Ships & Modules

big advantage of the astero is that it can chase off any other exploration frigate.

The Astero's advantages are its slightly lower skill requirements (though they amount to less than a week of training IIRC) and its combat ability - not only the damage of a full flight of drones but also quite a substantial tank.
The Covert Ops advantages are their greater scanning and hacking ability and their shorter recloak delay... and their lower cost.

While the combat ability of the Astero is useful in some circumstances and it does allow a pilot to run sites which the CovOps cannot it is not sufficient to run the majority of combat sites or even (by my understanding) the lowest end combat/hacking sites. In reality therefore it is less well considered than such ability would be in a more directly combat oriented ship.

The Covert Ops strengths on the other hand allow a pilot to find sites more quickly and to complete them more quickly, reducing their exposure to possible hostiles...

Hence the Astero is often considered a mere stepping stone to the Covert Ops - though they do still have their place...

I can only add that properly fitted Astero has great gate-camp escaping capabilities - align and warpout times less than 2 seconds!

Probably so, AFAIR.

Covops. Asteros are far overused by explorers. They can be good little PvP frigates, but at 80+ mil a pop they're hardly isk efficient in that role. At best you're scaring off covops ships from exploration sites, but that's not exactly wise since you're just opening yourself up to being ganked by their friends or even just them re-shipping and popping back into the site to eat you.

I think the main reason people fly them is for the bling factor, they look cool and it's easier than skilling into a proper covop ship.

I can use either but tend to fly around high sec doing the data/relic sites in an Astero. The only reason is the better tank for when I run a Limited Sleeper Cache. It is far more forgiving if you mess up.

I have not fitted one to be able to fully tank the site but just a simple tank with plates and a DC lets me survive when the security can explodes.

Astero Advantages

• Shiny
• Most Agile
• Excellent Capacitor (seriously outclasses all covops frigates)
• Largest Cargo Space
• Tankier
• Drones
• 3 Rig slots

Astero Disadvantages

• Expensive
• Less Scan Strength at Max Skill
• 15 second recloak delay
• Harder to fit Expanded Probe Launcher
• Slower Warp Speed
• Lower Calibration

Unlike what a prior poster said, it has the exact same hacking str bonus as any covops.

Training time wise, the racial frigate skills aren't a huge deal. You could skip training the covops skill (generally a 4 is required for fitting), fly an Astero for a bit while training some general hacking/scanning/ship skills, then finish up with covops to give you the option of flying an Astero or a normal covops frigate.

Once you have the option, the choice of what to fly is up to you/you're wallet.