DigitalCommunist
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Posted - 2006.07.05 03:56:00 -
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Edited by: DigitalCommunist on 05/07/2006 03:57:41
Thats only been true for a short while, Coasterbrain. For the longest time, there did exist such things as an unprobable safespot.
When EXODUS came out, all they did was bring the old F11 bookmarks and all their grid contents (ships, cans) within the system bounds (i.e. within 192au of the star). Some of the people (myself included) that logged off 500au away before the servers went down found themselves logging on 500au away when they came back up and simply bookmarked this spot.
Unfortunately, it didn't matter because the original concept of probing was and still is faulty. They only scanned in a triangular pattern whose bounds were a direct line between the probes. That means if you dropped them at a planet, and the safespot was created from one of its moons which was off to the side a little bit you wouldn't get a result.
This was fixed when they added one extra AU to the scan range border.
The next problem came when people found that Observators were broken completely, so even though safespots were moved within system bounds, there was no way to place the 192au probe on the opposite end. The fix didn't make it on TQ for a very long time. When it did, people found another problem which was even worse.
The triangulation system was limited to a 1au buffer in the Z-axis (vertical) which meant that any safespot created more than 1au above the system plane was completely unfindable. This is also where all agent deadspace missions were located. In combination with instadock, and most missions being located in the same system, this meant that even if you declared war on somebody it was literally impossible to kill them.
This was reported, and the devs said probes would be changed to scan in a spherical pattern to compensate for any vertical deviation. This never happened. To the best of my knowledge, any safespot more than 1au off the plane or out of system bounds requires an observator probe to find.. even if its within spitting distance on the scanner.
But thats not where the problems end..
Observator probes were found to give results in a spherical pattern, which meant you needed many many attempts and sheer statistical probability to brute force your way into obtaining three scan points all on the same 1au "pizza slice" plane as the object. The scan results usually being very far away, and your max scan range being 15au, with little to no planetary reference.. this made it nearly impossible to even tell if you had a good spot. Thus requiring you to warp between the various spots like a maniac, trying to see if you can pick something up on scan.
The solution was to have all observator probe scan results on the same 1au plane as the object being scanned, unfortunately I have no freaking clue who started this, or even if its true. The fact that it takes ages to scan down system safespots means it probably isn't.
On the whole, its more effective to use a spy. The only probes worth using are 3aus, because you can get a result seconds after deploying them all in the same spot (thank you, 1au buffer!). Even then you need pure luck and hope your target a) doesn't see them b) doesn't warp away c) doesn't cloak and d) isn't aligned.
All these problems, and months of uselessness combined with the sheer difficulty of even fitting probe launchers to standard setups means that most people gave up before they even began. I will be glad when the all-new system is in place, even if it takes no skill to operate. At least it will work.
And as far as I know, using any safespot is not an exploit. Its just metagaming at its best/worst.
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