Editing Skills and Implants (section)

===Scanning Skills===

Scanning skills are the sweethearts of Signal Cartel pilots. They are the bread and butter of our trade. We take screenshots of our character sheets to show each other when we get all of the scanning skills to level 5. Sometimes we frame the screenshots and hang them on the wall with the family photos. OK, maybe not, but scanning skills are very important, and training them properly will up your game as an explorer.

The single most important scanning skill is Astrometrics, which forms the core of what we might call the Astrometrics Family. Each skill in the Astrometrics Family increases a certain aspect of your scanning, with a higher bonus for each level trained. But, even better, each level trained in Mama Astrometrics gives you the same benefits as one level in each Baby Astrometrics skill, all at the same time. We'll go through the benefits of each Baby Astrometrics skill individually, but don't forget that each level of Mama Astrometrics is equivalent to three levels of Baby Astrometrics.

Astrometric Rangefinding increases your scanning probe strength by 5% per level. The benefit here is fairly straightforward: stronger probes can pick up weak signals better, so you're less likely to get down to your maximum scan resolution and still not be able to get the signature to 100%. If you're down to 0.25 AU scan radius, and your probes are centered just right, and you still can't get it to scan down fully, you're usually out of options... high scanning strength will help you to avoid that situation. 

Astrometric Pinpointing decreases your maximum scan deviation by 5% per level trained. This is a little more abstract than the probe strength, but it also makes sense. When you're scanning down a signature, the approximate location of the signature moves around as you reposition and focus your probes. Reduced scan deviation means that the approximate locations of the signature are going to be closer to the actual location of the signature. The net effect is that you will find the actual location of the signature in fewer scans when your deviation is reduced. 

Astrometric Acquisition is probably the least useful of the Baby Astrometrics skills. It reduces the time needed for each scan to be completed by 5% per level trained. This isn't exceptionally useful, though, because the scans don't take very long to begin with, so making them faster isn't much of a priority. Your training time is probably better spent on one of the other Baby Astrometrics, or on Mama Astrometrics. 

If Mama Astrometrics and her Babies make up a happy Astrometrics Family, then the Survey skill is that strange cousin who nobody really likes. Survey is good for using scanners that look at ships and cargo, which is not much of a priority for exploration. The Survey skill doesn't actually make those scans more powerful, either, just a bit faster. If you like to use a cargo scanner to check out your cans before hacking them, the Survey skill will speed up the process, but otherwise it doesn't have a lot of application for explorers.

Also worth training for improved scanning are the Jury Rigging and Electronic Superiority Rigging skills. This includes both rigs to improve scanning strength and rigs to improve virus coherence for data and relic hacking.