| a. Skills |
| Astrometrics - Adds one scan group per level. Is the primary skill that determines what probes you can use. |
| For example all exploration probes require level 5 and so do Observator probes. |
| For combat ship probing level 3 will do fine unless the target is in a deep safe for which level 5 is need. |
| Astrometric Pinpointing - Reduces maximum scan deviation by 10% per level. |
| Means that you can use a weaker probe and still get a result that lands you in the same grid as the target. |
| Astrometric Triangulation - 5% scan strength bonus per level of skill. |
| Higher scan strength means easier to find the target and more accurate results. |
| Signal Acquisition - 10% faster scanning with scan probes per level. |
| Must have skill, will cut scan time in half at level 5. Sadly it's rank 8. |
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| b. Probe Launchers |
| There are 2 different probe launchers, Scan Probe Launcher I and Recon Probe Launcher I. They have similar fittings (220cpu, 1pg / 220cpu, 2pg) and despite its name the recon probe launcher is not force recon exclusive. It can be used on any ship. |
| Scan Probe Launcher I - 600 sec base cycle time (can be cut down to 108.4 sec). 10m3 capacity. 15 sec rate of fire. Intended to be used for moon surveys and exploration. |
| Recon Probe Launcher I - 120 sec base cycle time (can be cut down to 21.7 sec) 1m3 capacity 2.5 sec rate of fire. Intended to be used for ship probing. |
| The reason the Recon Probe Launcher can not be used for moon survey and exploration is the simple fact that the probes are too large to fit in it. |
| It's not possible to fit multiple probe launchers on a ship, not even offline. You have to choose which one you want in advance. |
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| c. Probes |
| There are 3 different groups of probes. Ship probes, exploration probes and survey probes. |
| Ship probes are the probes that fit into the Recon Probe Launcher. They include: |
| Observator Deep Space Probe I - 1000 au range, 1 point sensor strength, 20.000 km max scan deviation, 4800 sec flight time. |
| Ferret Scanner Probe I - 40 au range, 2.5 points sensor strength, 10.000 km max scan deviation. 2400 sec flight time. |
| Spook Scanner Probe I - 20 au range, 5 points sensor strength, 5.000 km max scan deviation, 1200 sec flight time. |
| Fathom Scanner Probe I - 10 au range, 10 points sensor strength, 2.500 km max scan deviation, 600 sec flight time. |
| Snoop Scanner Probe I - 5 au range, 20 points sensor strength, 200 km max scan deviation, 300 sec flight time. |
| Range - The max range of the probe, this is a 3d sphere and the probe will not be able to find anything outside this range. |
| Sensor Strength - Higher sensor strength means larger chance to find the target and more accurate results. |
| Max Scan Deviation - The maximum distance from the target any scans with this probe will give. |
| Flight Time - The amount of time the probe stays in space. You need to finish any scan before the flight time runs out or it will fail. |
| All the other probes are uninteresting for ship scanning. While the exploration probes have very high sensor strength they also have very low range making them unsuited for ship probing. |
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| d. Ships |
| The ship of choice for probing is the Covert Ops frigates. There are 2 reasons for this, one is the built in bonus of 10% reduction to scan time per level (level 5 cuts the scan time in half) and the other is the ability to warp cloaked. If you can't get a 0 m accuracy result you will need to warp in cloaked and approach manually. |
| Other ships that are useful for probing is the cloaking force recon ships for the warp cloaked ability and possibly the t1 astrometrics frigate as they have a 5% reduction to scan time per level. But in worst case any ship can be used. |
