EVE New Citizens Q&A

Typing the name of the site into google will get you any one of several websites that list the contents of a given exploration site so that you can know what exactly to bring.

Generally speaking, I tend to hit high-sec sites with a cruiser, just from sheer laziness, but the standard is to bring in a destroyer or a well-fit frigate, and that's usually the better choice for this category of anomaly if you're relying on turrets.

Sansha are shield tankers (weakest to EM, Thermal's not bad) and use lasers (EM/Thermal damage). I would venture that if you fit your catalyst with blasters and good propulsion you could wipe the stuff you're listing out pretty fast, it's not as optimal as a laser coercer for sansha but should be more than enough DPS. Twenty minutes or so at worst.

A couple other things I picked up here:
-- "dropped my entire shield": Gallente are not really natural shield tanks, you'll generally want to do armor
-- as a corollary to the above, using active armor (a small armor repairer) is usually good for PvE
-- The Imicus is a good scanning ship, but not much of a combat ship. you'll generally want to grab something else to run sites
-- Whether you've got a problem sort of depends on what you mean by "a long time". Twenty minutes? That's fairly normal for a newer player clearing a high-sec site. Several hours? Yeah, we need to go over what you're doing in detail to find your problem.

I meant as soon as I finished warping in, the first few hits wiped out my shield and then into my armor. With my Catalyst it was able to tank it much longer while running armor repairer. I had to wrap out then back in a few times though.

Also the refuge is an anomally not a signature, it can be found by any ship using the on board scanner and does not require a probing ship like an imicus.

Okay, lots of problems here :)

Refuge is not a signature, so probes etc are not needed and in any case it is usually best to change ships (or change mods on ships) from prober to combat ship to run sites, especially while your skills are low.

Never dual tank with both armour and shield reps, it is self defeating. Focus on one.

Never have empty slots if you can help it, especially not tanking slots.

Fit mods that boost resistance to the rats you will be facing.

If you are using short range blasters you need a propulsion mod (i.e. afterburner) to keep you in range of the enemy. If you don't have a prop mod you need long range weapons like rails.

salvager is a bit pointless, at this level salvage is worth very little and you can always refit to salvager and come back if you want.

Basically your catalyst needs a small rep, at least one if not 2 resist mods specific to the rats you will face (in this case em/therm), an afterburner and a set of guns (use electron blasters if you can fit a rack of ions). Any spare slots fit cap mods. If you can afford it fit either auxilliary nano pump rigs to boost reps or damage rigs.

Yes, though i would use some sort of damage specific hardening mod instead of the damage control if you know what sort of rat you will be facing. Against sansha for exmple use an armor thermic plating. Get rigs as well, they are great.

Run a Google search for a program called EFT (Eve Fitting Tool).

You can play with fittings till your hearts content and get a rough idea what might work. Obviously you wont know what truely works until you dont get blown up.