Missions & Complexes

To clarify, the relative difficulty of missions for a given mission level.

I've been grinding out my standing doing security missions.

Mission difficulty varies of course, and that's great and expected. Naturally, I hate those that dump you right in the middle of a swarm - that's cruel and unusual punishment to me. These are tough, but a tactic can be developed so that a tough mission is doable if you tackle it the right way...

Then I ran into Cut-Throat Competition. This began as one of those gate-into-the-middle-of-a-swarm problems. Okay, tough but I have my tactics and I know my Stratios.

The mission is very tough; two groups of cruisers. These groups are very quick to target your drones, and devastatingly effective against them; I watched one "Integrated" heavy evaporate in four seconds.

With patience and care, I was able to draw out the field, isolate them enough to control range and through slow attrition, take them out. I was just thinking how much harder this mission was than anything I'd gotten before for a level 3 when BAM, a new group spawned practically on top of me. This in itself is a mechanic needing attention, as this post says, as I now found myself in the original difficulty of being almost surrounded once more.

I immediately turned-and-burned to get the hell out of the kitchen, but ended up having to warp out. These new visitors are way more powerful than the first two groups and I was already well into my armor and struggling to manage cap.

This new group (of 9 cruisers I think) had "specialists" and other beefed up cruisers in it, btw. They refused to spread out, always keeping the max distance between any two ships to under 10km, and they did a lot more damage.

Worse, they can target and jam you out to over 130km, and they are dangerous up to about 120km, throwing missiles and I think projectiles with deadly accuracy. I ran off and did a refit to try to deal with this, but the best falloff range (at my sp) I could coax out of the Stratios was about 70km, targeting out to maybe 80km+. Not even close. I had no way to get close enough to do -any- damage before I'd get jammed.

I don't yet have the capacity to fly BCs or BSs - maybe one of those would have the range and/or tank to handle this situation. And of course, a group could do it.

But that is not the point of my post.

The point is, this mission started out being so much harder than anything else I'd encountered at this level that I was already thinking it was a bit imbalanced, and then it escalated exponentially. Frankly, I'm impressed the Stratios was able to tank them long enough to run away from 30-ish km out to about 140km (which took a really long time - the Stratios is not a sprinter).

To put this another way, if you use my skills and the ship I fly as a measure, these missions were running from "not bad" to "very difficult". The start of this particular mission raised that bar significantly to "nearly impossible", then escalated to "WTF - totally impossible".

And I was just starting to convince myself we "soloists" aren't being strong armed into joining corporations. :)

I believe you, and thank you, but...


Is the description misleading then? It does say I am required to destroy "their entire... force".


I'll take note of that - basically be sure to rtfm, right?


Just stirring the pot :)

You should probably consult a physician for that.

You probably need to up-ship. The Stratios is a fine cruiser, but some missions are going to make it work very hard. I've found that BC's are almost a must for some L3's if you want to do them in any reasonable amount of time -- you need the tank and firepower. Also, I never have just one basic hull I for L3/L4 missions. I have several different setups for different missions: kiting, brawling, missile boats, laser boats, drone boats, etc.

And as a previous poster pointed out, Eve Survival is your friend. Always have that window open when you're mission-running to see what you're going up against and how to fit to counter it.

EDIT: Gurista/Caldari missions suck because of ECM jamming. Worst missions in the game. Even damps aren't as bad as not being able to lock at all. I don't even bother running Caldari missions because of ECM jamming. And ECCM doesn't seem to do squat.

yup, that mission was a nasty surprise when I got it for the first time

"Its just a lvl 3, nothing to care about ... hey wait a second, where did my armor go? WTFFFF"

there are freak missions like that in every tier. The Blockade is also quite hard for a lvl 3. Or Mission of Mercy for lvl 2.

Outstanding. Thank you for the information.

Working on that :) The Stratios has served well, but it is apparent I am asking too much of it in cases like this.


Noted...

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Thanks for the advice.

Rule #1 of EVE: Trust no one.

Rule #2 of EVE: Apply rule #1 to any description of gameplay or pop up provided by CCP.

Range dictation is key in missions, especially missions with a lot of jamming. One strategy for countering ECM jamming in Caldari/Guristas missions is to train up drones and/or FoF missiles. Even if you get jammed out, with drones or FoF at least you can put *some* DPS on the targets. Laser boats are generally not a great choice against Caldari hulls; missiles or rails/blasters are usually a better choice (antimatter or void/nulll ammo). When you have a lot of ECM on the field, clear out the jammers first whenever you can. Snipers are good for this kind of work, though you may need to hit at 60km+. Moas can do it, but it's hard and you can't deliver much dps at those ranges; Feroxes (rail-fit) and Drakes (heavy missiles) are better. If you have Amarr skills, a Harbinger is a good L3 mission ship, but it's suboptimal against Caldari because lasers only do EM/thermal damage. Harbies murder Sansha and Blood Raider rats, though.

HACs and command ships are obviously even better, but once you get to that level you're probably not worried about mission rats breaking your tank anyhow.

Heavy jamming missions are also good "bring a buddy" missions, because once you draw aggro, the other guy can clear out the jammers.

Yes