EVE New Citizens Q&A

4 L2s from one station at the same time or 1 L3.

include looting and salvaging.

which is more profitable?

depends on the missions being offered, and how quickly you can complete them.

in isk/hr it's probably going to be the 4 l2's
but isk/hr is a poor metric for comparisons

which will you enjoy more
4 easy l2's, where you barely need to think
1 l3 that might pose a bit more challenge

i'd go for the more entertaining option, even if was worth less isk
as you can't really place a value on fun




/tldr
fun/hr > isk/hr
/tldr

I don't suggest bothering to salvage L2 or L3 missions. I did it, but looking back think I wasted my time with it.

Unless you are making rigs, the salvage just isn't going to be worth the rewards of running another mission, or two, in the time it takes to salvage for low end rig parts cheaply available in markets. The same holds true for loot, but you may need the money as a new player.

Since you can fly a much larger ship in PvE than you would survive in for PvP, it doesn't really make much sense to linger on lower level missions rather than to 'power game' your way into L4's. The ability to run a T2 tank and full flight of drones is more important than fielding T2 guns for missions.

So, you want to run as few missions of a given level and as quickly as possible so you can move up, stopping at L4 for pure carebearing. L5's take you into low sec, and your skills won't be up to that challenge just yet.

L4's are where missions really begin to pay for the time and ship investment. A battle cruiser will be overkill but allowable for some L2's, perfect for L3's, and handle lower end L4's until you can afford a battle ship. The salvage from L4's can be fairly good, and you may get into rig production at this point just for pocket change.

Unless you are using the salvage, even at L4, it may not be worth your time. The market isn't in short supply of PvE loot, and loot that may take as long as the mission itself to collect, has to be evaluated as to it's reward versus another mission. Also, more missions opens more locations for jump clones (if you don't want to drop corp to use a clone service corp).

If you do insist on salvaging, stick with a cheap destroyer. It takes either an obsessive dedication, or living cheap to make mission running pay for itself for quite some time. Many people use very shiny ships to run missions in order to blow thru them. But it just takes that many more missions to pay for all that ship and faction fittings. You sort of get locked into a career PvE'ing and your first loss to a gank or poor choice of low sec short cut puts you right back to square one.
Think beyond mission progression to what you want to do in Eve, and missions are just the means to that end, at least at first. That's what I did until my sec status forced me out of high sec. By that time though, I didn't need missions anymore!

Hope that helps.