Missions & Complexes

I've played this game on and off since 2007 on my other character, and I always assumed the natural progression for caldari ship mission runners was drake then raven then CNR/golem. I pretty much just play this character now and missions is what I am doing for the time being.

Reading a few topics recently I have seen people advising not to bother training for a raven and cruise missiles and to just hold out in the drake until you can get in a tengu. Is this really the case? Is a raven not an adequate upgrade, or is this simply a matter of the extra time a raven takes means its time not spent going towards tengu which is apparently more fun?

I currently have about 9mil SP, good fitting skills and 1.5mil in missiles. I'd really like to fly a nighthawk or a tengu but the thought of BC5 and cruiser 5 concurrently is very daunting. Is it really not worth me getting in a raven, would I not earn isk faster anytime soon? The battleships are of course cheaper too, it'll take a while to earn enough in a drake.

Part of the decision rests on the way you're completing missions. If you're killing everything for purposes of bounty or salvage, the difference between a tengu and a raven isn't uniform... there are advantages to each. If you're "blitzing" missions... just going for loyalty points while ignoring bounty, the tengu has a clear advantage due to travel speed. Most good blitzing missions are affected by speed moreso than the DPS of the popluar ratting ships (recon, special delivery, dread pirate scarlet, etc). The raven just doesn't work well for that kind of missioning.

Another factor that would influence the decision relates to future plans. Training the appropriate skills for a raven makes a lot more sense if you will eventually be flying caldari capital ships. The caldari cruiser V skill is needed to get popular caldari t2 supcaps like the falcon and onyx. If you have any interest in PvP, this might make the decision easier.

If you feel like answering "don't know/don't care" to differences like those, the tengu would be the default choice just because it and its related skill have many more effective application.

Drake -> Raven -> CNR still works just fine. Having said that, I do own a Tengu as well.

The Tengu and the CNR are about on par for damage as long as you're attacking Kinetic weak rats. This is important, because as soon as you're trying to kill something else (Sanshas perhaps) the damage on a Tengu tanks big time, whereas the Raven will just fit EM missiles and keep on rolling. The Tengu also has trouble with webbers. It is a cruiser after all and it tanks missions by moving fast enough that it doesn't really take much damage. The second you get webbed, you can expect your Tengu to melt faster than a snow man in a hell. The Raven also doesn't have this issue, because it's a battleship and actually has a tank.

Tengu shines when you're missioning against Guristas or Serpentis, or on missions with a lot of travel involved (100kms to the next gate or 5 jumps away). For anything else, you're better off in a Raven.

I skipped the Raven and went to a Scorpion Navy Issue first. Slightly less damage, much better tank while I got the bearings I wanted before moving on. It was fine until I got bored quickly of Cruise Missiles. Sure they are pretty, but the whole 'taking 18+ seconds to hit the bad guy' thing is too underwhelming for me. That being said, if you are wanting to go into Caldari Battleships and you have the ISK to spend, a SNI is wonderful at the beginning.

Depending where your missioning, I think the SNI is a good all round mission ship. I say 'depending where' because theres one thing that caught my attention about the SNI; its got lots of mids.

That means if you can go around a bunch of agents and pick up several missions at once you can do them all without going back to station and changing hardeners. SNI has a solid ability to fit an omnitank plus afterburner plus target painters. And you don't have to spend tons of money to fit it like that.

However if you are doing lots of missions for just a few agents and queue them up so you are facing the same damage types when you undock, the CNR is better as its damage output is higher. You just can't fit such a variety of hardeners and utilities on a CNR as you can on a SNI.

serras I don't think anybody implied that a tengu would ever be speed tanked exclusively without a booster but the speed helps in tanking. I would have thought that was obvious.

Also talking about navy scorpions etc really isn't helping my predicament. It's irrelevant to what I asked.

Well my drake is faction fitted and if I were to sell all that I could probably afford a CNR + t2 fit tbh if that was really best. I have no interest in a rattlesnake tbh I am interested in isk/hr more than anything.

Though I can't afford a tengu, I'd be able to afford one by the time I trained cruiser 5 so cost isn't so much of an issue.

It is hard to know for sure what ship I want to fly without ever having flown them. It will be a shame to have something less manouverable than a drake but if it meant the best money making potential overall then i'd go for it. Unfortunately people seem highly biased either for tengu against cnr or for cnr against tengu. It's difficult to gauge who I am more likely to agree with in the future. Impartiality and objectivity seems elusive.

Training for a raven is not wasted. It certainly works much better for lvl4 missions. As mentioned above, tengu shines against kinetic npc, and a raven will perform uniformely across all. My personal choice is to use a NM and Tengu depending on who I am fighting and thats because I hate managing drones.... the NM can pop most of the frigs before they get close enough so on a rare occasion I need to use drones and the tengu with a rigor good skills and implants can easily deal with frigs with standard scourge.

Lots of good points in this thread and tbh I agree with all of them. One thing hasn't been mentioned yet and that is personal play style.

I own both a CNR and a Tengu, but very rarely use the Tengu - it's just not for me. That makes my Tengu an expensive hangar queen.

As far as how to proceed, considering you have "lowish SP" my advice would be this: Go Raven/CNR, then Tengu.

The reasoning is this:

a) A Raven is relatively easy to get into skill-wise.
b) A Raven is relatively cheap.
c) A Raven has a solid tank.

Thus a Raven gives you a cheapish yet solid foundation to start your L4 missioning career. So while you're continuing your training towards the Tengu you have a solid income stream. Then, when you finally get into one, you will know all the different missions pretty well. You will know the triggers, how much incoming dps to expect and most importantly which frigs tend to web/scram you. This is nice need to know because tanking works differently in the Tengu than the Raven.

With the Raven/CNR as your solid income stream you can then more easily buy a Tengu. You can try it and see for yourself its strengths and weaknesses and if you like it you keep it and if you don't you sell it.

Finally, should you ever get suicided in your Tengu (happened to me) it won't be as much of a burden (especially "psychologically" as you said). Hop back into your BS, run a few L4s, buy a new one, move on.

Edit:

Just to make this clear: this advice has nothing to do with whether either CNR or Tengu is "better." It's simply a suggestion for low-SP players on how to proceed.

Closest to the Drake will be Tengu, and a good missioning ship it is. Besides that, with other fits you can use it for almost everything in EVE.