Warfare & Tactics

Yes, thank you for your contribution.

Now back to the thread, it depends on your targets. If the explorers you're preying on are the type to have little or no ways to fight you back then the pretty much the only thing you need are launchers and 2 scrams to deal with their MWD and warp core stabs. The Magnate and Astero can potentially get 4 stabs on their ship, meaning 2 scram still wont be enough.

If the ship uncloaks or approaches a can but then you don't see any animation of them beginning to hack or analyze that probably means they filled up with WCS and now take forever just to target the cans -- if they are cargo scanning a can much more than 10k away they probably have few/no stabs. Watch for them to use MWD+cloak. See if they cargo scan before hacking. Do they go to both data and relic sites or do they always skip a type of site in each system? When you watch their ship does it seem likely that they have nanos and could be difficult to lock in time if they keep themselves aware? These can tell you how they're fit and thus give you info on if you can kill them, what modules you'll need and how much risk you are putting yourself in.

Some quick info:
Magnet has 40m drone bay, 15 bandwidth, 3 high slots
Heron 35m drone bay, 15 band, 3 high
Imicus 40, 20, 3
probe 35, 15, 3
Astero 75, 25, 2

Helios 5, 5, 2
Other T2 ships: 0, 0, 3

Due to the increased drone capacity and potential to fit more guns (especially if they fit no prototype cloak) can make t1 frigs actually a decent threat and better than their t2 counterparts in this regard, or could even be more slippery if they field ECM drones (most do not afaik.)

So you might fit a hound something like

3x launcher, cloak, probe launcher
2 scram, MWD
nanos/DC/ballistic controls
Rigs whatever. --Gravity cap would be nice in most cases. But if you plan on scanning down sites with a diff ship and bookmarking a few systems then jumping between them looking for targets on SB get something that provides tank or gank. Would free up a high slot -- you could put a gun in that slot if you wish. Other potential items could include webs, sebos, and a number of other modules that might be worth it for your situation.