Ships & Modules

Your fit looks nice, but you're missing a couple of medium slots ... the Navy Scorpion has 8 of those

I'd upgrade everything to Tech 2 as soon as possible, drop the Heavy Capacitor Booster for a Shield Boost Amplifier, add a 100MN Afterburner, and use 4 hardeners, either 2x 2 of the specific damage types for the mission, or 2 Invulns and 2 specific ones for omni-damage missions.

The Small Tractor Beam is mostly wasted IMHO, a Small Remote Armor Repairer to patch up your drones when/if needed would be better ...

Keep in mind that you don't NEED a cap-stable, permaboosted setup, "burst" boosting is the way to go : start the shield booster when your shields hit 30%, keep boosting until your cap drops to 25% or your shields are back to 70% or so.

I have a range of 111 kms with Fury cruise missiles, and 74 kms with Precision for Frigate/Elite Cruisers work ...

I'd be willing to be that your missile support skills are not high enough to properly fly a Battleship ... you *really* NEED at least 4's in those, and preferably 5's, before level 4 missions are "easy" (and not all of them).

Also, shield skills, cap skills, targeting skills, etc ...

Just because you have the bare minimum skills to fly a ship is not a good reason to rush into it ... Battleships can do level 4 missions without too much sweat, WHEN and only WHEN your support skills are good enough.

Yeah I agree that's why I was asking for general rules of thumb. I'm still not entirely certain what I need before doing level 4s.

All of my shield skills are 4 (shield operation is 5, shield management is 3). Turns out my missile skills are much lower than I thought, but I still show 622 DPS. I definitely need rage and targeting skills, I just can't figure out how I am so far below some of the listed skills, unless people are listing their stats with all level 5 skills.

as far as rules of thumb go you sound reasonably good for starting, just need to work on them missile support skills.


people usually post stats from the all level 5 character because that is the easiest to compare to. most people probably won't bother training cruise spec to 5, or maybe skip out on target navigation to 5, but for the most part with lv 4/5 support skills you are pretty close to the all lv 5 character. sure it might take you an extra few secs in some missions, but that is probably worth it to not spend a few months perfecting some support skill.

IMHO, if you are paying with money for your sub don't bother PLEXiing a "good" mission boat. Just slowboat your way to it.

Dear OP: there are two general rules of a thumb that you should consider:

1. Do not fly what you can't afford to lose
2. You need about 1000 dps gank/tank to do level 4 missions.

Now obviously, some L4s are easier and some are harder. For instance, blitzing The Assault is easy, as you can just skip the first two rooms and do a single group in the last room. However, doing the last room in Angel Extravaganza can be insane for an unprepared character. So let's add a third rule to the above two:

3. start doing L4 missions when you get more profit out of them than out of doing L3s with whatever ship you're using for those.

Overall, forget about SNI and god knows what else people are throwing around. Nowadays, you can do missions in a badly tanked sniper in most cases. However, for them to be profitable, you want as much damage as you can get.

Now, I see you're in Amarr space, have Amarr BS 5 and missile skills T2, so I'll suggest something completely insane for you:

[Armageddon, pve]
5x Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Fury Cruise Missile
2x E500 Prototype Energy Vampire

100mn Afterburner
2x Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

3x Drone Damage Amplifier II
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Damage Control II or Armor EM Hardener II (I prefer DC because of the extra hull buffer, but Hardener is more effective for tanking)
Large Armor Repairer II

Large Processor Overclocking Unit I
2x Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I

Curator I x5
Garde I x5
Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5

Stick those Vampires on a nearby enemy and you'll be cap stable as long as your AB is off. This fit should give you somewhere between 600 and 900 dps depending on your skill and more than enough tank to do all L4s. Now you can decide which way to go - if you want to keep training Amarr ships (great for Amarr space), you can train lasers and eventually switch to a laser boat or if you like missiles more, you can train Caldari Battleships and get a Raven / CNR instead. You can even train for drones, which will improve this ship and grab a Rattlesnake eventually.

Tldr: Just because something is cookie-cutter, it's not the only option. Look at your skills and you might be amazed at the options you have.

Indeed, Kery. I have never in my entire game time in EVE used real money to fun ships and I've never, ever flown a ship I wasn't ready to lose. I'd rather do stuff a bit slower and be sure I can recover from inevitable trouble than put it all in one basket, then rage as it goes kaboom.

Besides, EVE is one of those games where bigger isn't always better. Sooner or later, one realizes that the pimped battleship in that L4 mission isn't all that cool, then crashes down to frigate/cruiser as he enters FW or null space ratting for considerably more isk. Sometimes I wonder if those guys spending isk on that pimped L4 ship realize they could have bought hundreds of merlins / talwars for the same money...

Not really. All weapon systems have issues. Some deal fixed damage like lasers and hybrids and will sometimes have to shoot into high resistances. Missiles never hit for full damage when shooting moving targets. Projectile weapons hardly ever apply their damage within optimal range.

Drones are not an exception here. They have only different issues, but their DPS can be compared with any other weapon system. When in the had of a bad pilot will any weapon system perform badly.

That was a level 3 Angel Extravaganza withouit the bonus room, didn't it ?

I'll agree that a properly fitted Drake is overkill for most level 3 missions, BUT, and this is very important, there is a whole galaxy of difference between level 3 DPS and level 4 DPS ... an overtanked Drake could survive in level 4s, but it's damage output with HMs/HAMs will not always be enough to kill the high-end NPC Battleships ... and those hit HARD !

If the Drake is "too easy" for you, try a couple of level 3s in a Caracal ... the difficulty of those will be much closer to level 4s.

(Note : it's been a while since I've flown my Caracal ... I do know what you're talking about with the Drake tough, I did a bunch of level 3s in mine for standings grind.)

Don't let people convince you that, L4s can give you decent(ish) income, but it's nowhere near the best.

I saw you were missionning in amarr space and that you have amarr BS 5. Do you have any skill in gunnery? If yes, think about buying a nightmare. This ship is simply the best in amarr space <3