Missions & Complexes

While I've come to the conclusion that complaints surrounding the new AI and its effect in missions hasbeen overstated, I'm a bit concerned about its effect on .0 solo exploration. Traditionally, the go-to boat has been the Ishtar but is this still possible? At least in missions there are a variety of ships that can be used.

I've been looking at alternatives but can't find anything armor tanked with enough mids (analyser/codebreaker) and free highs (cloak and probe launcher) for the job. I'm not keen on using a t3 tbh.

Can anyone with experience comment? Ideally it will be for serpents space but other suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

Long story short: youre ******.
Even low grade exploration is nearly impossible to do now in a nonmissile ship vs sansha/blood/serps, i actually offered 50b reward in my corp for doing 4/10 sansha in a turret boat, so far its still unclaimed (for reference: 20+ cruisers, 7+ TD, and an overseer to break through your tank). And i cant imagine how to do 10/10 vs them now.
If you can i advise switching to mintard space, angels are easily doable still.

Obvious overreaction is obvious.

Running 4/10s in an Arbitrator/Vexor works just fine, the only problem I ever experienced was in the Blood 4/10 in loosing the terrifying amount of one Hammer II when blitzing the site.

That said, the Sansha 4/10 indeed is a pain in the ass with the TD but managable in a turret battlecruiser that can actually tank the damage or a drone cruiser. It's not like the Sansha's tracking/damage projection and speed is particularly great, it just takes a while to complete the site.

Also, please name a non-T3 turret based ship that was excellent or as good as drone/missile boats for Sansha and to a lesser extent Serpentis exploration before the patch.

Missiles and Drones have been the go-to ships for a fairly long time in exploration, that's not new. It's not like people were tearing through the 4/10 sites in Thoraxes and Stabbers before the patch to begin with.

One thing I have to note though is that the performance gap between cruisers/battlecruisers and T3s has gotten larger with the latest changes as people on the lower end of technology are forced to specialize even more.

Being forced into certain ships by game design is not really a good thing and should be adressed, however saying that low grade exploration is flat out impossible isn't right either.

That said, do I have to be part of your corp to get hands on that 50 bil bounty for doing the Sansha 4/10 in a non missile boat?

Expensive? what? Not everyone needs to fly pimpend tech 3 ships to explore.

Instead of wanting to do all, you should rather find your niche and find out what works for you. For instance you can take one of the t1 scanning frigates, slap on a probe launcher, codebreaker and some drones and run off to find radar sites in highsec. After one site you will probably have earned back what you paid for that tiny ship ... and if you are a new player you can make some good isk for very little required skillpoints.

Then if you get annoyed by the farming hordes in highsec, you might just as well take your favourite t1 cruiser with cloak and mwd and find a nice lowsec area to explore in. You won't be doing all, but again sticking to radars and maybe the occasional easier combat site can make some good isk for the price of a t1 cruiser.

And so on. Work your way up and find out what is okay and what not ... people seem to want if all spelled out for them, rather than just going out there and maybe taking a challenge.

Now for nullsec solo stuff, there might be some merit to OPs question. Personally i haven't been exploring in null for a while and when i did it was in some very quiet area that i would often be alone for most jumps. I do however still fly my ishtar in my lowsec activities - and i must say i generally do not have much problems since the new rats behaviour (apart from not using my paper tiger tornado anymore, which is a different matter but okay). I generally only use light drones or sentries. Yes frigate size npcs have developed a liking for my light drones, but i either just snipe them when they are still in comfortable sentry range, or i watch my drones and recall the one when it gets attacked (after a while the frigs seem to lose interest anyway, i think) ... sometimes i am too slow and lose one or two, but the ishtars drone bay is large and i have enough spares. Sentries are generally not a problem for me, they very rarely get attacked if i have aggro on my ship.

Again i would probably just advise to take yer ishtar and find out how it is now.

50b? No offense, but your corp is lacking skilled/greedy ppl.

Should I join your corp for that 50b? Surely a proteus should handle it, just not in a speedy manner...

Please tell me what's so great about the "new" ai, that rats switch target and kill drones, THAT IS IT.

Open the offer to anyone as long as they have a video. I have been farming all kinds of plexes just fine. I could run a 4/10 with a proteus no problem.

It's funny because nobody has the issues with the same AI in wspace and are dirty rich as a result.

HTFU, refit and

Ishtar up...

Wait passive Rattlesnake can work too.

SENTRIES are the way to go

I cruise missile'd 3 web scram frigs yesterday. I wont lie it was the most exciting 8-10minutes of my life.

Pre ret id have been warping back to the station to turn in at about the 10min mark.

Um, that was actually what the post was about. Is it still possible to do the same level of plex with an Ishtar, and if not, what is an alternative?