Ship for High Sec DED 4/10

T3 Destroyers are best choice because you can use them for 3/10 DED, anomalies up to 5/10 and Clone Soldier hunting. They align fast and warp fast. The best of them is Jackdaw, but Confessor has also merit as you don’t need to buy ammo too frequently. They have decent cargo.

Disadvantage is that they need tons of skills to make them efficient and they require some practice of flying and doing the sites, 4/10 are not as easy as just warp in, stay in place shoot everything, it requires some strategy and tricks to do it like shooting only the structure or ship with loot then warping away and waiting up. You better start with something else first.

So, if not T3 destroyer the other option is Sunesis (4x t2 drones and 3x turret/missile can imitate t3 destroyer in about 50% efficiency, for 3/10 is it still really good for 4/10 not so much and depends on faction but doable). Still requires quite a practice and a little of bling too (I use deadspace shield booster worth of 40mil but maybe if I was using omega clone with higher skills I would not need it).

Another option are t1 or t2 (if you have the skills for them) cruisers. Railgun Vexor is the ship I used in beginning and it was capable of doing DED 4 easily, but usually t1 cruisers will struggle outside of their “region”. Caracal will be probably exception because of the damage profile advantage of missiles and no reliance to drones which are in Blood Raider 4/10 quite useless for example.

If you find t1 cruisers too slow and inefficient and you don’t have skills to fly t2 cruisers then Gila is best ship. It is both drone and missile ship so you can use it both afk-style for easier sites or anomalies and active style for tougher sites. It can also do anomalies up to 8/10 and I was able to do drone DED 5/10 with it as well, but drone DEDs are crap and unfun to fly. Other pirate cruisers will work too but Gila has the best DPS and is most universal and easiest to use. In most situation you just sit still and shoot and controll drone aggro, or slowly approaching accelleration gate or some npc. Other pirate cruisers usually need much more than that.

Stratios really isn’t good though. It has no bonuses to weapons so it is slow. The bonuses to scanning are worthless, unless you hunt Sleeper sites. Otherwise you can scan anything with unbonused ship with basic t1 probe launcher and basic probes without noticeable difference in speed or difficulty of the scanning. Okay maybe not few relic/data sites but those are not the sites you want to do with Stratios anyway and in highsec especially.

Astero is terrible ship for DED sites. DED 1/2 are not worth it and they probably only appear in 0.9 and 1.0 as I never found them in 0.6 - 0.8 (but curiously enough I found them in lowsec and nullsec) there is no point to visit systems like that. DED 3 is doable but slow and the main disadvantage is cargo. Frigates have very limited cargo space, basically you can only pick up the deadspace module because if you pick the Overseer Personal Effect items you will be full after one DED 3/10.

Sure cloak means you can do it in lowsec but then you also need to train cloaking for a month. If you already have cloaking then Stratios will do much better job and as I said, stratios is actually bad for DED sites. Additionally, T3 destroyers, Sunesis and Cynnabal can get sub 2sec align (with a small refit) and thus fly around in lowsec easily as well and they will be faster than Astero in doing DEDs.

But of course if you are flying astero looking for sites and you find out DED 3 or 4/10 and you are too far from your base to reship why not? But if it is an escalation I would rather use Worm than Astero, he is almost twice as quick and cheaper. I don’t ever bother to refit for travelling, but I am flying in lowsec with low activity so gatecamps aren’t a thing and one guy sitting on gate never caught me and even if he did I would be able to return to gate.

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Astero’s aren’t “terrible”. I’ve timed their performance versus T3Ds and they only take 5 minutes longer to run a DED 3 or 4. But the biggest time sink in exploration is scanning, which the Astero excels at. 90% of the sites you scan will be garbage, so you want to reduce scanning time as much as possible, and be the first one to claim a site, especially in high sec. You’ll also go through dry spells where you’re only finding DED 1s and 2s. I’ve logged the isk/hr of running these sites, and they are definitely worth doing.

Anyway, T3Ds are also very good, I agree there. The Jackdaw is a solid choice. I do most of my exploration in low sec since there are fewer explorers, and prefer the Jackdaw. But in high sec, it’s about finding sites as quick as possible before anyone else and I found the Astero to be better.

Just my 2c.

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Well I guess it is because of your fit, I am flying relic+data+warp scrambler fit Astero so it is really slow. And when flying lowsec then I mostly look for data/relic not combat, but I moved to nullsec now anyway…

I still don’t get why would you fly Astero without data/relic analyzer for combat sites when you can do that with T3D or pirate cruiser (read Gila). Even if you will be faster to get there (and in case of T3D not by a much) these ships will outdamage you greatly and steal your loot if they are piloted by a player of that kind. Jackdaw will snipe that boss or structure before your drones even get there (overexaggeration of course) and Gila won’t be far from that.

The scanning difference is absolutely unnoticeable, it takes just as many scans with Gila as with Astero and I have already Astronometric at 5. No difference at all not even for combat scanning (the difference is only visible for things that cannot be scanned without the ship bonus at all).

I guess it depends on your skills. With high skills it takes one pass to know if the site is worth it or not, and another one to pinpoint it.

Yes, with Alpha clone skills using Gila with SoE launcher and probes I need 2 scans for combat sites. I still need 2 scans in Astero and omega skills, in fact even with Astronometrics V scanning in nullsec relic/data with SoE launcher and probes I see absolutely no difference to the times when omega runs out, I still need to do 2 scans for monument/sparkling and 3-5 for other sites. There is no real progress in scanning…

Why do you say this? It does have a significant bonus to range of medium energy turrets, which is pretty nice. However, its main weapon system is drones. In this case I’d use sentries. With a combination of beams and sentry drones, it should pack quite a punch from long range.

I spent a bit of time in pyfa and cooked up this fit. It was a quick try so I know it has room for improvement, and I’m unsure if an AB would cut it for DED 3/4, but the DPS isn’t shabby. Warden IIs will hit 365 DPS @90km and the Heavy Beam Lasers will hit 75 DPS @90km with Aurora. Plus it has a HUGE drone bay. Is this really not enough for DED 4s?

[Stratios, DED4 Runner - beams]

Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Reactive Armor Hardener
Medium Armor Repairer II

10MN Afterburner II
Denny Enduring Omnidirectional Tracking Link, Optimal Range Script
Denny Enduring Omnidirectional Tracking Link, Optimal Range Script
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher II
Heavy Beam Laser II, Aurora M
Heavy Beam Laser II, Aurora M
Heavy Beam Laser II, Aurora M

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Drone Scope Chip I
Medium Ionic Field Projector II

Curator II x4
Warden II x4

Of course I know the Ishtar would pack more of a punch, and probably tanks better too. However, it is more expensive, has a smaller (albeit slightly) drone bay, and doesn’t have the scanning bonus / cloaking. For Hi Sec the latter two points probably don’t matter much.

As for the Confessor, I do like this ship a lot. I have one that can hit 251 DPS @75+ km in sharpshooter mode. Pretty damn good for a destroyer at that range, but it still doesn’t really compare to the Stratios’ total DPS numbers.

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Well the thing is. I am not assuming all related skills at V. I play this game for 3 years and I still don’t have t2 sentry nor t2 heavy drones nor drone interfacing V. Also, sentry drones are generally not very good in DED sites as you need to stand near them, clear everything, then scoop them and continue to the next gate, DED3s have many of those and this will slow you down considerably, I just don’t see how you can outspeed any destroyer with this strategy.

Surely you can pull light drones and send one for each frigate but it is annoying to do really and is a reason why I say Astero sucks as well.

Anyway I don’t use sentries so I don’t really know how much better is stratios with them. I don’t think that t1 sentries are worth it and in DED3/4 most of the times you use light drones (and then your DPS is basically the same as Astero) or medium when you clear frigates and destroyers, heavies are useless there (I don’t like bling so I never tried Gecko for PVE with Stratios and again I don’t have t2 heavies).

Simply put with my average skills I found Gila twice as good as Stratios (with 3 railguns). But of course, Stratios has the advantage of cloaking and therefore passing lowsec, so if this is in lowsec or nullsec then Stratios is probably best choice (since T3C cannot enter DED3 afaik). But generally speaking and highsec considering I don’t think it is better than other ships.

In the end I suppose it all depends on the skills you have more than anything else and OP didn’t tell us his skills.

clic to expand
[Stratios, sentry pulse]
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Reactive Armor Hardener
Imperial Navy Medium Armor Repairer
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Stasis Webifier II
Large Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery
Cap Recharger II

Sisters Core Probe Launcher
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II

Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor II
Medium Drone Scope Chip I



Hobgoblin II x5
Curator II x5

Sisters Core Scanner Probe x16
Scorch M x4
Optimal Range Script x1

30km pulse, then sentry range = drone = targeting range.
anyhow 30km should be enough. MWD to move fast. cloak is useless in HS

In the sansha ded3, you have two pockets. The first is with several groups, you can shoot the first and let the rats come in. Your sentries will shoot the rats one after the other, I agree it takes a while. With turrets it’s [group1], [next target], [group2],[next target] until they are all dead. Going with fast ship screws your tracking, also it can let the rats come too close so you hit them less. Best is to stay at the entry and shoot the rats, then use MWD to go to the next gate… However in 4th pocket of the angel ded3, it’s faster to go toward one group, shoot them, then aggro the three other group, all while going toward the gate, because the groups are far (50 km ?) so you can shoot them easier when they are coming.

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Which DED 4 are you doing with Astero, I tried Serpentis DED 4 and was not able to break the boss tank at all. It might be because I used alpha clone (with max skills that alpha allows for drones) for this but even if you were able to break his tank with all drone skills at V it must take ages to pop it…

Now there are DED 4 where you just need to pop a structure so that is not so big deal but then it is not really universal solution at all.

As with @Vokan_Narkar, I’m also curious about these numbers. 15 minutes for a DED4 in an Astero? @Kaivarian_Coste with the fit you posted above I get about 150 DPS with Hobgoblin IIs. Pretty good for an Astero, no doubt, but that still pales in comparison to the other ships we’ve been discussing.

Which DED and what are your tactics?

Blaster Hecate? Most people suggest rails for Hecate. Do you use blasters for only specific DED missions? Wouldn’t your tank melt if you need to get within 5k of all the rats to actually apply damage?

for angel ded4 an hecate is very good. you can kill the rats faster than the next come cloe to you, and in the second room it’s easy mode : orbit excavator @1km,cut MWD, full damage, it’s dead before the other rats around can close on you.

On the other hand, vs guristas it seems a bit juicy.

You need more than 100 DPS to break tank. But around 150-200 is best to not sit in pocket for hour. No idea what DPS astero has. But I was running them fine using day old alpha chars in algos.
Final BS use MWD. So agro him and burn away from other rats and go under his guns. No tank needed.

I had 125.4 dps using Warrior II which the boss has second worst resist of 60% (worst is thermal 50%) and it didn’t break the tank in 5 minutes of trying.

No idea what went wrong. I have no problem running them with cheap Algos.

Anyway, do you guys have idea what type of missiels use on caracal and then on Orthrus? I’m gonna try to do exploration i missile ship.

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rhml with fury and two rigors. don’t forget to split your guns. Er, launchers.

I ran a Mul-Zatah Monastery yesterday on my can-barely-fly-anything highsec alt in a Gila:

high slots: Malkuth RLMLs, 1x Drone Link I
Mids: meta 10MN AB, 1x Adaptive Invuln II, the rest Large Shield Extender II
Lows: 3x Drone Damage Amps
Rigs: t1 Core Defence Field Extenders
Drones: t1 Hammerheads
Ammo: Inferno auto targetting light missiles

Total build cost was probably not even 225mill. I could probably have run the site in a shield tanked drone Vexor for 1/10 the cost.

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