Hi all,
I wish to try some exploration with an Astero… any suggestion on which drones to use?
Thanks!
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Not T1. Use T2 and the drones that deal the damage against the rats that you hunt.
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Hornet EC-300 to break tackle if you get caught.
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Are they still effective with the changes to effect duration?
If all you want to do is Flee, then the EC drones mentioned above are all you need. If you want to fight, then T2 drones. I fly with one flight of ECs, and then Hobgoblins and Warriors. I also tend to use Faction drones for the extra tank they have. This is useful if your target decides to ‘defang’ you (target your drones first to remove your attack capability)
Astero is combat ship. If you don’t want to fight, there is no single reason to use such expensive hull over T1 or T2 exploration frigate
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Says who? With only two turret hardpoints but plenty of drone space and cloaking bonuses, Astero is a covert ops ship, not a combat vessel. Even entry level frigates have 3 hardpoints, and they cost about 1/10th of what the Astero costs.
Unless you take the enemy by surprise, you’ll have a hard time winning any fights in this rig.
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Say that joke to any explorer out there. Astero is one of main ship used to hunt explorers. And again. It don’t have any bonus to use as hacking platform over covop frigate.
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That doesn’t contradict my point, as zkillboard doesn’t tell us how many of those were sneaky kills. Also, look at just how many of those kills were T1 exploration frigates, which generally suffer from the same problems, and have less shield and armor HP than the Astero.
Sure it does. 10+ bonus to relic and data analyzer virus strength, 37.5% bonus to core and combat probe strength. Also, if you fit a probe launcher, you’re left with a single turret hardpoint. Unless you bring some hefty drones and sneak up on your target with a cloaking device, it will certainly lack any meaningful firepower.
I’d agree that as a hunter of explorers (T1 or T2) the Astero is top notch. That said, and I’m biased as the Astero is what I fly 90%), I have no qualms about taking on any Frigate or Destroyer with it … have not had a chance to go against a T3 Desto yet but would relish the chance.
Why you try put in my mouth that explorers Hunter is supposed to be OP PvP boat?
I only said that Astero is combat oriented. And using it only for hacking, considering it’s price tag. Is not worth it compared to lack advantages over other options out there.
It’s good option if you either want to hunt explorers/soft targets or be able to at least put a fight when surprised while hacking.
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The advantage is you need gal frig 1 and amarr frig 1 to use a cov ops ship.
Thanks all for the nice tips!
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Is that actually viable? I always use t2 after I train into it. T2 does significantly more damage as it is affected by the ### Drone Specialization skill.
This means that if you fight with factions, you are less likely to win the defang battle since your drones will do less damage to the enemy drones and while your drones have more hitpoints, enemy drones deal more damage.
There is a lot of *player skill contributing to the result obviously but if the players are similarly skilled in drone battle then I would bet that the one with t2 drones win rather than faction. (Gecko is the exception)
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Not sure anyone would use faction drones if that were true
Well there is a ship difference, if the ship is different you can easily win with faction, and skill requirements for t2 drones, player skill difference, character skill difference (not just damage but all drone skills matters and drone type choice as well. Quite a lot of factors, but if I assume perfect skills, same type of ship, same type of drone type and equally skilled in drone battle then t2 should win with a lead imo.
The astero also gets drone bonuses, it’s a drone based combat ship. The cloak makes it popular choice for hunting and surprise tackling people.
T2 and Faction drones both deal 20HP ‘out of the box’, the only difference in DPS comes from the Faction Specialisation, which is 2% per level. So a max of 2 extra hp per drone, for a total of 10 per volley. The Armour and Shield bonuses give th e dron an additional 31% … so still ahead of the extra damage that the T2s do.
Is a close one though and really up to each pilot’s style I’d say.
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What I see here is comparing drone damage over drone tank. It’s worth to have in mind that in combat, choosing between taking someone drones out or focus on actual ship can be deciding factor.
Completely agree … reason I use Factions is so that if my target decides to go after my drones, they can survive longer and continue to do damage, hopefully enough to make the difference.