Information
overload
Last
week I mentioned the loss of my first Harbinger, which happened not
long after I first moved from pure ninja salvaging to baiting and
killing. A quick look at the killmail
will tell you the story: I jumped a shooty Dominix and was jumped in
turn by his corpmate in a Celestis. Said Celestis kept me pointed and
neuted while the Dominix pounded me with blaster fire until I
exploded.
That
was not how it happened in my mind, however. I never noticed his
corpmate until I studied the killmail. It was a pretty nasty failure
of of situational awareness. Thing is, my overview was so cluttered
by drones, rats, wrecks, containers, mission structures and whatnot
that, ironically, I had no overview of the situation at all. I fixed
that and I recommend you do the same.
Getting
started
Right-click
the little four-bar icon in the top of the overview window and select
“Open overview settings.” From this menu, you can edit almost
everything about what is displayed in your overview, and how. I won't
go into all options in depth, you should consult the EVE manual for
that. Wait, what? Oh. Well, in lieu of a manual, check out this EVEUniversity article and/or download ISK The Guide.
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| There's a lot of options in here. A LOT. |
Don't feel like you
have to set up your overview to EVE University specifications: a good
overview should be matched to your
needs and the circumstances you will most frequently encounter. I'll
explain how I've set up my own overview and the thinking behind it.
And it's the thinking that counts. I am still frequently tinkering
with the overview but I am happy with the basics of my current
set-up.
Tabs
First
of all, you should know about tabs. By right-clicking one of the tabs
in your current overview, you will be given the option to “Add
tab.” You can have a maximum of five and I recommend you use them
all. These tabs will allow you to quickly switch between different
overviews as situations change. It's also useful for d-scanning if
you have the “Use overview settings” box checked. It will use
your overview settings as a filter, leaving out lots of junk you may
not want to sift through, like wrecks and cans while in combat.
I use
five tabs: Ninja, Gank, Drones, WarpTo, and Everything. I'll go over
them one by one. When setting up your tabs, start by removing
everything and then fill in the bits you think you'll need. This will
prevent you from overlooking things like POS modules which can really
mess up a d-scan result at the worst possible time.
Ninja
This
is the tab where I spend most of my time. It has quite a lot in it:
containers, wrecks, NPC ships, player ships and drones, and
acceleration gates. What it leaves out is various celestials (suns,
planets, moons, stations), structures and other inert stuff that I
don't need to keep an eye on. While this particular setting can get
quite cluttered in a busy mission with lots of rats and wrecks
around, it is only used during the “baiting” stage of getting a
mission runner to shoot me, when I don't yet need to worry about
overextending my limited brain capacity.
 |
| The Ninja tab in action. Notice how all non-essential information has been stripped. |
Gank
When
things get funky, I switch to the Gank tab. This is essentially the
same as the Ninja tab, except it leaves out the cans, wrecks and NPC
stuff. I leave the acceleration gates in because I often find myself
chasing a mission runner down a room or two (or six). One thing I
also take out is drones. Once there are three or four ships on grid
with five drones each, the overview quickly fills up, so it helps to
get them out of the Combat tab. They are in the Ninja tab however,
because it's intel: being able to gauge the tech level of the mission
runner's drones from d-scan will give me a quick indication of how
far up the skill tree this guy has gone.
Drones
Hah!
Thought I didn't care about drones at all in combat? That's not true.
In fact, drones can be a very critical factor, especially when I'm
flying a flimsy little frigate, holding on for dear life while a
friendly pilot is bringing me a Hurricane, and the mission runner
starts launching Warrior IIs at me. That's why I give drones a tab
all to themselves. It has the drones, all the drones, and nothing but
the drones. This allows me to quickly target those drones I want to
shoot down.
WarpTo
Sometimes
I just need to go places. Or check on where a mission runner is
aligned to. WarpTo has the sun, planets, customs offices (easy to
forget those), stations and beacons. Not moons or asteroid belts
though, because there's generally too many of them to be worth the
hassle of warping to each one. If you do need to find someone whom
you suspect of being at a moon or belt, it's better to warp to the
planet and use some narrow-angle d-scan magic instead.
Everything
Unsurprisingly,
this tab includes everything.
Sometimes you'll want to see something that you can't visually pick
out. Like moons or asteroid belts. It's more of a backup than
something I use often, but when I do use it I'm always glad it's
there.
Brackets
and appearance
Some
final tricks that have made my life in the overview much easier
involve the use of brackets and the appearance of neutrals. Brackets
are the things you see in space. EVE allows you to use a different
overview filter for the overview itself and the brackets in space
depending on which tab you have selected. You can configure this
under “Overview tabs.” I use the Ninja setting for all tabs
except WarpTo and Everything. This allows me to keep an eye on
mission rats and enemy drones, or quickly select and save the
location of an object for a tactical warp, even when I'm in a more
limited overview tab. Best of both worlds, so to say.
 |
| Brackets in action. Though displayed in space, the wrecks are not in the overview. |
As for
appearance, this affects the colors and symbols of pilots and their
drones. From the overview settings menu, note that only the “Filters
→ Types” settings are tab-specific. The other settings apply to
the entire overview regardless of which tab you're on. I've used the
options under “Appearance” to set neutral and no-standing pilots
to a yellow icon with a yellow background. This makes them stand out
much clearer from whatever other stuff there may be on my current
tab. It gives a good visual cue whenever some third party shows up
and it means that I'm always able to pick out players from NPCs and
inert items at a glance.
Mess
with it – a lot
The
overview tabs and settings I've described here work well for me. As I
already said, however, I'm frequently tinkering with the details and
I'm sure other ninjas use other setups. I'd be delighted to hear how
other people have theirs laid out. Why not drop a reply to this post
with your thoughts? You can earn a cookie if you add a screenshot of
your favorite tab in action. Apart from that, my advice to you is to
grit your teeth and dig into those overview settings. They're a bit
of a pain to figure out but you'll find it is well worth it in the
end.
And finally, special thanks to Sihoja for involuntarily supermodelling in these screenshots. You were born for the catwalk, baby!
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