Scanning

Scanning

How does the scanner work?

Scanning can be a valuable tool to locate objects, ships and hidden locations within the solarsystem you are located in. All ships within EVE come with an On-Board Scanner that anyone can use for directional scanning. However, as with most good things, if you really want to get serious, additional skills and equipment will provide you with many more options.

The scanner window

To use the scanner, click the scanner icon in the ship control console or press CTRL-F11. The scanner window offers three basic scan types:

• System scanner
• Directional scan
• Moon analysis

Each scan type has its purpose and requires different methods, skills and equipment.

System scanner

To use the system scanner you will need probes and a probe launcher with the exception of the On-Board Scanner, which does not require probes. You can perform a system scan with one probe only, but more probes may be helpful. When you have launched the probe at the desired location you will see the analyse button at the bottom of the scanner window. Pressing this button activates the probe and the scanning itself. When you have started scanning, it’s a good idea to switch to the systemmap. From this view you can see the scanning radius of the probe. There are many different types of probes and their scanning radius and accuracy varies much. As mentioned before, you can use more than one probe to scan at the same time, but they can not be placed directly inside the scanning radius of each other. However, in the space where their scanning bubbles intersect, the scan quality is increased. When objects are found they appear in the systemmap in different colors. The color indicates the accuracy of the scan:

• Red = bad scan
• Yellow = medium scan
• Green = good scan
  

There are five basic groups of things that you can scan for with the system scanner:

• Drone & Probe
  Other probes and drones in space.
  
• Cosmic Anomaly
  All kind of encounters may be found by using your ship scanners and warping to a planet. No probes are required.
  
• Ship
  The rule of thumb is that smaller ships are harder to find, as the signature radius of an object, is a defining factor of how difficult it is to locate it.
  
• Cosmic Signature
  Gas clouds, Hacking sites, Archeological sites and hidden asteroid fields. There are many types of probes and they have different sensor strenghts in order to locate different cosmic sigantures:
  
  Ladar to find Gas Clouds
  Radar to find Hacking Sites
  Magnetometric to find Archeological sites
  Gravimetric to find Hidden asteroid fields.
  
• Structure
  Scanning out the location and defenses of an enemy POS can be very rewarding.
  

You can only scan for one group at a time, but this number can be increased by training the astrometrics skill.

Directional scan

With the directional scanner, you can locate most of the same things as with the system scanner, with the exception of cosmic signatures. However, with directional scanning, you can also locate the following:

• Asteroid belts
• Planets
• Moons
• Stargates
• Force fields

You can adjust the scanning range up to a maximum of 2.147.483.647 km and the angle can be from 5 to 360 degrees.

In the directional scan window, you there is a checkbox that allows you to make the scanner show the same things as your overview is set to show. This allows you to create and save customized scanning types within the overview settings, depending on what you are scanning for.

Moon analysis

For this type of scanning you will need a probe launcer and survey probes. First find yourself a moon (they are found orbiting planets) and warp to it. Align your ship so that it is pointing straight at the moon, then activate your probe launcher and launch your probe directly at the moon. This method, while a little crude, is necessary since the probes don't have automatic guidance. It is best to get as close to the moon as possible, as the probe you launch has to fly to and land on it before its flight time expires. 5000km will probably be sufficient if you are using the 'Quest Survey Probes', as they have a 40 minute flight time.

Once the probe hits the moon it will begin its analysis. This can take a while, but once the timer expires you will receive the results. They appear in the 'Moon Analysis' tab of your scanner window and contain data on any usable resources that the moon might have. If the moon contains nothing of use, a window will pop up to inform you that the probe found nothing of value.
Be sure to stay online and in the system during the scan, as otherwise, the probe cannot send you its results.

Scanning related skills

• Science
  Required for operation of launchers and probes.
• Electronics
  Required for operation of launchers and probes.
• Survey
  Required for moon analysing.
• Astrometrics
  Skill at operating long range scanners. Adds one scan group per level.
• Astrometric Triangulation
  Skill at the advanced operation of long range scanners. 5% scan strength bonus per level of skill.
• Astrometric Pinpointing
  Greater accuracy in hunting down targets found through scanning. Reduces maximum scan deviation by 10% per level.
• Signal Acquisition
  Skill for the advanced operation of long range scanners. 10% faster scanning with scan probes per level.
  

Note: The On-Board Scanner is not affected by skills and is standard on all ships.