EVE New Citizens Q&A

It's role bonuses are what set it apart from the other T1 exploration frigates. Right out the box it's like being able to fly a Covert Ops.

Ofc the catch is its price tag.

It's the quickest covops train,from day one You can be cloaking in one in about a week as it's prerequisites are much less than the t2 frigates.

It's also quite a good frigate when trained fully.

That, and it can actually defend itself reasonably well. Any cloaky bomber attacking you is going to have a bad day, whereas a CovOps frig is probably boned in that situation.

Personally, I'd advise practicing a bit in a Magnate/Imicus or whatever. Get a feel for staying safe and how to get around, then jump into the Astero.

The Imicus is the T1 Exploration frigate, Cheetah is the CovOps frig. The opinion that follows is based purely on Theorycrafting in EFT and experience in other ships, so take it with a grain of salt.

The Cheetah's big selling point as far as I can see is it's speed while cloaked, for exploration that seems to me to be of fairly limited use. When it comes to getting warp ins for cloaky ganks/ grid manipulation in fleet fights, that's far more useful.

If I were to use one for exploration I'd go with this:

[Cheetah, Cheetah fit]

Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Relic Analyzer II
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Acquisition Array I

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher I
Salvager I

Small Emission Scope Sharpener I
Small Ancillary Current Router I

You're only as safe as the amount of attention you're paying to your surroundings. Spam that dscan button like an 80s cokehead and make sure you can see your overview while hacking cans. If you see ANYTHING on the overview that can shoot, run. The Astero as said earlier has more options in such a situation, it can defend itself from most other frigates. However, I've had success exploring in a T1 Explo frig without a covops cloak. Made my life a little more difficult, but nothing some experience, patience and a dash of luck can't solve.

EDIT: to more directly answer your question. If you can already fly it, go with the Cheetah over the T1 versions (Imicus, Probe, Magnate, Heron). It's only a bit more expensive and can pay for itself in one or two Relic sites.

They tend to be worth more yes (as far as I can tell), but I'm sure you can make it big with datas as well, up to you really. Relics tend to get cleared quickly compared to datas, so it's a trade off. Personally I've never bothered with datas, but that's just me.

I got mixed up and thought the imicus was the gallente Cov ops ship and not the T1 aha c:

The Imicus' pudgy tea-sipping hippie brother the Helios can throw a T2 small drone in the face of anyone that gives them trouble, which is often useful when dealing with NPCs but significantly less of a difference since defenders got stripped out of a lot of the exploration sites. It's also fairly unique among the T2 ships for having even that token level of offense.

Imicus, however, isn't a covops at all, and it has a bandwidth of twenty, meaning that even though you can only fit a standard cloak you can also hit people that bug you with damn near a full flight of damage-bonused drones, without reducing your effectiveness as a scanner-boat in the slightest. Also, as a T1 ship, it's cheap to the point that you might accidentally buy a stack of 100 when you meant to buy 1 and not notice until a week later.

That doesn't necessarily mean you need an astero, though. Warping cloaked is kind of pointless if you're just running sites, you sit still in one place while probing, then you have to decloak in the actual site.

Warp cloaked is primarily an offensive measure when you're trying to sneak up on someone, either to straight-up kill them (stealth bomber, Astero, or about half the covert cruisers) or to lock them down and drop your friends on top of them (the other half of the covert cruisers, covops ships, etc). Its defensive value is negligible, it'll do nothing to protect you if you're the one potentially getting jumped.

In fact, if you're using it for PvE it's a bit counterproductive, because an Imicus running a data site isn't worth the time and trouble, whereas a helios or astero is a lovely little expensive kill for your KB stats, which isn't getting a damned thing from that covops cloak while it's hovering there playing with the hacking minigame.

Warping cloaked is handy for getting past gate camps, clean camps that aren't bubbled at least.

If all you want is to do data/relic sites, the astero isnt needed, since it cant tank or kill sleepers in thoose sites anyway, well perhaps some c1 sites, but thats about it.
Astero is really only needed if you wanna do PVP and catch people in sites or do lower level combat sites. If all you wanna do is run the data/relic site and be gone, covert ops will do a better job, as it has better scanning bonusses then the astero and can warp and align much faster.

I can highly recommend the Helios, because of the high number of mid slots and the pricetag of covert ops frigs arent big, compared to the astero.

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[Helios, Null/WH exploration]

Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

5MN Microwarpdrive II
Relic Analyzer I
Data Analyzer I
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I

Sisters Core Probe Launcher, Sisters Core Scanner Probe
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Small Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade II

Price: ~70m
Warps at 10 AU, aligns in 3,2 secs, top speed at 3299 km/s and has some amazing scanning bonusses
EHP isnt important, if you get caught you die anyway, hence fast align- and warpspeed.

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Ive used this fit here alot, never ever got caught in any gate camp. Just remember to do the MWD trick, where you circle the MWD one time and instant cloak, you will be way out of bubbles before anyone is even remotely close to you or has a chance of decloaking you.
The warp speed also insured that 85%+ of people arent able to keep up with you, if you decide to burn systems to get away.

Alternatively, you could swap the Data Analyzer I for another Scan Rangefinding Array I, if you dont intend to do data sites anyway, but i liked having the option to do both kinds of sites and you already have really good scanning bonusses on the ship :)
Also, it can carry one drone.... One!! So i never use drones on it hehe, as one combat drone wont help you and one ECM drone wont do anything either. If you really want to utilize the drone bay, stuff a Salvage Drone I in there and hope you come across wrecks left behind :)

Just my 2 cents.