Missions & Complexes

Hello every body, I am currently a merchant and I came here to advise with You.

My goal, from this thread is to advise on which ship to train for, so that I can effectively rush/grind/blitz level 4 missions to gain faction standing in the fastest possible time.

The ship must be fully T2 fitted, that includes drones.

-Ishtar
-t3 battle-cruiser
-Eagle
-Tech3 Cruiser
-Ashimmu
-Gila
-Phantasm
-Rattler (T2 Sentry drones to make up for lack of DPS)

Which one, if ANY of the above choices should I go with to expend the least amount of SP training for to blitz/rush level 4's as fast as possible?

What the above poster said. Drake/raven is the best if u want to do it less sp way, but i would advise against it. Your dps wil be pathetic and so your isk/hr will e low.

Now if u can spend an extra month to get to a tengu, then thats worth it. Train the cal cruiser 5 first, u can train t2 launchers after that.

But if u have the skills for an ishtar and t2 sentries then its the best. if u don't have the skills for a t2 sentry i'd advise against training them. It takes longer than a tengu for those.

So, a Tengu would end up running less SP then a Rattler?

Will a tengu run level 4's faster then a t2 sentry rattler?

yep. now u can't compare t2 sentries with tengu. there is a lot of difference between the both in dps.

And sentries are not practical when u need to move around. so you have to sit still till everything is dead and then move to pick objective/ warp gate etc which will cut down your isk/hr greatly.

train up to t2 mediums. and aim for t2 hml tengu.

best. ever.

tengu doesn't need drones. What i meant was t2 medium drones are sufficient for most mission ships, so instead of wasting time with training t2 sentries, he should go for tengu.

And lvl4 all missile skills are good enough. CN missiles easily pop the frigs fyi.

A Bestower with the proper Social skills is the lowest SP required to do level 4 missions when grinding for Standing.

If standing is your main goal.

A Raven isn't a CNR now is it? CNR is good, raven is garbage. Raven doesn't give you enough to compensate for how much slower/less tanky it is than a drake or how much bigger cruise explosion radius is. (Plus all the SP you have to sink into large missile skills to catch up to where you were on your Drake/NH/Tengu.)

I agree....Drake= win button for level 3 missions. I was able to run a ridiculous tank even with T1 modules and skills. With improved skills now after grinding lvl 3's for some time -- they're a joke.
I was lazy too, omni-tanked and never once fitted specifically for each NPC type. Just slap on a bunch of shield and looted T1 launchers and ammo. If you bother to fit for each NPC, you'll be nigh immortal.
I have just this one toon, and spread out skills to the four winds trying various things in Eve, so when I say mediocre skills carried me thru in that Drake, I ain't kidding. Now that I've gone back to bring up some critical skills, the Drake is just stupidly OP for level 3's.
For SP point numbers, can't help ya. But the Drake can run a killer tank with a couple T1 low slot mods for PG and CPU, and be cap stable all day. Once you can fit T2 tank modules, you'll be bored with the Drake for PvE.
It's why I am finally moving into BS hulls, because a level 3 in my still poorly fitted Drake is essentially an excersize in - Target, Orbit, Paint/Fire, next Target.
Salvaging takes way longer than completing a mission. I still have poor drone skills and Warrior I's still stomp frigs in Lvl 3's without issue.

Torpedoes have more hit points than cruise missiles, you don't lose an entire torpedo to defender missiles. For Golem users, it's better to fire torpedoes ungrouped: firing them grouped means the damage calculations will remove the amount of damage proportional to the amount of HP removed by the defender missile.

I didnt really see anything about your current skills, so its hard to advise. This may be an abnormal answer, but what about courier missions?


No they wouldn't be as fast as combat missions, but if your only goal is to gain standing, I would think during the month+ of training any of the above ships, you could be running courier missions and have your standing.

Just a thought.

-Edit-

And yes, T2 Sentries/heavies are a lot of SP. The last skill alone for each is 17 days if you are mapped for it.