Core Probing Tutorial

Fit a probe launcher and load it with some core probes.  Make sure you have the civilian data analyzer fit.

Undock.

Once in space you can get past page 1 of the tutorial Page 2 tells you to launch your probes.

Page 2 tells you to open the probe scanner.

Drag this window off toward the side of your screen as you’re going to need to be able to see your main display to probe.

Page 3 and 4 tell you about the analyze and recover buttons.

You may notice a countdown timer on the probes. Recover your active probes before the timer expires, or the probes are gone forever.

If you forget your probes in space when docking or jumping out of the system, you can come back and then reconnect to lost probes, as long as their timer has not expired. I’m not sure why you would want to destroy the active probes, but there is a button for that too.

Before we analyze, we need to spread the probes around the solar system. To do this, we need the solar system map. Page 5 tells you to open the map.

On the map you can see the locations that the probes will scan from as well as the ranges of each probe.

You can zoom in and out using the mouse wheel. Left click-drag (outside of the center probe’s range bubble) rotates the map. Right click-drag moves the map.

You will initially be looking at the map from like a 45 degree angle.  Click on the map (outside of the range bubbles) and drag down so you are looking on it from directly above. 

You may notice the arrows in the center of the formation. Click-drag the arrows to move the center of the formation.

If you click-drag inside a center probe’s range bubble, it will move the probes in or out from the center, and automatically resize them.

Page 6 of the tutorial tells you about the spread and pinpoint formations. There is an additional button that lets you save your own custom formations. For now, let’s use spread formation and press analyze.

Now press the analyze button in the system scanner window.  The probes will now warp to the location you specified. They will then scan for signatures and return results. 

Scan results will fill with the results, and you will see some rings and bubbles. A ring is a signature that two probes detected. A bubble is a signature that only one probe detected. If you have 3 probes hit on a signature, it will reduce to a dot or two.  

Look in the scan results for a data site. Select it, and the other signatures will be removed from the map. If you do not have a data site, you may have to move the probes and try again. 

Switch to the pinpoint formation. Reposition the formation, and then shrink the ranges of the probes to focus in on the site you are trying to locate.

THREE DIMENSIONS! Space is 3D. click the map and drag so that you are looking at the solar system on edge. Reposition the probes as needed.

Bad

Less Bad

With the probes repositioned, analyze again.

If you lose the signature, then you may have to make the probes larger again. Move again. Your goal is to keep increasing the signal %, shrinking down the probe radius, getting closer and closer to he exact location until it gets to 100%. Then you can warp to it.

With the low level skills you have, it is not very easy. Skill up, and get better at probing, and you’ll be a much better player.

When you have a data site at 100% warp to it. You can now RECOVER ACTIVE probes.

Once in the site, it is hacking just like the done in the business tutorial.

Don’t get frustrated, probing is not easy, but once you get the hang of it (and you get better ships and equipment), it gets easier.