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One mystery at a time: D-Scan
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Pod Panik

Low-Sec Scrubs

Likes received: 38

#1 - 2015-01-23 19:59:03 UTC

Hello all!

So, let's educate me on D-Scan.

From what I understand, you pick a direction (facing screen), pick an angle and a signal distance strength. You then execute the scan and it tells you what objects/items are in that range. Then what?

- How can you get more precise information avout a specific item? For example, class of ship, distance, etc

- Can you warp to that item? Or how can you get to the identified item (other ship, wreckage, etc)?

- Can you imporve the D-Scan effect in game? Does different ships have different D-Scan?

- Is there a way to hide yourself from other D-Scans?

But more i mportantly, how do YOU use the D-Scan...

Thanks for sharing the Wisdom!

J'Poll

School of Applied Knowledge

Caldari State

Likes received: 6,455

#2 - 2015-01-23 20:01:35 UTC | Edited by: J'Poll

1. Ship classes are named. Distances are only listed for stuff that you can see on the overview.

2. No, for that you need probes. Probes.

3. Nope, nope

4. Cloak or Recons.

How to use it, use Youtube for guides.
D-scan is something that you must "see" in action and then try yourself. It is not something you can easily explain in text.

The best way to practise it, get in contact with someone and do it together, while online.
This way you can match D-scan results etc.

Personal channel: Crazy Dutch Guy

Help channel: Help chat - Reloaded

Public roams channels: RvB Ganked / Redemption Road / Spectre Fleet / Bombers bar / The Content Club

Solonius Rex

Federal Navy Academy

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 443

#3 - 2015-01-23 20:24:32 UTC

Pod Panik wrote:

From what I understand, you pick a direction (facing screen), pick an angle and a signal distance strength. You then execute the scan and it tells you what objects/items are in that range. Then what?

Then nothing. It shows up on your scan. But two things:

1. You dont need to pick a direction. If you do a 360 scan, it will tell you everything around you.

2. You can set your Dscan to sync with your current overview settings. Which means that, for example, if your overview settings are set so that you only see player-owned ships, your Dscan will only show player-owned ships. If your overview is set to only see POS towers, your Dscan will only show POS towers. Its useful to filter out the noise/garbage and concentrate on what youre actually trying to find.

3. The only time you want to pick a direction and an angle, is if you want to scan something specific down, but dont know where they are, dont have any probes to scan them down, and dont want to risk warping around.

Quote:

- How can you get more precise information avout a specific item? For example, class of ship, distance, etc

It tells you both the name of the ship, and the class of the ship. Always look for the class first. Some people name their ships differently to confuse players. Class never lie.

Distance can be determined manually by changing the scan range. I.e. If you set the scan range to 4 au, and you see someones ship appear, but when you set it down to 3 AU you no longer see it, it means the ship is between 3 and 4 au distance from your location.

Quote:

- Can you warp to that item? Or how can you get to the identified item (other ship, wreckage, etc)?

No. But you can always determine if he is in, for example, an asteroid belt, or a Customs office, and warp to there instead.

Quote:

- Can you imporve the D-Scan effect in game? Does different ships have different D-Scan?

No.

Quote:

- Is there a way to hide yourself from other D-Scans?

Cloaking, and the new Force recon changes have allowed some recon ships to be undetectable by Dscan.

Generally speaking, though, most people scan when they jumped in, or are on route to another gate. And the scan range is only 14 Au. So if you are 20 au from all gates in a system and none of the routes between the gates comes within 14 au of you, chances are they wont find you on Dscan.

Also, you open up the Dscan menu from the button at the very bottom of your screen, right next to your sheild/armor/hullpoints and capacitor sphere, and press "Scan".

you can read up on it more here.

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Directional_Scanner_Guide

Elena Thiesant

The Scope

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 1,795

#4 - 2015-01-23 20:25:43 UTC

Pod Panik wrote:

- Can you warp to that item? Or how can you get to the identified item (other ship, wreckage, etc)?

D-scan just tells you there's something out there, not enough information to lock a warp drive on to.

If the item you d-scanned is a ship or drones, you can get an expanded probe launcher and combat probes and probe the item in question down. Normal probe launcher and core probes aren't enough.
Wrecks can't be probed, so unless there's either a ship or drones at the same location (or in the same mission for an active, gated mission), you can't get there.

Ralph King-Griffin

New Eden Tech Support

Likes received: 21,564

#5 - 2015-01-23 20:40:11 UTC | Edited by: Ralph King-Griffin

Here's an example of a quick offensive use of the dscan.

firstly, UN**** your overview. Do this, do it now, I will wait.

Done that?

Ok now

I normally log my prober in scout alt before my main
"Ohh, we have someone in system...goodie"

I live in a lowsec island so anything I can catch is fairgame.

Undock, hit max dscan @ 360°....procurer...ok so he's probably at a belt ,

Narrow the angle to 5° and with the tracking camera on and belts showing on my overview.

Now assuming my camera and ship position are central in the screen ,
whenever I click on a belt in the overview the camera will track to it,
when it settles I can hit scan and it will do a narrow scan of that belt.

Click the next
*camera tracks*
Hit scan

Repeat till you get a result

Once I find him he might be in a cluster of belts,
if I look at my overview I can see the exact range to each belt,

From there I can adjust the distance to see which belt in a cluster he is in.

Once I know I warp my scout there (cloaked from the start obviously) to get eyes on him.

Knowing where he is sitting then I'll place the scout about 10k behind him inline with where my main will be comin from.

Then quickly login, fleet up, warp to fleet member at 10, overload everything in route and hover over the empty spot in the overview with ctrl held ready for a quick lock....and then swear blue murder at the monitor because he was stabbed, Warped off and is now blowing rasberrys at me in local.

No probes needed here and he only had a tiny window to see me coming on dscan , which he should have been spamming like a ...really...spammy ...thing.

Here's an old video , it's still the same functionality just been dressed up a bit since this video.
Introduction to the Directional Scanner: http://youtu.be/WydGHvTH7NA

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

=]|[=

Cara Forelli

State War Academy

Caldari State

Likes received: 2,242

#6 - 2015-01-23 21:13:32 UTC | Edited by: Cara Forelli

In the excellent words of myself, another way to use your dscan:

Cara Forelli wrote:

Tip for dscan

Instead of using the space view, switch to solar system map mode. SInce 9/10 times players are at some specific place on the map like planets, sites, belts etc. this allows you to quickly visualize all the possible locations and see which ones are outside your range.

To perform the scan, double click on your own location to center your view (say you are at the sun for example). Then zoom in as far as you can and rotate your view to line it up with a planet. You can then use the sun like the scope on a gun; line it up by placing it directly on top of the planet. This allows you to easily do 15 and 5 degree scans without getting dizzy from the tracking camera swiveling your view around in space. I also feel it gives you a better visualization of where things are in respect to each other.

I use this method the vast majority of the time when hunting other players. It's especially effective for FW sites because they show up as beacons on the map. It's also great for locating POS in hostile systems. Start at the sun, and scan each planet for a forcefield. Once you find the planet, warp to it and use it to line up with the moons for a second round of scans.

Want to talk? Join my channel in game: House Forelli

Titan's Lament

Memphis Baas

Likes received: 3,085

#7 - 2015-01-23 21:49:00 UTC

As it's been mentioned, the D-scan is a text-based radar.

Ways to use it:

- incoming ships scan: set it to 360 and a certain range, and scan periodically; any ships that appear on d-scan are possibly headed to your location.

- probe detector: set it to 360 and if you see probes, someone's probably in the final stages of searching for you.

- gatecamp detector: instead of warping to a gate, warp to a nearby safespot or planet, then narrow the scanner to 5 degrees and aim it at the gate, and you can see if there are ships there, and more importantly if there are warp disruptor bubbles there.

- track a pilot without probes: as explained above, you can check whether the target is at a planet, moon, asteroid belt, etc. without probes by doing narrow angle d-scan checks. Useful when you don't want to alert the target by launching your probes.

People rely on the d-scan because it gives advanced warning, especially in cases where you're screwed if the enemy lands within range of you (or you land in range of enemies you didn't expect).

L'ouris

Have Naught Subsidiaries

Likes received: 284

#8 - 2015-01-23 22:16:19 UTC

a defensive example would help too ralph :)

Though the new recon changes screw with its effectiveness a bit...

sit in an anomaly blasting rats
Dscan at 360 max range
local chat channel up in a separate window ( I'm only one in local)
Local chat flashes ( a new fella in system )
I start spamming scan at max range

After a few spams, I see a hurricane on scan somewhere in max range
decision: Oh kay, can I take a hurricane? will he be fit long range or not? should I move? is he even coming here or bouncing along?
Set dscan to 5 au
does he disappear or still there?
he's gone -> snap scan a bit more to see if he shows -> repeat until local clear or I'm done bearing it up
he shows up -> set scan to 1 AU and spam like a crazed monkey ( i'm probably either moving at max speed even further from the warp in or in a direction with no possible celestial he may warp in from )
decision again: fight or flight? or he just coming by for a closer look?
he's gone -> snap scan a bit more to see if he shows -> repeat until I get bored and set scan range larger again or I'm done bearing it up.
he shows up -> aligning away to a bm in space or getting into position for a fight

I leave it to Ralph to pretty it up, and there are obviously much more decision trees you would follow but the DSCAN plays a role in just about every good one.

Ralph King-Griffin

New Eden Tech Support

Likes received: 21,564

#9 - 2015-01-23 23:55:52 UTC | Edited by: Ralph King-Griffin

That's already plenty pretty,

Assuming you're not actively looking for a fight or aren't fit for PVP
defensive d scanning is exactly as L'ouris described + watching for combat probes like a hawk .

see one or two on scan, recall you r drones while aligning out,
you see 8 on short scan (2-4 au ) you start hitting that warp button for all your worth.

Probes gone?
Your safe right ?

wrong,

something is inbound regardless of what your dscan is telling you, and you had better be in warp by now because you're ship is ****ed if you're still there when they land.

When you're not in highsec always have your dscan window open and train yourself to click it compulsively every couple of seconds when someone else is in local.
awarebears are considerably harder to catch, hesnse the abovementioned dscanning tactic , witch it should be noted would be extremely effective if done with a force recon, I.e. you won't see it till it lands on grid with you.

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

=]|[=


Pod Panik Low-Sec Scrubs Likes received: 38	#10 - 2015-01-24 03:06:42 UTC I played around with the D-Scan and I found that there are a LOT of wreck left behind. For a new player like me, that would be GOLD. How do I get to them? Can I find the entrance of a dead space with the D-Scan?

Pod Panik

Low-Sec Scrubs

Likes received: 38

#11 - 2015-01-24 03:27:40 UTC

Ralph King-Griffin wrote:

Quick one...how do I know where my screen is facing compared to star system map? Kinda important when my angle is smaller then 360...

BTW, the suggestions at the link are very very good! Thanks!

Thomas Builder

Center for Advanced Studies

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 524

#12 - 2015-01-24 05:19:43 UTC

- How can you get more precise information avout a specific item? For example, class of ship, distance, etc
D-Scan gives you both the name of the ship and the hull. To get from the hull name (e.g. Hurricane) to the class (T1 battlecruisers), you have to learn them by heart. The ship name is chosen by the pilot and can be anything - it might be the default (Thomas Builder's Hurricane), something random, something specific to the fleet he's in, something to mislead you.

You can get the distance by playing with the d-scan distance: if a ship shows up at 100M km but not at 90M km, it's somewhere in between that. Or it might be moving.

- Can you warp to that item? Or how can you get to the identified item (other ship, wreckage, etc)?
As others have said: to warp to it you need probes. Unless there's another way to warp there. E.g. if it's a Retriever in a mining belt, you can use d-scan to find out which mining belt and then warp to that mining belt.

- Can you imporve the D-Scan effect in game? Does different ships have different D-Scan?
No. There's a skill that supposedly makes it faster, but it's already fast enough without it.

- Is there a way to hide yourself from other D-Scans?
Beside the already mentioned cloak and recon ships, there's a deployable (the Mobile Scan Inhibitor (MSI)) that will hide everything around it. The MSI itself however will be visible, so others will know that there's something, just not how many and what kind of ships. It's also quite expensive for daily use. It's more intended for fleet warfare.

Pod Panik wrote:

I played around with the D-Scan and I found that there are a LOT of wreck left behind. For a new player like me, that would be GOLD.

Unfortunately, there's no way to get to wrecks if that's all there is. If there's also a drone or a player, you can scan down the drone/player with probes and warp to that.

Pod Panik wrote:

Quick one...how do I know where my screen is facing compared to star system map? Kinda important when my angle is smaller then 360...

That's the nice thing. When you're in the star map, it no longer matters which direction your screen is facing, but which direction your map is facing. And I find the map easier to orient than the screen.

- But more i mportantly, how do YOU use the D-Scan...
One thing that hasn't yet been covered is the use in FW (or anything else which uses acceleration gates).
As enemies cannot warp directly to you, I set it to max range and if I see anyone on it, I then narrow the range to just cover the acceleration gate. Not all are out to hunt, so I can stay there until they show up at the gate and still have time to flee.
Also, in the rare case that they are solo, the hull type usually gives some idea whether they are brawlers or kiters, which gives valuable information on whether I can win and where in the complex I should wait for them.

OTOH, if I had to flee to a safe spot, I can then use d-scan to watch when they leave.
And when I'm hunting myself, d-scan can quickly tell me in which complex someone is and what ship they are flying.

Trevor Dalech

Nobody in Local

Of Sound Mind

Likes received: 324

#13 - 2015-01-24 05:38:44 UTC

Another trick to use: by playing around with the distance you can get a very accurate estimate of the distance at which someone is in a very short time (wayyyyy faster than probing him down, and he won't see it coming.)

For example, when you see a juicy target on max range d-scan:

Scan at
8 au, still there
4 au, not there
6 au, there again
5 au, still there
4.5 au, not there
4.8 au, not there

This took 6 seconds, and you now know the target is between 4.8 and 5 au away from you. In your anomalies/signatures window, sort by distance check whether there is a likely site in that range. In your overview, check if there's a likely celestial at that range. If yes, you got him!

If not, you know he is at a safe and need to bring probes. First play around with the angle on your d-scan, until you have a rough idea in which direction the target is, do this well enough and you can identify a 0.5 au region of space where he must roughly be. Launch probes, do one scan, recall probes, warp and open fire. Most people will not see this coming.

Elena Thiesant

The Scope

Gallente Federation

Likes received: 1,795

#14 - 2015-01-24 08:51:49 UTC

Pod Panik wrote:

I played around with the D-Scan and I found that there are a LOT of wreck left behind. For a new player like me, that would be GOLD.

How do I get to them?

You don't.

D-scan never gives you enough information to warp directly to something. To warp to something you either need to have a bookmark or location, for it to be on your overview (like stations or planets) or you need to probe it down.
Wrecks cannot be probed down and very likely those are completed missions where the mission-runner's long gone and the mission is turned in.

If there's a ship or drones still there, you can probe those down and get the location that way, but for just wrecks there's no way to get a warpable location.

If you're really dedicated you can slowboat (sub-warp speeds), but even with an interceptor that can be hours or days

Ralph King-Griffin

New Eden Tech Support

Likes received: 21,564

#15 - 2015-01-24 09:25:17 UTC

Pod Panik wrote:

I played around with the D-Scan and I found that there are a LOT of wreck left behind. For a new player like me, that would be GOLD.

How do I get to them?

Can I find the entrance of a dead space with the D-Scan?

As people have mentioned, you hope the bear left something you can probe down in the mission area.

A good bet though would be to just ask in local if someone will let you salvage their wrecks,
it's no longer really worth it for an established player but it's probably not entirely bad isk for a brand new player like yourself.

Also, if you're willing to put a little time in with combat probes you can make ( relatively ) excellent isk by scanning and scooping abandoned drones , if you get lucky you might find geckos , find two and you're about 100million better off.

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

=]|[=

Kaea Astridsson

Hoplite Brigade

Ushra'Khan

Likes received: 191

#16 - 2015-01-24 09:45:35 UTC

You could start scanning the missions runners that leave theirs wrecks using combat probes while they are still in the sites. Saving the bookmark etc.

Each ship is assigned it's own signature, so say you're following Bob in his Blitz golem (if that's even a thing, I'm terrible at PvE) and scan him on the undock as he is leaving for a missions. You note down the signature ABC-123, then just follow him to his missions objective system, ignore all scan results BUT his, save the bookmark. Then you're likely to have a missions site full of wrecks and possibly even loot.

Bob's signature will stay the same - until the day he chose to repackage the ship and then reassemble.

Being a ninja salvager will probably not net you a ton of isk, but you'll get good combat scanning and might have fun.

Get on Comms, or die typing.

Pod Panik

Low-Sec Scrubs

Likes received: 38

#17 - 2015-01-24 12:52:59 UTC

Thomas Builder wrote:

-
- But more i mportantly, how do YOU use the D-Scan...
One thing that hasn't yet been covered is the use in FW (or anything else which uses acceleration gates).
As enemies cannot warp directly to you, I set it to max range and if I see anyone on it, I then narrow the range to just cover the acceleration gate. Not all are out to hunt, so I can stay there until they show up at the gate and still have time to flee.
Also, in the rare case that they are solo, the hull type usually gives some idea whether they are brawlers or kiters, which gives valuable information on whether I can win and where in the complex I should wait for them.

so you cann scan the acceleration gates but there is no way to get to them. Major tease! Hahaha

Allright. So I guess the option of salvaging behing big boys conflicts is out of the question without the big scanner (can't remember the name) and to use it you need a lot of skills, which I don't have.

It would be a lot of time investment to collect trash. And since I won't do Ninja Looting (just plain bad...) then it really not worth it.

Memphis Baas

Likes received: 3,085

#18 - 2015-01-24 16:30:07 UTC

As far as how you align which way your scanner points for the 5 degree narrow scans, your scanner points in the direction that you're looking (with the game's main view).

So you enable all brackets in your overview, and/or hold down ALT to see the brackets (squares and circles around every item in the solar system), and you put the bracket of interest in the center of your screen by rotating your view.


Thomas Builder Center for Advanced Studies Gallente Federation Likes received: 524	#19 - 2015-01-25 00:15:28 UTC If you are interested in salvaging, you could just ask. Many players won't mind letting you do that. There's even a company dedicated to that, look up Pro Synergy if that interests you.


Memphis Baas Likes received: 3,085	#20 - 2015-01-25 12:55:24 UTC \| Edited by: Memphis Baas The wrecks stay up for 2 hours, even if they report mission success and close the mission. All you need is to bookmark a wreck and you can return to the whole wreck field as needed within the 2 hours. Quite a few mission runners don't care about salvaging the wrecks, because they're blitzing missions in order to maximize LP or standings.

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