💾 Archived View for thrig.me › game › eve › exploration captured on 2024-09-29 at 01:13:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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With a single account, one might fly an exploration frigate (e.g. the Imicus) or a more expensive version of such (the Helios). There are also various specialized and expensive ships suited for exploration, which may bring benefits and drawbacks. Drawbacks include an expensive ship being a more likely gank target, or more loss if you lose the ship to Player versus Environment activities, such as an explosion at a so-called ghost site. EVE punishes those who do not read and understand the mission or whether the site has "explosive" somewhere in the name. Benefits of a fancy ship might be more hit points, expanded cargohold, etc. Much in EVE involves tradeoffs and how much risk you can tolerate.
A solo player can do quite a lot; train up all the scanning and navigating skills; the navigation skills allow you to MWD between cans faster, and better ship agility will make you harder to catch. Omega accounts should train cloaking, as that makes life better in low and null security systems (I have no particular experience in wormhole space, as I like to know who is in local and what they are flying), and allows one to fly covert ops, the Stratios, etc. High security scanning can be a race, as many other pilots engage in this relatively low risk and high profit activity. Be faster, or be not where the other explorers are. Luck is involved, depending on where you are and where and what sites spawn. Try random things, go to random systems, see what works for you.
With multiple players (or by switching between multiple accounts) the amount of sites that can be run increases; combat ships can process combat sites, and some sites have much in the way of salvage or rare asteroids. A variety of ships is be necessary due to site limits on ship size, or dedicated combat ships may be necessary for the more exciting combat sites. Multiple accounts are also necessary when mining out a site, as some sites will despawn the asteroids after the site is completed and the last person warps out. By keeping an account in the site, mining ships and whatnot can be brought in. A Venture (or more) and a Miasmos allows the ability to mine out, say, the Rogue Drone Asteroid Infestation via jetcan mining, following something else first scanning down the site and something else shooting up all the NPC. Travel times will likely mean that this sort of scanning will mostly be done near your base of operations, to limit time wasted getting everyone coordinated, in the right ships, dropping off excess ore, etc.
Without multiple accounts involved a site may be run by someone else in the time it takes for you to switch ships. This may not be relevant if you are in an unoccupied area, and depends on how aggressive other players are; some combat sites can be blitzed with an assault frigate that ignores everything except for the final special rat: shoot that, loot the wreck, and get out, all very annoying to have happen after you slogged through the first few rooms only to have the good loot stolen. This is why processing a site as quickly as possible can be important, especially in high traffic areas, or also in low or null security systems before someone else shows up and takes an interest in the site or your ship.
Mining out a site may take a lot of time, and may be less profitable than simply scanning for more sites. Mining however will involve less clicks while the mining is happening (indeed I am writing this article while mining is going on) so whether to mine out a site will depend on what you want to do, what other ships are available, etc.
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Rogue_Drone_Asteroid_Infestation
Now I need to figure out how to best sell or reprocess about 66 million ISK worth of Omber…
These are externally documented as ghost sites, but have "covert" somewhere in their in-game title. Do not use a frigate, unless you are okay with having the frigate blown up by a failed hack or the NPC ships that eventually show up. A trick is that the site timer apparently starts when warp is initiated, so the best option is to warp to the site from the closest object (usually a planet) to the site.
The skills of the player will influence the ship fit, and a mobile depot may be necessary to switch items around, especially if mid slots are starved—the Magnate only has three slots; an Imicus or Heron are likely better starting ships for exploration. My scanning account has very good scanning skills, so tends to fit rigs that give hacking bonuses rather than increased scan strength. A player with lower skills may need gravity capacitor upgrades for better scan strength.
I tend to fit for speed and agility as this makes the ship harder to catch and quicker to move between cans, though ships that take on ghost sites or those that may need to survive a smartbomb attack may want to add some tank. I avoid smartbomb attacks by warping to gate bookmarks, or lacking those by first warping to an off-angle planet or something, or by simply avoiding the low security systems prone to have smartbomb spam. It's not really a shortcut if you have to worry about who is in local and to maybe make extra warps, but others will do the risk versus benefit calculation differently here.