Ships & Modules

Well you're not gonna find any rats in data or relic sites in lowsec for the most part, so Buzzard should be fine. I do all of my exploration in a Buzzard, the only sites I can't handle with it are sleeper data and relic sites which you only find in wormhole space.

For Sleeper data or relic sites you'll probably need something like a Stratios or a t3 cruiser, but honestly those sites aren't really as worthwhile as the pirate faction sites which are unguarded.

An astero will not be able to handle the rats in WH sleeper sites. C1/C2 sites could be done in a battlecruiser. C3 and higher you will need a group of people, or a rattlesnake, tengu, etc.

I used a drake for C1/C2 sites, then a rattlesnake for C3, above that I always did them in fleets.

For WH data/relic sites you bring a combat ship in, clear it out, then a salvager in to get the wrecks, then maybe hack the cans. Honestly the loot/salvage from the sleepers guarding the site are more valuable than what you get hacking the cans themselves.

So did you use the Drake as an exploration ship too? Hmmm, looks like it's not that much expensive and I almost ready to fly it. I'll definitely consider your advice, thanks!


So it's still a maybe, I see. Well, damn. That SoE ship is a beauty v_v

If you want to go for sleeper sites in wormholes, i'd advise against it. It's not exploration... Sure, they're profitable, but most ISK comes from killing and salvaging sleepers, not cans themselves.
Sure, Astero can run C1 sites, Stratios C3 sites, T3 can do C4 sites. But again, it's not "sleepers protecting cans", it's "half-empty cans that happen to be near sleepers".

Now as for ships themselves:
Cov-ops are "bad" for actual exploration. They have the highest scanning bonuses, ability to easily fit Expanded Launchers, covops cloak of course... They certainly have their uses. No arguing about that. For example, im using Helios with full mids of arrays and scanning rigs to scan down WH chains as fast as possible.
As for individual Covops, you'll want more mid slots, while low and high slots don't matter much. That means Helios and Buzzard is superior to Anathema and Cheetah. Then you look at stats like agility and fitting room. And when you do, you'll find out Helios is superior to Buzzard, as Buzzard suffers from very anemic PG and outright terrible agility. Heck, Buzzard has 7.5s base align time (5.1s with max skills), even cruisers have better aligns than that. However, it's not worth wasting 9 days or so for another racial frigate which you may not use.

Astero has 12.5% less scan strength and is unable able to use combat probes without fit that cripples it's capabilities.
HOWEVER
Astero is far better for avoiding PVP (agility & speed), can fight back if they get into PVP (actual tank, dps, ECM drones), it can run sleeper CACHES (everything except Superior's archive). It can be used to kill other explorers as they steal your loot.

Stratios... It's weird Astero (but slightly better looking). It has better combat capabilities but worse agility/speed, which is the main reason i wouldn't use it. I'd use it for combat sites over anything else.

T3 are probably the safest and most powerful ships for exploration, however losing one is huge.

I don't do any WH exploration, but isn't CCP handing out more Gnosis battlecruisers in November?

https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/celebratory-rewards-coming-for-november-expansion/
This announcement was released 2 weeks ago.

It's not 100% clear to me that every player will get one, the wording in that announcement could be read that some players will be randomly picked to get one.

Thoughts on the Gnosis as a WH exploration ship?

Nah, not caches, I won't be able to do them for now. Ordinary Relic and Data in WH, which are sometimes populated with drones (Awakened for example)

I still can't figure out how you evaluate difficulty levels of WHs and Sites, even though I've studied all related articles on EveUni Wiki, darn.

Thank you, Petranese, it's much clearer now!

I assume Gnosis is the one that is to be issued by the CCP under some kind of a special offer. What about Astero, then? Has good bonuses and can fit a covert cloak (expensive, I know, but I can afford one... For now.)

Astero is THE BEST hull to use for exploring in hostile space. It's extremely versatile ship, fast, agile, tanky, with cloak and exploration bonuses. Its able to field full flight of light drones, it has the toughest drones of all frigs, can carry 3 sets of them.

It's basically immune to stealth bombers and able to run from anything else. Heck, it can even fight dictors!
It's 50m per hull, but it would be worth it even if it was 150m per hull.

Stratios is tougher, packs more punch. However it requires more SP and more importantly, Stratios is much less agile and slower.

Astero can warp in less than 2s, so locking him on gate is very hard if not impossible even without cloak. If you get into bubble you can overheat MWD which puts you at 5km/s or so.

Stratios can't do this. Its still fast and agile cruiser, but not nearly as much as Astero. That makes Stratios more of "combat ship with scanning bonuses" than "exploration ship". It's similar to Nestor and Gnosis

Agility and speed is very important in hostile space. For example, T3 has 5s sensor recalibration, that means it can't initiate targeting for 5 seconds after dropping cloak. Locking Stratios could last like 2s...
So if Stratios aligns in 5s, it will escape as T3 requires 7s to apply tackle.
However, this requires perfect response time by Stratios player. Even if Stratios does everything right, T3 can bump him and delay his warp by 3-4 seconds, which means dead Stratios.

Now, Astero warps in 2s, and it takes 4s instead of 2s to lock it. Bumping Astero with T3 is almost impossible, so Astero has 7s to react and gtfo.

That means you'll have more than three times as much response time to flee than in Stratios... and that's pretty huge

One more thing: there's no " natural predator" for Astero. It can easily run from anything larger than itself, fight most frigs/dessies and survive long enough for ECM drones to work against anything else

The hacking sites guarded by sleepers are most often not worth as much as the normal pirate hacking sites.
Unless you are into the indy side of researching and producing t3ds or t3cs or got a ocd for un opened containers
The best isk in the blue loot and little in the salvage.