Scanner

The scanner window's various functions combine to deliver a very powerful information-gathering tool to those who understand how it works. Most new pilots will not find a need to even open the window for the first few weeks or months of their careers, and some never use it even after several years. Many, though, will reach a point where they think "I need to find [whatever], and I know it's somewhere in here...", and at that point the scanner window becomes their new best friend.

The window is divided into three tabs, each with a separate function. We'll cover each in turn here, going into to some detail as scanner use is usually an advanced skill.

System Scanner

This is the interface used to interact with most probes (the exception being moon probes, which we will get to later).

The majority of this window is taken up by two boxes - the Groups box, and the Probes box. The Groups box lists the five item groups you can scan for:

• Drone and Probe - all kinds of drones and probes
• Scrap - a placeholder group for as-yet unreleased content
• Ship - capsuleer vessels (includes unpiloted ships but not NPCs)
• Cosmic Signature - exploration-related content
• Structure - starbase structures of all kinds

You can select one group to scan for for each level of Astrometrics you possess, using control-click. Astrometrics V lets you select all five at once.

The Probes box lists all the probes you have in flight in the system. If you haven't launched any probes, the On-Board Scanner will be listed here instead. If you are controlling a System Scanning Array, that will be listed here, overwriting the On-Board Scanner. The On-Board Scanner only works with Cosmic Signature selected, and the System Scanning Array only works with Ship.

To use the System Scanner, select one or more entries in the Probes box - these can be launched probes, the System Scanning Array or the On-Board Scanner. With probes selected, a button will appear at the bottom of the screen marked "Analyze".

When you press this button, the window will change to the Results view, with a timer ticking down in the top-left corner. When this timer reaches zero, results will be generated and displayed. Results are calculated at the point the timer reaches zero, so if you're trying to locate a moving target, any result you get from it will be generated from its location at the exact instant the results are displayed. Scans are aborted if you change system, leave your ship for any reason, or one or more probes expire.

Results are displayed in five columns:

• Type. This is the type of object that this particular result relates to. In most cases it will be the market name of the item - say "Abaddon" or "Warrior II". For exploration content, the Type is always "Deadspace Signature".
• Signal Strength. This is a measure of how strong the result is, and also the probability of finding it in any given scan.
• Distance. This is the distance from the probe to the result. (For the On-Board and System Scanners, the probe is at your current location.)
• Accuracy. This is the exact distance from the result to the actual object.

Results are warpable objects - you can right-click any result in the Results window and warp to it as you would any other object. They are also shown as colored circles on the System Map view - Green for a strong result, Yellow for a medium and Red for a weak one. You can warp to any result from the System Map too.

Results are saved until you either leave the system, leave your ship (for whatever reason), or complete a new scan, at which point they are discarded. You can start a new scan by clicking the New Scan button, which takes you back to the main System Scanner window. You can get back to results which have not been discarded by clicking the View Result button.

Directional Scan

The directional scanner has a deceptively simple interface, but can be immensely powerful in the hands of a skilled user. It can be used to instantly check for a wide range of objects within the selected volume, but will not return an actual range for most types and lacks the Warp to result functionality of the System Scanner.

There are three obvious controls here:

• Use overview settings. This checkbox forces the scanner to filter out all object types not currently shown on your overview. It does not remove objects excluded from the overview by filter (for example gang members, pilots with negative standing, etc.). Some objects cannot be selected on the overview at all (such as probes), so to scan for these you must untick this box. Additionally, some things (such as NPCs) cannot be scanned at all.
• Range. This is the maximum range of the scanner - no objects beyond this range will be shown. Range is in km, and the maximum range is 2147483647km. As a rule of thumb, 1AU = 150,000,000km, and the max range is around 14.3AU
• Angle. This slider lets you pick from the following values: 360, 180, 90, 60, 45, 30, 15 and 5 degrees. The angle is calculated using the direction in which your camera is currently facing, and limits in both horizontal and vertical axes. 360 will scan in a spherical bubble all around you, 180 will scan a hemisphere in front of you, 90 will scan a right-angled cone directly in front of you and so on. No results outside the defined angle will be shown in the results.

As a result of the third control, there is also a fourth, "hidden" control - camera direction. Moving your camera view around will allow you to scan different volumes of space when angles below 360 are selected.

The combination of these controls allows you to find certain types of objects extremely quickly. An example case is the best illustration of this.

Moon Analysis

This last tab is the most straightforward element of the Scanner Window, although not without its quirks. Its function is to survey the composition of moons before setting up expensive mining operations.

To use it, you need a Scan Probe Launcher and some Survey Probes - Discovery, Gaze and Quest Survey Probes, to be precise. Load a probe into your launcher, and fly to a moon. Be warned: moons often have starbases nearby, which have a tendency to vaporise unwanted guests!

If you arrive unharmed, steer your ship directly towards the moon and launch your probe. It will shoot off in a straight line and, if you've lined up right, eventually hit the moon in question. When it does, it'll either tell you there's nothing of interest, or list the results in the Moon Analysis tab. Each moon scanned in a system gets its own named results drop-down, listing Moon Product (what type of mineral[s] are present) and an Abundance for each, which currently has no in-game effect but may become relevant in future.

You can have several probes in-flight at the same time, and results are stored until you leave the system or your ship.