Scanning for Signatures

Today I learned a bit about scanner probes and how to suck less at probing in a wormhole.

When I picked up my Cheetah the other day, I fitted it out with some nice bling – a Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher and a set of Sisters Combat Scanner Probes. At the time I thought this was the best set up I could get for probing down signatures in the wormhole as well as spotting ships that ventured into our space.

Little did I know, that Combat Scanner Probes are horrible for scanning cosmic signatures. While Combat Scanner Probes are one of 2 types of probes able to scan down ships, the other being Deep Space Scanner Probes, they are not optimal for regular scans. They have a base scan strength of 22 while Sisters Core Scanner Probes have a base strength of 44. When coupled with the 10% bonus to scan strength provided by the Sisters launcher, I was getting 24.2 scan strength before accounting for any skill while I could have been getting 48.4 scan strength. I was getting half of the scan strength and was considering myself a failure at exploration scanning – since it took me 45 minutes just to nail down a Ladar site.

Needless to say, when the static wormhole dropped me in Metropolis, I made a beeline to Hek to pick up some Sisters Core Scanner Probes. I fully expect my scanning ability to be at least twice a good going forward.