Missions & Complexes

A low SP character in level 4s can do something like 15-30m ISK/hour depending on which missions you get. You could get something like 10-20m from level 3s at much less risk in a BC.

Have you done missions before? What are your support skills like? It's really easy to loose your first battleship if your support skills are not up to par.

Play around in EFT and see which skills affect your tank and DPS, and get them ALL to level 3, preferably level 4, before you try a battleship. In the meantime, the drake is much more forgiving, and can still be used for level 4 missions if you have a T2 tank (which would involve skills that you'd need anyway for the Raven).

you have a few very big mistakes in your thought process here:

1. you dont care about lp but you want to blitz? wtf?
2. you want to use a slow ass moving BS to run missions >quick<
3. you want to do both above with very low sp?

let me get this right for you:

1. if you blitz you want lp. simple as that, check what items from lp store turn for most value and dont really care about mission payout
2. a raven with low sp is probably the worst ship for bliting. get a drake - its far better for what you want to do
3. if you sp are to low to fit acceptable dps on a drake to blitz lvl4s you should probably be salvaging missions or blitz lvl3s in a caracal

Let the Raven, you will quickly be bored of this heavy ship.
You should use Drake for L4, it's pretty damn safe and not expensive at all.


[Drake, PVE]
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Ballistic Control System II

Invulnerability Field II
Photon Scattering Field II
Photon Scattering Field II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Shield Recharger II

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Missile
Salvager I

Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I

The Raven isn't really a great intro ship for L4s. And it's certainly not if you set it up as described. I'd suggest either going with this (think this is stolen from Tau Cabalander?):

[Raven, Basic vs. Guristas]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Co-Processor II

100MN Afterburner II
Ballistic Deflection Field II
Heat Dissipation Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
X-Large Shield Booster II

[empty high slot]
Small Tractor Beam I
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Wrath Cruise Missile
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Wrath Cruise Missile
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Wrath Cruise Missile
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Wrath Cruise Missile
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Wrath Cruise Missile
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Wrath Cruise Missile

Large Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Large Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Large Warhead Rigor Catalyst I


Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5

It's a kiting setup, so basically you burn out of range and then turn everything off but the AB and launchers. Or you could be more traditional and do this:

[Raven, PvE L4 Liang]
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Damage Control II

X-Large C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
Heat Dissipation Field II
Heat Dissipation Field II
Ballistic Deflection Field II
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

Cruise Missile Launcher II, Paradise Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Paradise Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Paradise Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Paradise Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Paradise Fury Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Paradise Fury Cruise Missile
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Large Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Large Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Large Warhead Rigor Catalyst I


Hammerhead II x5

Either way, you'll be applying much more damage once you give up the idea of trying to get a cap stable booster. And that will decrease your mission completion time, and that's a Good Thing.

Short of that, flying a Drake into L4s isn't a horrible idea, but it will be slow.

Thanks a bunch for the info, especially the bit about blitzing and lp conversion. I really appreciate it.

Would you guys recommend a drake for level 3's until I can properly do level fours?

Alright, it's obvious that you have some combination of love for the Drake and hate for the Raven. I can sort of agree on both. I still prefer my NH over any other Caldari ship for missions, Tengu included (though for exploration the Tengu wins hands down). It's hard, though, to take seriously the idea that a Drake will, on average, across a representative spectrum of L4 missions, outperform a Raven. There are certainly individual missions where the Drake is preferable, and there are many where it comes out in a wash. But overall, the Raven will do better.

And why is that? Well, two things really. First, the majority of NPC hp to chew through in L4s rests in battleships, which a Raven has no issue applying damage to. If this weren't the case, the Drake might pull ahead if it weren't for the second thing: the Raven has a damage type-independent bonus, while the Drake only gets a bonus on kinetic. It's plausible that if you only ran Guristas and Serpentis missions -- along with EoM and Mordu -- you could get away with a Drake and have average completion times on par with a Raven. But in my experience that just doesn't happen: you're always going to pull enough Angel/Blood/Sansha missions where a Drake will get bogged down that the Raven wins if you compare across all missions.

Look, I hate Ravens. I really do. I never even hopped into one until I had BS 5 and had been roundly spoiled by my NH -- but when I did it was underwhelming. I agree that there are many, many better ships out there for missions. But a Drake -- which tops out at 435 DPS with 3 BCU IIs and Scourge Fury (my skills) -- is not going to outperform a Raven that hits 443 DPS with 4 BCU IIs and its choice of vanilla missiles (again, my skills). Neither is great, and the Drake definitely has a more solid tank on it. There are better ships for L4s, including the CNR, NH, and Tengu. But it's simply not true that a Drake is somehow better at L4s than a Raven.

And after you learn level 4's with your Raven.

Train Tech 2 Projectiles and grabe ether a Vargur or a Machariel to realy cut though thoughs missions at high speeds.

I have flown caldari ships extensively. and imo the raven is definetly a step up from the drake. But as others have said it's not as forgiving as the drake. If you first start doing l4 missions I'd go with a tank over gank set up. sure you wont complete missions only slightly faster then in a drake but as your support skills get better en you get more comfortable with the ship and the missions you're doing you can add more BCU's in the lows and start getting a much better performance out of your ship.

also I suggest that you dont start out with blitzing the missions untill you know how to handle them. If you're trying to blitz and screw up a trigger then you're toast. And being in a raven also means that you'll use more isk

I highly recommend against using a raven until you have the skills to fit and fly one properly. The tank on a low skill raven isn't enough for many l4's. the tank on a low skill drake can be stupidly powerful to the point of being indestructible. I personally hated the raven and used the drake and changed my fitting for whatever mission I had at the time and trained for a tengu and am not disappointed in my decision.

If you take nothing else away from this thread, this is a good peice. BC V opens up command ships like the nighthawk, which is one of the most noob friendly mission ships out there, it maxes a drake, which, while I love to hate, is a quality ship, and it also provides huge advantages if you want to cross train to other races. I would say of all the lvl 5 ship skills I have, that is the one I get absolutely the most use out of.