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Missions & Complexes

 
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So it's been about 3 years... Catch me up on the state of mission grinding?
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Toria Nynys
Surly Dinos
#1 - 2013-07-05 02:30:18 UTC
Trying to ease myself back into EvE slowly, starting with a bit of mission grinding. Care to suggest a multi-account starting point for a high SP noob-due-to-unsubbed-for-3-years pilot?

What I have at my disposal:

1 ~50M SP "All Vs" Gallente battleship and cruiser pilot. Heavy SP in drones, gunnery, medium and large tech2 hybrids. Looks like I trained medium tech2 lasers on that one for comedic effect (the Lorax). No BCs, can fly HACs, no tech3 training. No shield skills.
2 ~50M SP Minmatar/Caldari/Amarr battleship pilot. That's me. Almost as high drone skills, very heavy SP in gunnery, large tech2 lasors/projectiles/cruise missiles and associated support skills. No notable BC or HAC skills. Active shield and armor tanking skills.
3 ~44M SP Minmatar/Caldari BC/command ship/cruiser specialist. Has minmatar T3 skills. Used to fly a Nighthawk. OK drone skills, heavy investment in medium projectiles and missiles. Passive shield or armor tanking skills.

Looks like I have a Paladin, Nighthawk, and no other faction or t2 ships worth mentioning.

What would you assemble as a fleet for those 3 accounts? Is a Tengu sufficiently better than a CNR or Nighawk to train for? I was thinking I could probably do something like Nighthawk for tank and small ship cleanup (first warp in), Paladin for BS zapping (buffer tank, all gank) and a domi following the paladin with remote reps using sentries for giggles. I think I could manage that on 2 monitors. Also, I don't think I could run a Machariel effectively with 3 accounts.

Thanks in advance guys!
Tsukino Stareine
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2013-07-05 02:41:22 UTC  |  Edited by: Tsukino Stareine
1. Dominix, slap 3 omnidirectional tracking links and 4 drone damage amps on it, set drones on aggressive and turn it into an afk monster.
2. Caldari navy raven, active tank it im sure you can figure out the rest. Other possible ship would be the Typhoon fleet with cruise and sentry setup, much harder to fly however.
3. Loki booster with some webs and remote shield transporters, this will enable you to fit very minimal tank on your two damage ships and means small stuff that gets close will be easier to hit for the other 2 ships.

Then you just warp in all 3 at once:

1. shoot something with the domi with sentries out
2. Lock up all ships and sentries with loki and activate gang links
3. Switch to CNR and start blapping battleships with fury cruises
4. switch back and forth between domi and CNR prioritising small stuff for the domi
5. Rep things with the loki if required, most things won't survive long enough to even damage you though.
6. If something actually gets near enough for loki webs, web it and kill it.

Art of Explosions
Aurette
962348 Corporation
#3 - 2013-07-05 04:11:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Aurette
/Agree with Tsukino Stareine, if you find you need alts to work together Big smile

Strong Offence is the best defence now. DPS > HPS > Resist. Battleships have all the tank and dps you could need, yes they are slow.. but there is a range of mid slot propulsion modules to address that.

My tip since they changed the AI slightly is that a devoted tank is pointless, as aggro shifts now. Was using a rattlesnake to hold aggro until a few months ago. Now that is gathering dust in a hanger somewhere.

You can still solo missions fine, so long as you use the right damage type, right tank and sometimes the right ship is not your normal one.

Would suggest getting all 3 alts able to solo as in a dps fit ship, then see how many is fun to play.

A few weeks ago I was running 3 alts in a level 4... Now I am running 2 level 4's with one alt in each and a third is just mopping up salvage. Could do 3 at once, but have 2 screens and want to be able to mine and look at other stuff as I play ;)

My security blanket is a Micro Jump Drive... I go for missions versus Sancha and Bloods typically and they can't even hit me once I pop 100km away, but I can apply just as much damage. Think you can do the same with a drone setup also.

Sometimes a salvo of fury cruise will 1 shot kill a battleship now... Aside trigger ships and mission particular things what I find now is blasting the biggest ships first and the tacklers last is pretty much the fastest way to clear a mission. Ideally my strategy is to kill all the battleships, then cruisers, then release my warrior II's and flip to precision missiles to mop up any frigates. Yeah they may tackle me a bit but they are great recharge for my energy vampires lol.
Toria Nynys
Surly Dinos
#4 - 2013-07-05 04:50:16 UTC
Thanks for the TL;DR on missioning changes you two! I was freaking out for no reason, the game changes (and the slow pace) definitely make two level4s at once a viable proposition.

I tried my non-CNR (the very first Raven I started missioning with 7 years ago!) and it did well enough that I'll pick up another CNR soonest. The MWD is definitely key, tank and EHP were irrelevant for both mission boats. Speed was more important. I can see why people worship Machs, for sure. I may have to pick one up at some point.

My third alt I'll just put in an Orca with mining drones or something, it's no longer necessary to do even two missions at once and may even cost mission time. Useful to pull a third batch of missions, that's about it.
Marc Callan
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2013-07-05 08:38:33 UTC
Also bear in mind that cruise missiles got a nice buff with Odyssey, and the CNR now effectively comes with a free Rigor rig (it traded out its rate-of-fire bonus for that, but got an eighth launcher to compensate). At the moment, if you can fly a cruise CNR, you're pretty much golden.

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegurt
Kisaki Archess
Spectre II
#6 - 2013-07-05 11:02:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Kisaki Archess
Toria Nynys wrote:
Thanks for the TL;DR on missioning changes you two! I was freaking out for no reason, the game changes (and the slow pace) definitely make two level4s at once a viable proposition.

I tried my non-CNR (the very first Raven I started missioning with 7 years ago!) and it did well enough that I'll pick up another CNR soonest. The MWD is definitely key, tank and EHP were irrelevant for both mission boats. Speed was more important. I can see why people worship Machs, for sure. I may have to pick one up at some point.

My third alt I'll just put in an Orca with mining drones or something, it's no longer necessary to do even two missions at once and may even cost mission time. Useful to pull a third batch of missions, that's about it.


I run 2 Rattlesnakes & 1 Noctis (12.5m sp on each char) and make between 150-200m ISK an hour (up to the point the Noctis runs behind by 4 missions and i need to take a break with the snakes), i have the same amount of skills in Drones & Missiles but even the Improved Navy Issue Raven cant touch the performance of my Snake in mission completion time.

You just cant AFK anymore or your drones get eaten alive.
Toria Nynys
Surly Dinos
#7 - 2013-07-05 17:17:41 UTC
Feels like onanism to reply to my post, but OMG SQEEE I love what CCP has done for mission running via ship rebalancing. And by that I mean it's so AWESOME that there's no longer a single cookie cutter fit that's "best" in all situations.

Went ahead and got a TFI and CNR. Both are fantastic, though I must admit I'll probably be using the TFI more often on account of novelty. The only way it could possibly be better if I could put lasers on it. SFI, Rattlesnake, Mach and Nightmare are still on the wish list for now.

And yeah, a regular old plain domi is a major beast when driven by a multi-million SP specialist. I'm planning on moving to lowsec/nosec eventually so cheap hulls with viable tech2 (at best) fits with low grade implant clones are high on the priority list.

p.s. anyone want to buy a slightly used Paladin? Only driven by a little old lady on weekends to grind Carthum R&D standings.
Chainsaw Plankton
FaDoyToy
#8 - 2013-07-05 20:44:16 UTC
personally I can't keep track of 3 accounts in a mission. hell 2 in a mission + an off grid booster is too much of a pain in the ass to do. the rate I kill things I can't deal with much more than a domi or rattlesnake + a gank ship. Also with multiboxing I'd skip missile ships, although I guess cruise missile velocity got buffed too so maybe not as bad now.

I tried an arty mach for the first time in a while, flew it with a rattlesnake... wow alpha! that should pair nicely with nearly anything. the RoF is long, although you can't really group guns due to massive over kill, so have to pay attention to the cycle time of each gun.

sending each character to its own mission would be best, but I cba.

also the paladin is pretty awesome I'd probably keep it ;)

@ChainsawPlankto on twitter
Robert Saint
The Grumpy Dogs
#9 - 2013-07-06 02:00:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Robert Saint
Throwing in my two cents..... but I'm a missile lover!

Raven on account one with Cruise.... full DPS, no drones 1 Rigor is enough.... for battleships up 140k.
Cerberus with Rapid Lights full DPS with one Rigor and Accel II ... for insta pop frigs at up to 75 k.

Cerb goes in first and kills all short range frigs, then Raven within a minute after.... by the time the Raven kills all Battleships, the Cerb is done with Frigs and Cruisers.

This is my Two box setup and it's amazing, just circle and shoot, or fly to next gate and shoot. Managing drones is a bit tough if you want to complete missions fast.

Tengu is very weak as a two box setup and is what I use if I single box.

Best of luck.