Missions & Complexes

I'm a fairly new player here, ~7m sp, and recently (a little over a month ago,) I started doing L4 missions for Isk. I upgraded from a Raven to a CNR about a week ago, hoping the slight increase in tank and DPS would help me mission faster. It definitely helped over the Raven, but I still feel like I am taking too long to complete most missions. For example, Angel Extravaganza can take me an hour occasionally.

I've tried two separate builds on my CNR: An MJD build and an AB build.

When I use the MJD build I jump away from the enemies, aggro the closest group, kill, rinse and repeat until a pocket is dead. I feel that that is a pretty standard way to use the MJD, and I'm usually very safe while doing it, apart from the odd mission with cruise missile battleships. Even then I have more than enough tank. My problem with this build is that I occasionally have to wait or slowboat to get some of the far targets within locking range. I also lose a lot of time slowboating to acceleration gates in missions where i cannot safely MJD to and from a gate while killing mission rats. I'm sure with practice I can probably speed that up, but that's still a minimum 5-6 minutes in a pocket.

When I use the AB fit I generally orbit either the acceleration gate or my MTU and again systematically kill groups when that is possible. My problem with this fit is that I find myself having to spam my shield booster more than I'd like, which makes me need to fit and use a cap booster with my fits, and when that runs out on some of the harder missions I have to warp out.

Currently I'm only making 30-40m an hour doing missions including loot with my MTU, bounties, and LP on a good day. I haven't trained Security Connections yet (soon, it's on my queue,) so I know that will boost my income a bit. My DPS is also a bit low, but I'm working on that with capping out some more missile skills and replacing my BCUs and cruise launchers with Caldari Navy ones.

I'm looking for some critique of my fits, posted below, and any tips or hints at what I might be doing wrong. Should I blitz missions or clear them for the bounties in this ship? Any help would be appreciated. I'm not expecting to get to the speed and safety of a marauder, but I feel like I should be making more than I am.

Afterburner

High:
8x Arbalest Cruise Missile Launcher

Mid:
3x Mission Specific Hardener
1x XL Shield Booster II
1x Meta 4 Shield Boost Amp
1x heavy Cap Booster II
1x Experimental 100mn Afterburner

Low:
4x Domination Ballistic Control Unit
1x Photonic CPU Enhancer

Rigs:
2x Warhead Rigor Catalyst
1x Warhead Flare Catalyst

MJD

High:
8x Arbalest Cruise Missile Launcher

Mid:
2x Mission Specific hardener
1x XL Shield Booster II
1x Meta 4 Shield Boost Amp
2x Meta 4 Target Painter
1x MJD

Low:
4x Domination Ballistic Control Unit
1x Meta 4 Signal Amp

Rigs:
2x Warhead Rigor Catalyst
1x Warhead Flare Catalyst

You need to get T2 cruise missile launchers and use fury. Its still not going to do it as efficiently as a turret ship but will be much better. Turrets can insta pop frigs and cruisers as they come towards you, something cruise missiles don't do that well.

I'm running a very similar fit to yours, all T2 (with Cruise Missile Specialization 5), using Fury missiles (I switch to standard for frigates in missions where the NPCs tend to shred drones). I don't have a shield boost amplifier though, that slot is occupied by a target painter. Instead of the Cap Booster I have a Sensor Booster which I carry both range and resolution scripts for. Using fury, my CNR is pushing out a paper DPS of just over 1000, this includes a few cruise & other missile related implants. Without Fury, using standard missiles in T2 launchers, this CNR's paper DPS was a touch over 700.

To get 80M+ ISK/hr, I blitz missions, turn down missions that I can't blitz (attack of the drones? DENIED, rogue drone harassment? DENIED), and end up suffering a little due to less-than-perfect standings with my agent (sadly, LP rewards seem to take a huge hit between 9.9 and 9.8). Often I'll settle for not blitzing, but I'll still skip the truly worthless missions (anything with rogue drones). I value SOE LP at about 2000 ISK/LP.

The most important thing I do for getting a high income is don't dawdle. If you take longer than a minute to dock, hand in, accept, undock, you start seriously eating into your ISK/hr rate by blowing out the "hr" bit on the bottom. Accept the mission, undock, get to the mission site, start blowing things up as soon as you get there, head for the next gate immediately, abandon the wrecks (contract the salvaging to Pro Synergy), start aligning for the out-gate as the last enemy is being shot, get into warp ASAP, and don't waste time in chat channels while you should be warping or shooting or engaging your agent. There's time for chat and waffle while your weapons are cycling on battleships. Any time your ship is in space and not shooting things or warping to/from mission is wasted time. Every second that your ship (in formal terms, your "capital") is idle deducts another percentage from your ISK/hr.

I'll post my spreadsheet later, but I was at the point of completing "The Blockade" in a few minutes (warp in at range, only shoot the triggers, warp out), meaning that the 12 extra seconds aligning for the gate after I'd finished blowing stuff up was eating into my ISK/hr. The CNR is already slow enough in warp, you don't want to add align time into the mix.

30-40M ISK/hr is what I would expect from a high-end battleship with decent weapon skills when you're not deliberately pushing to blitz everything, maybe you're checking forums or babbling on TS or otherwise not keeping your ship moving to reduce wasted time in transit (i.e.: you are being social, not a ISK farming robot). And then maybe you're derping around with fittings. As an example of how I've tried to optimise my mission times, here are some names of saved fittings:

• Angel Cartel
• Serpentis
• Mordus Headhunters
• Pirate Invasion AC
• Damsel In Distress
• Dread Pirate Scarlet

I try to avoid drag & drop refitting where possible. Some of these fittings are duplicates, the aim being that I pick a mission-specific fitting where it makes a difference. Damsel is a MJD fitting: I MJD to range (keeping the building in line with a celestial), blow up the building, warp in to scoop the damsel out, warp out.

I was using Dominations to make up for a slight hole in my CPU when using BC2's in all slots. They aren't prohibitively expensive, so that's not a huge deal. I've replaced them with Navy BCU's though.

Again, T2 cruises are a long way off for me because I'm training towards tengus/hacs. Missioning is a means to an end for me, and I could use that 18 odd days training Caldari Cruiser V. Once that's done I'll consider it, but that's still a little while off.

To put my prolly TL'DR post in a nutshell :

ISK i.e. fancy gear does not comprehend for a lack of SP.

Dont be that guy with 7m SP that looses a 10b Ratting boat and finds himself as ALOD on TMC.

Ty good bye

I see this thread is a couple days old but figured I could help since I took the exact same route, drake -> raven -> cnr -> tengu.

It sounds like you already have a good plan in place and your current loadouts look good for your skills and isk investment. I would prioritize upgrading in the order listed below.

What to do with isk
1) get the navy bcu (only need 3)
2) start saving for tengu (t2 hams, small deadspace shield booster, transfer navy bcus from cnr)

What do to with skills
1) get your missile support skills to at least level 4
2) get your shield tank and capacitor support skills to at least level 4
3) train for tengu
4) improve your social skills, lp payout, mission payouts, standing gains, etc.
5) improve trading skills, this saves a lot when selling loot/salvage

30-40m an hour isn't bad for your ship/skills, in a cnr you should be full clearing rooms, i found it to slow to blitz with.
If you don't have an alt be more selective in which missions you choose to loot/salvage. Gone berserk is really good for loot as is the blockade, angels Extravaganza on the other hand isn't (pop the silo for the implant of course).

Once you get in a tengu change your strat to blitzing missions. Hopefully you will have 5.0+ standings with soe by then and can freely decline bad missions. This is where you should notice a huge jump in your isk per hour. You'll go from maybe 50-60m/hour slowboating in a cnr to 80-100m/hour blitzing in a tengu. If you need advice on how to get into blitzing and which missions to run and which to decline just shoot me an in game mail.

I don't think there is much debate that blitzing @ 2k/lp is > full clears for isk/hour (especially for those without a salvage alt)

Sp and isk are always an issue and tengu is far easier to fly at a far lower cost. Even if they were equal price and skill i can't think of too many missions where the cnr would out blitz a tengu. Blockade and angels are the only ones that come to mind where the cnr greatly out shines a tengu (they are both instant declines for me :( due to no cnr/golem)

I played briefly two years ago on this character, and had no idea what I was doing at the time. By the time I renewed my account I already had Caldari Battleships and Cruise Missiles, along with all races but Gallente and their preferred weapons, but zero support skills.

Missioning isn't what I intended to play this game for, and, at least for the moment, I would rather invest 18 days into Cruiser V so that I can fly HACs and Recons than I would on cruise missiles to burn through these missions faster. I like Tengus, and it just so happens that they are only a stone's throw away from some other ships I like to fly. In the future, when I have the extra training time, i'll train cruise missiles to V and switch back while I mission.