EVE General Discussion

Yes but he cannot die if he has no ship ;)

Hey as a wormhole guy don't touch my cloaky t3 cruisers, to the whiners just learn to adapt and learn what fights to take.
I learned the other week that a stratios and cov op tengu can't down a well fit c4 rattle...

Yup, I spent some of last night and all of today messing around with this thing, and finally have it 'somewhat' figured out (cough). Everybody here is right in that it is a totally necessary piece of equipment to use, and it saved my life twice today.

The problem is (and at this point the thread is derailed, but whatever), this thing is not given emphasis or importance by CCP, and only people 'in the know' (null-sec'ers, corp members, etc) use it. When a noob opens the game for the first time, the d-scan should be displayed and open by default, just like the overview is, and placed in a reasonable place. Instead, it isn't, it's tucked away somewhere, and people assume it is some 'special purpose' piece of hardware, like prope scanners or whatever, vs. something necessary to keep you alive.

I've watched 100 people play this game (people from work, casual friends on the weekend, etc). None of them ever use this thing or know what it is. I've even asked people what is it, should I be using it, etc. and people shrug and say "it's for hunting people down" or "it's for locating the direction an object is in." Sure, it can be used for all of that. But it seems the first and primary purpose is to keep you alive.

It also doesn't help that the first page of articles I found on google on how to use this thing either sucked, the links were down, or they were about 'how to use d-scanner for hunting people' instead of 'how to use d-scanner to stay alive.' Again, the noob is totally mislead.

Ultra noobs know nothing at all. I sort of considered myself an 'advanced' noob because I have a somewhat unfucked overview, and I always watched local chat all the time, along with the overview, to see who was coming and going, and to stay alive. Wasn't I some kind of bigshot. See, advanced noobs are taught 'watch local chat!' and 'keep an eye on the overview!' NOT 'learn to use d-scan, keep it open all the time, click it constantly, and here's why...' All this time I've been wondering why I kept dying like flies. Now I know.

If having basic knowledge of the interface and how to use it is considered serious pro tactic, then you should consider whether you're perhaps underestimating your own capacity for learning.

Well, this thread took a weird turn.

Some Dscan tips for you asmo:

If you're in a deadspace complex or safe, people can't warp straight to you without probing you down first. Be looking for probes on dscan. Generally, no matter what ship you're flying it's going to take most people at least two passes with probes to get a warpable position, even if they're very good. You're looking for "combat probes" in this case. If you set up a couple safes and bounce when you see those probes, you can avoid most hostile encounters even in your battleship. Generally if you're just defensively scanning for probes, set your scan range at about 5AU. "Core probes" aren't capable of scanning your ship directly, but if you're in a site you had to probe down, they can probe down your site in stead of you, and verify you're in it via dscan.

It's also probably a good idea to learn the names of common scanning ships. Since there are fitting tradeoffs, it is highly unlikely to see scanning frigates or the Stratios faction cruiser in space unless they're actively scanning for you, or in the case of covops frigs, possibly lighting a cyno for a hotdrop or jump freighter or whatever. However, since all scanning bonused ships are also designed to use cloaks, you're much more likely to see the probes rather than the ship.

You can efficiently pre-scan known spots in space (like gates, asteroid belts, anomalies, etc.) by making sure you're within 14AU, setting the scan radius to 5%, and just using the look at command. Default for this is to hold C and click the thing you want to scan in your overview or in space. Alternately you can have the normal orbit cam set to auto-look by pressing shift-c. This will basically make the camera perform a look command every time you select and object in space. This will help you look for enemy ships, wrecks, and other stuff from a safe distance.

Keep in mind cloaked ships do not show up on dscan. As well, a few rarely seen T2 cruisers are immune to dscan as well. These are more for fleet support so you won't see them a lot on solo hunters.

Also keep in mind that if you see a ship on dscan, and you're not cloaked, chances are it has also seen you.

One thing to remember too is your probes appear at the last location you used them in a system. A good way of scanning somebody very quickly is to set up your probes, then take them back in, you can then uncloak and and hit scan and the probes will automatically return to the last position they were in.

In this way you can easily pinpoint a person at a location on one pass if you can predict that a person will be in that location and set your probes up before they go there, so you could be scanned down in a few seconds to 100%.

This is useful for say setting up at an anom (sanctum) site and getting a 0 point warp in on a ratter before they realise someones even hunting them.

Well faction ships used to be so much more expensive... remember when machariels were 1.2 billion! CCP decided to make everything incredibly farmable and here we are.... Faction battleship bpos costing a billion even a billion 2 less.