Missions & Complexes

Scanning down signatures in null, I've always just lauched my 8 probes and never had a problem scanning any site down.

Someone in local yesterday said "How many probes?" and indicated that the mechanics had changed and was a bit overkill. After a bit of searching I've not managed to find a definitive answer about this.

So I'm just wondering, how many does it take to find even the lowest strength signatures? I'm using a covert with good skills, rigs & sisters launcher and probes. Not got probe implants, but never needed them.

Cheers

i use 5 with no problems

you can scan any sig anywhere with 4 probes.
the correct number to use for the fastest probing is 8.
you also need to know how to lay them out which i'll let you figure out on your own.

I agree with jack.

You **can** scan anything with four probes, but it is much much much quicker to use an appropriately setup of eight probes.

I used to be rather vocal on the you-only-need-four (or five) front, until I learned how to use eight efficiently.

Now, if I only have one or two sites to scan I use a deep-space plus four core probes. However, if I have anything more than just a few I use eight core probes ... RSS if it's gonna be a seriously demnding session sifting thru dozens of sigs.

Used to be that only 4 probes were used to calculate a result. This was changed to all probes (with incarna?) - so more is better now.

Now if you can scan down sigs with 4 probes or not depends on your probe strength. Most of you seem to be in a bonused ship with good skills and all - i would wonder if you couldn't scan everything even with only 4 probes with those.

Otherwise a probe strength of around 80 i think will enable you to scan down even the weakest signatures, but you need 7-8 probes then.

can somene suggest how to use 8 probes?

Geometry to the rescue! There is only one regular hexahedron, meaning a symmetric 3-dimensional shape with 8 vertices. This allows for a shape where all probes are equidistant from the signature in the middle, maximising your total scan strenght.

It's a very familiar shape, and very fast and easy to execute.

HINT: it's a cube.

No worries, I happen to have a few of those unused. They normally sell for 180-200mil, but I think we can make a special deal only for you my friend - convo me in game and we can work out the details!

dont use a cube, dont use a square.

the reason to use 8 probes is that you can have 4 at 4-8 AU and 4 at 0.5-1 AU meaning you never have to resize your probes or adjust your probe position.

i made a video a couple months back on how i do it but i can't find the damn youtube link...
if anyone has it, feel free to post it.

Yes, but someone above did ask about how to use 8 probes effectively. No reason not to contribute answers, even the OP might find something useful in them.

Personally, I did some testing with 7 probes arranged in a center-east-west-north-south-up-down position and the cube using 8 probes. I have to say that comparing these two, the 7 probe set up is actually better, that central probe makes a big difference. Setting up the 7 probe arrangement is also faster although the cube is nothing difficult as well with a bit of practice, really only somewhat slower. If using 8 probes, I second the recommendation for arranging them as 4 probes at something like 4 or 8au, overlapping, and then 4 probes right at the center of the overlap, at 1 or 0.5 au (obviously not right on top of each other, move them away from the very center but keep some overlap). However, this method doesn't scale very well with poor probe strength. If you have great skill and use implants, then this is the simplest way to make great use of 8 probes. Lacking in probe strength, though, you'll spend more time resizing and possibly ******* up resizing because shift-resize doesn't really work than you would if you were just using 7 probes. That's been my experience in testing the setups on characters, varying probe strength.

You can also set up a 7-vertex shape with an eight probe in the middle by doing something like this: 1 central probe, 4 probes below in a square, 3 probes above in a triangle. However, setting up 7-vertex figures is more of an exercise in being creative than in efficient scanning. Just use the 4 bigger and 4 smaller set up if it works for you, or either the cube with 8 probes or the cube with 7 probes where one is in the center (other 6 probes marking faces of the cube rather than vertices). The latter two are pretty interchangeable when it comes to scan results in most cases, and one is faster to set up than the other.

All of the above is categorized as "IMO" since I haven't seen any quality scientific studies on the matter, and I really can't be bothered conducting one