D-Scan. What are the tactics?

pvp
(Tyler Haaq'Entee) #1

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in J space hitting up relic and data sites for quite some time now. I don’t often spend more than a few hours in a particular system, but I was caught off guard and I’m wondering what I did wrong–asking my killer(s) didn’t give me any answers, unfortunately.

Running a site has its inherent risks, of course. Even spamming d-scan looking for probes or ships during a hack can be an insufficient amount of information. I’m curious what the possibilities of this mistake can be? All of a sudden I’m lightly coated with drones and ewar. This situation can only mean that this fleet had pre-scanned the entire system prior to my arrival, correct? That way all they need is a cloaky to find me on d-scan and fleet warp. I never saw probes (core or combat), a ship, or anything until they were on grid.

A similar situation that I observe quite often is when ships pop onto d-scan and disappear. How are they able to locate the wormhole without scanning? Did they scan the system for wormholes earlier that day and now they’re traveling in a different ship?

Basically my question(s) is: what are the possible tactics players use to defeat a careful WHer?

Thanks in advance!

(Gaius Mileghere) #2

You’re spending HOURS in a wormhole.

That’s where you’re going wrong.

If you don’t live there, be in and out. Don’t hang around. Ninja the site then GTFO.

(Tyler Haaq'Entee) #3

Yeah I suppose you’re right. I pop in, cloak up, and just sorta use the site as bait until I decide I might as well pick it up and get out.

Maybe I should just pull the trigger. I’m always worried someone is just waiting in a T3 for me to decloak in a site. Is this not as common as my brain is making me think?

Edit: Would it be better to hit one site per WH?

(Gaius Mileghere) #4

Dunno, not much experience in wh space, but the bit I have done I know to assume that someone has already scanned the site I’m on, has a pin at range for a cloaky warp-in, and has more than enough ability to wreck whatever ship I happen to be in. Lesson learned when I was gas mining one day and a tengu decloaked 3,000m off my bow, locked me up and wouldn’t release my ship until I had jettisoned my ore hold of gas(!).

There again I was unlucky to pick a hole with structures in it. BUT whether or not you do spot structures by eye or on D, I would say yes, pick one target site, warp in cloaked, and when you feel comfortable running the site, ninja that thing, scoop whatever drops and burn for your exit ASAP.

[EDIT] Also check ZKill for recent ship destruction in that system, if it’s dead recently or ever then it’s because it’s not considered viable by anyone and you can probably go nuts. If there’s a large knot of kills then you’re probably in an eviction site and should probably not stick around.

(Tyler Haaq'Entee) #5

I just started checking zkill for the system, it’s been a decent help.

I suppose I should just assume that the sites have been scanned and bookmarked by something meaner than my Stratios before I get in there.

Thanks for the tips!

(Herzog Wolfhammer) #6

And your request was probably bandied about as “tears!”…

Meanwhile…
There is a way to scan ships out properly. I learned this from a wormhole pirate. It goes something like this:
When using Dscan, yourself, as a hunter, you can narrow your cone and aim your scan. When you do this, and the tools for it are better now than they where when players were doing this under the (then) new probe system, you can get a 3 dimensional idea of where the other ship is.
Think of it as a binary search. Once you have the direction of a narrow cone D-Scan search down, you have a heading on the other ship. Then you half your range. Is the ship still on D scan? Half again. Still there?
Eventually you get a good idea of how far away the target is.
With that, you can now put out your combat probes. You can start going wide, wide enough that the target might not catch those probes on their own D-scan. Notably there are skills that can be trained up to change the metrics of scanning: faster, more accurate, more range. Plus the use of improved equipment and modules. Also, what’s the signal of the target ship? Big? Small? Those are factors. In the past, though I think it was nerfed, it was possible to make an un-probable ship with lots of ECCM modules. Again I vaguely recall a change to this.
Ultimately, with the proper D-Scan fu and probing skills and gear, it is possible to probe a ship down without the target knowing. Either you can be good enough to actually get a location on the target without having the probes piled on top of each other, OR you can do it fast enough to catch anybody who is not mashing their own D-Scan every two seconds.
We could take this as an opportunity to point out what a crap mechanic this is that the D-Scan has to be pressed every 2 seconds, but change that somehow and every bot and its brother will use it.

(system) closed #7

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