TYPES OF SHIPS COMMONLY USED TO SCOUT

The main types of ships that are used to scout while staying safe in order of accessibility are t1 frigates, fleet interceptors, covert ops frigates, covert ops recons and covert/nullified tech 3 cruisers.

T1 frigates are great because they can be used by everyone, are very cheap, can warp around quickly and they move fairly fast when fitted with an mwd.

Fleet interceptors are the stiletto, ares, malediction and the raptor. These are very fast, have the quickest warp rate in the game at 13.5 au/s, get a bonus to their warp disrupt and scram range and a bonus to reduce their signature radius while they are using their mwd.

Faction frigates and assault frigates are also ok but they aren't as cheap as the t1 frigates and don't have the point range and signature reduction bonuses that make the fleet interceptors so good.

Covert ops frigates have the capability to warp cloaked, warp faster than t1 frigates and they get a bonus to using probes. They are not as good for getting and maintaining tackle as fleet interceptors but their ability to warp cloaked allows them greater ability to run gate camps and sit in space unharrassed.

Covert recons can also warp cloaked and this also improves their ability to run gate camps and sit in space unharrassed. The main advantage of using a covert recon to scout is that they also have specific ewar bonuses that may be valuable to the gang as well and in small gangs especially you try to get as much out of the ships you have so getting a ship that can fill a required ewar role (such as long range webs or lr point) as well as being able to scout is an advantage.

Finally, the tech 3 cruiser is probably the best ship to use when moving through space and not wanting to be harrassed while you gather scouting information. When fitted with a covert subsystem and an interdiction nullifier they are pretty much uncatchable unless you make a mistake. They can be also fit to probe if required and can provide fleet bonuses as well giving them multiple roles. They can be used for tackle as well but its not advised unless you know what you're doing.

Of course having mentioned all these ships specialized at not getting caught, it should be mentioned that you can also scout in any ship at all if you don't mind getting caught. For example you might be running around solo baiting aggression for your gang a jump behind or for your gang sitting on a black ops ship or a titan. In this case you can use anything from a drake to a dominix with the important thing being having enough tank to survive until your gang comes in.

FITTING FOR T1 FRIGATES AND FLEET INTERCEPTORS

As far as fitting these ships for the purpose of scouting and getting initial tackle goes the most important modules to have are a mwd and a long warp disruptor point. After that I'd recommend a medium shield extender with the neccessary mods to make the mse fit such as a mapc or acr. I feel that having some buffer is much more important than modules like a sensor booster, a web or a scram to go along with the long point. An mse gives you a lot more buffer that also regenerates over time. Fitting this module allows you to have time to react without immediately dying and lets you stay in the fight longer. Also since it recharges and you get all your buffer back over time and you can keep leaving and coming back into the fight if you are forced off. Adding armor buffer on the other hand isn't as good because it makes you slower and it doesn't regenerate.

Having said that a scram and a web are good modules to have fitted after you have your core modules of mwd, point and mse. This is why the stiletto is widely considered the best fleet tackle interceptor because its 4 mids allow it to fit mwd, lr point, mse and your choice of either scram or web. A sensor booster is sometimes used by some frigate pilots. Sensor boosters are not very good to use in the mid slots because those slots are very valuable and other modules are better suited for them. If more lock range or locking speed is required signal amplifiers should be fit in the lowslots instead.

As far as low slots go, a damage control, nanofibers and overdrives are good to fit. For rigs, its largely preference but you can rig to increase grid, increase buffer, lock range or agility and speed. High slots should be your last consideration, fit whatever guns will fit or salvagers if you want. Your role as a scout should be gathering information, getting initial tackle and staying alive so you can keep scouting.

TOOLS FOR FINDING TARGETS IN LOWSEC AND 0.0

If you are in the unfortunate position of not having spies in other alliances you might need to resort to using other means to finding targets. There are several tools available for knowing where to go in order to find targets to shoot. The in-game map is the most common tool but there are several out of game resources that can be used such as dotlan and killboards. Another good tool for finding targets is to remain aware of what's happening in eve's political landscape through community sites, this can aid in knowing where certain groups of players are deployed or live. For this video I'll be focusing on the in-game map. You can access the in-game star map my pressing the map button on the eve task bar.

When the game switches to the star map a window called the world map control panel should also appear. If it doesn't pop up its probably minimized or something. Anyway in this window select the 'star map' tab along the top and then select the 'stars' sub tab immediately below it. Here you can choose different ways to display the dots on the map which each represent solar systems. Under the 'statistics' drop down you can select different ways to show activity in the solar systems. The main one I and a lot of others use is to show "average pilots in space in the last 30 minutes". This will increase the diameter of systems with a lot of recent activity in them and they will be easier to pick out, we usually refer to these active systems as blobs on the map. Since pilot activity is dynamic and always changing the information from this setting is not always 100% accurate since things may change by the time you get there but it is still very useful in finding targets and you will often find activity at or near blobs on the map. If you are solo try to find systems with 5 or more people active in them, small gangs of 2-3 people should look for systems with 10 or more and so on.

There are other options in the statistics menu such as number of jumps which can be useful if you are looking for pipes to camp, however beware that a high number of jumps could also just mean a large fleet just came through and that there isn't actually a lot of traffic apart from the one spike. Number of pilots currently docked and active can help you find stations with a lot of pilots in them for the purpose of determining how likely you'll be able to escalate a fight by holding someone hostage nearby or in the system. Escape pods or ships destroyed in the past 1 or 24 hours: usually if you are going to use these options you want to select the 1 hour time period these statistics are similar in the information they give as the pilot activity in space option but they are displayed as different coloured dots insteads of dots of increasing size so it's more difficult to quickly pick out very active systems. Finally pirate and police ships destroyed will identify areas with heavy NPCing but if you are looking to kill ratters dotlan is a better tool than the in game map because it updates more frequently.

Having said this about the in game map you should also note that generally the best systems in 0.0 and lowsec to find a lot of targets in are entry systems that lead to lowsec or hisec from 0.0 or in actively used station systems. This is where the majority of players can be found. If you are by yourself you may find more manageable engagements in the back systems but they are also much more sparesly populated so finding targets there is also more difficult.

[Do an example analysis of the blobs on the map and talk about what they could possibly mean and where you might plan a route to roam and find targets]

THE DIRECTIONAL

The directional scanner button is found on the left beside the ship capacitor. Clicking it opens the directional scanner. The maximum range on the directional scanner is a little under 14.5au. It displays everything your overview displays if you select use selected overview settings. This is often good to have selected otherwise you may be overwhelmed with a lot of irrelevant information because if you deselect it the scanner will show absolutely everything within range. However at the same time if you only have ships on your overview you may want to add some more items to the overview for the purpose of scanning or create a new one. Some important items to have on a scanning overview besides all the ships would be anchored bubbles, dictor bubbles, POSes, wrecks and drones. Certain beacons or celestials might be good to add as well such as gates, stations, planets and cynos. These are not as important to have as the items in the first list because they can be seen in space as brackets but some people find them useful in confirming results quickly.

The scanner in addition to an adjustable range readout also has an angle slide bar that can be used to narrow down scans by angle. At 360 degrees you are scanning in a sphere around your ship up to the range you've set, at 180 degrees you scanning in a semi-sphere in the direction your camera is facing. At the lower angles of 90, 60, 30, 15 and 5 degrees you will be scanning in a cone in the direction your camera is facing. Your ship is always generally in the center of the screen the cone begins from the center of your ship and out into space. You can press alt to bring up a little square that shows the center of your ship so you can more easily line up your scans.

There are a few different techniques and variations of techniques to perform a directional scan. I will explain a common and effective one. A lot of it is about how fast you can do it. Once you know the basics anyone can find anything eventually (unless it keeps moving of course) but the more you practice it then the faster you will be able to find targets. The first step once you jump in is just to do a simple 360 degree scan.

Once you've done this you might find a few ships of interest. The next step is to narrow down the location of those ships. Without taking anything else into account the fastest way to do this is to follow up the 360 degree scan with a 180 degree scan while remembering the target ship or ships you want to find. Either the ship remains on scan in which case you know its on your half of the screen or it isn't meaning it's likely on the other half. Depending on which half its on you move your camera to cover that a portion of that half and perform a 90 degree scan. If it is not on scan do a 90 degree in the other half of the semi-sphere. Once you have it on 90 degrees narrow it down again using the same principles until you can tell exactly where it is. It is basically a process of elimination to narrow down scans. If the target ship does not show up in between scans and you are following the process correctly then it may have left scan range completely in between your first and second scan or unless it cloaked, docked or jumped. This is why it is sometimes good to make redundant scans that have confirmed positives in them so you know the target is still there.

Once you have a direction you can also determine the approximate distance away from you. The range is listed in kilometers with the max range being around 21.5 billion kilometers meaning the same thing as about 14.5 au. You can quickly deteremine distance of 10, 5 and 1.5 au through a couple quick methods. To do an approximate 10au scan replace the 21 at the start with a 14, to do 5au replace the 21 with a 7, to do a very close range scan of 1.5au simply delete the last digit on the max scan range to reduce the order of magnitude.

Sometimes there are multiple celestials in a cluster along with the targets and you need to find out which one the target is at. Celestials in a cluster will always radiate out from the planet, so the best place to warp to narrow down the specific celestial is the plant in the cluster and then perform the directional scan over again.

Now there are a few tips to make the process of narrowing down a target quicker. First you can use a combination of checking range and direction at the same time to eliminate possibilities more quickly. For example you can jump into a system do a full ranged 360 scan and immediately do a close range 1.5au scan because there is a planet close to your in gate with a lot of moons and belts around it. If the targets are still there then that means you can narrow them down as normal and pick out the last few celestial brackets close by quickly. If they are not then you know they are one of the other clusters and you can immediately narrow your scan range to around 30 and pick out the clusters and head immediately there to further narrow them down.

Another thing is knowing which types of celestials are likely to have ships. The majority of the time ships in space are at gates, stations or inside a POS. If they aren't here then they might be killing NPCs in space or safe spotted. There are of course other possibilities but these are the most frequent locations. Knowing this you can always do a quick scan by doing a narrow angle and picking out the gates and stations in the system right away. If this doesn't yield immediate results then you can do a through scan if the ships are of interest. A note about POSes is that they often contain ships called "POS junk" which just means a bunch of low value ships like haulers and frigates for the purpose of cynos and hauling fuel and other stuff back and forth. If you see POSes on scan and lots of targets like these they can usually be ignored in favour of more substantial targets.

A quick way to check for what a ship might be doing if they've been narrowed down to a location that isn't a warpable celestial and appears to be empty space is to check for drones and wrecks by removing the x from the use active overview settings check box. If there are no wrecks or drones or if the wrecks are not anomoly wrecks then you will need combat scanner probes to locate the ships. However if the wrecks belong to an anomoly you can find them by using your on-board scanner. Anomoly wrecks are called Core in space with Serpentis NPCs, Pith in space with Guristas NPCs, Gist in space with Angel NPCs, Centus in space with Sanshas NPCs and Corpus in space with Blood Raider NPCs. So if you see any of these wrecks you should run your on-board scanner. You can do this by going to the System Scanner tab at the top of the scanner window and selecting on board scanner and hitting the scan button. You can only scan using the on-board scanner when you are not in warp (unlike directional scanning) and as of the Crucible expansion the on-board scanner will pick up all the anomolies in the system. As a result its usually good to run an on-board scanner as soon as you jump into system if you suspect people might be running anomolies. Once you have a result you need to use your directional scanner in solar system map mode to find which anomoly the targets are in. To enter the solar system map click the Map button on the side bar and if you are not immediately in the solar system map select the solar system map button in the world map control panel window. Switch to your scanner and perform a directional scan on the green beacons that show up as you would normally scan celestials.

REPORTING INTEL TO YOUR FC
Generally the best FCs will often scout for themselves on an alt account. The reason for this is because gathering your own intel and seeing what the situation is like for yourself allows for quicker and more accurate decision making. If you are going to scout and provide intel to an Fc you need to be as concise as possible while giving as much relvant information as you can.

The most important information for an FC to know as soon as you jump into system includes how many people are in local, if the in gate and grid is clear, if immediate scan is clear, and in general what might be going on in the system.

MOVING THROUGH LOWSEC AND 0.0
When moving large ships through 0.0 its best to use a scout. If a scout is not available then you should probably wait until one is. If you are really impatient (like me) and just want to get from point A to point B and can't wait then you are going to have to travel fit.

This is how you can travel fit a battleship for example:
Lows: Required - Nothing; Optional - Inertial Stabilizers, Nanofibres, Damage Control, Warp Core Stabs
Mids: Required - 100MN MicroWarpdrive; Optional - 100MN Afterburner, Shield Resists/Buffer
Highs: Required - Improved Cloaking Device II; Optional - Heavy Energy Neuts
Drone Bay: Required - Nothing; Optional - Vespa EC-600s and Vespa EC-300s

In Gate:

Option 1: The gate is camped (10+) and bubbled/bubbler is there
1. Wait out session change timer
2. Approach the gate and quickly hit mwd, then cloak
3. Coast to the gate while cloaked, if decloaked immediately hit mwd again, if scrammed continue to coast
4. Jump (9/10 times you will have gotten back)

Option 2: There are only a few ships on the gate (<10) , there may or may not be a bubble/bubbler is there
1. Pick a good celestial to align to (one that is where you are facing or one that will take you out of the bubble the quickest)
2. Immediately hit align to, mwd then cloak in that order
3. You will continue to hold cloak until just before your mwd cycle has completed
4. Just before the cycle completes decloak and hit warp
5. You will insta-warp if done correctly

Note 1: The key is that your MWD will not deactivate until it finishes its cycle even while cloaked. This allows the MWD to counter act the reduction of speed from the cloak. A T1 cloak will reduce your speed too much for the MWD to compensate a T2 will not. What you are hoping for is that your MWD+Cloak speed is approximately the same as 75% of your regular speed (align speed). If it is, then you can warp the instant you decloak at the end of the MWD cycle, as you will be at the speed needed to warp. If you decloak too soon or too late, then you need to accelerate before you can warp.

Note 2: If there is a dual bubble dictor and he is decent then he will burn to where you decloaked and put up a second bubble. Sabre's usually aren't, the others sometimes are. If you are unsure then it is safest to re-approach.

Out Gate:

- Warp to a safe spot off the out gate and scan it using directional scan to find out what's there.
- If no safe spot nearby is available warp to the closest celestial at range and scan.
- If no celestial is close enough to scan from then make a safe spot in the system and run your mwd until you have reduced your cap enough so that you don't complete the full warp but can warp far enough to be within scan range. If unsure how much cap is needed for this then do multiple short warps.
- If you are cap stable offline your mwd and online it again to get below peak recharge and try the above again.
- If there are no bubbles but a dictor on the gate then you can check if he has a bubble up by unchecking "use active overview settings" the bubble if it's there will show up as mobile warp disruption sphere or something similar, there is no way to check if a hic has a bubble up using directional however (assume it does).

Note 1: Frigates need very little cap to warp so you pretty much need to use up all the cap until your mwd turns off then spam mwd until it uses up the cap that has recharged at which point you will have 0 cap. You need to do this because the cycle may end when you have only half of the cap needed for the next mwd cycle but this may be enough to complete the warp. From there you can either warp straight away with a few recharged units of cap (an interceptor) or wait longer for a BS so you can do a longer but still an incomplete warp. If you do this enough you will get a feel for how much cap you need.

Note 2: Another way to get rid of unwanted cap is to warp to something you are not aligned to and then ctrl+space to stop your ship before you complete alignment and do it repeatedly until you have the cap level that you want.

A lot of this can be applied to people trying to catch up to the gang as well.