Originally by: General Coochie

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You cant simply see a ship on scan and put out a probe. You wanna know its a mish runner.

It doesn't matter if you directional scanner shows drones or not. Just make sure that you select "ships" and "drones" when probing so you can get hit on both. Even if the mish runner isn't using drones by the time you start probing he might pull em out when probing finished and thats the result you see. For example if you pick up a hauler that jumped through the system, you will see the result 1 sec ago when the probing finished not the result 200 sec ago. (can be useful to know)

What you wanna do is making sure its a mish runner, when searching for him its a good idea to have, belts, stations, control towers, planets and stargates on your overview and ships ofc. If there are a lot of drones in system you can remove them from overview so you don't get a lot of clutter. You can also remove shuttles if there are many about. Just right click in the directional scanner field and pick remove form overview and hit scan again. When you want it back simply select your saved "probe" overview setting again.

Try narrowing down where he is so you know he is not at a station belt or POS. Start with 180 (or 90) go down 60, 30, 15. After doign this a lot you'll get the feeling how to pan around to quickly narrow them down. Depending on how close you are its less important to have a narrow hit. If he is 14 aus away (the full reach of your directional scanner) you probably want a 5 degree accuracy to find out where he can be (a 5 degree might not even be enough as you can have a lot of celestials at the cone extending from your ship). If he is as close as 1 au a 30 degree is probably enough.

What you wanna do is excluding that he is at a celestial (or that he is if you wanna belt pirate) or POS. Control tower = pos. If there is a control tower in the direction he is in, hit alt and you see the moons. Scan moons at 5-15 degrees and you might find that control tower, if he isnt at that moon, you excluded that.

Basicly you want him at 15/30 degrees and nothing else in that direction. Then you know he is in middle of space. This means safespot, mission or exploration site (note that MWD works at exploration sites).

As for knowing whether its a mish runner or safed ship, experience and common knowledge of eve. Ship name can give you a hint. Drones out suggest mission runner.

When you found him select warp to 100km preferably unless you are setting up for a gang to warp in. Because if it is a exploration site and warp to 0 you will uncloak on your target. 100km usually puts you outside exploration site and you can bookmark a wreck near the target. For missions with gates you always land at 0 no matter what u warp to.

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