T3 Exploration

Hi All,

Been playing around with a Proteus as an exploration ship. H has nearly maxed gallente and caldari strategic cruiser subsystem skills, but you see Tengu’s everywhere… just about as ubiquitous as the drake, so I’m trying to avoid them. That and the fact that I’ve had Tengu’s nick sites out from under my nose in the past means I just don’t wanna.

I’ve always loved the Ishtar as a drone boat. Lost a few in my time mostly through inattention and stupidity. Even with their staggeringly good resists, they can be very fragile. Very constrained on the CPU front as well, meaning drone rigs will almost nerf what you can fit into oblivion.

Enter the Proteus and all it’s subsystems. Once I’d cleared my cache and got the damn thing out of reverse, I started to have something of a play. It had been set up as a command ship/remote repair boat in the hands of one of my alts. Dual boxing in missions became a doddle, mostly because I’d grab all the aggro, bring in the T3, drop T2 rep drones, activate the command links and reppers and orbit. Effective but booooooooring.

It’s current incarnation involved purchasing a couple more subsystems and yanking a sisters launcher and probes off a helios. Once done, I scanned and ran a few sites. Easy peasy, though I had no luck with the drops… why oh why do I always end up with pith shield transporters I ask you? No escalations either… 😦

And then I got somewhat blase about the whole thing and thought I could try soloing an L4 mission in one…. yeah, no… not a good idea. I did manage to get it out, but on about 35% structure thanks to two web/scram frigates and a fair amount of incoming DPS. Thank god for overheating is all I’ll say. The issue really was the same with the Ishtar. Fragility. Ding! went the lightbulb. Checked the fitting and saw plenty of grid and CPU, ripped out one mod and dropped in a 1600mm plate.

That one plate in essence means I now have a cruiser with T2 resists, armor equivalent to a battleship and a sig of less than half of one. Plenty of time to kill any scrammers and webbers, and if necessary pull range and let the drones do the heavy work. They put out 350+ DPS by themselves, and in really tough missions, the combination of rep, speed, sig and buffer means she can actually outlast the Mega. I like.

As efficient as a Tengu? Nope. But it suits my play style. I can also appreciate the need not to dock on a regular basis. Scan a system, clear what you want, move on. And if you’re careful with your drone management (and mine are extra tough and speedy), you almost never need to do so. This is a very VERY good utility ship. Capable of running well over 4/10s as well as L4 missions. Tough and forgiving. Just don’t expect bleeding edge performance.

Looking forward to what the new T2 drone mods might do… as well as the hybrid changes. Things can only get better 🙂

FS

H

P.S Scan strength currently 114.