Newcomer / Intro ship scanning, quick answer needed

[Harrowdown]

I've never quite understood how ship scanning works. For engineering materials. It happens automatically? Sometimes? I don't really know. I'm hovering over a system authority craft right now. It seems to stand still indefinitely so I guess I'm gonna scan it. Manifest scanner seems out of place and possibly an illegal act against certain ships.

Gonna keep hovering next to it until I hear what to do.

 

[Krieger]

Select the ship you want to scan and point the nose of your ship at it within 20-30 degrees. Then the automatic basic scan will start. After 10 sec you get the results. With every ship scan there is a chance you get encoded materials.

 

[Harrowdown]

Select the ship you want to scan and point the nose of your ship at it within 20-30 degrees. Then the automatic basic scan will start. After 10 sec you get the results. With every ship scan there is a chance you get encoded materials.

Hm maybe that just doesn't work with system authority vessels? Or it happened and I didn't notice it.

 

[Krieger]

If you are friendly with the controlling faction data of authority ships is shared with you automatically. No scan needed (even if it flies behind you and you select it from the target list). Better to find a civillian ship to scan.

--edit: If you are neutral to the controlling faction authority ships do not show as green blips on the scanner and can be scanned normally. In that case they can also give you encoded materials.

 

[Harrowdown]

Oh right. I didn't notice that at all. Anyway, thanks for the help. Much appreciated.

 

[Chris Simon]

Yeah, it's easy to tell from the left target UI if you need to scan the ship or not.

Also, not every ship scan will give you data. If you want to speed this up, the best way is to find a really busy station, just hang around and scan all the arrivals and departures.
You can also combine this with scanning the High-wakes, which gives you another really useful set of data for engineering.

 

[badibeat]

I use long ranged scanners, so I can resolve and scan ships from afar when approaching stations. Many ships initially instance close together or are approaching the station or parked in it, making this process more efficient. This makes up for the loss of scan angle, and I have no need to farm this type of scan data. On my taxi i have a long ranged wake scanner as well.
You can also get scan data in super cruise. Whenever there's a shiny ship in the direction i fly, i use a Next Contact keybind to flip through nearby ships until it highlights the one in the scan area. This does not unlock your current destination, unlike the Target Ahead keybind.