Missions & Complexes

Hi all,

This weekend I've spend on getting myself into hisec L4s in my first and most expensive ship in my whole Eve carrier: maelstrom. For the moment it is fitted with t1 800mm ACs but tomorrow my large projectiles V will finish and I will be able to use t2 version.

Beside guns I run with pretty standard PVE fit:
- in mediums: XL shield booster, heavy cap booster with navy 800 charges, invul, two mission specific shield hardeners, 100mn mwd
- in lows: 3x gyro, 2xTE
- rigs: Large Anti-EM/Kinetic/Explosive Screen Reinforcer I (or different resists to plug lowest ones, I don't remember exactly)

All above modules are T2 except of XLSB which I had to drop to meta because of fitting problems. According to EveHQ I have 661 dps omni tank and around 950 dps against specific rats. Gunz are blazing with 485 dps, light drones are buzzing with approx 60 dps (I have to train more drones skills, I know).

I read that for missions arties are better but I like ACs better, I'm used to them in pvp and feel more comfortable with them.

OK, so L4s...

Bounties are so sweet in comparison to L3s. 300k - 500k for a BS and even 2,5 mil for mission target BS? Nice.
And to be honest my skills are low enough right now to keep me interested in what actually is going on around me. I've read a lot post from people who are like "meh, I park my ship, launch drones, go f**k my gf and mission accomplished when I'm back".

In my case it's not so easy cheesy. I have to keep an eye on those pesky web/scram frigs and pop them first from a distance or unleash my drones on them asap. Next in line are cruisers because they can get in my face pretty fast (well, comparing to BSs) and there are gazzillionz of them. And at the end I take care of BSs. And sometimes I have to pull some range on them, sometimes I have to get in their faces. All fun and engaging experience which is exactly what I'm looking for. Being all "meh" begs a question "so why da f*ck are you still doing it?"

Ok, moving on. Salvaging.

I've heard salvaging is pointless until L4s and now I understand why. I know that prices indicated by inventory are not exactly what you can get from a market, not with just selling stuff instead of putting on sells orders but 13 mils from one mission pocket? For my wallet it is a nice piece of ka-ching!

And just when I started to clean up my first mission I understood why people say that dedicated salvage ship is a must. I had thrasher fitted with 8 salvagers and mwd and I just HAD to go and buy tractor beams for it. MWDing to every single wreck to get in range of looting and/or salvaging was taking too fu*king long. Now I can track everything in 20km range and salvaging is a lot easier. And I'm definitely buying Noctis as soon as I can afford it.

Ok, what I noticed.

Sometimes I have to run my shield booster for a few cycles either because I got ahead of myself and under heavy fire or just to survive initial heat. And cap is going really fast in such situations. And if I have to cycle my mwd too to get closer to rats cap is just blitzing out. And when cap is going down cap booster charges are going too. I think training my skills regarding energy and shield should help here so they will land in queue right after Large Autocannon Specialization and BS IV (approx. 8 days of training).

Ammo is running fast too. I think it's because ACs and again - my lacking skills so I need more hits to kill a rat than I would have to on higher levels of gank oriented skills. Here already mentioned Large Autocannon Specialization and BS IV should help. I'm not sure about T2 ammo, people say it cuts profits greatly but again - more firepower means less actual bullets need to be fired to kill rats. I will have to calculate it when I will be able to use them.

Oh, a propos calculating profits.

After first day I honestly had no idea if I made any money. I had to buy a ship and most of modules (beside gyros and TEs which I had stashed already for my L3 running cane). Then I had to but salvagers and tractor beams for my janitorial duty thrasher. And large ammo, and cap charges. All that got me from approx 280 mils down to approx. 20 mils.

And Eve wallet is not exactly great in tracking income/spendings so I did a little googling and Eve Mentat popped out among search results. I installed it and yes, that's exactly what I needed. Journal tab -> "today" and I know if said day was in plus or minus area. Fast and simple.

TL;DR;

After two days of running L4s (approx 12 hours all with breaks in between for RL and getting out of my mom's basement, you know) I'm happy with that part of Eve. Profits are nice for my level of experience and commitment, missions themselves quite engaging and demanding so it's fun for now. Probably with skills and experience it will wear out but then I will probably move on to something else.

Few questions:

1) How do you but ammo, cap charges and such things that run out very quickly?

Is placing 3 months long buy orders with prices under current sell prices and just waiting for them to fulfill is best option? I like to have some spares stashed but to have items asap you have to pay full price and that of course cuts profits. I'm thinking about convo some indy corps and propose mutually profitable arrangement. Or maybe I should just train some more indy skills and produce t1 ammo by myself? I have no idea how accessible production lines are in hisec, probably not so much in very populated area where I am.

2) I'm using eve-survival.org (of course) and I noticed that some missions have versions for different rats factions. Serpentis, angels, sansha, etc. Do those factions depend on region where mission is taking place? I'm doing them in Heimatar and I noticed that rats are usually angel type but at one mission there were serpentis ships. And I think rats' faction dictates gank/tank damage types so it would be good to read proper version of mission report.

Ad. 1) Ammo cost is negligible to what you earn doing missions. Placing long term buy orders or manufacturing is wise but when you need ammo right now it doesn't make sense waiting till order/job finishes.

Ad. 2) The common wisdom is it depends of the region where mission is handed but my experience is that agent's faction plays some role too. In any case it seems it's not black and white and wherever you go you will get some mix of missions against different factions. Some will be offered more often than others. If you're not sure what are you up to, take a closer look at the agent's dialog window: where there is mentioned encounter place, just to the left is small symbol of the faction you will be fighting (no symbol means there will be drones, mercs or some mix).

Ad. charges) Well, the first logistic problem you have is to transport those charges to mission zone. And warping back and forth will cut into your profits. So for best effect try to rely only on what you can keep in your cargo hold. Also try to build your skills and ship's fit to get 700 dps or more. This way you will not only do the mission faster but also you will have to tank it for shorter time, which means you will use less charges and so you will not have to carry that many of them.

HTH.

No, I'm not pulling your leg. :) The icon is small but noticeable when you look for it. Just take closer look when you talk with your agent next time.

Please disregard my remark about charges, I didn't read your post carefully and I've got impression that you put charges to the jet can out of the ship while doing the mission.

Though when I mentioned skills, I didn't mean only skills required for guns. I meant all supporting gunnery skills. I assume you have most of them at 4 but try to train them to 5 too (no rush, just keep it in mind).

Usually I don't overheat modules during missions. They burn out too fast and the missions last too long to treat it as viable tactic. That said I did OH repper+hardeners few times, but they were ohshit moments and normally I plan mission so I don't have to do it ever again, but I carry smal batch of repair paste just in case.

Train mini bs to 5 maelstrom have shield boost bonus there is no reason for xl booster on that ship and when you downgrade to large shield booster your cap problems will go away.also mwd cap skills are must if you using it,and in the end train for vargur it have 4 guns so ammo usage will go away it have bonus to range so bar traveling to gates you dont need to work that mwd a lot,and finaly just train skills.

Thanks a lot for responses. I'm sure some other mission running newbie will find them useful too.

Regarding my skills here's eveboard link.

Supports for guns will follow BC IV and large projectiles spec IV shortly and when I will have them all at IV I will move on to "tank" category so shields, cap, navigation, etc. I have pretty much experience how they influence overall ship efficiency because not so long ago my pvp main made almost exactly same journey but up to BC class. No worry, I know that skills > bling pretty much. I've seen enough of lolmails where ppl learnt about that simple fact of Eve very quickly and violently

Once again, thank you all for taking time to provide useful info.

Try to make room for a shield boost amplifier.
This gives a massive increase in rep points per cycle, thereby meaning you need to use your booster less, thereby using less cap

google: "Eve Survival"
That site is great if you didn't know about it already.
(You can just type the name of your mission in google then add "eve survival" at the end.)

Also check-out "Chruker"
(Do the same google the name of your mission then add "chruker" to the end.)
Chruker will tell you exactly how much of each damage type each rat does, how many of each rat there are, what each rat's bounty is, how fast the rat goes, what its resists are, what its optimal/fall-off is, etc.

This is the best site for L4s. With all that info you can figure-out exaclty how many of each hardener to use, how much tank you will need, which guns to use (long or short range), etc.

Eve Survival doesn't have all the detailed info, but it is nice because there is a comment section where people will leave comments about what they used and if the mission was hard or easy or whatever.

Check it out!

I never looted or savalged in a Maelstrom.
But now I got a Vargur so I can loot/salvage the wrecks from one group while shooting the other group. That way I'm not wasting time on it aside from running to the nearest market hub, but I do that anyway for selling LP items.

Something it took me a while to catch on to.

Do not run faction missions. I am Gallente, but due to corp commitments, I ran Amarr missions for a long time.

Right now I am - 3.01 with Gallente and can only run level 1 missions for them.

Diplomacy at 4.

Oh well, live and learn.