So I saw this ship in system and wanted to hunt him. I went to my space spot and proceeded to scan down the signatures to pin point his location on d scan. While i was scanning the sites, this very same guy warps into my safe spot! now i’m very careful and spam d-scan all the time so I KNOW i there weren’t any combat probes and I KNOW there was only 2 of us in system (from Local).
So how did this guy find my position? What are the possible ways to do that? Is there a cheat soehwere out there? I asked him but he said it was a coincidence which i dont buy.
I don’t think anybody spams d-scan so much that they can’t maybe miss somebody who launches probes 14+ au away, does a single scan, and retrieves their probes immediately.
He did the same trick I use to quickly scan my prey down.
1st I use D-scanner set to 14.3 AMU. I then narrow the angle field down one click, and reacquire the target. I continue to do this until I have the cone down to 15 degrees.
Once I have that, I shorten the cone distance by 5 AMU, until the target disappears. Then I increase the distance by 1 amu until the target reappears.
I now know the location of my prey within 1 amu.
Next I launch my probes. Center them at the edge of my cone cone and open up the bubble range just until it encompasses the circumference of the scanner cone. Usually no larger than 2 amu.
Hit probe scan and within 6 seconds I got my prey. I then immediately retract my combat probes. So, if my prey isn’t spamming d-scanner every 3 seconds, they won’t see the probes at all.
One possibility is that the player got your location with a nice single scan trick like @Ax_l_Thorne described.
Another possibility that their combat probes did not show up on your d-scan is that you use a wrong filter list for your d-scan, one that does not show probes.
Easiest way to check if your d-scan does show (combat) probes is to launch some probes yourself, press d-scan and see if they are visible.
Also worth having combat probes on every filter not just PvP or whatever. You have a mining tab? Have combat probes on them. Have a PvE tab? Have combat probes enabled on that as well. You have a specialized tab for exploration? Definitely have combat probes on it too. This way if you have your d-scan filter on active overview tab you will see the combat probes no matter what. Better safe than sorry.
Also if you are an MTU hunter… or just don’t want to miss scooping up your own MTU after done with a site then the same applies.
If someone is trying to combat probe you, it may not be a good idea to activate your MWD. It significantly increases your signature radius when active, which means it’s much easier to probe you down.
There is a small possibility that the safe spot in question was not a good one… if it was just a bookmark dropped between two celestials, like stargates, it is not unheard of that the player could be found without probes.
While true, this would require the other player to have a ship with the same warp speed drop about 10 bookmarks while warping from the same starting object to the same destination object and check d-scan range to see on which bookmark you might be. It’s indeed possible, but takes time and unless they had a covops ship, you would see them on d-scan while they do it.
Better indeed is to make a safe that’s not inline between two objects by warping from such an inline bookmark to another object to create a better safe bookmark, preferably one that is out of d-scan range of any other object in system, if the system size allows that.
