EVE New Citizens Q&A

The method you're describing is referred to as a "safe spot" in EVE. There are two possibilities to warp to you when you're at a safe:

A) if you're in a fleet with the other person then they can warp to you.

B) the other person can deploy probes (using a probe launcher) and can scan you down that way. Probing you down takes anywhere from a couple of seconds (edit: actually about 10-20 seconds to be realistic) to several minutes and depends mainly on the following factors: the skills of the prober, the type of probes being used, the type of ship being used, the implants of the prober VS. the signature radius (size) of your ship (the bigger the easier you are to probe), the sensor strength of your ship (the higher, the harder you are to probe) and the location of your safe spot (the further and the more out-of-the-way the better). Obviously any piece of equipment, implant or combat booster that influences one of these parameters on your ship will also make you easier/harder to probe (for example an X-Instinct combat booster will reduce your signature radius by about 30% and will make you harder to scan).

It's even possible to make a ship unprobable against people with non-perfect probing skills: if your Signature Radius devided by your Sensor Strength is smaller then 5 devided by the scanning strength of the probes being used then they will not be able to probe you, ever.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

In theory there is also:

C) a person could randomly create a safe spot at the same location as you (within about 9'000km) and find you that way but given the size of space this is virtually impossible.

No, cloaked ships are impossible to probe.

AFAIK there are no ships that have a direct bonus to evading probes but a small ship with high sensor strength is harder to scan. Add a cloak to the mix and you're golden (at least if you only uncloak for a cupple of seconds at a time and relocate often).

Also, probes are visible on the directional scanner so you can usually tell if you're being hunted by a prober if you pay attention (but this is not 100% secure - skilled probers might be able to probe you so fast that you won't see the probes on dscan unless you're concentrating on that exclusively).

A further thing to keep in mind: when probing then you can change the scanning range of your deployed probes (32AU to 0,5 AU iirc) and the longer you set the range, the weaker the sensor strength of the probes becomes. That's why (as Ralph explained) it's a huge advantage for the prober to know in what general area you are before they even launch their probes.

I think i will need to delete my safe spots and start again. Thankfully I didn't do too many

So if I warped to....say a station, created a safe spot mid way. Head to that safe spot and, warp to somewhere else and create a safe spot. Delete spot 1 and use spot 2 - would that be safer to do?

Sorry if these are stupid questions. I'm only 2 weeks old :D

So:

1. If you're cloaked you're safe, but modules get deactivated when the cloak is running, so that limits what you can do while cloaked. You have to uncloak to launch the probes, but can be cloaked while they're scanning.

2. Figure out how to operate the d-scan. Edit your overview settings to include combat and core probes, so that you can see them on d-scan without getting cluttered by all the other stuff out there.

3. Make multiple safespots, so you can warp to the next one should the first be discovered. As mentioned above, a spot on the line between two planets is ok, but if you pick a third planet and create a new safespot as you warp to it from your first spot, that second safespot will be in the middle of the triangle, so to speak, and not on any direct lines, so slightly harder to pinpoint. Not by much, though.

4. While you're playing with d-scan and safe spots, practice creating a safe spot near (but off the grid of) a stargate, by warping to the planet or moon that it orbits (don't warp to the gate), and use the d-scan from your safe spot with a focused 5 degree angle to see who's in the vicinity of the stargate. Practice detecting gate camps, basically, without running into them.

5. Get a ship that has bonuses to probing and can fit a expanded probe launcher, and a friend, and try to probe them out as they sit at a safe spot.

Got it!

Awesome, thanks for the help guys. I'll spend tonight re-doing them :)

iv stipulated exactly this in my first post

I'm guessing from what i've read, that there is a lot I can do better to protect myself, but ultimately if a skilled player wants to hunt me down, they'll get me sooner or later. So in the end, just do what i can to "fly safe"

And if Ralph is about, fly in the opposite direction :P

Don't delete those midwarps just yet. You need the midwarps to make safespots, since safespots are generally midwarps between midwarps. Also, a midwarp is better than nothing in system, and you can use it as a base for establishing real ss later.



Not so good. All signatures are 8au of celestials. Like Ralf said, ideally you want to be as far away from a celestial as possible. But they are good, especially when all planets are on the same plane and in a line, (I hate those systems) then you can use sigs to at least get a little off line.

SS effectiveness are directly proportional to your distance from celestials and the size of the system.

Yeah, but in .7 or higher you have to be willing to toss your ship out the airlock as well so your target better be worth it!

Besides, I need to give my insurance agent SOMETHING to do to earn his exorbitant fees.


As to the desire to be outside of 14AU from a celestial (so D scan doesn't work), I haven't found a way to warp to someone with D scan. It seems to just give you a starting 'area' to work with for scanning. If the target takes Ralph's advice and moves the second they see combat probes, then those probes might be fishing in the wrong 14AU hole so I'm not certain that it's a huge benefit to fly waaaay off grid. That takes a lot of time, unless there's a trick to that I'm unaware of, which is entirely possible.

Oh, also bookmark old mission sites, those can be way off grid, as can combat sites with acceleration gates. I bookmark those too.