Ships & Modules

if you are looking at hisec, salvager, analyzer and codebreaker are not really worth it, or at least that's what i've heard. as for ships, ishtar is good, tengu is good if your wallet allows it.

I've found high-sec mag sites to be pretty disappointing, but radars are certainly worth doing - I once made about 22 mil for a few minutes of work, though that's been the very high end and is not a representational average.

What I've been doing is running around in an Ishkur, then sprinting back for a Tengu or Ishtar (or Drake in one case) when I find a 3/4 or a 4/4, and a Retriever the few times I've been bored enough to mine a grav site. Running in a Frigate will give you access to every site, and the Ishkur can be fit as a swiss army knife - and it can kite a Serpentis Watch (just don't expect to complete it in a reasonable time without fleet support).

If you're just starting out, I recommend a frigate swiss army knife - pack everything, try everything, and then refine your fit and ship to the activities you prefer to engage in.

There are a number of cruiser hulls that can be fit for the job, namely the Arbitrator, Vexor (to a lesser extent), and the T3s. A covert ops is great for straight up scanning, but if you want to ram around highsec jumping through every acceleration gate you find, I've found the Ishkur is hard to beat.

Here's what I use:

Ishkur, Swiss Army Knife

Highs:

Sisters Core Probe Launcher, 8x Sisters Core Scanner Probes
(Total scan strength of 81.9896 points with my skills, and really the only bling you need)
Salvager II
2x Light Neutron Blaster II (Null S / Antimatter S) - I tried railguns but found that just about everything I need to shoot is within blaster range. DPS is 163 with my skills - 5x hobs and Null.

Mids:

1mn Afterburner II
Codebreaker I (Can't use II yet)
Analyzer I (See above)

Lows:

Small Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
2x Capacitor Power Relay II

Rigs:
2x Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade

Drones:
5x Hobgoblin IIs with the remainder to taste - typically one small armor repair drone to top off dinged up drones on occasion.

Cap stable with afterburner, rep, and guns. Enough cap life with one exploration module active that cap isn't really an issue.

It's not a DPS monster, but it tanks reasonably well against Blood, Sansha, and Serpentis. Rogue Drones not so much (actually lost one during an escalation, fortunately the launcher dropped, the probes were out and I got 20m in t2 salvage from the wreck), and I haven't tried it vs. Angels or Guristas yet.

I've been using this fit for a couple of weeks now and if I'd sold off all of the modules and items I've found (instead of hoarding them for a rainy day) it would have paid for itself three or four times by now.

Personally on my exploration character I use a Legion with the exploration and drone subsystems (for the mids).

I'm also using a T2 pulse setup, but....I think I'll swap out to beams for range as it's PVE.

Highsec radar sites *can* be worth doing in 0.5, mag sites (even after a recent tiny buff) aren't worth doing in my eyes, mostly because some are ridiculously hard to scan down yet offer bugger all.

I was using a Covops + Combat ship but the T3 is just faster at it considering it can scan as well as the covops AND then do combat sites.