Missions & Complexes

If you're properly skilled and your ship is properly tanked a BS should be able to solo any level 4 and never need to warp out. Of course, this assumes you manage aggro properly as well.

Damage types is very important but you can tell that when you receive the missions.. for example, a mission against guristas or caldari is best done with kinetic/thermal damage and therefore an amarr laser boat isn't optimal.

The best selections for using any damage type are either Caldari missile BS (i.e. raven) or one of the minmatar BS. Gallente work to a lesser extent with drone damage but the hybrids are locked in as thermal/kinetic so aren't so wonderful against Sansha or Blood raiders.. Likewise, Amarr laser BS's suck hard against angels.

You can finish any mission with any damage type but it will be painfully slow and therefore much less valuable in isk/hour terms.

Well it depends largely on your style of play.. if you sit there like a rock and aggro half the room, expect a rain of hurt. If you keep moving (not necessarily kiting but enough to throw off some of the tracking and such) and are careful with aggro a moderate tank with some damage mods (i.e. heat sinks, ballistic controls, etc) would be perfectly fine.

There are two ways to tank.. absorb as much damage as possible OR kill the rats so fast they never get a chance to kill you.

As Dato states:

At first, make sure that you are very well tanked ( no such thing as overtanked until you know every mission and / or can easily replace your mission ship).

Use the mission report guides until you know off by heart, the damage types, spawns etc on each of the missions.
At some point in the near future, you will have the knowledge and confidence to know that you are in a position to run them faster.

At this point, start to strip out some of your tanking modules and replace with damage mods and tracking equipment. You will know when the time is right for this.

Hit me up in game over the weekend if you plan to run in minmatar / gallente or amarr space for your missions. I can take you out with me and show you the ropes if you require. ( I don't do caldari missions as I hate being permajammed).

like the previous posters mentioned, you do not really need that much tank in lvl4s unless you are inexperienced and/or have low skills. as long as you have enough drone skills to kill the occasional warp scrambling frigate, a ~500ish tank that you can hold up for about 2 minutes should at least keep you alive if you have to warp out. if you don't screw up and have decent dps and range, you can usually get by with about 300 permatank (or a larger burst tank, depending on your ship and preference)

as to which ship to fly
the current king of the hill is the machariel, closely followed by the nightmare. here are the main differences between the two ships
- machariel is faster and more agile. this means less tank needed if you keep moving and less downtime when flying to a gate. a nightmare can only get around 300m/s with afterburner, some gates are 50-60km away. you do the math
- nightmare has slightly better paper damage as well as better damage projection but is limited to em and thermal. especially gurista missions can become really annoying
- a nightmare has very little ammo cost compared to a machariel (you shoot faction ammo in lvl4s
- a nightmare is more beginner friendly because you can buy 4 faction guns and do not really need to skill large energy weapons 5 to deal good damage. you also have one more free high slot so you can equip tractor beam+salvager or somesuch.

if you have good heavy missile skills and good passive shield skills, you can do most gurista lvl4s in a drake sufficiently fast. but in the time it takes to get battlecruisers to 5, HML II etc, you might as well stick to lvl 3s and train battleship skills instead, as you have to train them anyway eventually, unless you go straight for tengu.

A) this is kind of a moot point given that none of the ships mentioned are really starter ships, but

B) check your damage curves on a typical mission Machariel. Now check its speed and realize that you will only very rarely be outside of 30km from your targets. Then

C) realize how much damage is lost from sig/speed reduction on a CNR and throw in the fact that how pretty much have to use drones on frigates rather than popping them at distance.

Conclusion: Mach eats CNR alive.

But see A above. To start out, the "best" ships are probably Drake (though only because Ravens are a dead end), Maelstrom, Apocalypse, and Dominix (though a Megathron can work in a pinch). The 1000 combined tank/gank is old wisdom but it does work for battleships, where you're hardly mitigating any incoming damage. Starting out, you will almost certainly have to warp out now and then, especially while learning triggers and figuring out how/when to blitz.

Since I started off in Gallente ships, I gradually worked my way up through the hulls and only went up a mission level when I felt confident with my skills in the current missions. I feel the main issue newish folks have is rushing to the bigger hulls just cos they have managed to save the isk or been lucky with a donor's generosity. That leads to a popped hull.

My personal philosophy as Gallente is to fly cap stable and over tanked until I am comfortable with the missions I am being offered. I should stress that I have about 22M SP but a large chunk are in Science and Industry. My Gunnery and support skills are reasonable but have some gaps which I am working on.

Since I have T2 light and medium drones and a T2 tank but T1 guns, I tended to fit a DCU, active hardeners, one appropriately sized armour repper and ONE damage module in the lows until recently when I have started dropping the DCU for a second damage module. There are a few missions where I have noted that with reasonably careful management I can go with a thinner tank so have started fitting for that.

Take it easy and start over tanked until confident.

I like my dominix, the one im useing right now is a passive shield tank with large arty cannons fit to it using sentry drones I have a alt that uses the same ship. So i warp them both in and make quick work of any mission.

Heres a fit that is close using Rail instead of Arty


[Dominix, pvp]
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Kinetic Deflection Field II
Thermic Dissipation Field II

Drone Link Augmentor I
Drone Link Augmentor I
425mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Lead Charge L
425mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Lead Charge L
425mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Lead Charge L
425mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Lead Charge L

Large Core Defense Field Purger I
Large Core Defense Field Purger I
Large Core Defense Field Purger I


Warden II x5
Garde II x5