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Holy crap they're tough. I fought the blood raiders burner just now.
I took in a worm that put out 270dps, and didn't even dent its armour (it repped back everything I could do to it). I'm going to try a daredevil 'cause I can't think of anything else that's going to put out that sort of damage.

First impression: A lot of people are going to lose a lot of expensive super frigates in this mission and never do them again. Perhaps a tad overpowered? Maybe I'm overlooking something? ECM drones or some such lol

Is this your idea of level design? Granted, I've only died in the Sansha mission so far, but there's only a randomly placed war station and a random large collidable. No rocks, no other structures, nothing that hints at least a hunch of effort, and that you could potentially use to your advantage.

This wonderfully continues the the trend of the Ghost sites and Besieged Covert Guristas Sites. /s

The Sansha Burner features Railguns on his hull. As a Amarr ship it should use Beam Lasers. or Scorch Pulses.

That is pretty much right thing to do unless you plan to multibox these missions, but afaik there is a small chance of faction drop and mission rewards are dynamic based on completion times.

Anyway, further testing confirmed my previous feelings - it is static pve content, that gets boring right after you figure it out.

Hello.

How to find the closest correct lvl4 agent from 6-CZ please ?

Some will try them and fail. They've had a good laugh and know thereafter why they don't meddle their hands in PVP, and thus stick to what they can do best: PVE. Working as intended. Others will try them and get encouraged to try them with friends, thus group activity and social interaction (maybe even with strangers) is created. Working as intended. Other people, who for instance already have posted their mastering of the mission here, will run them solo on TQ and will have a good money for their mission time if they get lucky and receive these missions from several agents in high frequency. This requires for them to fly around and visit several L4 agents, thus getting them in space. This might also lead again to a concentration of mission runners in very L4 agent heavy areas, which in turn attracts gankers and other scum. Working as intended.

Personally, since these missions require a group and specifically fitted ships for these NPCs, will not run these missions. For one, I don't have frigs available and will not JF them in to my mission paradises, and secondly I don't want to waste time waiting for corp fellows to show up. So in the end, each their own. Even if people think they have to farm the hell out of these missions.

I just tried all five missions and as someone who has very few experience in solo frig pvp the only thing I learned from them is: have a friend in a Kitsune or dual-box, so I can "solo" them all in a Harpy . I tried the Blood Raider mission two times in a Harpy with different fits. But even with 300 dps I can't break the tank because of "PVE-fit"... if I try to get a web and scram on it, I can't survive long enough to kill the burner. To be honest, as soon as Hyperion goes online, I won't start flying lvl4 missions just for those. If I like to trash my frigs, I go to a factional warfare system and have some fun there.

Basically I like the idea to teach ppl how frig pvp works but this is just the wrong approach, since they are too hard for newbies. Giving mission runners some new variations is cool too, but many will wait for detailed guides on eve-survival and then it's just a plain stupid mission as any other.Those who try the new burner missions on their own will fail for sure and after losing two more or less expensive frigs, they will give up on them and never accept them again, unless they can find a good guide which makes the risk-reward-ratio acceptable.

So, ppl who have the skills and knowledge to fly the burner missions are experienced frig pvp pilots and guess what, I doubt they will ever touch a lvl4 mission Even if CCP would add a new agent type, which gives out only burner missions, they are still not interesting for them, since they are too predictable.

If I couldn't dual-box I would probably skip most of the burner missions too, because I can fly T2 Caldari frigs only and I'm not willing to spend ISK for one or even two pirate faction frigs, just for these missions (leave aside the high risk of losing the ship). But this is just my personal view.


What about a test server within TQ? A "virtual reality" zone? No rewards, no risk. You can select a ship, fit it to your needs and choose a NPC opponent (like the burner NPCs) you wish to fight against. So you can train yourself or test fittings. This VR-zone could be then expanded for fleet tests. You can pick multiple different NPC opponents with custom or predefined fittings and a smart AI. So you can test fleet compositions or train your corp members. Something like an alliance tournament vs NPCs and without any risk (remember: you don't get any reward for that of course). It's a huge feature which is more like a "nice to have", but it would be better then the current burner missions :V


PS: I discovered a strange behavior of the Guristas Burner: once he burned away from my two frigs while he was jammed. But then he slowed down and after putting two webs on him, he stopped moving (0 m/s). This happened in two different missions. Are they so smart? They know when they are ****** up!? Well, only the Guristas Burner did it.

There is one more thing I would like to ask about these, since they are essentially commander frig

do you have data supporting the low skills of average mission runners? I mean I see a ton of high end battleships in mission hubs. or are we assuming these characters are extremely specialized and have no other training? And still I see very little risk in these missions, sure it is higher than the average lv4, but still should be very manageable.

Maybe it will exclude newbs from some content, like you said go meet someone with the standings. Also 5.0 standings are fairly easy to get.

lastly the likely hood of a loss is still dang low, baring disconnects, just need to figure out the proper setup and strategy. I doubt the risk/reward will go that far out of play. still need to see what the mission reward algorithm will say about it, but I would still expect a fairly decent pay off for very little time invested, plus that chance at a faction drop.

I'm still looking for the T1/T2 fit, no links, no implants to kill the Blood Raider bastard...(out of Worm).
I think Wolf is the way to go, but I didn't succeeded yet

Thx for the fun CCP :)