Put a probe in your probe

While chatting with a very experienced spacefarer I heard tales about treasures of immense value hidden deep in space. So deep that they would have to be probed out. Using scan probes would require skill in astrometrics. Eager to get quick results I tried to use the on-board scanner equipped on every ship. I warped to planets and scanned the surroundings. I found nothing but didn't give up. I jumped to another system and went through the planets there. On the second planet my scanners picked something up. A serpentis den!

I warped in with my rifter and found 2 destroyers, 2 frigates and 2 heavy missile batteries. They were too much for a very agile but somewhat flimsy frigate and I had to warp off quickly. I fetched my reliable thrasher and tried again. Howitzer artillery easily took out the ships, but more appeared as soon as the ones present had been dealt with. This time it was cruisers and an assortment of frigates. With my shields completely gone and the missile batteries still firing holes into my armor I had no choice but to warp off. After licking my wounds I warped back in and concentrated on taking out the batteries. I managed to take them out, but had to warp off again. Without the constant missile fire things were a bit more manageable, nevertheless there were waves after waves of Serpentis ships. I had to warp off countless times as the shield booster sucked my capacitor dry. The Serpentis cruisers used sensor dampening which didn't help either. After the ships stopped coming I counted 22 wrecks total and 9 of them cruisers. There was no doubt this scanning business would beat ratting in an asteroid belt, hands down.

After training astrometrics I fitted my rifter with scan probe launcher and some core scanner probes. With my skill level I could only launch 4 probes at a time, but it was enough to find some looted serpentis explosive debris. In that desolate site I found containers which could be accessed by using the salvager on them. Value of the salvage was about 1.6 million ISK. Easy money. But to really cash in on scanning I would need much more skills - hacking and archaeology to access different types of containers and astrometric acquisition, pinpointing and rangefinding to reach results faster and more reliably. Easy way to better results would be to use a ship with bonus to scan strength of probes. Minmatar have the probe. Funny...