Ships & Modules

Every week I see forums asking about L4 missions.

I'm going to approach the subject from the perspective of pure L4 grind.

If you are going to be a professional mission grinder you will need to work in all areas of high sec.
Opening up NPC corp after NPC corp so you have the best of standings.

This means you will need to be mobile!
Able to pack up and move hubs with ease.
Be ready to open up new corporations from L1 and up.


You will want a support fleet.
This can be done by using an Orca.
You will need some way of loot/salvaging.
You will need a ship or ships that can open up L1-L3 missions.


My top choice for this is Gurrista ships.
They pack a lot of mission specific damage with solid tanks and best of all are tiny m3 wise.
This allows an Orca to hold a Worm, Gila, Noctis combo. (( Most Frig/Cruiser/Noctis combo's will not fit in Orca ))
A lot of support for all your combat/salvage/hauling needs all being moved in one trip with all your other goods.
You want an Orca and it's the first thing to go for after you have a basic T1 BS that you can run L4 missions in.

If you fly Gurrista you will end up as a Rattlesnake pilot.
These really are the L4 kings.
They are not blitz pure dps king.
They are king due to lack of effort.
You can grind and grind with no distractions in one. Omni tank with huge health making it a bad gank target. (( They are cheap for pirate faction BS too ))
Never view a survival guide again. Go into the toughest L4's and laugh at the sad damage of multiple spawns.
1200 plus mission specific landible DPS at max targeting range. With a TP, MWD and drone omni.

The investment is huge SP wise to max out this style of play as well.
Training for all L5 effecting skills for: Worm, Gila, Rattlesnake, Noctis, Orca is no easy feat.



You get some side bonuses to making your mission running this level of professional:

Gila is like a pocket size BC. All the health and damage of a BC with small sig radius / speed.
It's also very cheap for a pirate faction cruiser ((Sub Cap PvP!))

You will have all the skills needed to jump into Rorqual / Carriers.
This will allow you to move large amounts of goods from low sec jump outs to null and get into cap fleets.
Having Orca/Rorqual makes you ready to trade/haul to make far more than L4 missions ever will. (( Supplemental Income ))

Training for the Orca will help you get some miners in the process just in case you ever want to just chill and drink beers with some industrial friends while you talk **** about more pressing corp matters.

Gila makes a solid exploration ship in all securities of space.

Rattlesnake spider tanks are awesome for WH's.

Rattlesnakes can tank L5's if you so choose.

Even with Gurrista ships taking more SP to master than other groups they have the ability to do many different things well.




Gurrista ships do have some down sides too:

One being incursion running, Rattlesnakes are not sought after as much as other pirate faction ships.
Not a huge deal in the 40 man groups but when looking for fleet in the 10 man groups you will notice.

More capital fleets are armor based so you will see that aspect as you move into capital ships.
Although for a little more SP you can cross train armor and use the Gallente BS skill to open up your cap ship option.

Missile secondary skills only effect 1 weapon type compared to Gun secondary skills that effect 3 weapon types.



If you are purely looking to be the L4 mission grinder from hell go Gurrista.
If you want to run incursions with other players as a higher level option of your PvE you may prefer other ship/weapon types.

You do not have to use Gurrista ships to go pro it is just my personnel recommend.
You will need to deal with space issues on the orca though so you may have to use a destroyer for salvage if you even salvage at all or you can just use an AF to run 1-3 missions all though a bit slow on the L3's.

Review:
Have an Orca as hauler.
Have support fleet.
Choose ship type wisely based on your exact goals. (( Machs, VindI, Nightmare are big with Incursion fleets ))


Incursion v.s. Missions
Those looking to run incursions with lots of missions will see great value in the Mach.
Mach would be my 2nd choice for missions and is still a great ship for incursions.
Those that will be in armor based cap fights will most likely see the most of out the Nightmare as the L4/incursion ship.
Vindicator is the ship for those looking for all incursion all the time while still being able to do some mission / cap fleet work every so often.
The heavy cap fleet pirate BS is the Bhaalgorn. It has the same issue as the Rattlesnake when it comes to incursions and doesn't handle L4's as well as the other pirate BS's but can still get the job done with ease compared to T1's.

These are purely recommends based on what I've seen in game.
I hope this helps some new players with long term goals toward mission running (( PvE aspects )) and feel free to add other tips.

I am slightly confused as to what the goal of this guide is. You open up with "I'm going to approach the subject from the perspective of pure L4 grind". From that I would expect a guide to maximizing your ISK/hour while doing L4 missions. Yet you keep going on tangents such as lack of effort, PvP, incursions, WHs, and such. In fact you offer no advice pertaining specifically to missions at all, except for "you will need to work in all areas of high sec". Which, given your goal of "pure L4 grind", is actually counterproductive - time spent moving from region to region is time you're not using to make ISK. And you don't care about your standings with other empires if you're just grinding your agents in one small pocket of space (as is the most efficient way).

I expected considerations such as ISK return on blitzing/salvaging/salvaging with an alt, agent selection, which missions to decline, which missions to blitz, which missions to clear. Fitting suggestions like DPS versus tank trade-offs, choosing a ship and weapon system against specific NPC types, etc.

To sum up, I don't think this is the mission running guide people are looking for.

no you won't.

The Gila does the job of the ishtar but takes less M3 and can mission specific the damage.
(( Gila is the shield / missile version of the Ishtar, but preforms slightly better ))
The worm rounds out the group for the L1's if needed.

Both of these can be done by other ships but I've yet to find anything that does as well as the Gila at it.
The worm on the other hand can be replaced with a AF that can fit in that last bit of space.
I only stick with the worm as it uses the same skill set as not to waste SP when maxing out the support fleet.

Gila > ishtar

Rattlesnake is a pirate BS that is missile/drone based.

SOE L4's are hot beds for getting ganked right now.
Other pirate BS's are huge targets for these groups.
Many threads on this very forum about it.

Of course skip looting/salvage when it is not worth the isk/LP ratio.
But better yet do what I do and have a new player enjoy it while they pay you a %.

SOE agent area can be a hard place to deal with market aspects.
Something a Rattlesnake pilot can do while they mission and increase isk per hour far more than being where the flavor of the month LP is.

I also wouldn't call SOE mission rewards/LP growing fat. So yes that is so hard.
It's a great place to be right now if you run cheap in a BS and are in the first year or two of the game. (( Thanks to the recent expansions ))
I'm talking about even longer term aspects of mission running. If you have a pirate BS that has faction/complex gear all over it SOE space would be the last place I'd want to be right now.

Bad thread is well, bad.

if you want to put something like this together, I would highly recommend writing it up offline, proofing and editing it. As it stands it mostly looks like you vomited words in a post. it is all over the place and poorly organized.

If you are going to be making assertions make sure they are at least accurate.

You may like the Gila but it is no way "better" than an ishtar. they are both primarily drone boats, but the ishtar simply does drones better. it can out DPS and apply the drone damage better.


And for gods sake, if you are going to talk about a Pirate faction all over the place, spell their name correctly at least.



I hope no noobs read this and take it as good advice.

Sigh. I get it. You really, really love Guristas ships and you have for a very long time. But I just can't see this anymore. I was willing to more or less let it slide for a long time but with the Ishtar's rebalance... the Gila just loses. Period. There are exactly two situations where I'd take a Gila over an Ishtar: non-kin/therm pure passive tanking and Angels. And the latter is arguable at this point.

So with all respect due -- why, exactly, should I value the Gila as highly as you do?

Nothing against the Gila but Sentry drones are about to be hit with a few nerfs in Rubicon 1.1. Something one might want to take this into consideration before spending months on drone skills.

For my purposes the Gila is superior.

The DPS and tracking can be adjusted for with the extra rig/mid.
A drone omni and a sentry rig can go a long way although a sentry rig is over kill.

The DPS also has a factor of not being mission specific for the ishtar.
(( A small factor but a factor that makes up for a small % of the DPS gap ))

Even if you run damage control on the ishtar and not the gila for the extra low difference the gila would out tank the ishtar.
Not that I recommend it but it show that when adding in the other extras the dps that lands can actually be same or higher with the gila (( Drone onmi > gun tracking when drones are the bulk of your dps. ))

Even if you don't agree on the Gila being better on those purposes and it's just a wash as far as being in L3 missions.

The Gila still wins out on ability to use it to help other mission runners (( L4's where you don't want to bring in your BS )) and has less un-packaged M3. Mission fit Gila also works better for jumping in a high sec combat site to help compared to mission fit ishtar as the extra tank goes a lot further. Using same ship for multiple purposes is always a plus.

The Ishtar does have situations where it is preferred over the Gila but for support ship on the mission runners orca it is a 2nd place pick.

It's neither.

It's what I discovered to be the most effective for Mission running period. L1-L4.
It is not L4 specific and it is not about general PvE.

Move only 2 ships when needed Orca and RS.
Orca as hauler.
Worm - Restricted L1's
Gila - L3 and under
Noctis - Salvager

Rattlesnake as L4 ship.

Go into any mission and have no need for changing parts or viewing survival guides. (( Time is isk ))
Professional mission running at it's finest.


PvE side notes:
GIla can do exploration well.
RS can do larger scale incursions but is not a top pick for small scale.
RS can tank L5's and also handles WH's and Cosmos well on the over all.

Viewing the thread now I see I should have made it more of a Gurista meets Ore thread to avoid the confusion.