Cadet I/Deprobing
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Mid Game - Deprobing
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You want your miners to live and your offensive runs (Bombing/HTT) to succeed ... right? If they are eyed the enemy will act on this information and kill your miners or camp for you bomber. Uneyed ships are happy ships. Thus, a lot of mid and late game focuses on keeping the enemy's sectors probed and your own deprobed.
Tip: You can kill a probe by ramming it!
Before we start on the deprobing let's define what probing is:
- Minimal probing - incoming threats are spotted well within time to react.
- Adequate probing - As above, and any miners or cons that enter the sector are eyed long enough to determine where they're headed.
- Good probing - As above, and miners, cons, and bombers are eyed for the majority of their journey through the sector.
- Excellent probing - flight paths of sneaky ships such as heavy troop transports and stealth bombers are probed.
- Over-the-top probing - Every single aleph, asteroid, flight path, and random point in space is probed.
And, it should go without saying, probes should be placed so that they can eye the enemy without being eyed themselves - otherwise they'll be destroyed.
Deprobing - the How-To guide
So here you are in your handy little scout and you get eyed! What could possibly be spotting you? Well, let's see how best to find out...
The first thing you'll want to do is turn on the grid, because you'll be doing a lot of triangulation and you'll need to stay oriented. Press Ctrl-g to do that. Now check F3, and note your starting point.
Now you need to start manipulating your signature to narrow down your target. Do you have eye? If yes, lower your missiles. If you still have eye, this is good because it means you are quite close to your target - remember, the lower sig you make yourself, the closer you must be to the probe for it to be eying you.
If you don't have eye start flying around, expanding from your starting position until you get it back. Now lower your shields and repeat. Occasionally it's worth loading to a higher sig, maintaining eye and seeing how far you need to go to lose it again. If you do that mark it mentally as another edge point on F3 - with 3 edge points you can significantly reduce the area you need to search. With 4 good boundary points (i.e. 4 that form a pyramid) you can theoretically locate it exactly. In practice you want to just continually refine your search, constantly lowering your signature and finding where you get seen with it to close in on it until you find it.
Tip: Firing your guns will raise your sig - using this in combination with different mounted equipment will give you even more sig levels to hone in on your target with.
If the source seems intermittent it's probably a ship, likely a cloaked one. If you're in a friendly sector and they have adv Tac then it's a safe bet you're being eyed by a stealth bomber - let your team know you "have eye in <sector name>". If they are adv Sup expect a TP2 scout in low-sig mode. If they have adv Exp, expect a low-sig HTT. If you see any of your probes disappear, immediately give warning and head to that region.
Basic strategy with no triangulation is:
- High Sig Mode - Mount everything, fire your guns and engage your booster. If you can't get eyed at all, there's nothing there. Once you get Eye, you go to Step 2.
- Find The Direction Mode - Drop missiles, continue firing, continue moving forward. If you don't reacquire eye, remount missiles and retrace your route, then make a 90 degree turn when you get eye again. Once you reacquire Eye a second time in lower sig, go to Step 3.
- Refine The Search Mode - Repeat Step 2 until you can continually lower signature and reacquire eye. Now you know it is somewhere in front of you. Every time you lose it and can't reacquire, head back, 90 degree turn, try again. Once you're at the lowest sig configuration possible, go to Step 4.
- Find The Damn Thing Mode - If you're eyed at minimum sig, you're very close. Spiral around, make a U-turn any time you lose eye, then when you get it back, head towards a region you haven't flown through yet.
Tip: Different missiles actually increase your signature by different amounts. If you really want to dedicate yourself to hunting down probes, load up one of each missile type, get yourself eyed in your highest possible signature loadout. Then change missile types to one with a medium signature and get yourself eyed again.
Tip: Sometimes you don't want to kill all the enemy's probes. Why? - Because if the enemy spot a sector with zero probes, they'll head there to reprobe.
- Because if they see a sector which just got deprobed, they'll figure you're about to attack from there.
- Because if your team is running a 'decoy attack' then it needs to be eyed.
- Because leaving a few enemy probes which have been placed in useless spots gives them a false sense of security.
Deprobing to aid miner defense
The most important is making sure that your miners are not "eyed". Your opponent has to know WHERE your miners are before they can come and kill them. The exception to this is sometimes a lucky SF or Int can find them without any recon from a scout or probes in the area - not much you can do to deprobe against that!
Start with checking for probes next to helium rocks where your miners are working. That is where many vet pilots will probe early game and the dedicated probers make a habit of it. Once you have checked them raise your sig to that of an average miner (180-210). (Remember: firing weapons, mounting shields or missiles will help change your signatare). If you get eye then check a bit further afield for probes. If you still fail to find anything it's either a well placed rescue probe or a scout/sf you can't see. In this case tell your Commander immediately ("Eye on miners in Rigel") so he can either move the miners or assign more defense.
If you know where your miners will be mining next don't leave it until the miners are in there to begin deprobing. Go there and deprobe that sector before they have finished mining the previous sector. Remember, if they can't see your miners, they can't kill them.
Tip: Expand the minimap and check for high levels of Helium in friendly sectors, if you are still unsure, ask your commander or the person defending the miners.
Deprobing for Bombers
A bomber will have a sig of around 200-400%, depending on factions and whether the pilot is trying to be stealthy or not. This means that a standard EWS Probe 1 (with a scan range of 500) will eye your top sig bomber at 2000m.
Go ahead of your bomber's flight path to find and destroy probes. Remember that a bbr has a higher sig than your scout and although you don't get eye when you check the path the bbr might! Raise your sig to around the bbr's by mounting shields and missiles and firing your guns. Warn the bbr if you do then attempt to find the probe.
If you are ranging far ahead of the bbr (i.e. he is one sector behind) ask him what his sig is. Adjust yours to match it and fly around the aleph he will enter from - if you don't get eye you can tell him it's clear to come through. If you do then try and find it, of course. Then continue along the route to the next aleph and inform the bomber pilot if you get eye at all.
Deprobing for HTTs
HTTs are generally the easiest to deprobe for. When your commander has researched Sig2 (and most competent comms will) it will lower the signature of the HTT to around 80%. This is good, because with careful choice of your loadout you can normally get your scout to match this sig exactly. You may have seen vets asking an HTT pilot "What's your sig?" They're asking this so they can match it.
For deprobing ahead of the HTT it doesn't matter if you are a little over (say 100%), if you don't get eye at 100 sig the HTT pilot definitely won't at 80. Proceed exactly as if you were deprobing for a bomber. It should be easier as probes have to be a lot closer to 'eye' you. Once you have verified that the HTT will not get eyed, inform the pilot, and allow him to proceed with his mission.
Leave some alive
If there are a few probes that are easily avoided but from F3 kinda look like they've got the sector covered, leave them. Why would you not clear all of the opponent's probes in a sector?
- The most important reason is so they do not come back and reprobe it up!
- Secondly your team may want to have a "decoy" bomber and you can't be a decoy if you can't get eyed!
- A decoy is a ship that gets eyed on purpose, attracts all the enemy team to defend against it, while your main bomber attacks a different target.
If the sector looks probed then the enemy won't reprobe, and you'll have a much more deadly sector because of it. You can send your ships through and they'll be all like "OMGWTF where did that come from that sector was probed 10s ago!". Whereas if you kill every single probe they'll go "Oh, they're deprobing that sector they must be getting an attack ready there."
So the most important thing when deprobing is finding the cursed things. Once found take a look at where it is in the sector and consider, will it spot your miners/cons? Can your bomber/htt pilots avoid it easily? Then make a decision as to destroy it or not.
If in doubt destroy it.
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