Missions & Complexes

You will actively support Eve economy and earn gratitude of indies supplying nearest trade hub :)

benefits to you? no.

I ran missions in NPC null and low for a while.

For Level 4 missions

Advantages
1) increase LP (up to 50% increase from running in a .5 system).
2) A more interesting game experience
3) If you are new to low/null you will be forced to learn game mechanics
4) Access to L5 agents

Disadvantages
1) While it is nearly impossible to kill a mission ship that doesn't want a fight in low sec, they can slow down your mission completion rate. If you goal is making ISK, you need to be able to complete 2 missions in low sec for every 3 that you would in high sec. This is easy in an empty system or on a weekday.
2) logistics. Getting your ships/ammo in and your loot out can be a bit of a pain. If you are just farming LP this is less of an issue.


L5 missions are where it's at. A properly set up group of 3-4 alts can easily make 400-500 Mil/hour. It may get harder with the mission changes, but I've got some fits in mind. We'll keep you updated post patch.


-FM

This is not true at all. If you play smart you won't *EVER* get ganked.

Lets assume you can run 4 L4 missions per hour in high sec or empty low sec.
That's an additional 20K LP per hour or 40 Million per hour (you are running for the best corps aren't you?)

If you mission for 1 hour per day, that is an extra 1.2 Billion per month. Lets say you lose 1 ship per month - a very high loss rate in my opinion. Run your missions in a ship that cost less than 1.2 billion and you profit from low sec.

But really, there is no excuse to every lose a ship to anything other than a bubble (none in low sec) or a remote boosted interdiction cruiser (use a scout alt on the gate if you are worried).

Plus you get to enjoy a new part of the game and make new friends.

-FM

A few problems with calculating low sec to high sec ratio.

High sec you can fly a faction fit faction/t2 bs. In low sec you really should not be doing that, t2 fit t1 bs's or t3's you aren't going to have the same dps/tank/speed. Say for example t2 fit mael vs t2 fit mach with faction gyro's you'll see a flat dps bonus along with higher speed better range and possibly tracking. Even without faction mods you make up a good chunk of the advantage without either having to go stupid with officer/deadspace gear.

You could bring a mach/vargur out to low sec but that brings me to my next point of getting camped in station. faction bs might increase your speed in low sec but in my experience the more expensive the ship your flying the more your gonna be sitting in station waiting for that cloaked loki with probes in local to get bored and leave. You need to manage your potential loss if you do die as well as how tasty you are going to look on a scanner to pirates and that means sticking to cheaper ships which means less isk income.

There is also plenty of time lost to said pirates or even just other mission runners looking for a kill. Weather you switch out ships, wait them out or move to somewhere else your losing time from all this. If you find a quite enough system or manage to diplomacy your way around to have most people not shoot at you this reduces it a lot.


lvl 5's are my personal favorites they bring in lots of LP especially if you blitz them. These are much more reasonable to do in low sec as they do offer pretty good rewards though you'll need greater numbers and/or greater risk.

They do have quite a few problems. Things like missions to kill carriers which sound fun but are more along the lines of kill 30 fighters which drop nothing have no bounty and are a massive PITA as well as carriers taking a godly amount of damage to kill while repping reasonably fast. There's also a handful or broken/frustrating not worth doing missions and a couple missions that seem to be copy pasted (cleansing house, sansha on the horizon). Lastly the agents will frequently send you out of system (about half my mission offers are 3/4 jumps away) which can be dangerous if you are trying to travel through low sec and some systems you just need to plain out avoid.

Kind of worried how these will turn out after AI changes, lvl 4 mission rats switching agro between players isn't too much of a concern as tanking them isn't real hard but lvl 5's you need a rather serious tank to not melt and having dedicated tanks or logistics is highly recommended. There's also some weird situations with ewar eg. will guristas/serps keep focusing the guy who isn't doing anything cause he has been mega jammed/damped, will angels keep focusing the guy in a bs who's sig has been blown out to the size of a carrier. Not sure how this will go, it might take another hit in profitability due to changes in fittings in ships but will have to wait and see.



Ironically it's often the exact thing that makes low sec missions unattractive that makes them worth doing. Having to manage your fitting/risk, keeping an eye on local and getting to know the local area and people, even the added risk all make low sec missions more enjoyable. Lvl 5's while occasionally annoying are generally more of a challenge than lvl 4's and some occasional gems are fairly fun if you can pull em off (like prison break).

I'd love to know what sort of set-up you have in mind. I've been interested in running L5 missions but I don't want to invest too much isk because of the chance of getting ganked.