Right but under those same circumstances a Duvolle Quantum Active Scanner has a target visibility of 25 seconds and a cooldown of 15 seconds with an effective scan area (using that formula) of 31,416 meters squared. Meaning that anything within it's effective scan area is permanently on the map, no matter what, provided the person scanning is continuously scanning (which considering it's duration is a mere two seconds that's not much to ask for).

Suffice to say, for eight seconds you could still see a Scout trying to get -ANYWHERE- on the Line Harvest map just by standing on the table top (square platform in the center). Cool-down sucks but you can easily determine where someone is going during an eight second window.

I'm personally on the fence for now, but I am consoled in that only you and your squad can use the results, not everyone on the team. Still... That's a third of the team, potentially, with our current sizes.

now it gets down to a matter of taste. in most cases, the 15s cooldown on the duv is shittier than the 11s on the a-45 because you want to scan, kill, and re-scan for new spawns... especially if you have a whole squad doing killing you want faster refresh for new spawns. and not much is actually going to fall under your 36db threshold. 200m is less desirable because it falls outside your radar - still useful, but less so. scouts are gimped atm and scout hunting is its own subset and honestly not that worth it. your a-45 is going to pick up non-scout light frames without damps. if they have damps, less of a threat in combat. if they drop equipment, your a-45 picks THAT up so you know someone is there. also there are fitting drawbacks to the duv that make it not worth it, and isk expense if you care.

realistically they're not going to be perfectly in sync like that. 99% of scouts aren't enough of a threat in the compound to warrant gimping your refresh speed. and/or ability to maximize your fitting in other ways

z coordinates not taken into account. thus scan area is on a plane. it's either pi * r^2 ... or if you don't feel like spinning in a circle it is:

pi * r^2 * (scanangle / 360)

This thread has a distinct lack of graphs...

Didn't spend time prettying it up but here you go:

http://i.imgur.com/nXOd3aD.png

ohh that was good!!

... third dimention for time/area?

Would have to make a separate graph. If I try to input 5 seconds as a target visibility it won't even show up on the graph.

thats the point

if that flux scanner loses all its time scanning such a large area whats the point

I dont think Area is the primary factor... time/area, whats the point of waving your scaner like a pink sparkly baton if results only stay up half a second

Why are you trying to calculate this anyways?

The proto flux has a long cooldown so it's balanced compared to the shorter range of the other scans. Being able to scan the whole field is nice, but not if you can't do it all the time, or have it last long enough for it to actually be useful.

However, I have been wondering about the scan width at max of the regular flux compared to the basic scanner. For instance, is the flux actually better because at long ranges it covers the same area as a normal scanner?

30 degrees at 150 meters = ? width
60 degrees at 100 meters = ? width

Oh gosh, now that I think of it...the proto flux...

90 degrees at 200 meters...that has to be huge.

It actually makes a lot of sense when you've got an enemy red lined. You can use the Flux scanner to pick out which of the front line objectives they're going for, or even if they're bypassing it entirely, and that eight second window is more than enough time for you to get an understanding of which direction they're intending to go.

Cross that with it's innate ability to give snipers targets and it's a powerful little tool that makes the 25 second cool down worth it, especially considering it can pick out the soft targets (scouts) a good distance away so you have time to react. All it takes is one sniper round, so might as well.

This is true as of now, but add in the warpoints for canned kills and those extra seconds start to matter.
You can do a 360 scan and get the idea of disposion fine... you can do that with a basic scanner, albit at a shorter range

True. Suppose I will be switching to the Quantum pretty soon, especially in maps that have an Outpost given their small range.

Though, as another discussion brought up this issue, I think they need to tune down the Scan Duration on these things to make it less exploitable by turning really fast.