Ships & Modules

I would strongly suggest an Atron or a Rifter, Breacher, Punisher, Tristan or similar T1 frigate hull for your early forays into PvP.

If this is your first time actively seeking PvP, know this: You Are Going To Die. A Lot.

Save the Orthrus and similar such finery until you learn some of the fundamental lessons you need to learn that cannot be learned in any other way than to try it out (and fail. repeatedly.)

You may wish to spend a month or so with RvB.

In that case, Orthrus or Cynabal are both pretty solid.

The Curse generally struggles to find fights (people see a curse ongrid, RUN!)

It's probably still a good idea to have a mate or two along with you.

Not sure what your options look like, but if you plan of flying the orthrus and gila you might see some issues with players simply not wanting to fight, or wanting to fight on terms that you find acceptable. A big part of solo PVP, at least I have found, is how engagable your opponents perceive you to be.

That said, the gila and orthrus have some of the widest engagement profiles of any ships in the game, particularly when they use the ASB+LSE fits. These fits give you more ehp than conventional buffer fits can, good resistance to high alpha damage, a reduced chance of wasting valuable cap charges, a higher chance of surviving until the end of your reload cycle, reduced vulnerability to cap warfare, and performance nearly as great as active deadspace fits.

The 100mn Navy Vexor is currently an extremely strong solo ship, and much less pricey than a pirate cruiser. 100mn fits are much more difficult to fly, and I suggest that you give it some practice runs with friends before you try it out, once you've mastered them, though, they'll allow you a surprising degree of range control and damage mitigation, even under webs.

The cookie cutter omen navy issue is also a great choice, though you'll find it's not as useful against ships larger than the destroyer class as the above mentioned fits because of it's comparatively weak DPS and tank. It's fast enough that grid manipulation becomes trivial vs slower opponents and will allow you to effectively separate gangs to pick of the light ships that you can kill easily with scorch's excellent tracking.

These are just a few examples of well known fits, but don't take that to mean that you can't go out of the box. I've roamed extensively in t1 battleships solo and had great success. Other I people I know have used 100mn blengus, vargurs, dual prop firetails, beam slicers, dual rep thoraxes and a hundred other ships effectively.

I suggest that you join the in game channel Bringing Solo Back to get in touch with a community dedicated to solo and small gang play. They will be a great source for new fits and tactics, as well as places to hunt. Good luck and I hope to see you out there some day.

Also, watch suitonia's videos. He's got a great way of explaining not just fits, but how to set up for a fight, what to be looking for, and how to analyze your current situation.

Thanks for all the advice.
I'm pretty much looking at Worm, and then out of Stratios, Gila and Orthrus. Can't really decide between them as each seems to be able to take down the other.
There was a question posed of what meta is in my area. I pretty much roam so was looking for most versatile for that.