10 replies to this topic

[Jaepee Dee]

Please let us know what you thought. We take your feedback seriously.

[Chaluka]

Great fun as always. Learned a few new tricks and gave me some good in the field experience. I'm rather surprised at how docile and easy to track down some people are in Syndicate. Twice I was able to directionally scan, and narrow down Plexers close enough to drop probes at 4AU and work solutions on them, warp to them, sit on them for 10-20 minutes. Unfortunatly i was on the fringes and fleet didnt make it over in time. In the 0.0 I reside in, if we see a neut or red in system , let alone probes on 360 we safe up. Crazy ratters in syndicate. The only addiotional materials I would have liked to see covered in more detail would be a) Direcional Scanner. The enemy is generally not dumb and unaware. simply being in system had already put them on alert. dropping probes at 32AU and working your way down to a warp solution on a target, let alone narrowing down which hits are not POS's ships generally doesnt work. Your probes are spotted, the guys moving all about. Myself I find that 75pct of the work is hopping about a few celestials to 360 the entire region and get a feel for whats there, what seems to be by control tower/force fields and thus POS's, whats valid, in which direction and how far my target is. Only then do I move probes within 4 AU of the target and can usually start at 8/4AU if not 0.5 if the targets on a celestial. You've then only dropped probes in his notice for 30 seconds. Anyways didnt see much coverage on the Direcional Scanner as a tool in Covops. any tips to sorting out the details you get when entering a foreign system. 10 in local, 25 on 360 from various locations, quickly need to find out which 15 are POS'ed. Now have to figure out which, if any are uncloaked live targets, either due to celestial location, fleet intel on the ship type etc. Then as above, narrow down where the real targets are on the map so you can reduce probe exposure and get them fast. So what I'm getting at is I'd like to have seen some detail on how to best cope with sorting out what your looking at as you setup. Once again great fun.

[Krute]

Learned some new stuff as usual. Wondered what happened as I wasn't able to get back in after the DC. I was trying to report the camp in PC9, where I am working my way back from today, but no one seemed to hear my reports. I plan to go as alumin/incomplete at the first chance I get. Thanks

[Krute]

Oh, I had one question about off grid and on grid. As I understand it on grid you can see other ships, off grid you are to far out to see other ships. At what distance do you go off grid?

[Ged Hawkins]

Oh, I had one question about off grid and on grid. As I understand it on grid you can see other ships, off grid you are to far out to see other ships. At what distance do you go off grid?

It's rather complex.

The SHORT answer is: both the size and shape of a grid are affected by what else is on-grid.

The LONG answer: Goons posted a very detailed "Grid-Fu" manual a little while ago, documenting their findings:http://www.eveonline...hreadID=1081948

[Silas]

Oh, I had one question about off grid and on grid. As I understand it on grid you can see other ships, off grid you are to far out to see other ships. At what distance do you go off grid?

The grid is as you say, the surrounding area you can see, meaning that ships show up with a bracket in space and on the overview. The grid does, however, not have a set size. It usually starts up somewhere around 400km, but anything on this grid can "stretch" it to a larger size. This stuff is rater (incredibly) complex and I won't go into too much detail here.

Long story short, there is no magic number, it's all somewhat random. There are rules to the madness, though. Ships, wrecks and other objects in space "stretch" the grid to a larger size. Think of it like this: Each object in space has it's own grid. When objects are on grid with each other, these grids merge to form one large grid. This is the reason why you sometimes end up 600k off a gate and can still see everyone at zero on the gate. When there's nothing on grid, these expanded grids will eventually reset to a normal ~400k grid.

I've personally seen grids as large as 1200k on a gate and have heard stories of even larger ones. So as I mentioned initially, there's no set distance for a grid, it varies greatly.

EDIT: Ged beat me to it looks like. The Goon article is the only source I've seen on the subject, but looks solid enough, and is certainly an interesting read.

[Jaepee Dee]

Oh, I had one question about off grid and on grid. As I understand it on grid you can see other ships, off grid you are to far out to see other ships. At what distance do you go off grid?

Everything the other guys have said about the changing size of grids is true. Nevertheless, it's pretty rare to see a 1000km grid, so if you were thinking about making off-grid bookmarks at gates, anything over 1000km will do. A lot of people also start at nearby celestials and make a bookmark much further away, e.g. 50,000 km.

[DaDutchDude]

Learned some new stuff as usual. Wondered what happened as I wasn't able to get back in after the DC. I was trying to report the camp in PC9, where I am working my way back from today, but no one seemed to hear my reports. I plan to go as alumin/incomplete at the first chance I get.

Thanks

I'm not sure at which part of the roam this happened, so I'm not sure my comments will be relevant.

As an Intel master, I had a lot of information to work with. At the same time, the main roaming group was busy enough without the covop scouting, so I made a conscious choice to not interrupt the FC while this was going on. Exceptions might have been:
1) there was something immediately endangering the fleet
2) a very juicy set of targets were found relatively nearby the fleet position
3) the current target of the fleet was not interesting compared to what scouting had found

Condition 3 happened twice, and one time I worked my comments in while I was too hesitant the second time. Condition 1 happened once, but before I could report, the skirmishers already reported the targets. Condition 2 happened twice I think, but both time I hesitated too long. Your comments might have been filed as either 2 or 3, but I cannot specifically remember an interesting camp in PC9, only some ratters in plexes (which we unfortunately didn't get to in time).

[Myra Rodan]

Just FYI, We had a member who found that grid-fu document on his own, and petitioned CCP about it while we were at war. CCP officially considers it an exploit to intentionally modify the size / shape of the grid to your advantage. That said, it is still very interesting reading. Myra

[Redhouse]

I enjoyed the seminar part and learned a few things. I liked the practical with the bubble edge drop in, and would suggest more practicals would be nice for this class (directional scanning / probing / bubbled gate) Also I forgot to ask this question but I was wondering if there are any rules of thumb when warping suspected targets in roid belts? I have done this at some range in the past and found myself right on a roid occasionally. If you wanted to get a drop on someone and you warp to 100 try and ensure you retain your cloak you may be very far from the target when you end up on grid.

[Stein Voorhees]

Also I forgot to ask this question but I was wondering if there are any rules of thumb when warping suspected targets in roid belts? I have done this at some range in the past and found myself right on a roid occasionally. If you wanted to get a drop on someone and you warp to 100 try and ensure you retain your cloak you may be very far from the target when you end up on grid.

Obviously not an Agony point of view, but from my experience I tend to go in at 10 or 20 from the asteroid beacon. This means I won't get decloaked by the beacon, hopefully won't get decloaked by an asteroid as I warp through them and hopefully won't land on the target or any drones / rats but still be in sensible range of the target. As you can see, when warping to belts there are a lot of "Hopefullys" so it is not a very exact science.

Also, a lot of ratters won't warp to zero in a belt and at this point it all just gets a bit random %-6 . One thing I have done is to make some BMs 180km above each belt beacon in systems which I go to a lot and which tend to have lots of ratters. This way, I can warp in, take a look in comfort and then warp down to the belt if I need to make a tackle or get close.

Bottom line, warping cloaked into belts can be a rather random and hectic afair!!!!