Saturday, February 8, 2014

The Discover Scanner Doesn't Push New Sigs

Nobody is around but me.  Earlier today, I ganked a Heron downstream from my EOL wormhole.  Now, our static wormhole has timed out and poofed.  I check: three sigs in my home system, as expected.  We have a Sizeable Perimeter Reservoir (a gas site) that I've been eyeing for a while.  Carebears gotta care.  Since we are now zipped up via the hands of Father Time, it's a good time to suck some gas.  In fact I have been planning this since I came back out of the old C4a: I already have my second-account alt logged on and ready in a Venture.

I warp over to see if the gas site has been instantiated yet today.  Yes, there are sleeper frigates.  Great.  I warp back to my POS and refit into a Drake.  Precision heavy missiles will do the job efficiently, off a cheap platform.  I warp to the gas site and engage.  It takes three hits to kill each frigate, and the job is soon done.  As I kill the last frigate, I warp in my alt to the C50 cloud and start sucking gas. When the sleeper dies, I warp back to my POS to get a salvager.

Now I warp out and salvage.  It's a lucky day for me: four nanoribbons from the six frigates.  (Often you get none.)  Now I warp back home and dump off my salvage.  My plan is to log out and log on my "peasant", a same-account alt character with just production skills relevant to wspace life.  (Those being: PI, sucking gas, and mining rocks, and also scanning in case of emergency.)  Von can only use T1 gas miners, whereas my alt can use T2, which means a 50% higher gas sucking rate.  It's worth the minute or two logging in and out.

I log in the alt and warp to the C84 cloud, and start sucking gas.  Then I get my two alts into a fleet so I can fleet-warp off if needed.  And then, I notice the discovery scanner.

There are four sigs on my "peasant's" discovery scanner.  I look over at the other screen.  There are still three sigs on my alt's scanner.  Interesting.  It's probably a wormhole; most new sigs are.  I check dscan, and there are no probes or ships other than mine.  We are in a gas site, which must be probed down.  I am in Ventures, which are tiny and moving and have warp core strength built in.  So, I feel reasonably safe.  I keep gas mining, at least for now.  First priority is to check and see if the new sig is a wormhole.

I fire probes and study the system map.  Yes, there is a new sig in the outer system.  I put my probes there and start scanning.  A few cycles later, and I have it: it is a wormhole, and it is a fat one.  K162 by the signal.

Now I check my second-account alt, and it still does not have the new sig yet.  Since I have noticed a character not seeing a new sig before, I figure this is a great time to perform an experiment.  I am not going anywhere, and I can dscan just fine on my main screen.  I will not do anything on my second account, and just wait for the new sig to be pushed to me.  How long will it be?

Meanwhile, I am sucking gas and hitting dscan like a fool.  Nothing.  Minutes pass.  The C50 cloud is sucked, and I microwarp over to the C84 cloud.  Dscan, dscan, dscan.  More minutes pass.  Finally, the site is exhausted, and I warp both characters back to my POS.

The second account was never updated that I noticed, and I was watching.  It had three sigs the whole time.  When I get back to the POS, I notice three sigs still.  When I compare, I find that both accounts now see the same three sigs.  My guess is that when the gas site despawned, it triggered the discovery scanner to update.  But the new sig, whenever it came, did not.

Looking back on it, I think it likely that the new sig was there when I was killing the sleepers in the Drake.  (Shudder.)  It had not been pushed to me when I was sitting there AFK before, and I probably did not check my discovery scanner when I changed ships.

My current theory on how the discovery scanner works is that new site spawns (which includes K162s in particular) do not trigger its autoupdate.  Old sites despawning do trigger an autoupdate.  This means that hunting through wormholes you instantiate should still work, assuming the potential victims do not know to force-update their discovery scanner.

If you have information confirming or falsifying my theory, please do make a comment.  Further research, as they say, is indicated.

Update: several commenters say I am wrong.  I know it is buggy sometimes, because I explore and see the lack of update in new systems.  So, maybe what I observed is a bug.  Still, even if that is so, it gives one the hope that hunting in wspace through non-K162s can be successful.

16 comments:

  1. Are you saying that the discovery scanner has been ninja-changed in a recent patch? Or are you claiming it has always worked this way?

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  2. No. The hole was opened while the two Ventures where in the site. I know this, because I opened it. Alas my probing for the site was to slow and the site was finished before I got a hit.

    Also: tell my what made you think you could catch that Viator with your Hound? or was it the Manticore? :)

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    1. Ah, you mean Venture. We have actually done that before also, when some newb was afk mining in our old C1.

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  3. Nony 1: I am guessing it has always worked like that. Well, since Odyssey, I mean.

    Nony 2: Ah. You must be one of the Russian dudes in C4c.

    (For other readers: the new wormhole was a K162 from C4, which I dubbed C4c. I explored it, watched the locals at their POS for a bit. Downstream from C4c was C2a, and it opened to highsec. I watched two guys from C4c exit into highsec. I waited around for them to round-trip to Jita or whereever, and tried to ambush one of them in a Viator on C2/C4 coming back in to C4c. It came in the wormhole alone; I was there in a Hound about 5000m off, and started trying to lock, but it cloaked and evaded me.)

    A blockade runner is not usually catchable at a wormhole unless it gets unlucky and starts within 2000m of the wormhole. Or unless you warp-bubble it, but that's not possible in a stealth bomber. In this case, I guess you were more than 2000m. However, I have caught a Viator before in similar circumstances, so I know it can be done. It might have helped if I had had a sebo, but Hounds are lean on midslots.

    Nice job evading me, Nony 2!

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  4. Oh, and thanks for the info on you hunting me. I never saw either your ship or probes, and I was dscanning a lot. So much happens in wspace that we don't know.

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    1. I was not one of the Rus. I'm fort her down. I'm the one that baited you in the Venture. That did not turn out as well as I imagined, but it was great fun. Good gank!

      Also: I found out how to post as non-anon. Go me.

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    2. Ah. So you were just watching me attack the Rus in my Hound, eh? Hey, you guys had a Onyx later on... why didn't you use it to trap the Viator?

      Yeah, the whole scrap with your Venture baiting us was fun. Like idiots we bit, but I guess you expected just a bomber. That would have been an embarrassing loss for me, I expect. Fortunately we brought Jayne in. I might write it up.

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    3. Yes, I thought something bad might happen when your venture turned toward me and scrambled me. Fortunately you died quickly enough I got out before your Proteus could get a lock. I finally got to use my Stratios for something, so it was good I guess...

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    4. The Onyx was on the hisec to c2 hole. In hindsight I should have put it on the c2 to c4 hole, which had made possible catching you two also. But cloaks make it hard. :)

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  5. anon1 posting again: I've definitely had sites pushed to the discovery scanner without an old site dropping off, and I have no reason to believe it wasn't near-instantly. Add to that the fact that there seems to be widespread belief across the blogosphere and forums that the discovery scanner pushed new sigs instantly, and your anecdote looks like either a bug or a recent change.

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    1. I feel like I have observed instant pushing too. I used to believe it fully. However, I am no longer completely sure of it. Might there have been other circumstances that triggered the pushes? There might. Might it have even be me tweaking the scanner by toggling anoms? It might. Might it be that you normally get pushes, but this one time yesterday I did not due to a bug? Might. As I said, more research needed.

      I am hoping that by laying out my theory explicitly I am now more sensitive to the conditions when I see a new sig. You will be too.

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  6. Changed with odyssey. Well known in FW where you have ti tick/untick "show anoms" to see a new plex spawn. Annoying.

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  7. Discovery scan will periodically update on its own. It will also update due to session changes, manually tweaking the settings, or sites despawning. It has always been this way (come on man, you live in a wormhole you should have known this). You will sometimes need to manually tweak the settings (hit anoms on and off, switch filter, etc.) to see new sigs even after jumping gates or wormholes, so it is inconsistent.

    Also, a sebo wouldn't have given you the necessary scan res to catch that viator before he cloaked if he spawned outside cloak range. And lmao at the cocky viator pilot who had already been caught under the same circumstances!

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    1. I should know it, but I don't. It is very difficult to observe without using an alt. Of course I have an alt, which is how I observed it at all. But I don't do that much stuff with two screens both observing the same system.

      In any case, I know what the common theory of the discovery scanner is, as you lay out in para 1. That's what I thought too. However, this observation has shaken my belief.

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  8. I have one more comment which was mailed to me in-game. I quote:

    If you toggle show anom's the discovery scanner will update. If you don't, it will auto update for despawning sites, but not show k162's. I've reliably tested this with 2 accounts open at the same time at least 10 times in a c3.

    MORAL/ TL;DR: Toggle your anom button if you want to see new k162's


    So this fellow seems to be seeing what I thought I saw.

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  9. You are 100% correct. A Ross my three accounts I have noticed this many times. Now I dscan on 1 and toggle anoms to force a Sig refresh.

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