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Skills

Required skills

Astrometrics L4: Needed to be able to use all types of scan probes.

Highly recommended skills

Archaeology L3: If you want to do Arch/Sal sites.
Salvaging L3: If you want to do Arch/Sal sites.
Hacking L3: If you want to do Hacking sites.
Astrometric Pinpointing: Increases your accuracy (reduces the distance that your scan is off by).
Astrometric Triangulation: Increases the signal strength (increases the chance of a successful scan).
Signal Acquisition: Decreases time per scan. You must reduce your scan time from maximum at least once, and this is one option.

Recommended skills

Frigate: Decreases time per scan for your race's scanning frigate (if you're using it).
Covert Ops: Decreases time per scan (if you're using the scanning covert ops ship)
Jury Rigging: To be able to equip Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I's to reduce time per scan.

Technique

The basic procedure for finding an exploration is as follows (details to follow):

1. Use a Multispectural Frequency Probe to see if there are any explorations you want in the system.
2. If there are, place the approriate Quest Probes at planets to ensure maximum coverage and scan until you detect the exploration.
3. Go to the spot indicated and place the probe with the smallest possible radius and scan until you detect the exploration.
4. Repeat #3 until you get a detection within a distance of 500 km.
5. Warp to the detection within 500 km to bookmark the spot.

Things you should know before starting:

- You'll want to set aside quite a bit of time to search for explorations, especially when your skill levels are low. I recommend at least two hours.
- Warping will stop any scan your conducting. Be sure to put yourself in a spot you don't mind staying in for 10 minutes while you scan. Asteroid belts that can spawn rats may be be a bad choice.
- If you're concerned about pirates, be aware that people can probe to find your location, even if you're in deadspace. In low sec, you may want to create several deadspace bookmarks and move around to them between scans.
- Don't warp to moons to scan. Moons can have armed POSs which will destroy you on sight.

Detailed Procedure:

1. Determine if explorations exist

Once you get to the system you want to explore, you need determine if there are any explorations there at all. To do this,

a. Launch a Multispectral Frequency Probe.
b. Open your Scanner and choose the first tab.
c. Select "Cosmic Signature" from the first list and your probe from the second list.
d. Click "Analyze.

The probe has a scan radius of 999 AU so it is guaranteed tol encompass the entire solar system.

Once the scan is done, it will list what it has found. If it says "Nothing Found" there's nothing for you in the system. Otherwise, it will list the types of signatures it has found, according the the list below.

Unknown - Combat
Gravimetric - Mining
Magnetometric - Arc/Sal
Radar - Hacking
Ladar - Gas Cloud

Note: The results only show presence/absence, and not number. If it says "Unknown" there is at least one Combat site in the system, but there may be many more.

2. Locate the general area of the exploration

Once you find a signature that you want (let's say, Gravimetric), you're ready to use the probes of that type.

It is important to note that ALL explorations will be located within 4 AU of a planet. Therefore, to find explorations, you need to probe within 4 AU of all planets in the system. Luckily, Quest probes have a radius of 4 AU.

The problem is that you cannot drop a probe within 4 AU of another probe. Since many inner planets are within 4 AU of each other, you will need to choose which one to drop the probe at and hope that the exploration isn't outside of its range. You can use your Solarsystem Map to plan this out. If you can't find the exploration, it may be that you're unlucky or it may be that you chose the wrong inner planet.

a. Load Quest probes of the appropriate type into your launcher.
b. Go to each planet.
c. Drop a Quest probe at each planet. For inner planets, drop probes to ensure the greatest coverage, with the understanding that you might have to try again at a different planet.
d. Select all probes in the scanner interface (click the first, then shift-click the last), select Cosmic Signature, and click Analyze.

When the scan is finished, you will (hopefully, but certainly not always) see some results listed. Much of the time you'll find nothing, or nothing useful -- just scan again.

If you do have results, you'll see a list of what signatures were found, though nothing to indicate what type they are. You already know that they must be of one of the types found by the Multispectral probe, but the rest is guesswork. The important information, though, are in the last two columns.

The Signal Strength column tells you what chance you had of getting a result. If the number is over 1, you were guaranteed of detecting that object, and as such, it's useless -- it's one of the combat sites that the On-board Scanner can detect. You can go clear it if you want, but it's not what you're really here for.

The good stuff will always have a Signal Strength of less than 1. A Signal Strength of 0.25 meant you had a 1 in 4 chance of getting a result. In general, the lower the Signal Strength, the more scans you'll need to find it, and the better the exploration will be.

The Distance column tells you how close your detected coordinates is to the real site. If it's less than 500 km, you have pinpointed it and could warp directly there (though I recommend you read the next two steps first). If it's more, you'll need to narrow it down more.

3-4. Pinpoint the exploration

The Pursuit, Comb, and Sift probes narrow down your results. The radii of the probes are 2 AU for Pursuit probes, 1 AU for Comb probes, and 0.5 AU for Sift probes. This is how you use them.

a. Warp to the result you got from the Quest probe (right-click).
b. Look at the Distance column. That's how far away the exploration is from where you are right now.
c. Load the launcher with the probe with the smallest radius that's bigger than the Distance. For example, if the Distance is 0.74 AU, you'd choose a Comb probe, which has a radius of 1 AU.
d. Deploy the probe.
e. Scan until you get a result that is either under 500 km (at which point, you're done) or under the radius of a better probe (at which point, you warp there and start these steps again).

5. Visit the site and bookmark it

Got a result that has a Distance of under 500 km? The hard part's done, and now you get to go to your exploration. You want to bookmark it right away, because your scan results disappear if you enter a station or jump to another system.

The first thing you will want to do is park your ship somewhere safe, like a planet, that's at least 1 AU from the exploration. Why? Two reasons:

- You will want to eject from your ship and pod to the destination. Really.
- Explorations are deadspaces. When they spawn (when you arrive), they make it so that you cannot warp to a bookmark made within about 0.5 AU of them. If you make a bookmark too close then leave your ship there, you may not be allowed to warp back to it until the exploration despawns.

Why do you want to pod to the destination? Scanning ships are notoriously fragile (they usually are equipped with scanning stuff, not weapons and defenses), and even though your covert ops ship might be cloaked, rats see through cloaks. You want to pod in so that rats will not shoot at you. Believe me, I flew into one with my ship, bookmarked, and immediately warped out with only a fraction of my armor left.

Once you've ejected, right-click on the scan result and warp to it. 0 km is fine, since you're in a pod and won't be shot at. When you arrive, bookmark the spot (open People and Places, go to the Places tab, and click Add Bookmark). Then you can warp back to your ship and you've got your exploration!

By the way, once you've warped to the exploration, you can check your Solarsystem Map to find out the name of the exploration. For combat missions, this will tell you what enemies you can expect to find; for mining, it'll list the types of asteroids you'll find.

Notes and Tips

Added as I think of them. smile

I've scanned for hours and I can't find this site! Sometimes, especially if your skills are low, you'll know there's a, say, gravimetric signal in the system, but you won't find it after many, many scans. Keep trying! Finding it is completely determined by chance (the signal strength is your probability of finding it). Remember:

a. A "real" exploration always has a signal strength of less than 1.

b. The lower the signal strength, the better the exploration tends to be.

c. However, also, the lower the signal strength, the harder it is to find it. A 0.05 signal strength means you have about a 1 in 20 chance of finding it each scan.

d. Astrometric Triangulation increases signal strength. So do some implants, and I think there's a rig for it, too.


Can rats attack while I'm mining out this belt I found? Yes, sir! The rat type and strength is the same as what you'd find in the regular belts in your system, but they appear MUCH more often. It is not unusual to get two sets of rats within 10 minutes. One exception is that you can get attacked by rogue drones.

How do I find good combat sites? This is something that isn't clear and has changed recently, so I'm going to spell it out here.

As I noted above, there are common combat sites, which are pretty easy and don't give good rewards, and can be found with the regular on-board scanner. These sites are classified as Cosmic Anomalies, so if you don't want to find them, don't select that scan group.

Then there are the rare combat sites, which can range from easy to really difficult, and often give good rewards. They can also escalate into long expeditions of multiple sites. These sites are classified as Cosmic Signatures, just like other explorations. If you have only Cosmic Signatures selected and your multifrequency probe scan detects an "Unknown," you've found a rare combat site.

How long will this exploration site last? Exploration sites last three days from the moment it is found (i.e. arrived at for the first time), and despawn at the next downtime. Note that someone else may have located and visited the exploration before you, so the timer may be shorter than you expect.

There are some exceptions to the above rule.

- A mining exploration will despawn sometime soon after all of its asteroids are mined out.
- A archaeology/hacking exploration will despawn sometime soon after its containers have been opened and looted.
- A combat exploration will despawn sometime soon after the combat is over (and any containers have been looted).

As long as you have a bookmark to the space, you can return to there after it has despawned (to salvage wrecks, for example).

When should I rescan a system for new explorations? When an exploration despawns, it is immediately recreated somewhere in the galaxy. Thus, it is possible (though unlikely) that a new exploration will pop up in a system you just scanned, if someone somewhere finished an exploration.

Most people ask this question because they want to know when they should return to an area and scan systems again. That's really up to you, when you feel the best chances of catching new explorations will be.

New updates: Added information on Ladar explorations (gas cloud harvesting) and a section in the Notes and Tips about combat explorations.