Missions & Complexes

Golem. If that is all you want to do, a marauder does the trick. I like the Vargur but that's just me. This whole thing lately of warp speed mattering much is goofy. Missions are all about gank followed by gank.

The current most efficient ships for full room clears (not including salv and not blitzing) are the Vargur, Rattlesnake, Paladin, Golem.

Paladin unfortunately is restricted to Amarr space. Vargur and Rattlesnake are tied for first imo. Get some standard Lvl 4 mission fits for them and play around with the dps graphs in EFT for various rats.

Rattlesnake does more dps outside 50km than the Golem or the Vargur. Vargur does the most DPS within 20km but the damage drastically falls off past the 20km mark. From 0km to 40km, the Vargur's damage averages out to about the same as the Rattlesnake using Bouncer or Garde. Using Gecko's on the Rattlesnake within 0-40km would yield approx 200-350 more dps than the Vargur.

Rattlesnake hands down does more dps to battleships than any other lvl 4 ship with a Gecko/Bouncer combination drone compared to the Vargur and Golem across it's full engagement range of ~94km. But there's more micromanaging of drones. Vargur is a simpler press F1 to win kind of ship. But it does considerably lower dps between the 45-100 km range.

I usually contract out my looting/salvage because I'm too lazy to do it myself.


Here's some stats on the isk/hour of a Vargur:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=320422

With my Rattlesnake I get around the same if not a bit more depending on which missions I get. The missions with more battleships are the most lucrative for me. Gecko op

EDIT: I didn't include any hybrid ships (Kronos) because of the crappy engagement range. You don't want to to have to burn or slowboat to get to your gun range when it only hits 20-30km out.

Tengu's are great as long as you deal with or avoid missions with web.

I used to use a 40km HAMgu pumping 875 DPS and it was decent, but there's not much more progression you can get out of a tengu. BS are the natural progression upwards

My progression was slightly different than what you mentioned in the OP. I went CN Raven, omni-tanked Tengu and then Golem with bastion. I still fly all three, but the Golem has become the mainstay because I'm not missioning for Caldari agents right now.

When I took out the Golem for the first time, it was like "Whee!" The Golem was like a Tengu on steroids. The other ships mentioned all have merit, but I promise you: You won't be disappointed with a Golem.

Just another opinion, not to argue with the others.

Since you will be running in all areas of space the turret based systems will be at a disadvantage in at least half of the missions due to their restricted damage type availability so in a general sense the missile boats are a better option.

For level 4's I fly a rattlesnake and a Golem.
If the mission plays into the therm/kin bonuses on the snake it is hands down the best of the two.
For the other missions the Golem is actually slightly more efficient but the snake is still very capable.
If you prefer drones then the Rattlesnake is the ship for you.

With the Golem you will have a decision to make on how to fit. I have tried all 3 of these and personally I find the Cruise fit to be the best compromise across all missions and all areas of space.

Torp with missile speed and flight time rigs. Great against the BC & BS when they are in range but suffers significantly due to explosion radius issues with the smaller ships. Range is limited to about 70k max without implants which you can work around with a MJD.

Torp with rigor catalysts and a MJD to compensate the short range. Hands down my favorite way to torp fit a Golem. It still suffers from explosion radius issues but not nearly to the same degree as the fit above.

Cruise missiles with rigor catalysts and suing the fury tech 2 missiles, this is my favorite Golem fit. It will take 1 or sometimes 2 more volleys on the BS than the torp fits but makes up for it on the smaller sized ships. Normally 1 volley for the destroyers, cruisers and many of the BC where the torp fits usually take 2 volleys to kill these ships.

So there you have it my opinions on the whole lvl 4 mission ship thingy.

Mac is a good ship and it would be a good choice for lvl 4's. I have a disagreement with your statement here as it simply does not hold true to any of my experiences. Frigs can be problematic for missiles but then your large guns have serious trouble hitting them as well so it probably balances out. Besides that the frigs usually do not last long enough for me to need missiles anyway the drones tend to have them gone by then.

My cruise Golem single volley every destroyer, cruiser and most battle cruisers in all of the missions I have run over the last 2 years so I do not know where you are getting this from, perhaps a poor fit or poor skills, or bad luck who knows.

Golem is the only choice given your criteria. Run with 3-4 TPs and 2 Rigor Is plus Fury ammo.


Vargur meets all your requirements, plus Vargur > Golem for various reasons.

I guess you never used Machariel with autocannons...

Umm… This responds to posts in the "What rigs to use on a golem" topic. Might want to copy it to that topic.

As it has been already stated above all your preferences are YOUR PREFERENCES and only. They are based on your preferences and are correct taking into account your preferences But if you state that one ship type is the best and the only one worth to be used, then you can't be more far away from truth - with all the due respect.

I do not run missions very often right now, because it's mostly solo activity and I get bored to hell very fast with it. I prefer other sources of income where I can use advantages of multiplayer game and teamwork. But last Saturday I had some time when there were no fleets running and I offered one friend to run some missions together just for the sake of fun. He pilots HAML Tengu and based on your statements he should be much more effective against small and fast ships than me, piloting Machariel. But the result was quite opposite - he eventually stopped even targeting frigs as they were turned into the wrecks by the time his missiles reached them. Actually there are very few places where frigs spawn "under the guns" and then it's no problem to pop couple of them using the pack of light drones. But usually I am able to shoot down all frigs and even most of the cruise size before they reach me and that taking into account, that I usually start burning toward NPC with AB switched on as soon as I land in the site. I pilot Minmatar ships, and Machariel now almost all the time I played EVE (I have alts that can pilot missile and hibrid ships, but still my first and only love is projectiles) and I never regretted it. But this is MY PREFERENCES and only. They are based on my preferences and are correct taking into account my preferences To support my preferences I can tell, that the next day I logged into the game I found my friend, whom I missioned with, discussing with other player how fast they could swap their Tengus for Machariels, as my friend really liked what he saw. Never the less I warned them, that once they change missile boat for projectile one they might not like what they get as it's quite different experience and if you are not used to projectiles and used missiles on and on, tanked with Caldary OP shield tanking and so on, you might get uncomfortable in Minmatar ships.

Best example is that my other friend who used to do missions with dual account Tengu setup decided to try Machariel, as he was really attracted by almost twice higher theoretical DPS of Machariel. But eventually he said that he feels more comfortable with his old and proven Tengus.

So it's really personal and there is no "one and only best ship for lev 4 missioning". There are many good options and which one of them will be the best depends on the person who is choosing and his play stile.

I think, that the best for OP would be missile boat as he's already spoiled by that game stile. But it's not because other options are worse - they are just different and require bit different play stile, skills and attitude.