Missions & Complexes

I want to use my Orca as like a mobile mission running base that I can fly to a system and set up shop with everything I need, ammo, different tank fits, etc, etc. I want to carry a Noctis for salvaging and like a Cerberus.

My question is, is there a better ship than the Cerberus to use for running level 4 missions that would fit in the Orca's 400,000 m3 ship hangar. The Noctis takes up 270,000, leaving 130,000 available. I can fly t3 cruisers, heavily specced caldari and missiles but I can also use t2 blasters, rails, pulse, and beams. Can use almost all t2 caldari ships and many t2 amarr. Could be in gallente with little effort.

Also, what would your recommended fit be for speed running level 4's in the cerb or whatever ship you suggest.

cerberus is a bad mission boat; it has neither the DPS nor the tank you want in lvl4s. if you insist on a small hull, take a look at the ishtar, gila, tengu and (drone) proteus. these four ships are passable mission runners.

edit: before the HML nerf, i would have said tengu too, but with the way things are now, the tengu will probably be outperformed by the other three i mentioned.

Tenting will still be viable. HAMs maybe the way to go.

Posting this from work so can't log in and double check the mass of an ishtar, but if you can use t2 drones (including sentry)
then a passive shield fit Ishtar is going to probably be your best bet.

here is a link to a fitting guide that I found useful
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Ishtar_(Fitting)


I've never used a Gila, or even really looked at it, but if its drone bay is similar to the ishtar you might want to try that
depending on what fits you and your Orca best.

Personally, I use the Orca in the same way, with an exploration fit Pilgrim for scanning down sites, and a Legion or Ishtar, depending on my mood, then my alt account follows behind in a noctis

Edit: the post above suggesting repackaging the Noctis is a great idea, thanks for that!

Perfect mission setup for an Orca would have to be something like:
1x Gila with 3x DDU's.
1x HMLGu
1x HAMGu
1x Loki

Screw salvaging. Not worth it. Screw Ishtar, can't fit a decent tank and 3x DDU's at the same time.

I would have done this unfortunately I have already rigged my noctis a long time ago with salvage rigs and I dont want to eat the cost of popping them. I use it mostly around the same three system span where I do missions now, and having the rigs plus my skills gives me like a 65% access bonus with salvager II's. Lets me run 6x tractor beams and 2 salvagers, allowing me to still salvage quickly with only two salvagers. I suppose I could buy a second noctis just for this purpose but that would be a pretty penny just for the convenience.

Going to repackaging the noctis would allow me to use a drake or nighthawk for running the missions, so there is that... And I could also take a probing frigate along for the ride too...

In response to the salvaging destroyers thing, I did that for so long that now that I have the noctis, I just couldn't stand going back to it, too irritating with limited cargo space and tractor beams with completely unmodified range.

The tengu might not be quite the powerhouse it is now, but the drone nerfs through AI changes will make droneships so annoying to use that the tengu's lack of need for drones will make it shine again.

drone boats make god awful mission boats.
even more so not that your drones are going to get killed by NPCs.

PS: as for drone proteus, ill give you the same reaction i gave a corpie who wanted to make one for pvp: youre kidding right?

I'm sorry to hijack this thread but what is a purpose of using orca this way? I could imagine using it in w-space where you basically have no other way than being nomad if you cannot setup POS but in hisec (of course not missions in w-space only sites)? You cannot accept or complete missions outside of agent's station so why not just do it normal way with having "base" station for missioning?

If that's the only reason I would say orca would be like a cannon to kill a fly.