Hidden belts

[SurfD]

Someone in the suicide gankers thread mentioned Hidden belts for mining.

As a noob to pretty much everything except combat mission running, how does one go about finding hidden belts?  I assume you can only locate them through survey probes and related skills?

[Teleku]

Yeah, you find them with exploration.  It can take a long time to find and scan down one if you don't have the skills trained up for it.

If you don't know how scan probing works, read this:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=431586&page=1

and then this:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=445716

[Yoru]

Even if you have the skills for it, it takes quite a while to scan stuff down via exploration. Average about an hour to 90 minutes per signature, from first setting out with multispecs to bookmarking your find. In highsec, gravimetric sigs just aren't worth it. 0.0, they probably are.

[Teleku]

I'd actually say they are generally less useful in 0.0 because you already have the best ore available laying in the open around you.  The advantage to hidden belts is that they can often be composed of ore you can't normally get at your security level.  Thats why when I get the urge to do some high sec mining, I scan down belts in .5 systems, which lets me (sometimes) find belts of ore I can only normally get in low sec (and is much much more profitable to mine).

Though I imagine finding a large belt you can pick at in a secret location would make things easier in regards to protecting yourself while mining in 0.0.

But yes, exploration can be a long and boring process.  Once you train up alot of your skills, and get into cov ops, you can nock the scan time down significantly, which helps alot.  However, your looking at weeks and weeks of training to get there.

[lac]

I sometimes run into a hidden belt when my probes pick up the wrong signal in a system with multiple exploration sites. Last week I found a herbergite (spelling?) site in high sec and a gneiss site in low sec.
If you are into gas mining you can also find gas clouds in hidden belts in low sec.
0.0 hidden belts tend to be a lot bigger than the average 'normal' belt, they also consist of the really juicy rocks. They are notoriously hard to find, for some reason gravimetric sites have a lower signal strenght than the 3 other types of sites.

[Endie]

I'd actually say they are generally less useful in 0.0 because you already have the best ore available laying in the open around you.

Not quite true, since all 0.0 is not equal.

Only really deep 0.0 systems have the c.-0.7 or lowers truesec required to spawn things like mercoxit, arkonor etc.  Most of Providence, for instance, spawns hedbergite and hemorphite at best, which will make you about about 9mill an hour mining at most.  Still good, but not arkonor good.  This is where hidden belts come in: a hidden belt in Providence will often provide arkonor and bistot sitting there, with no competition and any gankers needing to have probing equipment fitted in order to find you.

[ajax34i]

[...] no competition and any gankers needing to have probing equipment fitted in order to find you.

Which they do, usually.

What sucks is it takes you 1.5 hrs to find a belt, and it takes someone else about a minute to find you at that belt, and thus either interrupt you or want to "share".

[lac]

Unless they get extremely lucky they will not find you that easily, especially if you don't have your drones out.

[Teleku]

Ah, k, thanks for the info Endie.  Both the places we went to 0.0 (I think Syndicate first, then Scalding Pass with -V-), had Crokite and then Arknor all over their belts respectively, so I sort of figured all 0.0 was like that.

And yeah, as I understand it, scanning down your ship is way harder when you are residing in a hidden belt.  That's why I never leave my drones out unless I'm being attacked by something (drones are suppose to be easier to find).

[Endie]

Most of the occasional gank gangs we encounter don't bother with probing equipment: they check the belts then move on.  That said, I agree that you'd be dumb to gamble on it: you want to have emergency safespots set up if your ship can't usefully fit a cloak and you're mining .

What I don't know is if gravimetric exploration sites spawn in deadspace: the complexes sure do, so like lac says you're safer from probing in them than in a normal deep safespot.

[lac]

There is never an acceleration gate but I assume the grid is in deadspace as it is with missions without acceleration gates

[Endie]

And yeah, as I understand it, scanning down your ship is way harder when you are residing in a hidden belt.  That's why I never leave my drones out unless I'm being attacked by something (drones are suppose to be easier to find).

This was one of the things I demonstrated to the folks on the probing course: with no drones out, nobody found the target raven in a deadspace pocket only a few AU away even with high-power, shortish range probes.  Eventually they might have got an innacurate fix, but that could take half an hour.  When it had drones out and mwding around the place they found him within a minute.

[tazelbain]

Is that why a raven appeared on my overview even though it was 2k+ away?

[ajax34i]

No, what was happening when we were scanning for the Raven-inside-mission-deadspace was this:

1.  First off, we didn't know exactly where it was, so we had to use the longer range probes just to cover the possible size of the system, and the longer range probes have lower sensitivity.  So nothing showed up.

2.  Even when he moved us closer to his deadspace so we could use the shorter range probes (some of us didn't have the skills required for the longer range probes), we still didn't see the Raven.

3.  Once the Raven launched his drones, though, and we started scanning again, one of us got a hit and saw drones in his scanner window (the Raven was still not visible), and when that person warped to the drones he arrived at an accelleration gate.  At that point we all warped-to-member and activated the gate, swarming the Raven.