EVE New Citizens Q&A

You can run level IV missions in pretty much any battleship.

The Machariel is probably the ultimate projectile turret ship, followed closely by the vargur, but that may be a bit out of your price/skill range.

The Maelstrom is a very solid choice for level 4s.
The Tempest is also fairly solid.

If you want to stay away from battleships and head T2 instead, the Sleipnir and Loki are also very capable projectile turret missioners.

Also, you're going to want decent drone skills - at least enough so you can field a full flight of five T2 light drones, because you'll need them to shake off any scramming or webbing frigates.

The basic elements of your basic L4 boat are:

1. Use a T1 hull, going bigger is usually a waste

2. Pick a boat that has a drone bay. You don't need a large drone bay, just a bay of some kind, 5 small or at most 5 medium drones to take down smaller targets are what you need for backup.

3. Use AB, not MWD. More generally, you want to be Cap stable indefinitely, maybe a bit better than that.

4. As with all mission ships, a bunch of the same weapon is better than a variety of smaller ones.

Beyond that, pick a boat, load it up, and try things until you're clearing missions as fast as you'd like or you get blown up. There's not really a set "mission boat" that you need, L4s are basically the non-heroic dungeons of Eve: sure, more power and optimal builds helps, but there's severe diminishing returns on effort past a certain point.

thanks guys. The drones are already very useful for lv 3s to deal with the annoying frigates, I figured they would be invaluable for lv4s as those things become more dangerous (web/scram). I have been using a cheap fit arti hurricane for lv 3s so far (251 dps) and I rarely encountered problems.

I'm not really sure what you mean with this



but the help is appreciated from everyone. Just one more thing: do I need a full T2 setup (guns, repaiers, resists, etc...) to be able to complete them in a reasonable amount of time (i.e higher isk/hour than doing lv 3's instead) or will the standart meta 4 stuff take too long to be worth it?

Around how much DPS should I be looking for to start off?

T2 guns are not necessary, Meta 4 should serve their purpose here perfectly.
As for tank, T2 is generally advised. As said above, overtank at first then start reducing it for more gank. The same goes for Capacitor: Sure it is nice to be Cap stable, but ultimately stable Cap IS wasted Cap and three or four minutes (or even less) of Capacitor are entirely sufficient if you know what you are doing (and a damage rig or two look better than those CCCs anyway).

Also, a common figure is 500 DPS: 500 Tank to start running L4s somewhat comfortably and safely; with better skills you will be able to raise both numbers and can additionally tweak them for more DPS... dealing over 1000 DPS is entirely possible.

As many have said, go for a solid T1 Battleship set up, supported by drones to tske down the fast scramblers and webbers, and any other pesky frigate type.

All I want to add is a thought on drones. Aim to use T2 Hobgoblins. The do Thermal Damage, and almost everything, that you will meet in a mission, takes some level thermal hurting, so they are a solid and versatile drone.

Using a single drone type keeps things simple and as I say, Hobbie 2's are the bee knees for mission runners, and people like me who tend to beat on Blood Raider exploration sites

for minmatar and projectiles I would first make sure I had these:

t2 everything except weapons. This includes:

1. tank
2. drones
3. weapon mods

Then I would make sure I had the rigging skills

Finally I would probably recommend a maelstrom with 1200mm artillery to start off in level 4s.