Scouting

=Basic Tactics and Techniques=

Also, there is a useful sticky thread on the Eve-O forums regarding Post-Kali probe functionality: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=431586

Identifying Hostiles

 * Counting and identifying hostiles
 * From the Overview
 * Counting and identifying hostiles off your overview is the best intel although it's the most dangerous. It's the best since you can put a player name to a ship type so FCs can have primary targets selected before they ever see the enemy.
 * From the Scanner
 * If you're in a dangerous situation, like uncloaked in the middle of an enemy fleet, you should get away as fast as possible. However, you still can collect good intel either while warping out or while you're about to be blown up.  Bring up your scanner (HotKey Ctrl-F11), set it to 360 degrees and hit Scan.  This will get you ship types, ship names and number of hostiles, which you can then report when you're safely away or warping off in your pod.  However, remember that you probably won't be able to get player names tied to ship types because players can rename their ships to whatever they want.  You can't be sure that the ship name is accurate to the actual ship, even if it's named in the standard "Player Name's Ship" form.
 * Local Chat
 * In a pinch, you can just read off the total player number off local and report an estimate. If you are safe, you should count hostiles off the player list of local chat.  Identifying hostiles was made easier with the standings mini-icons introduced in Kali.  If it's a small group, you can link the player name into a chat window by dragging their name from the local chat player list to a chat box and selecting Show Info.  This allows goons and our allies to better identify the player through their standings, corp history and most importantly their likely ship types, fittings and tactics from experience or through data off the killboard
 * Identifying what alliance the hostiles belong to
 * Corporation and alliance membership can be easily identified in the Local chat player list with the Portrait Pack. Keep in mind that it is managed manually so you'll want to check the standing mini-icons to verify that they are hostile.  You should update your portrait pack every day before starting Eve.

Reporting Hostiles
This is a skill that every pilot should utilize but it is of utmost importance that a covert ops pilot provides clear information on the enemy’s fleet composition and location. If you encounter an enemy fleet, you should report the following to your FC and/or in RedArrow: ''I personally jot down the names of the pilots in ships of interest. This generally means battleships, HACS, Covert Ops pilots, expensive ass ship we want to kill really badly, etc. By providing the names of pilots for the different ships the fleet commander already has the information he or she needs to call a primary and secondary before the fleet actually engages.''
 * System name
 * Number of hostiles
 * Hostiles' alliance
 * Ship types
 * Pilots
 * Location (What gate or station are they at, their distance from it)
 * Situation (Are they camping the gate? Do they have bubbles up? Are they aligned like they're about to warp off?)

Note: "No eyes" is slang for, "I don't have eyes on them, through either the overview or scanner, so I don't know their ship types"

Example reports:
 * "RYC, 15 BoB, no eyes"
 * "3 LV in XV-. DoctorFaggot, BlueNose, ChowDowns, no eyes"
 * "5E-, 10 LV on the 1V- gate, Malediction, 2x Thorax, Stabber, Rupture, Crow, Flycatcher, Drake, Brutix, Dominix"

Techniques for Discovering Ship Types

 * Use your scanner. If you know you are jumping into a hostile gate camp, do a 360-degree scan once you jump into system. Once the scan is done begin your warp and immediately cloak. Once you are safely warping off, check the scan to see what ships are present. Even if you do a max range scan you can still tell what ships are on the gate because ships that are in visual range scan with a distance displayed in the scan. Write this information down. Once you drop out of warp, return to the gate at a safe distance and start matching names with ships. Also always check local and try and match up the number of hostiles in local with the number of ships you have seen. Report all of this information to your fleet commander.


 * Enable viewable ship types in your overview. When you do this you can hold your cursor over the ship or the person’s name in the overview and the ship type will be displayed. This makes matching names with ships go a hell of a lot quicker.

Basic Gate Scan-range Bookmarks
If you intend to be a basic Frigate scout during fleet ops you should have bookmarks in every system that your fleet is likely to go to near each gate, but far enough away so that you do not show up on the overview of enemies. Anywhere between 1,000 - 100,000 km away from the gate is good. To create such a bookmark simply warp to the stargate and while you are in warp open your People & Places, click Add Bookmark. When the dialog box pops up, wait until you are under 100,000 km away and click Okay. Remember: The bookmark does not get created until you click okay. These bookmarks will let you use your scanner from safety and spy on enemy fleets from afar.

Scanning a Place Without Warping to it
If you need to scan a gate camp or planet that's beyond your scanner range, but don't want to actually warp to it (presumably because it's hostile), here's what to do:


 * 1) Start moving your ship in a direction away from your target
 * 2) Initiate warp towards your target (or even better, some other object even further away) -- this will drain part of your capacitor
 * 3) Immediately spam Ctrl-Space to stop your ship
 * 4) Repeat steps 1 to 3 until you're out of cap -- note how much each aborted warp drains your capacitor.
 * 5) Start moving away from your target again
 * 6) Let your cap recharge to close, but not enough to warp to your target, as per step 4
 * 7) Initiate warp to your target -- you should get a message telling you that you don't have enough cap to warp the whole way -- if you don't, spam Ctrl-Space
 * 8) Drop out of warp within scan range of your target

=Advanced Scouting Using a Covert Ops Ship=

The key to being an effective covert ops pilot is to provide warp-ins as quickly as possible and provide clear and accurate information to the fleet commander. If you do these things you will provide an invaluable service to the fleet and everybody will think you are one swell guy.

Advanced Gate Bookmarks
A fleet should have advantages in its home system and one of the greatest advantages that a covert ops pilot can create is a plethora of pre-made bookmarks around commonly fought over locations. In our current home system, a  covert ops pilot should create bookmarks that are 100, 150, and 200 km above, below, straight out, straight behind, to the left and to the right of the gate. In addition to this, the pilot should create a bookmark 1500km above the gate so that he or she can quickly warp in and out to these defensive bookmarks traveling short distances.

By creating this system of bookmarks, you have prepared yourself to be able to react to enemy fleets setting up at different locations around the gate or whatever object is heavily contested in a system and are able to more quickly set up warp-ins as well as sniping spots to help your fleet be a success.

Another use for pre-made gate bookmarks is to enable to covert ops pilot to safely scout out a gate that is in a check point system and avoid being sucked into a hostile gate camp’s warp bubble. For example, gate camps with bubbles are fairly common and a properly placed bubble can suck a ship in that has warped in from 100KM away. To avoid this, create a bookmark 150-200KM away and out of a straight line with the gate you warped from initially. From this position you can then maneuver your ship to create sniping points or simply scout the camp.

A good covert ops pilot will watch what the enemy fleet does and figure out patterns of behavior. If Badguy Fleet A always brings sniping battleships and sets them up 100KM in front of the gate then a good covert ops pilot is going to create a bookmark to counter this tendency of the bad guy fleet so that a warp-in can be quickly created.

Creating Warp-Ins
Creating a warp-in point is one of best ways for a fleet to engage a hostile force that has set itself up around a gate, celestial body, or station. Creating a good warp-in allows tacklers to land almost on top of the primary target ship and dictates the nature of the fight in favor of the friendly force. A covert ops pilot that creates good warp-in points is a valuable asset to any fleet and therefore every prospective pilot should know how to do this. The following provides a barebones instruction on what is required to set up a warp-in:

When the fleet commander instructs you to create a warp-in on a target, figure out what celestial body in the system will be the quickest to set the warp-in point from. Once you have determined this inform the fleet commander so that the fleet can be moved to that location. Keep in mind that it is not always possible for the fleet to be moved and you may be required to set up the warp in from a point other than what you originally wanted. If the fleet commander tells you to set up a warp-in from X then do so.

Your job at this point is to place your covert ops directly opposite the celestial body selected with the target ship in a straight line with your ship and the celestial body. The easiest way to determine if you have a straight-line warp-in set up is to zoom in on your covert ops and eyeball it. If there is some other way to do this I haven’t figured it out to date and am unlikely to. The ideal warp-in distance is 15km but ideal situations are not always possible. Remember that the fleet can warp to you within 100km so do not obsess about getting to 15km if it isn’t practical. The key to setting up a good warp-in is to do it as quickly as possible so the enemy fleet doesn’t have time to get nervous and run away or shift positions.

By way of example:

Say you're hunting a battleship that likes to camp hundreds of km from stations/gates. In this instance it's Hastrabull inline with Planet X at 100 km from the 6-u gate. What you do is:

1) Figure out if he's inline with anything (i.e. is he between the gate and say a planet?) In this case we know where he is.

2) Using this info, warp to Planet X then warp to the gate at a set distance, for example 80 km.

3) Find out where your gang is. If they're at station 3 you need to get _above_ Hastra as he will be almost right above the station.

4) Impulse cloaked to maybe 40 km above Hastra, make sure his ship is right on top of the station icon in space if you look straight down.

5) Tell your gang to warp to you at 40 km.

Voila!

Use this guide and customize it to your situation. It's really all about positioning yourself so your gang can warp to you at a distance (15, 30, 100 km doesn't matter) and land right on top of him (or whichever distance you're looking for).

=Using the scanner=

Every ship has a scanner. It's one of the buttons on your HUD near your cargo button; the shortcut key is Ctrl-F11. 

Here's a basic guide to using your scanner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99kRIbp4FBQ

Overview
The scanner is very crude - it only reports the name and type of any objects it finds, not their distance or direction or even the pilot's name if it picks up a ship. To use the scanner you first set a distance (note that 1 AU = 150 million kilometers) then you set a scan angle. You can scan at 360 degrees if you wish but since the scanner doesn't report direction it's impossible to tell which direction something is if you scan at 360 degrees. If you scan at less than 360 degrees just rotate your camera around (important - you scan in the direction your camera is pointing, not your ship). To compare your camera's angle to the system map, bring up the Mapbrowser (Hotkey F11) and watch the green angle indicator on the bottom right. (This used to be in the scanner interface pre-Kali) Hit the scan button and the results appear on the right. It can take quite awhile to scan if there's a lot of objects in range. Note that the scanner does NOT allow you to pinpoint objects in space so you cannot use it to warp to anything.

You'll probably want to enable "use overview settings" because otherwise the scanner will show you every object in range which usually includes a lot of useless shit like asteroids (unless you're looking for asteroids). When you enable this checkbox the scanner will only display objects that match your overview settings. This also speeds up your scanner since it runs faster the fewer objects it finds.

In this screenshot I've just run a 360 degree scan at 1 AU. The only object in range (that matches my overview settings) is a Caldari Shuttle. It has the name BobZumda's Caldari Shuttle but that doesn't necessarily mean it belongs to BobZumda since anyone can change their ship's name. In this case it probably is Bob's, and since he's not in system and I'm nowhere near anything interesting it's probably sitting at a safespot of some sort. Note that I cannot tell where it is with the scanner, only that it's within 1 AU of my current location. You should also know that this shuttle could very well have the name "BobZumda's Raven" but that it would still be listed as a Caldari Shuttle under the type column so the type column never lies.

Now you can try a more precise scan. When you scan at less than 360 degrees it scans in a cone. So you not only have to line up the green angle indicator on the scanner pane but you also need to line up vertically. The easiest way to do this is to minimize the scanner and rotate your camera until the object you're interested in is in the center of your screen. In the screenshot above you can see the 6-U gate in the upper left corner. I'm going to scan this stargate so I rotate my camera until it's in the middle of my screen as you can see below.

Now I can reduce my scan angle to 30 degrees or less and increase my scan range. You can see that the gate is 12.94 AU from my current location but the scanner has a maximum range of 14.3 AU so it's in range. I will scan at maximum range by simply typing in a whole bunch of 9's and clicking scan.

You can see that the green angle indicator on the left lines up with the target although I already know that I should be lined up because I rotated my camera with the scanner minimized. Coincidentally Bob's shuttle shows up on this scan but I already know it isn't on the gate. The gate is almost 13 AU away but I picked up his shuttle on my 1 AU scan so it just happens to be in the direction of the gate.

The other ships and the corpse on my scanner are probably at the gate but I don't know for sure. In fact, the spot I'm in is pretty terrible for scanning this gate because it's 13 AU away. A much better spot would be a few million kilometers from the gate, around 0.01 or 0.02 AU away. However, note that since the solar system view is 2D it can be quite misleading. The white dot beside the gate (the gate shows up as a green dot) is planet 7. You might think I'll pick up whatever's floating around planet 7 but the planet is actually below me and nowhere near the gate.

You should practice scanning a couple of objects in space just to get the hang of it. You might be asked to use your scanner at some point and it's hard to figure out if you're not used to it. Anyway, at this point you should know how to use the scanner so I'll go over a few reasons why you might want to use it.

A word of warning about this. If you're safespotted with an enemy fleet in system, there's a chance they might try to probe you out (see Scan Probes, below). It's a good idea to fire up your scanner, set it to 360 degrees and maybe 4 or 5 AU and watch for scan probes (I think the 3AU ones are called snoops). If you see any nearby, you should get the fuck out and move to another safespot. Alternatively, you could just keep warping between safespots.

Note that if you aren't scanning for scan probes you won't necessarily even know when you've been found out because from what I've heard scan probes tend to be used by covert ops ships. They'll probe you out, warp to you (and be like 50km off), then approach and get into a good spot so their fleet can warp to them.

Reasons to use the scanner
One use for the scanner is to watch a gate without actually sitting on it. Make a safespot close to the gate (say anywhere from a million km to an AU away), setup your scanner and hit the scan button every couple seconds. Whenever a ship appears on your scanner you can be reasonably sure it's on the gate if you're not scanning in line with any other celestial objects. Unfortunately you won't know who's piloting it but you can take a pretty good guess if it's named "XXX's Ship" (unless they're being sneaky) but at least you'll know what type of ship it is. If there's a lot of shit around the gate that you don't care about, configure your overview settings to only include what you're interested in and check the "use overview settings" box.

A fourth use is to check for gatecamps. If there are any celestial objects near your destination gate, warp to one (not the gate) and scan the target gate. If you see any mobile warp disruptors and a bunch of ships, it's probably camped.

Another use is to get a readout of an enemy fleet. If you're scouting out an enemy fleet you can try to scan them to find out how many ships they have and what types (very important). Similarly, if you're alone and you warp in on an enemy fleet or get trapped and you're about to die then open your scanner and set it to 360 degrees and low range and hit scan. You should only do this if you're calm enough to think rationally since it's more important to get out alive and this could distract you. However, your readout will give us a good idea of what we're up against so we can outfit accordingly. If you don't get a readout then don't worry, you can tell us how many people were in local when you died.

Finally, you can also use your scanner to look for player owned stations. POSes are always stationed at moons so just warp to each planet with moons and scan the immediate area. If you see any control towers then there's a POS nearby and you can try to refine your scan to pinpoint which moon or you can warp to each moon in your pod (POSes won't fire on pods).

=Using Scan Probes=

How do I probed ship?

Here you are, trying to find out where someone hid that battleship you see on your ship scanner. You want that piece of crap. What do you do?

Start probing.

This guide will focus on ship probing so if it’s a guide to exploration or moon surveying you want you will have to look elsewhere. This guide assumes you posess at least basic control over how the Directional Scanner works.

To do scan probing you'll need a few things, namely a probe launcher, probes, a ship to mount it on and the skills to use them all.

Old guides: Scanner and Intro to Scan Probes Pre-Revelations Scouting