I thought I'd try my hand at this new fangled explorimacation stuff so I trained up the skills, fitted my falcon with a doohicky probe jobby and Pass kindly built all the probes I need. Spent two or three days probes away with no results, and was beginning to get a bit discouraged, but tonight lo and behold, after 2 hours of multispec scanning I turned up a Radar signature in our very own JK-Q77. So I spammed the system with Radar Quest probes and hit scan....nothing. Beginning to get frustrated and close to giving up, I hit scan one last time and bam! Got me a signature. After that it was easy to narrow down the deadspace to zero and I warped in all excited and cloaked, of course. There was a funky looking 'thing' and a bunch of your common 'plex guns but I figured it'd be no fun to go it alone - not very 5punky eh?
So we went in, me, Fea, Aki, Jimmy and Pass all fitted for plex running. In the event it wasn't very taxing, despite a couple of surprise spawns, but we were stumped when it came to the hacking. Thankfully Stins was on hand with his uber 1337 haxxorz and cracked all the codez for us, unearthing some tasty looking inventing doohickies....which we decided to sell cos thems worth a bit apparently.
So all in all good fun and a successful run. But the moral of the story with exploration is that perseverance is everything!
I be an explorar!
Moderator: Forum Moderators
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Miro Mishu
- Unicorn
- Posts: 306
- Joined: October 22nd, 2006, 1:07
Is it the inventing Module? The thing that makes invention possible? Yes its valuble however if its the think Hulk linked before it doenst get used up and makes invention possible.
Make a few billion isk or keep for inventing purposes.. That's the question
Either way, grats! And I am looking to get my covert jumped down (even with the war) to start exploring..
-Miro/Lara
Make a few billion isk or keep for inventing purposes.. That's the question
Either way, grats! And I am looking to get my covert jumped down (even with the war) to start exploring..
-Miro/Lara
Not entirely sure narf. The Multispec probes for sure but after that...
There are 4 sizes of 4 types and whilst I can see all four types being used I suspect that there will be variable use for the different sizes. For instance, I have seen somewhere that it's possible to go from the longest range probe of whatever type is being used, to the shortest; intimating that there is little need for the two middle range probes. Perhaps someone who's spent more time exploring can shed more light.
There are 4 sizes of 4 types and whilst I can see all four types being used I suspect that there will be variable use for the different sizes. For instance, I have seen somewhere that it's possible to go from the longest range probe of whatever type is being used, to the shortest; intimating that there is little need for the two middle range probes. Perhaps someone who's spent more time exploring can shed more light.
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Dolly Parton
- 5pork
- Posts: 961
- Joined: October 22nd, 2006, 15:33
Exploration and probing
Kali also introduces proper exploration, in the form of various hidden encounters. These can be any number of things - there are over 250 being introduced in Kali 1, which get more interesting and much harder as you move from Empire to Lowsec to 0.0. I've been playing around in a COSMOS constellation in 0.0 and I've found gas clouds (for booster manufacturing), straight-up complexes, archaeological sites full of rig parts and T2 rig BPCs, hidden databanks loaded with invention material, rogue drone outposts, hidden roid fields full of ark and bistot... There's plenty of riches to be found, but you need to use scan probes to do it
Basic mechanics
Exploration probes use exactly the same mechanics as ship scanning probes - same skills, same equations etc. You need to use a Scan Probe Launcher rather than a Recon Probe Launcher, simply because (as Hoshi says) you can't fit an exploration probe in a Recon Launcher because the probes are too big. Other than that, the basics all work the same way.
Exploration sites themselves seem to spawn within 1 and 4 AU of planets in system. There may be multiple sites in one system, or there may be none at all.
Finding an exploration site
Tools
Exploration sites cannot be found using the system scanner - you have to probe them down using the exploration probes. These come in four flavours and four ranges:
[Type] Quest Probe - 4 au range, 250 points primary sensor strength, 50 points other sensor strength, 2.088 au max scan deviation, 4000 sec flight time.
[Type] Pursuit Probe - 2 au range, 500 points primary sensor strength, 100 points other sensor strength, 6,250,000 km max scan deviation, 2000 sec flight time.
[Type] Comb Probe - 1 au range, 1000 points primary sensor strength, 200 points other sensor strength, 125,000 km max scan deviation, 1000 sec flight time.
[Type] Sift Probe - 0.5au range, 2000 points primary sensor strength, 400 points other sensor strength, 2,500km max scan deviation, 500 sec flight time.
The four types available are Gravimetric, Magnetometric, RADAR and LADAR. A Gravimetric Quest Probe will have 250 points of gravimetric sensor strength and 50 points each of Magnetometric, RADAR and LADAR.
There is also one final, very important probe:
Multispectral Frequency Probe - 999 au range, 1,000,000 points sensor strength (all types), 600 sec flight time
This probe has no deviation, as it doesn't return location-based results. Instead, it will simply tell you if there are any cosmic signatures within its range, and if so what sensor type they are.
Technique
Firstly, you need to confirm there's anything worth looking for. Drop a Multispec probe anywhere in the system and do a scan. If it returns no results, the system's empty, so move on. If it returns one or more results, decide which sensor type you're going to look for, destroy the Multispec probe (right-click in the scanner interface and "destroy", otherwise you can't deploy more probes) and start probing. "Unknown" results work equally well with all probe types.
It is believed that the different sensor types correspond to different types of site, but there isn't enough data to confirm which are which yet.
In order to run down the site, you need to get it in range of a probe. The easiest way to do this is to drop Quest probes of the correct sensor type so they cover every planet in the system. This is easy with outer planets, but with the inner ones you need to think about exactly where you're going to drop for maximum coverage. This may require some bookmarks, and sometimes you just have to compromise and hope you don't get unlucky and have the site in a blindspot. The system map is highly recommended at this stage.
Once your probes are down, select them all (ctrl-click) and start analyzing. Each site seems to have a set value for the "sig radius/sensor strength" ratio, generally between 0.1 and 0.2. If you do some calculations for ships you'll see that this is a pretty low number, equivalent to an interceptor with 200 or so sensor strength. With quests you'll be looking for a signal strength between 0.1 and 0.4 on the right probe type. This means it can take ten or fifteen tries to get a result, but the probes last for an hour and a bit so you can afford to sit around and keep trying until you get something.
Once you get your initial contact life gets a lot easier. It'll show up on the system map, so figure out where it is and try to see how close you can get. The rest is fairly obvious - drop the shortest-range probe you can that'll still scan it, and keep analysing until you get a good result, warp to that, analyse again if necessary... you get the picture. You'll often be able to go from a Quest straight to a Sift, and when you can't a comb will usually work - pursuit probes are generally not that useful.
You really need a result with under 100km or so deviation before you can be confident you've found anything. Many sites won't spawn unless you warp into the grid they're in, and as you can't use the directional scanner to find them, if you land in a different grid 400km away you need to reprobe.
Once you have your 0m result, be very careful with it. Some sites drop you at an empty deadspace gate, some drop you at a gate with passive hostiles near it, and some drop you straight into the line of fire. If you go in with a covops, go cloaked, bookmark quickly and run away again - I've lost I think two covops on SiSi to enemy fire in this way. Also, if you do decide to park your ship and go in with a pod, make sure not to leave your ship too close - once the deadspace pocket spawns, the usual deadspace rules apply and if your ship is too close you won't be able to warp to it until the site expires
Once you've got the bookmark you're basically done with the exploration aspect. Gas clouds aside, the stuff I've found in 0.0 is not suitable for covops ships. Some of the plexes are supposed to be 10/10 equivalent difficulty.
One of the more common questions that crops up with regards to exploring, and something that leads to a lot of the initial frustration, is why a signal doesn't turn up after 10, 20, 30 or even more Quest Probe scans. Assuming you've got your probe coverage correct (and DNightmare is the master of probe positioning - see his IGB site ) then the next lesson to learn is Exploration Probability 101.
Signal Strength is a calculated value based on your probe's Sensor Strength and Scan Range, your Astrometric Triangulation skill level, the distance from the probe to the site, and finally the site's visibility (Hoshi calls this Target Signal Size, which for ships is Target Signature Radius / Target Sensor Strength - we'll come back to this in a minute) (Hoshi's post can be found here).
The take home rule is that the Signal Strength is the probability that the Deadspace will show up on any one scan. For example, the odds of a calculated Signal Strength of 0.1 turning up on any one scan is 1 in 10. Of course, we're dealing with probability, so you might get it on your first scan or not until your 500th, but the fact remains that a 0.1 Signal Strength should appear on 1 in 10 scans. So, what Signal Strengths should you be expecting out there?
To know this, we go back to Hoshi's Target Signal Size. Every one of the exploration sites has one of 5 different Signal Sizes - 0.2, 0.1, 0.05, 0.025, and 0.0125. If we relate this back to the formula for ships then we can say that all exploration sites have a Signature Radius of 1 and a Sensor Strength of (5 * 2^Level). So, a Level 0 site has a Signal Size of (1/(5*2^0)) = 0.2 (easy to find) while a Level 4 site has a Signal Size of (1/(5*2^4)) = 0.0125 (very hard to find). In fact, as the Signal Size is a multiplier in the Signal Strength formula, we can see that each Level we go up halves the Signal Strength (and therefore the probability of it turning up on any one scan), so a Level 2 is twice as hard to find as a Level 1 site, a Level 3 twice as hard as a Level 2, and so on.
As an example of the types of sites in each Level, we'll look at the High Sec sites (these can all be found in 0.45 security space and above).
Gravimetric
Level 0 (0.2) - EXPLORATION SMALL (OMBER)
Level 1 (0.1) - EXPLORATION - MEDIUM - OMBER
Level 1 (0.1) - EXPLORATION - SMALL - KERNITE, OMBER
Level 2 (0.05) - EXPLORATION - LARGE - OMBER
Level 3 (0.025) - EXPLORATION - LARGE - KERNITE, OMBER
Magnetometric
Level 1 (0.1) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 1 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 2 (0.05) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 2 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 3 (0.025) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 3 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 4 (0.0125) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 4 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Radar
Level 1 (0.1) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 1 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 2 (0.05) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 2 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 3 (0.025) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 3 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 4 (0.0125) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 4 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Unknown
Level 0 (0.2) - [FACTION] HIDEOUT
Level 1 (0.1) - [FACTION] LOOKOUT, HAUNTED YARD
Level 3 (0.025) - [FACTION] VIGIL, CHEMICAL YARD
I got a link to a pdf on exploration at home I'll post that later
DP
Kali also introduces proper exploration, in the form of various hidden encounters. These can be any number of things - there are over 250 being introduced in Kali 1, which get more interesting and much harder as you move from Empire to Lowsec to 0.0. I've been playing around in a COSMOS constellation in 0.0 and I've found gas clouds (for booster manufacturing), straight-up complexes, archaeological sites full of rig parts and T2 rig BPCs, hidden databanks loaded with invention material, rogue drone outposts, hidden roid fields full of ark and bistot... There's plenty of riches to be found, but you need to use scan probes to do it
Basic mechanics
Exploration probes use exactly the same mechanics as ship scanning probes - same skills, same equations etc. You need to use a Scan Probe Launcher rather than a Recon Probe Launcher, simply because (as Hoshi says) you can't fit an exploration probe in a Recon Launcher because the probes are too big. Other than that, the basics all work the same way.
Exploration sites themselves seem to spawn within 1 and 4 AU of planets in system. There may be multiple sites in one system, or there may be none at all.
Finding an exploration site
Tools
Exploration sites cannot be found using the system scanner - you have to probe them down using the exploration probes. These come in four flavours and four ranges:
[Type] Quest Probe - 4 au range, 250 points primary sensor strength, 50 points other sensor strength, 2.088 au max scan deviation, 4000 sec flight time.
[Type] Pursuit Probe - 2 au range, 500 points primary sensor strength, 100 points other sensor strength, 6,250,000 km max scan deviation, 2000 sec flight time.
[Type] Comb Probe - 1 au range, 1000 points primary sensor strength, 200 points other sensor strength, 125,000 km max scan deviation, 1000 sec flight time.
[Type] Sift Probe - 0.5au range, 2000 points primary sensor strength, 400 points other sensor strength, 2,500km max scan deviation, 500 sec flight time.
The four types available are Gravimetric, Magnetometric, RADAR and LADAR. A Gravimetric Quest Probe will have 250 points of gravimetric sensor strength and 50 points each of Magnetometric, RADAR and LADAR.
There is also one final, very important probe:
Multispectral Frequency Probe - 999 au range, 1,000,000 points sensor strength (all types), 600 sec flight time
This probe has no deviation, as it doesn't return location-based results. Instead, it will simply tell you if there are any cosmic signatures within its range, and if so what sensor type they are.
Technique
Firstly, you need to confirm there's anything worth looking for. Drop a Multispec probe anywhere in the system and do a scan. If it returns no results, the system's empty, so move on. If it returns one or more results, decide which sensor type you're going to look for, destroy the Multispec probe (right-click in the scanner interface and "destroy", otherwise you can't deploy more probes) and start probing. "Unknown" results work equally well with all probe types.
It is believed that the different sensor types correspond to different types of site, but there isn't enough data to confirm which are which yet.
In order to run down the site, you need to get it in range of a probe. The easiest way to do this is to drop Quest probes of the correct sensor type so they cover every planet in the system. This is easy with outer planets, but with the inner ones you need to think about exactly where you're going to drop for maximum coverage. This may require some bookmarks, and sometimes you just have to compromise and hope you don't get unlucky and have the site in a blindspot. The system map is highly recommended at this stage.
Once your probes are down, select them all (ctrl-click) and start analyzing. Each site seems to have a set value for the "sig radius/sensor strength" ratio, generally between 0.1 and 0.2. If you do some calculations for ships you'll see that this is a pretty low number, equivalent to an interceptor with 200 or so sensor strength. With quests you'll be looking for a signal strength between 0.1 and 0.4 on the right probe type. This means it can take ten or fifteen tries to get a result, but the probes last for an hour and a bit so you can afford to sit around and keep trying until you get something.
Once you get your initial contact life gets a lot easier. It'll show up on the system map, so figure out where it is and try to see how close you can get. The rest is fairly obvious - drop the shortest-range probe you can that'll still scan it, and keep analysing until you get a good result, warp to that, analyse again if necessary... you get the picture. You'll often be able to go from a Quest straight to a Sift, and when you can't a comb will usually work - pursuit probes are generally not that useful.
You really need a result with under 100km or so deviation before you can be confident you've found anything. Many sites won't spawn unless you warp into the grid they're in, and as you can't use the directional scanner to find them, if you land in a different grid 400km away you need to reprobe.
Once you have your 0m result, be very careful with it. Some sites drop you at an empty deadspace gate, some drop you at a gate with passive hostiles near it, and some drop you straight into the line of fire. If you go in with a covops, go cloaked, bookmark quickly and run away again - I've lost I think two covops on SiSi to enemy fire in this way. Also, if you do decide to park your ship and go in with a pod, make sure not to leave your ship too close - once the deadspace pocket spawns, the usual deadspace rules apply and if your ship is too close you won't be able to warp to it until the site expires
Once you've got the bookmark you're basically done with the exploration aspect. Gas clouds aside, the stuff I've found in 0.0 is not suitable for covops ships. Some of the plexes are supposed to be 10/10 equivalent difficulty.
One of the more common questions that crops up with regards to exploring, and something that leads to a lot of the initial frustration, is why a signal doesn't turn up after 10, 20, 30 or even more Quest Probe scans. Assuming you've got your probe coverage correct (and DNightmare is the master of probe positioning - see his IGB site ) then the next lesson to learn is Exploration Probability 101.
Signal Strength is a calculated value based on your probe's Sensor Strength and Scan Range, your Astrometric Triangulation skill level, the distance from the probe to the site, and finally the site's visibility (Hoshi calls this Target Signal Size, which for ships is Target Signature Radius / Target Sensor Strength - we'll come back to this in a minute) (Hoshi's post can be found here).
The take home rule is that the Signal Strength is the probability that the Deadspace will show up on any one scan. For example, the odds of a calculated Signal Strength of 0.1 turning up on any one scan is 1 in 10. Of course, we're dealing with probability, so you might get it on your first scan or not until your 500th, but the fact remains that a 0.1 Signal Strength should appear on 1 in 10 scans. So, what Signal Strengths should you be expecting out there?
To know this, we go back to Hoshi's Target Signal Size. Every one of the exploration sites has one of 5 different Signal Sizes - 0.2, 0.1, 0.05, 0.025, and 0.0125. If we relate this back to the formula for ships then we can say that all exploration sites have a Signature Radius of 1 and a Sensor Strength of (5 * 2^Level). So, a Level 0 site has a Signal Size of (1/(5*2^0)) = 0.2 (easy to find) while a Level 4 site has a Signal Size of (1/(5*2^4)) = 0.0125 (very hard to find). In fact, as the Signal Size is a multiplier in the Signal Strength formula, we can see that each Level we go up halves the Signal Strength (and therefore the probability of it turning up on any one scan), so a Level 2 is twice as hard to find as a Level 1 site, a Level 3 twice as hard as a Level 2, and so on.
As an example of the types of sites in each Level, we'll look at the High Sec sites (these can all be found in 0.45 security space and above).
Gravimetric
Level 0 (0.2) - EXPLORATION SMALL (OMBER)
Level 1 (0.1) - EXPLORATION - MEDIUM - OMBER
Level 1 (0.1) - EXPLORATION - SMALL - KERNITE, OMBER
Level 2 (0.05) - EXPLORATION - LARGE - OMBER
Level 3 (0.025) - EXPLORATION - LARGE - KERNITE, OMBER
Magnetometric
Level 1 (0.1) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 1 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 2 (0.05) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 2 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 3 (0.025) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 3 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 4 (0.0125) - PROFESSION - ARCSAL - BASE 4 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Radar
Level 1 (0.1) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 1 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 2 (0.05) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 2 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 3 (0.025) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 3 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Level 4 (0.0125) - PROFESSION - HACKING - BASE 4 - HI SEC - [FACTION]
Unknown
Level 0 (0.2) - [FACTION] HIDEOUT
Level 1 (0.1) - [FACTION] LOOKOUT, HAUNTED YARD
Level 3 (0.025) - [FACTION] VIGIL, CHEMICAL YARD
I got a link to a pdf on exploration at home I'll post that later
DP
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Miro Mishu
- Unicorn
- Posts: 306
- Joined: October 22nd, 2006, 1:07
So I took a hand at Exploration tonight...
My second system I hit a gravmetric sig (Y-YGMW)
So I went to our POS to make some Grav probes. I went back and it took almost an hour to find a lead with Gravs (I had like 2mins left on my durations).
**Also** if you leave then come back you'll have to multispec again to get the signature to start methinks. I dunno.. either way I started probing it down and found an acceleration gate.
I'm sure we will have time to do it today (Saturday). The first gate was nothing but flavor (Debris that couldnt be salvaged, "infested" stuff etc) ...and then I used the 2nd gate.
HIVE SWARM!!!!!
My covops got dumped into the middle of 7 or 8 BS's and a ton of frigs. They don't do a ton of damage and it looked to be thermal according to my logs, but they put my covops into structure before I could warp out. There was a "Warp phenomenon" that kept me from warping instantly out...
Anyhow let's hit this today!! The deadspace was labled 'Radiance' on my system map!
-Miro
******Update: A couple hrs before downtime Bomber and I decided to take a whack at the spawn... 500+ damage per hit from the BS landed bomber into structure ..while I got a popup to set destination to another system. we both warped and then i realized we were on a timer. Bomber had to log and I went to the system to check it out. It put me into the middle of a group of rats for the 2nd time and I was scrambled and I stupidly lost my covops. Meh. 15+ frigs and a handful of BS's and some cool looking scenery. So I think we lost it since we didnt finish it while we were on the clock
I wish i knew there would be a clock on this one... meh
Nite.
My second system I hit a gravmetric sig (Y-YGMW)
So I went to our POS to make some Grav probes. I went back and it took almost an hour to find a lead with Gravs (I had like 2mins left on my durations).
**Also** if you leave then come back you'll have to multispec again to get the signature to start methinks. I dunno.. either way I started probing it down and found an acceleration gate.
I'm sure we will have time to do it today (Saturday). The first gate was nothing but flavor (Debris that couldnt be salvaged, "infested" stuff etc) ...and then I used the 2nd gate.
HIVE SWARM!!!!!
My covops got dumped into the middle of 7 or 8 BS's and a ton of frigs. They don't do a ton of damage and it looked to be thermal according to my logs, but they put my covops into structure before I could warp out. There was a "Warp phenomenon" that kept me from warping instantly out...
Anyhow let's hit this today!! The deadspace was labled 'Radiance' on my system map!
-Miro
******Update: A couple hrs before downtime Bomber and I decided to take a whack at the spawn... 500+ damage per hit from the BS landed bomber into structure ..while I got a popup to set destination to another system. we both warped and then i realized we were on a timer. Bomber had to log and I went to the system to check it out. It put me into the middle of a group of rats for the 2nd time and I was scrambled and I stupidly lost my covops. Meh. 15+ frigs and a handful of BS's and some cool looking scenery. So I think we lost it since we didnt finish it while we were on the clock
I wish i knew there would be a clock on this one... meh
Nite.