Missions & Complexes

Hello,

I'm basically 2 month old, 3m SP, 70m isk in my wallet and I make 6 to 8m isk/hour from L3 missions in a myrmidon with T2 modules (except weapons) and T2 light and medium drones. I just reached L4 and I realized it is going to be a lot of grind to get me to the next step.
Until now, I found the missioning to be reasonably rewarding: income was ok, new skills to learn in reasonable time, new modules to fit. The game experience was fun. But when I saw the battleship prices (and other T2 ships) and learning times getting bigger and bigger (34 days to T2 sentries), I started feeling a little bit disheartened.

What can I do to get my little fun back from missioning (or from Eve in general)?

Ideas:
1. Grind my way to a battleship (Domi with sentries ?): long and it seems not interesting anymore
2. Fly cheap frigates to low and null sec for exploration: I tried. It is fun aside from having to be paranoid all the time. Unfortunately I got bored after being killed a few times. It's not fun to always be the mouse.
3. PI, Industry or Trading: It is fun to make spreadsheets and install your setup but then it starts to be boring when you have to resupply. Anyway there is no nice business plan left (at least in high sec) and small margins and no starting capital = no profit.
4. Join a corp and do stuff: Unfortunately I am a casual player and I am not sure I can invest myself enough to make things work.
5. PVP: havent tried yet. Can you do it for cheap ?
6. Buy a PLEX and get to business: I dont feel psychologically ready to buy ingame money.
7. Quit the game.

And you, where was your fun when you were a young pilot ?

Thank you for the feedback.

My point with missioning was that the progression between L3 and L4 feels steep compared to the previous steps. It is not the missions difficulty but the price of a fitted battleship that discouraged me.
I agree with you on missioning as being the mean of fueling other activities but for the moment, I feel I cant do much with the small isk/hour I can get.

2. Here again, the SoE ships look super nice but incredibly expensive for me. I'll have a look at the stealth bomber.

Don't need a Battleship to run level 4 missions, there's Cruiser class hulls that can complete them such as Command Ships, Heavy Assault Cruisers, T3 Strategic Cruisers, etc.

I know people who complete level 4 missions in Assault Frigates. Course the ship fit is top equipment with high skill levels. The whole point is it doesn't require a Battleship.

After reading the original post of your thread, I think you should slow down a bit and stay with level 3's and increase your skills. Just because a player can quickly jump into and pilot a Battleship doesn't mean they're actually qualified to fly it, especially if their support / fitting skills aren't at max level.

My first 9 months of playing this game, I stayed in a Rifter Frigate and max trained every skill related to it and buffed the fit up with top equipment before I even thought about jumping into a new ship. I was completing level 3 encounter missions and gaining the bonus reward in a T1 Frigate. The only reason I jumped into a Battlecruiser was to complete the missions quicker so I could collect the loot and salvage from the wrecks before they despawned.

I mix Exploration with Mission Running and jump between the 2 to break up boredom. There's also a different form of missions which are offered by Event Agents that you might consider trying. I definitely enjoyed completing them.


DMC

with your skills you will probably make more isk running level 3s than slowly grinding out lv4s. For a short term goal I'd say get sentry drone interfacing to lv 4, and then buy a set of faction sentry drones.

also as a new pilot the most fun I had was flying around with my corp in t1 frigs shooting each other. good fun cheap pvp. Seems that novice FW plexes would be one of the best places to try this out solo. But I'd still say join a corp.

Be warned, however, that the competition in highsec exploration is high to the point, that you will usually get company in a DED 3/10 or 4/10 as soon as you take more than a few minutes to clear it. While for me highsec combat signatures happened to be the source of my first 10B in eve, it was more than frustrating in those days to have almost completed the first room in GSO (in a horribly underskilled Drake) just to get a Tengu warp in, charge to the gate and steamroll the telescope in the 2nd pocket (substitute Tengu for any FoM ship, like Cerb, Ishtar or Gila, since T3 got banned from entering DED 4/10 plexes).

As others have already mentioned: This is Eve after all, there is no predefined goal or level progression. And missions are indeed (imho) only one of many sources of easy ISK to fund other activities, like loosing said ISK in pretty explosions.

My advice is to experiment with everything available, as long as you can afford it, find out what works for you in terms of fun and satisfactory rewards and then stick to it and specialize (could even be multiple career paths simultaneously).

Strat Cruisers got banned from entering DED 3/10s. They can enter 4/10s.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I understand that BS or HAC are more like a mid-term goal for me now.


I think I'll stick with this as a short term goal.


Yes, with LP and bounties included, I roughly make 7m isk/hour. At this rate, in 10-20h of (efficient) game play (around 15 days for me), I will have around 150m-200m in my wallet. Still far from a fitted battleship. Apart from sentries, do you have other ideas to help me improve my mission clear time ?


I havent tried combat sites yet but I am not so fond of this kind of competition. It was already a pain when I was training for data and relic sites in high sec.

Anyway, as a lot of you said, it might be best to start going social and find a nice corp soon.

Either this is a recent stealth change or it's a bug cuz T3 Cruisers were denied access to 4/10 and lower rated DED sites a long time ago.

Some people say T3's are allowed, others say T3's aren't allowed. I haven't seen any statement from Dev's confirming T3's now have access to DED 4/10 sites.

Seriously, this type of change is definitely noteworthy and should have been mentioned in a Dev Blog or at least included in the Patch Notes.





DMC

Alright, back on topic.

1) Find a group (or at least another player) to play with. I can not overstate how important this is. Solitary players do not last for long, in this game.

2) If you find missions entertaining, then find someone to mission with. There are plenty of people climbing up the mission ladder.
Helpmymission is a good place to start, but so is NPC corp chat. Don't fleet up easily, some people are out for your skin.

3) Someone will swear at me for this. You don't need T2 sentries. Either T1 or faction ones will do just OK, with good support skills. Sentries will kill targets faster than regular drones, at equivalent or slightly ower DPS, given the lack of travel time.
You need a MJD: having one and knowing when to use it will keep you alive.

4) You shouldn't leap to L4s until you have a sturdy T2 tank. Once you do, try a couple with a friend, to get a taste of the difficulty. The difficulty gap between 3 and 4 is very large. You might have to consider doing L3s in your battleship for a while, optimizing it in the process.

5) You already have most of what you need for a Dominix. The hull will cost you about 180 mil. You already have a very large part of that, counting your BC. Mail The Angel Project (it's an ingame character) if you need some spare isk, she'll help you.

6) Consider doing L3s in your battleship. Your isk/h will improve over what you're averaging now, and you'll get to practice with it. There's no rush.

Eve-Uni recommends shield-tanked Myrmidons for missions. The Rubi 1.0 version fields a stronger potential sustained tank than what you've got here - you'd want to run the appropriate pair of Shield Hardeners for the mission rats, and you do miss out on the Omnidirectional Tracking Link to help your future sentry drones.

That said, I've not flown a Myrmidon in a while, and never thought to shield tank it. I was using it for DED sites primarily, and sometimes ran into trouble in DED 4/10 rated sites with an armor tank that looked similar to what you've got.

Ideas tho:

• Omnidirection Tracking Link isn't particularly useful until you've got sentry drones in play.
• Myrmidons can fit Medium MJDs - if you're choosing between gunnery skills and drone skills, going for a "distance tank" fit may get you into L4s more quickly, and allow you to focus your immediate training on drone skills.
• As a small tweak, consider dropping the powergrid rigs and downsizing your guns. I've heard CCP employees on podcasts saying "mixed guns are OK when you're getting other benefits." Given that at best half your damage is coming from guns, you might be better served choosing smaller guns for a bigger tank (with Auxiliary Nano Pump) or more drone damage (Sentry Damage Augmentor or maybe Drone Speed Augmentor).

Now I have a minimally tanked MJD sentry Myrmidon to figure out.