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EVE Nomad Posts

Signal Cartel / EvE-Scout Turns 10!

As of January 20th, Signal Cartel is a decade old! Co-founded by Johnny Splunk, G8keeper, and Mynxee on January 20th, 2015, with the EvE-Scout Enclave alliance being created on the 23rd and the corp opening recruitment on the 31st, the corp and alliance have been going strong over the last ten years.

Founded in the wake of Thera’s addition to the game in the 2014 Rhea expansion, EvE-Scout started as a neutral service to map the system’s numerous wormhole connections. Since then, the group has branched out to wormhole rescues, wormhole rescue caches, storm tracking, tourism, and more. You can read all about SC’s history in this blog post on signalcartel.org by Katie Sae.

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Explorer’s Annex: Drug Production Facilities

A week ago, I made a Reddit post asking explorers at what point they usually drop off their loot. Since a few people had questions about the loot I posted in general and drug sites AKA chemical labs specifically, I’m making this brief guide. This’ll cover nullsec drug production facilities, such as H-PA Crew Crash Production Facility. The lowsec versions are pretty lousy and LS exploration isn’t good in general. Specifically, I’ll cover how to cheese run these sites in a frigate.

The Basics

There are 8 null COSMOS regions in the game: Catch, Cloud Ring, Delve, Feythabolis, Fountain, Tenal, Vale of the Silent, and Wicked Creek. Predictably, these regions have null COSMOS agents, with each region’s agents being concentrated in a specific constellation with lore significance. Each null COSMOS region also has unique gas and other sites, such as combat relic sites. This guide will focus on drug production facilities.

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Explorer’s Annex: Rogue Drone Relic Sites

That’s right! These exist now. As of the Revenant expansion in November 2024, there are now rogue drone relic sites in addition to the existing drone data sites and dronelands ghost sites. While a nice addition to the drone regions, the sites are unfortunately fairly disappointing.

The Basics

Rogue drone monument site
A Rogue Drone Monument Site.

Rogue drone relic sites can spawn in the 8 nullsec drone regions (Cobalt Edge, Etherium Reach, Malpais, Outer Passage, Perrigen Falls, The Kalevala Expanse, and The Spire) and in the kinds of wormhole systems that normally have pirate data/relic sites (C1, C2, C3, C13, and shattered C4). They follow the exact same naming scheme as nullsec/wormhole pirate relic sites:

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Explorer’s Annex: Silent Battleground

Ever come across a weird signature in a wormhole that you couldn’t quite manage to scan down? It’s probably a Silent Battleground.

Overview

Silent Battlegrounds are very rare cosmic signatures that only appear in shattered wormholes, including Thera. However, they still spawn often enough that you can usually find one in a long roam. If you get really lucky, you can even find multiple Silent Battlegrounds in the same system.

Silent Battlegrounds are one of the very few sites in the game that show as level 5 signatures in the probe scanner, specifically level 5 data sites. The only other level 5 sigs are Superior Sleeper Caches (also level 5 data) and the Space Oddity (level 5 combat). This makes them one of the hardest sites to scan down: aim for at least 104 probe strength. All the usual strategies for increasing your probe strength apply here.

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What’s the Best Covops?

The best covops is whichever one you think looks prettiest. See you next time.

Wait, you’re still here? Fine, fine. But “What’s the best covops for me?” is really a better question. When deciding between the 4 covops frigates (Anathema, Buzzard, Cheetah, Helios), there are a few things to consider. This’ll be from the perspective of exploration, not scouting for a fleet or what have you. I’ll also include starter fits for each one.

I won’t cover the Pacifier here, since it’s a different kind of ship that fills different roles.

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Explorer’s Annex: Ghost Sites

Come on, ghost sites aren’t that scary. Why yes, that’s a screenshot of a ghost site explosion. Why do you ask?

The Basics

Ghost sites are unique exploration sites found in every part of New Eden: hisec, lowsec, nullsec, and wormholes. They always appear in the probe scanner as level 3 data signatures, except in the null drone regions (Cobalt Edge, Etherium Reach, Malpais, Outer Passage, Perrigen Falls, The Kalevala Expanse, and The Spire), where they show as level 1 combat signatures. For some reason. And with their drops skyrocketing in price, it’s never been a better time to run them.

Angel Cartel ghost sites

All ghost sites are named [Prefix] [Faction] Covert Research Facility. For example, “Improved Sansha Covert Research Facility.” That’s not to be confused with Beseiged Covert Research Facilities, which are proper lowsec combat sites.

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T6 Abyss: The Gila

For more T6 abyss guides, check out the main T6 abyss page!

Ah, the Gila. It’s great at all kinds of PVE and the abyss is no exception. While a lot of people (including me) think the Gila’s boring, it’s a very popular choice for T6 abyss due to its combination of strong shield tank, drone and missile bonuses, and relatively low SP requirements. Let’s dive into T6 Gila fits and how you can get the most out of this ship.

The Basics

Like the Ishtar, the Gila’s a drone ship. It’s shield-tanked like the typical T6 Ishtar fit on that page and uses missiles for supplemental damage. The Gila’s unique in that it follows the Guristas flavor of only having 2 drones in a flight, but getting massive HP and damage bonuses for those drones. This means that the bulk of your damage will be coming from 2 medium drones. Fortunately, the Gila has a massive drone bay, with room for 10 flights of 2 medium drones each. Those drone bonuses are also role bonuses, and the Gila’s a T1 pirate hull. This makes it far more friendly towards low-SP pilots than other T6 abyss cruisers. For detailed stats, Uniwiki is of course a great resource.

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Explorer’s Annex: Drone Data Sites

There are 8 nullsec regions known as the drone regions or “dronelands”: Cobalt Edge, Etherium Reach, Malpais, Outer Passage, Perrigen Falls, The Kalevala Expanse, and The Spire. These regions are unique in that they don’t have any regular pirate data or relic sites outside of temporary content like metaliminal storms, though they do have the recently added rogue drone relic sites, which are pretty similar to pirate ones. They also don’t have Sleeper Caches. Instead, they have special drone data sites.

The Basics

Instead of decryptors and such like regular data sites, drone data sites drop 2 kinds of loot: drone blueprint copies (BPCs) and assorted junk. Most of the junk is “drone poop” such as Drone Capillary Fluid. They can also drop filaments. 2 types of drone BPCs drop depending on the site: ‘Integrated’ drone BPCs and ‘Augmented’ drone BPCs. These BPCs drop in 10-run, 60-run, and 120-run variants. The drone poop’s used for manufacturing the drones, and isn’t very valuable. The blueprints, however, can be extremely valuable. We’re talking potentially billions of ISK.

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T6 Abyss: The Ishtar

For more T6 abyss guides, check out the main T6 abyss page!

You might be wondering why I didn’t start with the Gila, since that’s by far the most popular cruiser for T6 abyss (and abyss in general). The answer is that I think it’s boring. Also, the Ishtar’s my “main” T6 abyss ship. Write what you know, right? Anyway, here’s a T6 Ishtar guide!

The Basics

Like the Gila, the Ishtar’s a drone ship. However, while the Gila’s limited to having just 2 medium drones active at a time, the Ishtar can field a full flight of 5 drones. With 125 bandwidth, the Ishtar can use a full flight of heavy drones or the more popular 2 Geckos, 2 mediums, and 1 light. This setup works well because the Geckos do a lot of damage and have a lot of tank while the light flies around and pops caches for you. Thanks to the Ishtar’s tracking bonus, its heavy drones (including Geckos) have no issues applying damage to most targets.

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Explorer’s Annex: Metaliminal Storms

In 2020, CCP introduced Metaliminal Storms: multi-system weather effects that roam nullsec and affect the stats of all player ships within them. These storms are considered annoying by many null residents, but they can also be immensely valuable with some understanding of how they work. How valuable? Over the course of 2 evenings, I yanked over 3 billion ISK out of an electrical storm in Insmother. I haven’t seen this kind of ISK/hr with non-combat exploration outside of getting lucky with quiet Sansha systems, drone data escalations, or wormhole Ghost Sites. And none of those are nearly as consistent or predictable.

To find a storm, just go to your ingame map and toggle the Metaliminal Storms filter. The map won’t tell you which storm is which, but Signal Cartel runs a public storm tracking service.

Basics

There are currently 4 types of metaliminal storms: Electrical, Exotic, Gamma, and Plasma. With 2 of each type existing simultaneously, that makes for 8 storms at a given time. Each storm’s effects are divided among “strong” and “weak” systems, with some additional hidden effects. Eve Uni has a wiki page covering the weather effects of each storm. There’s also a good visual guide in this Reddit post.

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