EVE New Citizens Q&A

Ah, the Blockade. I put that mission (well, the level 4 Blood Raiders version) to good use on the weekend, getting a filthy rich incursioner to join my corp, help me run that mission, then at the end, warp scram, offer a ransom, then when that was denied, blow up his 2500m ship and scoop loot.

Back on topic, though, the thing that is nastiest in the Blockade missions is the electronic warfare, IIRC. Depending upon the specific Blockade you are running, you either want to be at ultra long range (Blood Raiders, Angels) or very close (Serpentis).

Can you fly a battleship? If so, any sniper fit with a Micro Jump Drive is likely ideal. Just jump 100km away from the hostiles, stop completely and get to sniping. (A sniper fit means a ship with your racial long range weapon systems - railguns, long range ammo, and several modules that increase optimum range and/or falloff, and targetting distance).

Alternately, if you do not mind spending 150m on a smaller ship and have some drone skills, a Vexor Navy Issue with Republic Fleet Bouncers (long range sentry drones, the tech 1 version are horrible so don't use them), a microwarp drive, and drone range increasing modules will work. Get ~90km away from all the hostiles, come to a COMPLETE stop, drop your drones, snipe until they get inside 40km, then return drones, run another 90km away and repeat.

The cheap option of a Vexor with that last fit will work too, but will be very, very slow.

myrm is the better mission ship if you have good drone skills. blockade is a nasty mission make no mistake about it. It is the one mission where if you eff up the triggers you are in a world of hurt :)

What you can try, is just get range on them. Since you can warp in at any range just warp in at say 70. this will give you time to pop the incomming ships as they come towards you, and always try to keep moving. Even if you are moving slowly you still mitigate damage this way, if you use sentries just orbit one of em.

And forgive my next comment but you never know: you did fit mission specific hardeners no?

But my main advice, use range. Yes angels will rush you, but you still get some extra time to blap em. And when they start getting to close you can always warp out of you are feeling cowar.. i mean.. cautious ^^

EDIT: and please I know a lot of my fellow pvpers will go.. haha noob pve is so easy.. well.. yeah in faction fit top of the line stuff. we where all young once. I lost my first ship in pve (a gila) to that mission. It isnt something to be embarrased about. and I would offer to help but.. darn high sec police has this irrational hatred towards me. ^^

Myrmidon works very well for blockade level 3 when using sentry drones. Just don't shoot the trigger ships til last. If you do the amount of incoming DPS can quickly get out of hand.

Warp in to about 50 when you start the mission, take out the stasis tower as a priority, then take out the ships in order of DPS, leaving the triggers til last.

I usually run L4s easily with pretty good skills (T2 guns and T2 tank and all that).
That one time however, I was grinding L3s for standings with a certain NPC Corp and decided to use a Command ship for that, easy mode and all that, just sitting at warp-in, ignoring triggers and blasting away, trying to do them as quickly as possible. That worked perfectly (hell, it usually works with L4s for me most of the time) until I tried that with The Blockade... before I even realized it, I was swamped by rats and, well, nearly lost my vessel, a fücking COMMAND ship.

Had to actually warp out repeatedly before I started to kite to pick them off.
Suffice to say, it´s now a VERY long time a mission has given me this much trouble....

A Sleipnir.
Though granted, the tank consisted of only an Invul Field II and a Shield Booster II. Two Tracking Computers and an MWD to complement this. High and low slots and rigs for damage. So, yes, the tank certainly was not optimized, but it served adequately enough in the other L3s.

But apparently not enough for the L3 Blockade if you shoot the triggers, then sit still while trying to DPS-tank though, this one can be a nasty surprise...

Ok, I have refitted a new ship and will be trying again tomorrow. As I have been thinking about it, I have done this mission before, but not with the Angels. The thing that is getting me with this mission is just how hard these ships are to destroy. Normally I just sit in one spot, drop sentries and grind whole fleets to dust like they are nothing.

Now that being said, I was asked about how I was tanked. These are the angels, so I was tanking Thermal, Kinetic, and Explosive.

I also heard that missions reset each downtime. That sort of bums me out because I had a whole bunch of ships destroyed.

At any rate, I made some changes to hopefully up my dps. Any pointers on how to tell what the trigger ship is?

As Elena implied with that link, look up the mission on ever-survival.

It can sometimes be a bit difficult to know which ship exactly is the trigger if you have many ships with the same name. Always kill all the other ships first and then you have to guess.

As for your dps, you do know that you should use Minmatar drones (i.e. Bouncers) against Angels? Especially against those HACs it'll make a big difference.

It's not a gated mission, so you can warp in at 70 the first time.

Plus you can warp within the mission.

Or it could wear necropants?

On a serious note, the lesson you can take from this is that ship fittings are a tool, and sometimes what works for one situation is hopelessly outmatched in another.

I would fit an Ishtar (my favorite ship to fly) very, very differently for PVP against a Vindicator, to PVP against an Interceptor, to PVE.