ARCHAEOLOGY

Scanning down a signature

Core probes are for signatures. Combat probes carry roughly twice the deviation and are for finding ships. The Ministry files these separately because pilots who confuse them file losses.

The launcher and its ammunition

The core launcher is the exploration fitting. Light on CPU, core probes only. The expanded launcher fires both probe families and costs an order of magnitude more CPU for the privilege, which is why combat probing is a fitted decision, not an afterthought; on a covert frigate it displaces real fitting and is taken deliberately or not at all. Tech II launchers add +5% to the strength of every probe they field. The Sisters of EVE launchers add +10% and fit lighter than Tech I besides; their price is the objection.

The probes themselves carry a Sisters tier. Base sensor strength 44 against the standard 40 for core probes, 22 against 20 for combat, a flat +10% at roughly half a million ISK per probe. Sisters launcher and Sisters probes compound, 1.10 × 44 against a base of 40, which is +21% over standard equipment before a single skill applies. That margin resolves faint signatures a standard kit cannot finish, and shortens every descent of the ladder below.

The narrowing ladder

Each halving of scan radius roughly doubles probe strength, and a radius dropped too far below the signal returns nothing at all. The rungs below are the radii the instrument offers, filed for reference; they are not a procedure, and nothing obliges a descent to visit any of them.

In practice the descent is short and unceremonious. The name follows the category at 75% signal. Save the result the moment it reads 100%: re-scanning other signatures discards unsaved coordinates, and the Ministry does not reissue them. Entry kit spends more casts, trained kit spends fewer, and neither is marching rungs.

The skills of record

Astrometrics pays three ways at once and each support skill deepens one of its lines. All of it compounds across three ledgers, multiplies against the launcher and probe figures above, and is mirrored by the implant lines in §8.

Telling an empty site from a guarded one

The single most consequential distinction in exploration.

The tier words, graded

Both site families grade themselves in the name: the first word declares the space and, with it, the difficulty. The Ministry files both gradings in full.

Within a relic site the rest of the name grades the value, ascending: Monument Site, Temple Site, Science Outpost, Crystal Quarry, each rarer and richer than the last. Data containers grade individually instead, ascending in hack difficulty: Info Shard, Com Tower, Mainframe, Databank.

The Sleeper-guarded families grade differently: their tier word declares the wormhole class.

What the containers actually hold

Relic cans carry salvage, tech one and tech two, which feeds rig production; demand is structural, so the income is steady. Data cans carry datacores and decryptors (the inputs of invention), skill books, and the occasional blueprint copy that constitutes the lottery. Drone-region data sites are the sole source of Integrated and Augmented drone blueprints; ghost sites yield Covert Research Tools and, in null security space, capital construction components. The market pays for all of it; it simply pays relic sites more often.

Relic before data, in most filings

Data sites persist and occasionally yield a faction blueprint copy of genuine value (rare, but on record; some clear a billion ISK). The consistent, sellable weight of non-combat exploration nonetheless sits in relic sites, and many working explorers omit the Data Analyzer entirely. Where cargo and slot permit, carry both; the marginal cost of the second analyser is low, and the Ministry dislikes leaving containers unopened. (An integrated unit performs both jobs from one slot; the register is in §7.)

Where each site type actually lives

There is a hard class cutoff, and it is the most commonly misfiled fact in wormhole exploration.

Three prefixes fall outside the C1–C6 sequence: G- marks Thera, H- the twenty-five C13 small-ship shattered systems, and K- the five Drifter systems. Each is its own filing and none is covered by this circular's tables.

Known space: pirate faction territories

Where operations extend to null security space rather than J-space, each faction's sites are tied to territory: their empire home regions and the null regions they dominate.

Sovereign space: the farmed signature

Since the Legion expansion (May 2025), null security alliances seed their own exploration. The Exploration Detector, a sovereignty hub upgrade filed in three tiers, spawns data and relic sites of the local faction between zero and five jumps from the system where it is installed; the higher tiers spawn more sites and respawn them faster. Each detector-fed site carries a small chance to escalate into a dedicated data or relic escalation, and those containers hold the newest entries in the register: 'Xarasier' storyline module blueprints, the Triplot Scan Acquisition Array, and the Wedge implant set (§8).

The Ministry files the two consequences. Upgraded space carries more signatures than wild space, and owners who pay for detectors generally patrol what the detectors attract. The five-jump radius means the spillover lands in systems that did not purchase it, which is the nearest thing null security offers to an unattended orchard.

Two specialised filings

Observatory Infiltration: a level two cosmic signature in low security space and Pochven, dressed as a combat site but built for hacking hulls. The work is relic-analyser work on Drifter Collection containers, conducted among traps that arm when the site's lockdown triggers; a single failed hack starts it. The site posts its own countermeasure: a Patient Beacon on grid can be hacked to stand down the lockdown's defence fleet before it is needed. The Ministry files the arrangement as a site that grades your composure as well as your virus.

AEGIS Capital Ship Security Facility: a level three data signature in low and null security space, terminating in the Encrypted Key Storage: a 90-coherence red-core hack that spawns a hostile response fleet on success. The reward announces itself to the room. Hack it aligned, hold the key, and note that the key-carrier leaving grid despawns the site at once, whatever anyone else was working on.

Winning the intrusion

Every engagement on the grid is turn-based, and the ordering is the entire game: your virus strikes first; the node retaliates only if it survives. A knife fight with a filing system, in which the filing system is polite enough to let you open.

The grid, read properly

Exploration proceeds by adjacency: opening a node reveals its contents and opens the road to its neighbours. An empty node flashes a number, one through five: the distance to the nearest System Core, Utility Subsystem, or Data Cache. The numbers say nothing about defences, which is worth remembering before trusting a promising trail. A defensive subsystem blocks exploration past itself until removed, and the core is seated at least eight spaces from your entry point whenever the board permits, so the short way is rarely the way.

The fixtures of the grid

The measured column is practitioner record, not manufacturer filing: these figures appear in no public data source and were assembled from a decade of field guides. The strengths are consistent across every report; the coherence edges vary by observer, and the ranges shown are the union. The Ministry labels borrowed instruments.

The tools the grid dispenses

Utility elements are found in nodes, held in your analyser's utility slots (§7), and spent by clicking. Four exist, and the Ministry files their figures:

The arithmetic, taken in advance

Your virus reduces the node's coherence; a surviving node strikes your virus coherence in return. A 50-coherence node against 30 virus strength dies in two hits, which costs you exactly one retaliation. Raise its coherence by eleven points and it survives to a third hit, doubling the damage you absorb. The margins are small on paper and decisive in practice; the Ministry recommends doing the division before the clicking.

• Restoration Nodes grant twenty coherence to a random defensive subsystem at the end of every turn they survive (never to the core). Remove them the moment they appear.
• Virus Suppressors appear on hard (red) hacks only and hold your virus strength down by fifteen, to a floor of ten, while alive. Run the arithmetic above before engaging; if it says the Suppressor kills you first, it will.
• Defensive subsystems never touch the System Core at any difficulty. Their target is you.
• The rule of six, filed precisely: a node with all six neighbours present is guaranteed to contain no defence or to sit adjacent to the System Core. The Ministry notes the second clause is not the comfort the first one is.
• The hack ends if the ship moves off the container or warps; the attempt is spent. Hold still, or pay for the reminder.
• Cargo-scan a container before committing to it; low-value cans may be declined without ceremony (§7).

The register of failure

Difficulties run five tiers, very easy through hardest, set by the site's tier and its space. What a failed hack costs depends entirely on whose container it was:

Ghost sites

Covert Research Facilities: pirate laboratories that would prefer not to be inspected, on a clock that starts before you can see it. The best implant blueprints in the profession come from nowhere else.

They scan down as cosmic signatures of the data group, named for the local pirate faction, prefixed by security band. In the Drone Regions they file as low-tier combat signatures instead; the contents are unchanged. Four hackable containers sit roughly 23 kilometres apart; high and low security add a fifth above the warp-in, reported to carry the best of the site.

Detonations are explosive damage across roughly ten kilometres; the spacing means only the can you are working can reach you.

The procedure

The clock. It starts when you enter warp to the site, or at your decloak if you arrived hidden. It runs somewhere between thirty seconds and three minutes, at random, and shows you only its final thirty.

The work. Cargo-scan on arrival if your hull can absorb a mistake, or skip the scan and hack immediately if it cannot. A single failed hack detonates that container at once. Two containers per visit is competent work; when the visible timer appears, you leave, whatever is mid-hack.

The expiry. A pirate response fleet lands, detonates every remaining can, and holds a warp disruption net out to 24 kilometres with combined fire that exceeds two thousand damage in the harder bands. They linger about thirty seconds and depart. There are no bounties on them; fighting is a hobby the Ministry declines to fund.

The ships

Two doctrines hold. The blitz: a covert ops frigate (the Buzzard and Helios are favoured; the Heron on a budget) that aligns fast, hacks fast, and is gone before the clock matters. The face-tank: an armour cruiser, a Gnosis, a Stratios, or a strategic cruiser with buffer enough to eat one detonation and the opening volley, for pilots who intend to cargo-scan and choose. Either works; a slow uncommitted middle does not.

The Sleeper Caches

Three sites above everything else in the profession, where the environment does the guarding and the hacking does everything: opening doors, disarming hazards, and occasionally detonating in your face.

They spawn in known space of every security band (generally not in wormholes), file on the scanner as data sites, and demand both analysers fitted. Once the first relic container inside is cracked, the signature vanishes from every scanner in the system; whoever is inside works alone. The loot class is its own: Sleeper blue loot, tech two and capital manufacturing materials, and the only source of Polarized weapon blueprints in New Eden.

Limited · scans at 80.9 probe strength

A single pocket behind a frigate-only gate. Pressure clouds hold roughly 100 DPS across the work site until the Remote Pressure Control Unit is hacked, which silences them for two to three minutes at a time; plasma chambers detonate for 500 at proximity; the storage depots themselves fail politely, without explosion. A Heron, Magnate, or Astero with both analysers, a cargo scanner, a propulsion module, and a small tank is the entire requirement.

Standard · scans at 92 probe strength

Four areas joined by spatial rifts that serve as gates. Sentry towers fire every fifteen seconds for roughly a thousand, out to 250 kilometres, until the Remote Defense Grid Units are hacked dark. The site keeps an alarm ledger: every failed hard data hack raises it by one, and at five a Guardian gas cloud spawns at 400 DPS, climbing past a thousand and growing to cover the site; at that point the work is over. The relic hacks inside carry no failure penalty. A well-flown exploration frigate remains viable throughout.

Superior · scans at 104 probe strength

The rooms. Five, and each is its own filing. The power plant floods every landing zone at 600 DPS until its alignment discs are solved. The mine room punishes a failed hack with ten to twenty-five thousand explosive.

The turrets. The turret room sustains roughly a thousand DPS when roused; its plasma chambers are the subject of the advisory below. The archive consumes three Intravenous Oscillation Fluids to enter and greets a failed hack with a turret alpha near 4,500.

The practice. A frigate for the entry and the power plant, then a strategic cruiser for the rest; a full clearing runs to three quarters of an hour and, per the official career notes, several hundred million ISK. Arrive prepared, and treat every object on grid as a filing you have not yet read.

The modules

What the ship carries. Every figure below is the manufacturer's own filing, retrieved from ESI.

Analyzers

Utility slots hold the single-use tools a hack dispenses (§4); the integrated units carry one where the dedicated units carry three. Read the strength and coherence columns against §4's arithmetic: strength decides how fast nodes die, coherence decides how many retaliations you can absorb while they do.

The rigs

Small and medium sizes carry identical figures; the size merely matches the hull. A tech two rig outbids every implant in the coherence register, costs no slot in the head, and dies with the ship rather than the pod, which the Ministry files as the correct place for equipment to die. The integrated analysers are served by both rig families; a Zeugma hull with both tech two rigs carries +40 coherence before the head contributes anything.

The Cargo Scanner

The pre-commitment instrument: it reads a container's contents without touching its lock. Fit one and every can on the grid becomes a known quantity before the first node is revealed; §4's arithmetic runs better against loot you have seen.

The implants

What the head carries. The pod they ride in is addressed at the end, and in §11.

Scanning: the Poteque 'Prospector' lines

The Virtue set

The strongest scanning augmentation on record: six Sisters of EVE implants, slots one through six, whose business is scan probe strength entirely. Alpha through Epsilon (slots one to five) carry secondary bonuses of +1% through +5%; every piece also carries a set effect that multiplies the secondaries of every Virtue implant worn. The Omega (slot six) adds no scan bonus of its own; it exists to multiply, and it displaces the Pinpointing implant line from its slot. The full set demands Cybernetics V, the Omega being the demanding one; the earlier pieces climb from II to IV.

The set degrades gracefully. Pieces work alone, multiplied only by what is worn, so a partial set is a partial bonus rather than nothing.

What the full set buys is cycles. A signature that takes four passes bare takes two or three augmented, and the weakest signatures on the scanner (deep space probing, the Superior Sleeper Cache tier, the faintest wormholes) come into reach without perfect hull bonuses.

What it costs is the pod. A head that trades in the billions advertises itself to everyone who catches it (§11); the low grade exists for exactly the spaces where pods die. The standing counsel of the profession is that a fully trained scanner in a bonused hull reaches nearly everything without it; the Virtue set is for the pilot whose time is worth more than the pod, and the Ministry has met few pilots who priced that honestly.

The Ascendancy set

The Sisters of EVE's other set, mid- and high-grade, and its business is warp speed: nothing the scanner or the analyser can feel, but the profession is mostly travel, and the pilots who cross the most systems per evening wear it for exactly that reason. It earns its place in this filing by provenance rather than function: the blueprint copies fall from ghost sites (§5), and the Shattered Villard Wheels required to build the implants fall from the same containers. The profession manufactures its own reward, which the Ministry files under poetry, this time correctly. It rides in the pod, and the advisory below applies at full strength.

Hacking implants

The Wedge set

The newest filing in the register (Legion, May 2025): six Upwell implants, slots one through six, whose secondary business is virus coherence for Data and Relic Analyzers both. Alpha through Epsilon carry the coherence; the Omega carries nothing of its own and exists to multiply the rest. The set is recovered from the data escalations of detector-fed sovereign space (§3), which makes it the second implant set the profession manufactures for itself.

The set occupies the same six berths as the Virtue set, and a head holds one or the other: probe strength to find the site, or coherence to survive its locks. The arithmetic worth filing is the pairing with the Blackglass: a mid-grade set returns thirty-two of the forty coherence that implant spends, which turns the aggression package from a gamble into a posture. Without the Omega the set is a plain sum, so partial sets degrade politely.

The hulls

What carries the rest. Virus strength from the hull stacks with everything above; the covert cloak decides who files reports about whom.

The ledgers stack: a covert hull's +10 atop a Zeugma's 30 and a Blackglass's 20 makes 60 virus strength, which is the figure the working fits fly. Coherence stacks too, and the largest line is the one no module lists: the operating skill's +10 per level (§7). At Hacking V the Blackglass'd Zeugma works at 40 coherence, 45 with the EY-1005: an aggressive margin by design, softened by Self Repairs and Polymorphic Shields (§4) for the nodes that matter.

Sleeper threat, by wormhole class

Incoming pressure and site value scale together. The figures below are a field impression assembled from documented sites, not a formula; fit for the specific site's published maximum, never the class average.

The step from C2/C3 to C5/C6 is not a gradient. The higher classes are tuned for battleships, capitals, and dedicated fleets, and a strategic cruiser that clears C2 anomalies without incident can be dismantled by the equivalent tier of a C5 site. Extrapolating low-class experience upward without checking the specific site is a filing error with a killmail attached.

Field discipline

The sites rarely kill a careful pilot. Other pilots do. The Ministry observes both populations closely.

• Refresh the directional scanner at intervals not exceeding five seconds while uncloaked in J-space. This is the actual margin between seeing a hunter arrive and being seen to have arrived; the Ministry has measured both outcomes.
• Warp to a safe point first, never directly between locations that can be associated with you. Chain through an intermediate. Predictable pilots appear in other people's files.
• Fly what the site's expected yield can bury: a covert-ops frigate or Astero for relic and data work, a disposable battlecruiser for early Sleeper anomalies. Grief scales with fitting expenses.
• At ghost sites (§5), arrive cloaked and remain cloaked until committed; the clock is already running.
• For repeat operations from the same hole, bookmark a deep safe well off every natural warp line.
• Where a site name is unfamiliar, verify it against a wormhole reference before warping in. The Ministry maintains its own catalogue of Anoikis and recommends consulting it.

Figures of record

The circular's figures of consequence, consolidated for the pilot who reads nothing else. Each figure is filed in full at the cited section; the annex is a convenience, not an authority.