Free account. 1st character. Following the Explorer path if that matters and still very much in the early part of the tutorial at the stage when I’m supposed to go out and launch probes and find a site and pillage it (Cosmic Anomalies 3 of 5).
I had 8 probes loaded into my “Core probe scanner 1” fitting. I was in the Probe scanner screen experimenting with various patterns and ranges and all that and had to log off. I am 100% sure I did not click the Launch probes button at any point. When I logged back on all my probes were missing. I still had the fitting but no probe “ammo” to put into it anymore. The probe ammo was not in the ship inven or item hanger or anywhere else I knew to check. I tried clicking around with the 2 probe-retrieval buttons and just couldn’t get anywhere.
I’m more than willing to delete the character and start over (in fact its got 8 hours left on the timer), but is there something else I could do instead?
I have since learned that the probes “disappearing” was a pebkac l2p issue. I had launched my probes without realizing it and then logged off without retrieving them and the probes were despawned/destroyed/whatever while I was logged off.
I did not know that clicking the various probe formation/pattern actually launched the problems. I thought that you had to do that first, then click Launch, and analyze, etc… I was wrong and now I know.
I keep 16 probes on my ship and more in the station. With 16 the next 8 will autoload into the launcher when you launch. When you jump or enter a station the 8 in space will auto return to cargo. There have been times when, I have lost the 8 probes in space due to accidental disconnects or falling asleep at the keyboard. As time progresses the loss doesn’t hurt, as you are making more than enough ISK to recover.
Drones are another issue where I have warped away and lost them more often than probes.