Missions & Complexes

For something that specific you may have better luck in the mission and complexes forum. You may get lucky in that one of the experts reads this one, but best chances are there when your all dialed in.

That said, Minnie guns;
Pretty sure that fast lvl 4 projectile boats use autocannons.
Minnie boats to use before you eventually skill into themacharial would be
Rifter->thrasher-->ruppie->hurricane(lvl3)->maelstrom(lvl4s)-->varghur or machariel.

Most will use shields and focus on maximum damage fits to burn quick.

Skills to focus on would be gunnery support, shields, ship navigation and general fitting skills. You can use the certificates for each hull to figure out your mastery level and specific skills you should look at adding into the plan.

Again, folk in the mission and complex forums will likely be able to provide you as much more detail as your comfortable with.

I am not on a trial account.

In that case I would like to have this thread moved to the missions forum, but how?

Dawww... cute newbie.

Okay first off you are going to want to remap to INT/PERC and get yourself a set of +3 implants which means getting your Cybernetics trained to 3. You will likely use this remap for the first year of play.

You are going to be running level 3's for a good while so you'll want to skill into an assault frigate with t2 tank, or battlecruiser, in your case a Hurricane or Wolf assault frigate.

For the meantime you can run level 2's in a Thrasher quite easily.

When it comes to training, train to 4 or 5. Don't get a load of 3's or you'll have to spend a lot of time later correcting your skills.

Your first priority is going to be your fitting skills. Things that affect your capacitor, power grid, cpu, train these to 5. Next is going to be your tank, you will want to be able to fit a T2 tank for both sheilds and armor. Then train into your primary weapon system, projectiles. Train small projectile guns to 5, and then train the two specializations to 4. Then train all of your gunnery support skills to 5, things like motion prediction, surgical strike, sharpshooting all to 5. You'll likely need to kind of do these simultaneously.

Assault frigates can easily handle L3's. I've done them in both an armor tanked arty Wolf, and kiting setup with minimal tank. It makes you a better pilot.

For a new player it's very easy to get distracted with training as your queue is going to be all over the place in terms of relevant skills. I know this because I did it myself. Successful character building training means resisting the urge to put your skills all over the place and specialize into doing one thing right away. In this case, my recommendation is frigates because the hull is so versatile and can be used in every activity one could expect to participate in as a newbie. Those same skills also transfer over into Destroyers.

After a while, a two week train is a short train time when you're looking at 30 day trains once you want to max out BS level skills.

Max fitting skills are essential, it's a pain at first because you're limited in what you can do. But once that is out of the way, other hulls become much more viable. Absolutely essential is Weapon Upgrades and Advanced Weapon Upgrades. These should be put on a priority, I would want them trained in about three months.

Also there is a lot of things that can be done in a frigate outside of missioning, exploration can be done with a week old toon and rake in millions with basic hacking and scanning skills.

If you know what you are doing, L4's can be done in a stealth bomber. But that goes down a different weapon skills tree entirely and is out of focus for what the OP is asking.

can handle lv 3s, but in my experience they are inefficient and boring. Personally I pretty much rushed into a BC and then went back and did a ton of frig skills, support skills, and drone skills. But the OP's post was about getting into lv4s and in that case all the extra frig sp is more or less wasted. The core skills are important but most of them don't need to be maxed. The only ones I'd really suggest are the drone skills. Also an effective lv4 bs skill plan doesn't require maxing out any of the 30d+ skills. 90d old farmers in ravens used to be all over the place. although a bunch of them did have t2 cruise missiles.

Get into a Machariel if you want to do missions with a Minmatar-oriented skill set. You'll need Gallente battleship too, but keep the Machariel as a long term goal. In the meantime you'll head for the Maelstrom.

To get there, the obvious route would be:

• Thrasher
• Rupture
• Hurricane
• Maelstrom
• Machariel

In the Thrasher, Rupture and Hurricane, aim to get your "Mastery" to 3 then move on to the next sized hull. In the Maelstrom, you should be able to start L4 missions using MJD and long range artillery. As you get the following categories to level 5 within the Maelstrom Mastery 5 pane, consider switching to a Machariel. IMHO you'll need to have Gallente Battleship IV to make the Mach worth switching into:

• Armor Reinforcement
• Core Ship Operation
• Core Weapon Fitting
• Large Projectile Turret
• Shield Tanking

Then finish up the training for the Machariel. use EVEMon to help plan optimal neural remaps, but don't get stuck training gunnery skills for 12 months without any improvement on Core Ship Operation or Shield Tanking skills.

Mara Rinn's advice is solid, the Mach is one of the best options for L4s. Another option would be to go with Missiles and drone skills and aim for the Typhoon and fleet Typhoon. However going with turret skills first might be the easier option, since the missile fleet phoon is fairly skill intensive.

Breacher
Bellicose
Cyclone
Typhoon
Fleet Typhoon

Tanking type doesn't matter so much, mach and fleet phoon are a little better in armor currently(better projection and application) at expense of a fairly small dps amount if you can fly them with a thin tank. However shield is a bit more new player friendly by the higher boost amount, the higher resists invus provide and don't require to skill up 4 different compensation skills to use passive armor mods effective.

While most people go shield because of the Maelstrom/Vargur and because the performance of a armor pest is even with very high skills questionable at best in L4s(like a armor mach with a lot less speed, punch, range and dps), the fleet phoon works very well with a armor tank and projectiles, got plenty of drone bay for sentry drones and the missile bonus in combination with 2 rapid light missile launchers give it a flawless anti frig performance even in a 1200mm artillery fitting. Both Machariel and the fleet phoon are very good projectile platforms for L4, combining high speed, lots of utility, good range and high dps what makes them some of the best choices when it comes to L4 grind. The Mealstrom works to, but suffers from to low speed for auto cannon fittings and not enough space for tracking computers and painters in a artillery fitting to do L4s reasonable quick. The Vargur is solid if you look into a very good tank with ok dps, otherwise the Machariel outperforms it by the much higher mobility and dps.

Here is a little inspiration about the fleet phoon: http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1404/TFI_vs_Blockade%28Angels%29.wmv

Also AFs are not the right ship for the job, even a low skilled BC will perform better in L3s. They are nice for pvp or to farm lower level plexes, not really a hull type that can do L3 or L4 reasonable quick.

Edit: The BS choice with a minimatar skill set is a bit more difficult because it lacks a clear get go option(Phoon is missiles, Pest is a mess, and Maelstrom kind of a odd ship for effective AC and artillery setups) and it is easier with other races, where you have the Raven, Domi, Hype, Apoc and Abaddon what produce great result with the most common racial weapon system early on.