Ultra Deep Safes

Well another report has been made available by Goonswarm (RIP) that outlines what you need to do to creating ultra deep safes .  You can get a copy of it from here ... Poseidon Manual.


I have played around with this and looked into how effective it is at making deep safes and now have a couple in different systems that are around 660 AU to the nearest celestial body in the system.  I put together the following notes on creating these safe spots:

• When you log back in after the Control Q you can make a bookmark as soon as possible. Waiting till your speed has reduced to less than 10km/s (you are still in warp) will only give you a distance of 100k km. Which is not huge when you are looking at getting at least 7AU with each step.
• A cov ops (I used my cheetah with an aux power core, 400mm steel and 50mm steel plates) will get you 45-55AU roughly with each step.
• To get the most out of each step you should try and ensure your run up prior to quitting is as long as possible that way there is adequate distance to each top warp speed and be able to quite at a good time (just before you decelerate).
• Some battle reports talk of deep safes of up to 600AU and I now have a couple at this range though it will take you a couple of hours to make one.

A basic step by step process is as follows:

• Find two safe locations that are on either side of the system that give you the longest possible warp distance possible. Would suggest you use safes that are not directly on planets or moon warps. Your going to need the map open and on system display to help you here and as long as you are at a safe you should be able to keep this open.
• Declutter the window and make sure you can see you movement across the map.
• Warp to the location on the other side of the system.
• Hover your mouse over your speed and when you have reached your maximum speed (in smaller systems you may not reach max warp speed), prior to decelerating press control Q. Note that if you do this too late you will create a BM that is very close to the one you warped to so do not leave it too late. Also if you do too early you will end up near the point you were warping to anyway.
• The client will have quite so you will need to start it up again an log in as soon as possible. If you take too long you will back at your original location before you get a chance to make the bookmark. So restart EVE, login and BM asap.
• Once you have logged in create a bookmark as soon as possible. If you are looking at the map you will see that you have now bookmarked a location that is way beyond the point you were warping to.
• You will now have to wait as your ships finishes this warp away. Your ship will then warp back to the point at which you quite and will then warp to the point you originally warped to.
• Go back to your original warp from location and warp to your new deep safe and repeat the process as many times as you can cope with before dying of boredom. Remember that combat probes have a radius 128AU and deep space probes have a range of 256AU. It may take you a few steps to start to get a good distance each step (especially if you are in a small system. However once the steps are good you should be able to go from your end point to the new point and create the next step each time.

Scanning Skills Part 1

Introduction

Ok so I need to be able to scan, what skills are there and what should I learn when and why?  This is just a small post to start this whole topic off.

Fundamentally there are only four skills associated with scanning:

• Astrometrics
• Astrometric Aquisistion
• Astrometric Pinpointing
• Astrometric Rangefinding

Before you start you will need science at level 3, however all characters have this as a basic skill at this level so it is easy  to start.

Skill Descriptions

Ok before going through the training stages it worth describing the skills.

Astrometrics (Rank 3, requires Science 3)

The skill at operating long range scanners (probes).  The skill allows you to use one additional probe per level.  Starting with 4 probes at level 1.  This is a vital skill and you should aim to get this to level 4 asap.  This frees up all the other skills for you to access and also gives you more probes.  Ultimately with 8 probes out you can be scanning two locations simultaneously.

Astrometric Aquisition (Rank 5, requires Astrometrics 3)

Skill at the advanced operation of long range scanners.  10% reduction in the time taken for a scan probe cycle.  Starting time is 10 seconds.  So how much does the standard deviation really affect me?  Well if you are scanning at 4AU resolution and an anomaly to reading a distance of 0.681AU then it could actually be 4.681AU away, so when you reduce your probe range for the next scan there is a change you might miss it altogether.  This skill comes third in my list of importance and I would suggest getting this to 4 as soon as range finding has been trained.

Astrometric Pinpointing (Rank 5, requires Astrometrics 4)

Greater accuracy in hunting down targets found through scanning.  Reduces maximum scan deviation by 10% per level.  Starting scan deviation is 100% of the total range that the probe is set to.  This is probably the least important of the four skills as it does not affect your capability to find something and therefore should be one of the last skills you train to max.  It does however provide you with a huge benefit when either chasing down other capsuleers, trying to find that high value radar site before anyone else or just processing the 20+ sites you have found in w/hole space.  SO yes aim to increase it but not before you have focussed on the others.

Astrometric Rangefinding (Rank 8, requires Science 3)

kill at the advanced operation of long range scanners.  10% increase to scan probe strength per level.  Training this up is vital, your going to need all the scan strength you can get so you should target training this up as soon as possible.

Training

You are going to undertake the process of learning the scanning skills in several stages.  Why?  Well first and foremost the skills are ranked reasonably high and to train these all the way through is gonna be boring, and furthermore these skills are not the only ones you are going to need whatever active you are going to be doing so expect to break these up into stages.  This is going to get a lot more focus in Dominion where there will be specific scanning / exploration career paths so will be interesting to see how close I am.

Novice

This is very much a straight out of the box capability.  You have just started playing EVE, get the skill book and jump into a frigate and your away.  The draw backs here are that some of the higher value, harder to find anomalies are going to be out of your reach in finding (locking down to 100% and warpable).  So you are going to want to get up to beginner asap.

Beginner

This is where you will start to find your getting good at scanning, you have worked out your system for managing the probes and have found a pattern for scanning.  This level is good for exploration and will give you a good setup for finding anomalies.  You will probably plateau here for a little while as you will now need some of the other supporting skills (hacking and archeology).

Intermediate

Your now getting into the professional scanning, fleet support type of role here.  Your skills base is now getting to the point where your ship scanning skills are at a speed where you can scan down pilots quickly and effectively and are useful with fleet scouting and recon roles.

Elite

World is your oyster and it is time to train up on something else.  Congrats on getting here.