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EVE Evolved: Unleash your inner space janitor

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OMG I FOUND ONE! I'M RICH!

Congratulations on finding a starbase without a shield, but don't get excited yet; you still need to figure out where it is and whether it's lootable. You could waste your time warping around all the moons in a solar system looking for the starbase in question, but it's much quicker to use the directional scanner first. Narrow the scan field from 360 to 30-90 degrees and orient your camera until a planet is in the middle of the screen to scan it. Repeat this over all the planets until you can pinpoint which planet your mystery starbase is actually at, and then warp to that planet. Next, set the range to about 150,000,000km and set the scan field back to 360 degrees so that your new scan will show only starbases at moons orbiting the nearby planet.

If your target disappears, you're at the wrong planet and should expand the scan range to maximum to try again. Once you've got a 150 million km scan with the starbase on it, narrow down the scan radius to 90 degrees and look around until you find it again. Continue to narrow down the scan radius until you get a clean scan with your target starbase on it and no other starbases to interfere with the scan. Now deactivate the "use active overview settings" checkbox and scan again to get a list of the moons the starbase could be at and every object in the vicinity, from ships and containers to structures. Many will be worthless control towers with no modules or just worthless weapons, but some will have potentially valuable ship hangars, corporate hangar arrays, research labs, and manufacturing arrays.

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Tips on running Ghost Sites

An invisible timer starts when you enter a ghost site, after which reinforcements will arrive to detonate all of the loot containers. This was intended to make the site dangerous, but the damage isn't very high and threatens only frigates. It's not clear whether the timer starts when you click warp or when you arrive on-grid, so to be safe and give myself the maximum time possible, I always warp to a nearby planet and then on to the ghost site. When you enter the site, immediately destroy any white "damaged" ships you see as they appear to make the timer run out more quickly.

Cargo scan all the locked containers first before picking one to approach and hack; you never know which one will have the most valuable loot, and you may only get one of them open before the timer ends. Usually only one or two containers have anything as valuable as a blueprint, but always go for the most valuable one first. You can safely ignore the NPCs that warp in unless you're in a frigate, as they don't deal much damage and the explosions from the containers are pretty tame. The NPCs do warp scramble and web you, but they warp out and leave you alone about 10-20 seconds after the containers detonate.

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Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at Massively. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column or guide, or you just want to message him, send an email to brendan@massively.com.