EVE New Citizens Q&A

Exploration scales in speed, success rate and safety with the skills, expierience, and to a certain degree with the ship/equipment, but the cap to equipment for non-combat exploration is IMO somewhere in the 30-50m range for a covops frig or explo ceptor assuming near perfect skills. More expensive equipment won't increase the KPIs above much further to justify the price tag. The story is different for combat related exploration.

I would say part of the reason to go down the Covert Ops (T2 exploration frigates) road is that it also enables the use of Stealth Bombers that seem to be good ships for hunting other explorers. Destroying other explorers ships will net you loot (possibly higher Tier exploration stuff like Sisters Probes/Launchers) not to mention it also removes competitors for the sites you want to run. Also the fewer explorers that are selling stuff in your part of the universe the bigger your payout will be when you sell your loot.

A covert ops frigate with covert cloak and T2 fit will cost roughly 30 million ISK, you can spend a lot more for a faction fit. Low/Null/WH exploration sites are a lot more valuable than highsec but only if you survive to get your loot to market. Talk to the people at https://www.eve-scout.com/signal-cartel/ if you are interested in pursuing a career in exploration.

what you want is the SoE frig, Astero I think it is named.
It cost a lot but all them midslots and lows realy do make a diference.

Like J'Poll said get the idea of progression out of your head. This game does not have a gear progression like other MMOs and your skill points figure into things at a much much lower rate than levels in other games. So what you are doing now with hacking sites won't change all that much as you skill up. The cov ops cloak on the T2 ships is a nice improvement and you can look at the ship description to see what more it gives you for hacking but other than that it won't change a whole bunch.

One thing that I can add is that not all hacking cans are equal and the ones with the better loot are typically harder to hack. So if you are having an 80% success rate it's possible that some of the 20% that you are failing on had some extremely valuable loot in them.

Eve is a PvP sandbox. So the real engaging content you have to make yourself. The only type of "progression' that exists in this game is your personal knowledge and experience. You can go from being an F1 monkey in someone else's fleet to being the guy going out there and creating content for all the other F1 monkey's waiting for you to give the go signal.

Which NOBODY can do.

As exploration is a RNG profession, what ship you fly, what your skills are etc have NO impact on what items are inside a site. That is all "pre-spawned" by a RNG system, all you do is get the goodies out.

So, it's impossible to even get a fixed income on exploration, let alone compare ship A to B because:

* You have to get lucky with what you find
* You have to get your items to the market
* Market value depends regional and over the course of time

You need to open your mind for all dimensions of the exploration game, being able to covops is only one, and IMO not the main point. For example I have max probing and hacking skills and guess what ... never fly a covert ops ships for hacking sites. With maxed skills the hull bonus doesn't contribute anymore to a better hacking speed and the slightly slower probing can be over-compensated by three other factors, higher warp speed, agility and bubble immunity, hence I fly insta-warp 10 AU/s interceptors for relic exploration in deep nullsec. Also sometimes I fly a variant with point and guns, to kill other explorers in T2 ships to spice up the game. The 30m for the interceptor is totally worth it as you are nearly uncatchable and let you scan whole regions for the good sites in very short time.

So, pick the tool you like flying, and is convenient to use for the job. Keep in mind what ships can do what, experiment, and you will know when to switch. Also you should set yourself goals on what you want to burn the ISK you earn, so that you get a feeling of what you need to make and what risks you can take.

Here's the thing...

Exploration is (more or less) based on a Random Number Generator. The ship you fly will not increase the odds of getting loot and/or the loot value (at least, not directly).
Instead, those factors change based on what area of space you are flying. Generally speaking, the lower the security rating of a system, the better **odds** (key word here) you will find and/or get more quality stuff.
But this comes with a tradeoff; lower security systems open you up to more "interference" from others. Specifically; you can be attacked and blown up by another player.


This is where your ship comes in.

Your Heron is a Tech 1 exploration ship. According to you, it does its job admirably.
The Tech 2 version of this ship is the Buzzard. It gains the ability to cloak (with the right module and skills), is faster in-warp, and can hack/scan/probe a little faster and more effectively. However, it is a fair bit more sluggish at sub-light speeds and an order of magnitude more expensive.

What this means is that the Buzzard can hang out in more hostile environments for longer whereas the Heron may not be able to (because people can see the Heron on scan and chase it more easily). The Buzzard can also hack/scan/probe a little faster. The tradeoffs are that it can be more easily caught when not cloaked up and your wallet will hurt A LOT more if it is blown up.


It is a judgement call on whether the upgrades and tradeoffs of a more expensive ship are worthwhile within the context of the situation.
Loot alone is not, and cannot, be the determining factor in why you should upgrade a ship. Rather, you have to ask yourself if the extra abilities will allow you to be more effective overall (examples: warping around, keeping safe, holding your own when attacked, etc).

Speaking personally... if you can do something, anything, in a cheaper ship... do it with the cheaper ship.

This is quite true.

You can probe things down in both a Heron and a Buzzard... but only the latter offers the ability to probe without having to be paranoid and constantly looking over your shoulder (at least, not as much).

I love my Helios. I can probe and back almost lazily. I think speed and a peace of mind is what you get for 30-80x the price. Only T1 exploration Frigate I use anymore is the Astero and the only T2 I use is a Helios.