Ships & Modules

If you want a ship that can do it all, get a Tengu and appropriate sub-systems.

Are your purposes really that intense? Or did you mean Intents?

Tengu is good for exploration can be fit for stealth as well. Manticore is good for stealth death dealing. Stealth bombers are not as versatile as what you are wanting. Good for PVP not so much for PVE kind of a waste of ammo to use one in a lvl1 or 2 mission. It is ok to have more than one ship.The tengu will tear up missions and do most of what you are wanting to do.

With only 5 mil sp you should look into using some t1 hulls for missions for now maybe.

If you like exploration you should train up the t2 covops scanning frigates. After Odyssey I have a feeling that those ships will be the king of exploration. You will be able to do the all mag and radar sites in low and null. The traveling with a covops in low is really safe and if you learn to break gatecamps it is relatively safe in null too.

Cheap ship, big reward. Also shared skill requirements with bombers.

I always felt like the cost of the t3 cruisers closed off more options than their versatility opened up.

If you like using drones then arb into pilgrim is a very versatile platform for lowsec work. Wormholes need something a little heavier, but with good drone skills a Domi is hard to beat for ISK / effectiveness. And battleships fit to move quickly and with a 100mn mwd / cloak are actually very stealthy.

If you dont like drones then something like a Vigilance or Deimos or a fleet issue stabber could be fit with a cloak. These are fast, hard hitting ships and I have often wondered how far you could push them as far as PVE content.

The "do everything ship" is obviously the t3 line, but they do have drawbacks and there is a lot of fun to be had thinking a bit outside of the box. Any ship can make use of a cloak and fit scan rigs.

I think the more important question is what skills you want to train, once that's done you can try out some different things and see what you prefer. Get your core standard done, choose a cruiser to get to 5 and a medium weapon to train to t2, and go from there.

Tengu is going to be a swiss army knife for you. They are more expensive than most hulls but they are well worth the investment.

If you want to cross-train into another race I reccommend Amarr. A HAM Legion is also viable and you won't have to make an intial skill investment in turrets to make it work. For the most part.

Before sinking into the cost of a Strat Cruiser, may I suggest looking at a Pilgrim? Check it out, see if it has the fitting for what you want to do. If you can dock your can swap out some fits to move between pure combat and exploration fits, but it covers a lot of the bases you want.

At the risk of angering the restless purists, you might look at the new Gnosis, also. It can't handle your stealth requirement, but it might we worth looking at.

Edit: after reading Zappity's post, I assumed you were talking about exploration outside high sec. For high sec exploration just about anything with enough mids will do nicely. The requirement for stealth isn't really necessary in high sec.

You assumed right Ginger. But I'm taking my time to get there of course. I looked at the pilgrim but it would take a month to train just to be able to fly it. I looked at the Caldari equivalent but the 'flavour' of the ship really isn't what I'm looking for.

If the Buzzard can be equipped to explore and scan/hack AND be able to to take out rats ok then I will start training for that immediately... But I'm not sure of it's capability. Still very much a learner here. I plan on learning as I go but I'm trying to find the right direction first.

Zappity, that is a good idea and I will definitely look into that eventually.

Ishtar for all PVE related business. Tengu if youre a sheep. but Ishtar > Tengu for nullsec exploration due to much lower cost of ship loss : proft ratio.

but we can also assume that you fly neither...