Hey! A new player here. Today I was scanning for a combat anomaly. About an hour or so. It was boring, I had to use destroyer scanning (50+ scan strenth, 0 fun), because dragging along scanner and destr/cruiser with one character is inconvinient. At last I got some combat anomaly, jumped into it, wasted half an hour or so on cleaning the first room, then jumped to the next - and the room was swimming in someone’s wrecks. And I wasted couple of hours of my time and effort literally in vain. And here comes suggestion - do something about this anomalies mechanic where a player has no clue is the anomaly free, has it been cleaned yet and so on. If a player jumps in anomaly - just block the warp gates for other players! It’s simple and makes pve better and more comfortable. At least you know if you should move along to the next free anomaly and not waste time.
The anomalies are open to encourage competition and conflict. That is part of the game. If you want to see if someone is in the anomaly you can use your DScan. Set it to 0.1AU and scan once you get on to the entry gate. If someone shows up on Dscan then you can assume there is someone in there. The sites despawn pretty quickly after they have been completed.
If you are going to do anomalies in and around The Forge then you are going to get a lot of competition for the sites. Moving to a quieter area of space will decrease the competition and you should find more sites.
I know that it seems a bit harsh when you are a new player. You will need to adjust your strategies until you are able to compete against more established players.
Were you by any chance checking with Dscan to see if there were other players within a close proximity?
It’s quite possible you jumped in while other players were already clearing the rooms. If you check out the Eve University page for Combat Sites you can check which one you’ve found. Combat sites - EVE University Wiki
Some of them have locked acceleration gates and some of them don’t.
Also, not to discourage you, but 30 minutes is a long time to clear a room. There is a lot of competition for sites in high traffic regions. You’re far better going off the beaten track. You can also blitz anomalies for escalations, but I’ve never found that particularly productive myself and I get bored pretty quickly doing it.
Edit: Also, in case no one has warned you; If someone warps into a site, loots your stuff and goes suspect… Do not attack them as a new player. Especially if they loot something that is menial. They’re baiting you so they can attack back without Concord attacking them.
If the combat site is completed it will be removed from the listing so if you found it that means there was someone in it but hadn’t completed yet or you were the first but wasted time and someone passed you. By keeping an eye on the scan window you can see if the site is still active or not, then by using the direction scanner you can see if there is another player in there and how many, if at all, wrecks he already created.
This means that with some knowledge, UI setup and overall effort you can know what the status is of that site, no hand holding required and it’s not based on “omega players” or “vets” or whatever, just on you getting better at the game.
you can see wrecks within 0.1au with dscan too
First, move to a lower population area, and do your exploration there. Amarr space is pretty massive so maybe there? Definitely not near Jita.
Second, get a scan ship and combat ship to whatever base you’d like to operate out of, and scan everything in a particular constellation or area, bookmark all combat sites, and run them with the combat ship.
Yes
This is a bad idea because of competition and because many ships can fit a probe launcher without issues so why even bother. Due to competition, which also happens in Amarr space, you’d waste time from finding a site to switching ship to then do the site. Time is the issue here.
Also it’s going to be annoying to roam around when needing to use two ships unless you never really leave your base area (which generally means limited sites).
Combat anomalies haven’t rooms and they are visible on Probe Scanner with those green beacons. You mean combat signatures, which require scanning and they have from 2 to 6 rooms. Those sites are spots of competition and are available for everyone. At the same time there’s an unwritten rule that relatively many players will follow - “Who’s first in the site, that’s the owner”. Some combat anomalies and signatures will trigger an expedition (only available for you), which can have from 2 to 4 escalations in hi-, low- and null-sec. This is the basic terminology.
The unfair moment here is that anyone can scan down your ship, while you are doing the site, and enter into your expedition site freely. Aka a site which looks like it belongs only to you, you did some work to get it, you were lucky and got an expedition, you find that isn’t actually your in the end. If the expedition is in a tranquil system you can do that ok, but mostly that will spawn somewhere near Rancer, Amamake, Tama or Oijanen, or nearby a low-sec pirate HQ, where you’ll be Combat Probe scanned like 24/7. Anyway, there are some options to avoid that, but they are not great at all.
Therefore, as a new player, you should focus on Tier 1 - 3 combat anomalies and farm some expeditions, do short DED 1 - 4 rated and unrated combat signatures. From unrated sites you can get an expedition also. See https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Combat_sites. The best ship to do it is Jackdaw. It’s people’s choice for combat PVE exploration and the best ship to do low-sec expeditions up to DED 5/10.
No such “unwritten rule” exists. Granted quite a few people will act that way and demand that others do as well but that is because they don’t enjoy competition and interaction with others, the building blocks that make EVE.
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