Gunless Ishtar, Inferno Update

Introduced in the patch yesterday were a pair of mods extremely attractive for any drone boat:
Drone Damage Amplifier I: 27 tf CPU, 1 mw PG, 15% Drone Damage Bonus
         (requires Drones I, Weapon Upgrades I)
Drone Damage Amplifier II: 32 tf CPU, 1 mw PG, 19% Drone Damage Bonus
         (requires Drones IV, Weapon Upgrades IV)

Naturally, adding as many of these as possible is of interest. In Guristas space where rats orbit at different distances, and the damage is heavily skewed, you can easily fit three (!!!) of them, although at the cost of your sentry damage rigs. For Serpentis space, where 2 Omnis are almost mandatory, I've only found a way to fit one. If you can figure out a better fit, don't hesitate to post in the comments.

[Ishtar, solo plexing]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Shadow Serpentis Armor Thermic Hardener
Shadow Serpentis Armor Thermic Hardener
Shadow Serpentis Armor Kinetic Hardener

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Large Peroxide Capacitor Power Cell
10MN Afterburner II
Eutectic Capacitor Charge Array

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Civilian Gatling Railgun, Civilian Railgun Charge
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I
Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I

Garde II x5
Ogre II x5
Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5
 
This is a tough boat to fit on low skills. You need Drone Rigging IV to have enough CPU,  and really nice capacitor skills to be cap stable (although if you're close to cap stable, you can skip a cycle on the rep every so often and you'll be fine.

The tanking stats are the same as the previous fit, and the DPS is 20% better than the no guns fit - 640 dps with just your sentries. The cloaking device is there in case you're in hostile space, so if you're completely confident in the safety of where you explore, you can drop it and upgrade to t2 cap mods for easier cap stability. The gun is only there to draw aggro in sites where rats don't auto-aggro, of course.

Serpentis Armor Ishtar

Serpentis rats (which inhabit Gallente space in empire, and Fountain up to Fade in 0.0), do Thermal and Kinetic damage and have the lowest resists to thermal and kinetic damage, so there are a few ships that stick out as being excellent for combating them. Primary among them is the Tengu, but that can often be a bit pricey for some folks. You could try a Drake, but it ends up coming up short and is generally pretty low on DPS. The in-between option is the Ishtar. While it's more expensive than a Drake, and isn't as effective as a Tengu, it does have a number of advantages - namely, its versatility. Thanks to its massive drone bonus and innate resists in both shield and armor, to go along with a tiny signature radius, you can fit it any number of ways and still be spectacularly effective against Serpentis rats. Some people will prefer a passive shield Ishtar, or a dual-MAR Ishtar, but here's my preferred fitting:

[Ishtar, exploring]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Shadow Serpentis Armor Kinetic Hardener
Shadow Serpentis Armor Thermic Hardener
Shadow Serpentis Armor Thermic Hardener
Beta Reactor Control: Capacitor Power Relay I

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
10MN Afterburner II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
[empty high slot]

Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I
Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I

Garde II x5
Ogre II x5
Hobgoblin II x5

At all level V skills, this setup is cap-stable, tanks 476 Serpentis DPS, and avoids a healthy chunk of incoming damage thanks to a 145m signature radius and 614 m/s top speed. The Gardes do 538 DPS at 45648+12000, and the blasters add another 167 DPS at 1500+3800. Although it has 3 faction mods on it, they aren't too expensive, especially compared to the rising cost of t2 hulls.

Using the Ishtar is almost trivial. Turn on your mods, aggro the rats, deploy your drones, and orbit them at 5k. Kill the scramming/webbing frigates (or towers) first, then the destroyers, then the battlecruisers, then the battleships. Once you're down to only the long-range battleships, there's little enough incoming damage that you can stop orbiting and center yourself in your drones (the BSes orbit you at 51km, so if you're orbiting your drones they'll actually be around 56, which kills your damage). You can also fly around to pull the long-range BSes closer, but I'm too lazy to do so.

Practically speaking, it can solo almost anything you'll find. The exceptions I've run into so far are the Serpentis Prison Camp final room, the 2nd room in both stages of the Shadow Serpentis Fleet Staging Camp, and the final room of the Serpentis Provincial HQ first stage. [I'll keep this updated if I run into other things].

This Ishtar has the added bonus of working well if your skills aren't perfect. To start with, its damage isn't affected by your Heavy Assault Ship skill, only the drone bay - the drones I've listed above fit with only level 3. Additionally, if your cap/gunnery/fitting skills aren't perfect, you can pull the guns off, slap on a civilian gun, and replace one of the Cap Rechargers with a Cap Battery, which should put you comfortably cap stable without losing a ton of effectiveness. The guns aren't essential, they just let you shoot any frigates that get under your Gardes without having to scoop them and deploy Hobgoblins.

Another modification you can make, if you feel safe in the space you're exploring, is to pull the cloak off and upgrade the guns to neutrons, letting you largely ignore the frigate rats with your drones and save them for your guns where you can really mow them down.

The main advantage this fit has over the passive Ishtar is the afterburner. It makes a surprising difference in how much damage you have incoming, and also makes sites that have multiple gated rooms much more tolerable

0.0 Exploring Buddy

For 0.0 exploring, it is almost always better to have a scouting ship with a Covert Ops Cloak along with your main combat ship. If you so desire, you can also make it your tank, or even supplemental DPS, but for my own purposes I use a CovOps that scouts, probes, and has the modules needed for radar and mag sites. The following is an example; feel free to use a similarly fit Anathema or Cheetah (Helios only has 2 high slots, so is poor for this purpose).

[Cheetah, Exploring Buddy]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Limited 1MN MicroWarpdrive I
Codebreaker II
Analyzer II
[Utility Mid]

Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Salvager II

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

In the utility mid slot, you can stick on a meta target painter (or t2 if you're using t1 codebreaker/analyzer), a cap recharger, or whatever you like, really. Alternatively, if you only have CovOps 4, you're probably better served putting a CoProc instead of one of the Nanos and leaving the utility mid empty, since you'll be severely CPU limited.

The rest of the ship is pretty straightforward. Carry a stack of combat probes, and then you can use the rest of your cargo bay for loot.

One more thing: it's important to actually use the meta 0 MAPC. You don't need more power than it gives, and all the higher meta stuff uses more CPU, which you're probably tight on.