in a drake/gas miner and at least making money first ;)

Ah was assuming it was a scan alt, but if its his main then yeah definitely don't need astro V any time soon for that kinda useage.

Regarding the 8th probe the maths are in favour of using it. Sometimes the sig will be on the edge of your probe formation. With more triangulation points there's a better chance that the sig will be inside the blue ball of more than one probe. If you like think of it as firing a burst of automatic fire with 8 bullets rather than 7. Not decisive 99% of the time but undeniably better.

i think that when you scan and get a red zone, rather than a point, it means only one of your probes caught the sig. So when you see that large red shaded area, think if I had had an 8th probe that might have been caught by two of my probes and given me a point rather than just one.

The DSP chart is really useful. Sometimes I only want to look for the static which with my set up is always a 0.07 strength sig in my wormhole. Back when I had 30 sigs there, mostly grav sites, that was great. In my wormhole mag sites and radar sites are also always 0.07 so in a chart looking like this:
0.29
0.29
0.29
0.29
0.29
0.29
0.15
0.15
0.15
0.15
0.15
0.15
0.07
0.07
0.07

it means I only need to check 3 sigs to find my exit.

DSPs generally are really nice probes. Many systems are bigger than 64 AU and most are bigger than 32 AU. I always start by checking 256 AU and making a list in Notepad of the sigs, cross-referenced against the DSP chart if I'm only looking for a certain type of hole. (For example sometimes I want to check null sec systems for a wormhole to high sec as I live in a class 1 with a null static).

So yeah, I personally would hate to have Astrometrics 4 after getting used to playing with V. It's a lot worse. However I do a LOT of scanning.

T3s "only" cost around 600 mil, yet I routinely see 3 billion isk fits for them.

It's about getting optimal performance. I've bought four sisters expanded probe launchers in two years. I still own three of them, one on each of my best scanning characters.

Sisters launchers are still the best there is.