No I would say it is quite the opposite. DSP's were absolutely designed to help speed up an advanced players scanning. One who was willing to train astrometrics to 5 AND use a ship capable of fitting an expanded launcher

Since no one uses option A anymore and since most system are small enough for combats and cores to cover the system, option B isnt really applicable either. Thus they have lived past their original design intent and its time to say goodbye to them.

If you can mix match your probes for scanning great for you, but you are one of the few people who I know who does. Why? Because you are using a probe with a lower scan strength with a probe with a higher scan strength. Thats like trying to put diesel fuel in a gasoline engine. It wont work very well.

Tbh, I kinda like the ability to get an automatic formation, because it was a royal pita to set the same damn setup every time I entered another system - it just gets old once you're used to one way of probing.

The new probing system isn't without its faults and foibles, but it's not the apocalypse.It is worth noting also that there was a lot of "the sky is falling" posts about exploration being dumbed down the last time it was revamped.......

People complaining specifically about the DSP removal have not understood the new system. DSPs are now in fact useless.

You want to look for new signatures? The new sensor overlay will show them even without any probes launched.

You want to sort sigs? You can do that almost as well with a combat probe, and with probing becoming extremely easy and fast there is really no need anyway. In a system with 40 sigs 20-30 of them will show their group on your first 8 AU scan.

No, you are not losing any SP.

That's exactly what they tries to combat with DSP removal. Don't hold your breath for it coming back in any form.

I'll answer that, and as you might have expected, the answer is no, CSM was not consulted about these changes. We found out in an article on themittani.com that we would be able to save probe formations. We found out at Fanfest about the probe results UI. We found out about the 7 probes/removal of DSPs from this thread.

The sheer number of people in this thread who haven't bothered to read, think, and then post is staggering.

Astrometrics: Added +5% scan strength, -5% max scan deviation and -0.5 sec scan time per level

Reduced the per level modifier for Astrometrics Rangefinding, Astrometrics Acquisition and Astrometrics pinpointing by half.

It should be obvious how those two things work together. It should also be obvious why you would still want to train Astrometrics V even though DSPs are being removed.

Think first, post second. And to think you did it for a post that already said that. Well, I guess that isn't surprising, since you don't seem to be doing ANY reading.

For all of you crying about dsp removal, have you checked out that the starting % after first system sweep are still in the usual bands? what i have confirmed so far, based on 10 probstrengh dsp:

old new

0,20 10%
0,13 7%
0,10 5%
0,05 3%

I bet the rest is accordingly, just was not able to find such a signature in the 15min i spend discovering that.
If CCP changes that every ano/sig after first sweep is in the list (currently not working) it will be even easier then before, no more dsp needed.

Oddly enough, I don't really see the difference between what the system scanner will do and using a single DSP currently does. Same for move box, click button as compared to shift-click move box, click button.

That seems to subjective to be actionable, unless the fundamental meaning is to make it tedious to the point of discouraging participation. I'd prefer that not to be the goal.

To clear your confusion, they want to give ALL players equal footing in KNOWING how many IDs are in any system no matter how small or large the system is which replaces the DSP uses. However, you still need skills to scan faster. Yes, scanning is kind of fast for new players, but skilled players can do it even faster. The actual scan time for analysis is the same 5-10 seconds, the only thing that is making it faster is the better scan deviation and strength.

Everyone is reacting negatively to this new interface because it is COMPLETELY alien to how we think of EVE and sometimes that doesnt sit well with players. However, I think its a good change. Skills in EVE allow players to have an advantage over others, this is the essence of the game, but when that gap is too large...it needs fixed.

Although some players enjoy taking time to actually sit and scan, some of us (including me) would rather spend our time running the sites we scan rather then taking that whole time to scan. I don't want to spend 70% of my time scanning and 30% running sites. With the new change its more like 50-50 now and that allows players to run MORE sites in less time and thus make more money.

No...but I don't want to spend valuable skill time to train lvl 5 in everything in order to scan anything half decently either.

Yeah well the problem with the way it is now is unless you KNOW how to do it...you have to go look up external sources on HOW to do it and that is not how a game should function. You shouldnt need to read a whole web page or watch a 20 minute video to learn how to use such a basic function of the game. If that means making scanning a bit easier so you don't need this rediculous process then so be it.

The purpose of Deep Space Probes is to give you a quick scan of the solar system before you start probing things down. The new system overlay already gives you this information without needing probes so Deep Space Probes are no longer needed.

With predefined configurations time will be a non-issue and assembling difficulty will be a one-time investment, so people will aim to use the most efficient setup. (Which IMO would be two tetrahedrons with different scan ranges and main direction, btw :))

What about reimbursement?

this is not a good thing. the DSP was a necessary opportunity cost. if you wanted to know what's "really" going on in the system, you had to invest into astometrics V and a probe launcher. now that everyone instantly knows all the sigs, the universe shifts from being "the great unknown" to "that useless thing between the sigs".

No offense to the devs, but I've always felt that Jack Miton's method was the best scanning method (8 probes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8n8KamI0Ag

Allows both wide area scans and pinpoint scans simultaneously. I think I still prefer it as the scanning method of choice.

yk

"Effort" should not mean "busy work". Clicking and dragging probes around in a hard to use interface is busy work. "Effort" should mean"challenging".... Challenging is when there are obstacles, puzzles, and opponents to overcome in an experience that changes each time you do it... i.e. not Aprocrapha style probing, which is always the same boring thing.

*The most interesting thing about it was figuring it out... after your thousandth scan... it's a mind numbing tedium. By having the Preset formations, much of the whole "figuring out" process is gone... so you're just left with the tedium.

Could someone explain to me please all the angriness developed by the fact that the DSP's are beeing removed ? With the new System-Scanner-Thingy, it makes the PvE side of the DSP's obsolete and for their PvP function the Combat-Probes take their place. One solution in solving this redundancy issue could be a Buff for the Combat-Probes in radius (e.g. from MAX_RANGE = 64 to MAX_RANGE = 128).

So, my feedback:

1) that alt-shift for scaling the formation sucks big time. Make scaling just a single modifier key, not double. 999999% of the times we're either moving or scaling the probes, not moving the individually.

THIS ten times over.

even disregarding the use case of deliberately placing drones in a system for strategic reasons, forgetting your probes is not a bug in the UI; it's you being bad at the game you are playing and it SHOULD be punished.

Why is that? I experimented with how quickly I can modify the spread formation into my old flat 8-probe layout and I find that it's almost as quick as before. With a little practice you should be able to remake your favorite formation quickly.

It's a little annoying that the center probes are now higher/lower than the other probes, but it's not too hard to correct that.