Missions & Complexes

people tend to use Angels Extravaganza quite often from what I've seen on here - it's pretty much ubiquitous across empire

Angel Extravaganza is one of the best benchmarks.
But this mission favours missile ships because it doesn't have much frig size ships.

As for time, it takes around 26-28 mins to do it in a Golem and like 16-18 in a pimped Mach.
Those time stats are mine and I play in relaxed style.

Good luck in benchmarking!

I would avoid certain missions. World Collide last room would be one of them in the CNR.

About 4-5 times I have entered that room, I got instant aggro from the entire pocket because of where you land. With the new AI system, trying to kill the scram frigs can be pot luck, as they will target them, and if you lose them, I think the DPS (based on running my Drake in there and EFT numbers) is just above 600, so unless you can tank that indef, you have a problem.

I took a CNR (on Singularity) into that mission and left the last pocket with hull damage, with drones still out.
Only non T2 on it was the the Shield Boost Amp, as that needs Shield Management V (13 days for me).

Any place like that where I can get that level of annoyed buzzy buzzy bees will not be seeing my CNR, cause once drones are dead, good luck killing scram frigs with Cruise Missiles.

I need much better skills to fly one properly, with say Rigors like some fits from GreenGimp on BattleClinic.

I never kill any extra rats and always skip as much as I can.
Looting, salavaging and killing for bounty hurts your ISK a lot.
I only loot Zor, Silo at AE and Supervisors at WC, anything else is a waste of time.

I can feel your pain. Missile ships are the worst porformers nowadays.
Today I did AE in a Mach for a test, wasn't skipping anything untill bonus room. Took me 21 mins to do so.

I wonder if CCP will fix it someday.

I tend to salvage any missions with plenty of bc/bs wrecks, if estimated value of the loot is to be belived, I get around 100%-150% of the bounty value of ships in mission worth of loot+salvage on avarage, should I still not do this?
I've done missions in 0.9 system though after I came back, and my isk/lp rewards seemed really low vs bounty/salvage on the good ones, maybe I should move to 0.5-0.6system?

ps. I have not done enough research to find really good lp items yet, so blitzing missions is probably worth less for me vs bounty/salvage.

pps. I had 0isk in my corp wallet when I started again (corp had died when I was away) and at 5% tax rate it now has 18.3mil, that means I've got 366mil in bounty+completion reward.
I also have saved all the loot+salvage from that point and their estimated value is now 210mil of loot, 66mil of salvage.
I've gained 95k LP during this time, so around 95mil at least I suppose, I haven't even checked this corp LP rewards yet ;).
Some of these are from lvl2's/3's but not much, it would seem to me looting is worth it? Salvage seems REALLY not worth it though alone, so drones and missions with no loot = not worth it.

Yeah the problem is finding a corp that has 3k isk/lp reward, and an agent in 0.5system, there is always something with 800-1000isk/lp on every agent, but I haven't done enough research to find a really good one, there is just so many items to browse trough...
I suppose you might have better chances if you could manufacture yourself or something, but I don't do that stuff either :P

SO, for now, I'm assuming LP=1k isk and that way it would seem that looting+salvaging the missions with over ~15bs/bc wrecks would be worth it. I will try to blitz trough any that don't have so many, and once I open up more lvl4's in near vicinity I'll use the "extra" ones to cherry pick only good missions and declining any "bad" ones.

It would be really nice if I could some day find a nice LP item, I've done excel table from few agents last time I played, but did not find anything nice, and its farm from fun thing to do those tables, so maybe I'll just do it this way.

I suppose I should do some isk/h calculations while i'm recording the benchmark times as well, to better see how much I lose for not searching that good LP item...

Dread Pirate Scarlett... go ahead. Easy mission. Take your awesomely fit new Rocket Raven in there, pilot.

I personally like Angel Recon 1 of 3 : first room. It has all the elements you need to stress test your loadout and your keyboard skills at using said loadout.

- The BSs are mostly, if not all, elite level. You will not easily pwn.
- Drone aggro present (even before the new NPC AI).
- Waves arrive in a timed sequence after initial trigger - no rest / pauses unless you wimp out and warp.
- You can't choose warp in distance - you have to go with the flow.
- fast to complete if you are not warping out and back in - part of the benchmark.

It's a tough mission. Much tougher than AE. In fact, AE is actually really easy except for room 6 (bonus). AE is not really what I would call a benchmark - takes too long, easily controlled by triggers and is too easy until the insane ending ... ( not spell checked )

I don't have the skills, nor isk, for mach, simple as that, well its mostly about skills but anyways.

I'm currently wondering if I would like to train tengu for lvl4's and exploration and whatnots, would seem a pretty versatile ship.

I've tested hurricane while raising new lvl4 agent standings, as I wanted to branch off to minmatar bs line, and I have to say I really hate TD now, it seems that you simply can't do missions with TD with a turret ship because it totally destroys your range, I could care less about tracking as you can overcome it with speed, but being at -75% range really hurts... :(

So I'm thinking its missile ships for me, I really hate the idea of not being able to complete every mission that I'm given, I already turn down missions against other empire factions, and I also don't like being confined to take missions only from certain factions to avoid sansha/bloods.

ps. I think I actually timed recon 1/3, but I think I timed the whole mission, as in I killed the extra in pocket 2 too and took time from that, I have to check that, anyways it might be a really good one indeed, I also started making two different timers with 4x bcu vs 3x bcu so I would have actual evidence next time someone says it is not worth fitting fourth damage mod. :p