Editing Exploration ships (section)

=Choosing Your Ship=
Choosing an exploration ship comes down to the same question as many other ship choices in EVE: "How much ISK am I prepared to risk?". A bigger budget will generally get you a more capable ship but if a hunter catches you, you will be just as dead as a cheap ship. Within each of the groups of ships here, the capabilities are generally similar across a class, so don't be afraid to choose a ship because you like how it looks, or perhaps because you have the appropriate [[Skills and Implants| skill]] trained already - particularly for new pilots who will start with their racial frigate skill and free T1 exploration frigate(s) from the tutorial missions.

Technically, you can explore in any ship in the game that you can fit a probe launcher on (almost everything) but if you wish to do it well you will want to fly a ship that offers advantages in the role. The T1 exploration frigates are a great place to start for beginners, as they have low skill point requirements and are very cheap. The natural progression is to the T2 equivalents, which are direct upgrades of their T1 cousins. However, the T2 frigates are Omega-only and relatively expensive compared to the T1 ships. Interceptors are another type of T2 frigate that historically have been used in certain areas of space, but due to game design changes have now fallen out of favour. The Sisters of Eve ships offer a very low entry cost in terms of skills needed to fly them (and can be flown by Alpha clones), however all three are extremely expensive. The T3 cruisers are very capable, their modular form means that they are able to switch from exploration to combat with a simple refit in space from a mobile depot - but again, this comes at an appropriately high cost. 

Something to bear in mind is that although you are hard to find while on the move (especially with a Covert Ops cloak that lets you warp while cloaked), all of these ships are relatively vulnerable while performing hacks on cans. Most exploration ships will struggle against an equivalent combat-fitted opponent, due to the [[Exploration Ship Fitting Guide| fitting sacrifices]] you have to make to be able to locate and exploit hacking sites. This is where the cost becomes relevant, since a cheap T1 frigate might be blown up nine trips out of ten and still make a profit, yet if you are flying a T3 cruiser you could survive nine times out of ten and still make a loss! This comes back to the original question: How much ISK are YOU prepared to risk?