Missions & Complexes

Hi! I've got two accounts, one's built for shoowing, mostly PvE, with a fair emmount of combat skills and mainly flies battleships, while my other has all the exploration type skills. I've been using them in high sec for probing and so on, and while its earning money, I was earning more just doing solo Lv4s. So I've been thinking about making the move to lowsec to make more money. I've got a couple of areas in mind which are pretty close to where I've been missioning anyway, which don't have any recent pod kills and a fairly low ship kill number, so it seems safe enough, though equally I know the risks of low sec and am going to be preparing appropriately, the main question I have is what ships to use. I'm thinking a ship with scanning bonuses and so on for one character, and a PvE combat fitted cruiser for the other? The scanning ship would also be filled with guns wherever spare as well so it could protect itself if required, though I'd rather run than engage if possible.

The main question I have is, what ships to use? I have a well fitted Crusader but I'm not sure how well that would work in these situations. And would a Pilgrim work for scanning? It seems to be a very good ship for solo exploration, so adding a second ship just for protection would surely be better? Especially since my scanning character doesn't have too much in the way of combat skills yet. Also, both characters area Amarr, and the combat char can only use lasers, so amarr missile ships aren't much use.

Thanks!

Thanks for the quick reply! I've got rangefinding at III at the moment, but not long until it reaches IV.
And I hadn't considered going for T3, but I can see how that would work. I wasn't going to be flying a BS around, was thinking more along the lines of a cruiser or frigate of some type, hence the crusader mention.
Ideally, I wouldn't see any combat besides that from the rats in the sites, its more of a deterrant than anything. Plus, hopefully having two ships in the one place would be enough to scare off the opportunist who is trying for an easy kill.

Low sec exploration is an interesting activity. I can't say if it pays better than high sec lvl4's but I don't think it pays less. Regardless, you want something that makes a good swiss army knife ship. It needs salvagers, a codebreaker and an analyzer at the same time. Obviously you need to be able to kill the rats as well. These vary from frigates to cruisers for profession sites. A pilgrim can fill this role just fine but I favor the higher dps of the ishtar. It may not have the cov ops cloak, but the mwd + ordinary cloak trick works just fine in low sec. With this type of setup, I recommend your second toon stick to probing. So a cov ops frig is your best bet as they have the best probing bonuses. Alternatively a gangboost t3 with the probing subsystem is also a good choice, though they don't probe quite as quickly as the cov ops frigs do.

If you plan to run the combat sites in addition to profession sites, then you'll need a proper combat ship and a pilgrim won't cut it (ishtar is fine though). On the amarr side, I recommend a gunboat legion without the cov ops subsystem. You can certainly fit that subsystem to move around, but you need to swap it out before going into a combat site. The legion may not have a stellar amount of dps (650-ish max) but it has decent range, good mobility and can tank the sites (5-6 of 10) pretty easily. Once again I suggest having the prober alt be just that, a prober alt in a cov ops. The legion does not make a good swiss army knife ship however. It needs those high slots for guns, you can't afford to be tossing salvagers there and codebreakers/analyzers in the mids. For the profession sites, the drone boats really are the best at them.

Cov ops frigs warp faster and are more agile. They also have some additional probing bonuses. The big thing is the warp speed, when you're going system to system looking for worthwhile sites, 13au/s vs 3.5au/s or whatever the base speeds are is not insignificant.

The time spent moving around is part of the probing process. Generally, a low sec explorer will setup shop in a vacant system and then probe it daily, sort of like corps moving into w-space. You'll probe your system and those within a few jumps of it. The added speed of the cov ops frig shaves a few minutes off the process assuming you drop your probes at safe spots rather than on the gate. You're also likely to poke your head into wh's, in those you'll be warping around to check that the entire system is genuinely empty before you go in to run sites. Some of those systems are 8au across, others 50+. Typical seems to be about 30-40au, so you'll be doing 2-3 warp to planets to do your snooping. That's a lot of time in warp in a t3, not so much in a cov ops frig.

That said, a gang booster t3 is pretty handy. If you do one or the other, I recommend the t3. If you are willing to move both out, I recommend you do the probing/scouting with the cov ops and then switch into the t3 for boosting once you're ready to start running sites. And as already mentioned, you don't need those boosts to run the profession sites. Those are super easy. The only time such boosts are useful is when you start soloing 5 or 6 of 10 sites or dive into a c3+ wh.

I just started to use something similar to your second fit on a pilgrim for low-sec combat, mag and radar sites and it works like a dream. The damage output is plenty from the Hammerhead IIs and it can hold all the mods to unlock everything (and scan).

Well, you should have plenty of systems around your home base. If your base system has 3 gates and each of those systems has 3 gates, that's a total of 10 systems while only moving 2 jumps out. That's an awful lot for one player and that scenario is not at all unusual, I'd say it's typical.

Of course, you can also go complete nomad if you have two accounts. You'll want your proby-cloaky-salvaging-hacking-analyzing-gas-mining ishtar of doom on one account, and a cloaky transport on the second to move all your supplies/loot around (and probably take over the probing role too via repackaged cov ops). But that approach really does require the second account to be practical. For single client, it's best to have a home system where you keep your stuff and drop your loot off at. You will have some sort of cloaky hauler there as well to make periodic runs to high sec, but that can be on the same toon as the aforementioned ishtar since you don't need to move the other ship at the same time.

I say ishtar in all these cases since it is genuinely the best at this type of thing, but the gila is damn close to it while the myrmidon, pilgrim, and a variety of other drone based ships are all acceptable. They need not be even remotely fancy either, a completely ordinary vexor/arbitrator also works, though not as well.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/32439-Pilgrim-All-in-one-Low-Sec-exploration.html
This is the fit you are talking about which was the first exploration fit i ever used before going to incursion. I have to say i miss those days might start doing it again.