Ships & Modules

Right now I got a Harpy fitted pretty good with all the essentials at Tech II.

There is not much else I can do to this ship. I mostly run missions with this character and I need a new & better ship for some lvl 3 & 4 mission. Today some lvl 3 are difficult and requires a lot of warping in and out.

I heard Drake and Tengu are some really good ships for this purpose.

Do you have any ideas of what would be a natural transition from Assault Frigates?

Rail Protues whit drone sub, or a rail Tengu if you wanna minimize your skill plan to keep it simple. Sentry/Rail ishtar is fine aswell but then you have all them drone skills to inject. Moa/Eagle/Deimos And then for luls Astarte?

a t2/t3 cruiser is a lot of specialization for lv3/4 missions (and aren't really all that effective in most cases anyways). I would work to a battlecruiser for lv3s, and then a battleship for lv4s. with a balanced remap and +3s, looks like it takes ~7 days to train BS4, where cruiser 5 takes 20days just on its own. And training a large weapon to 4 doesn't take very long either. I am mostly ignoring support skills as I assume they are already done, or will be required for both ships. Sure getting a t2 fit marauder will take longer than a t2 fit HAC, but neither is an entry to barrier.

A drake will face roll lv3s, and a tengu will do it even better than a drake. personally I prefer turret ships, but not sure how good BC level turret ships are for missions. Sounds like medium rails are in a pretty good position these days, so a ferox would probably work reasonably well. Drones are pretty strong, so a myrmidon would probably also be a good choice.

not really sure what your goals are so I won't push too strongly for any one direction, but there are options. for some training cruiser 5 is preferable to training any BS skills at all. A meta fit battlecruiser is sufficient for lv3s. and you will get there far quicker than you will training cruiser lv 5.

I used a Gila to run level 4's Really nice Tank for a cruiser (with the right skills) and also around 700 DPS+

If you are just doing high sec missions the easiest and best progression is as stated above. All the tech II frigs and cruisers are mainly pvp boats. Sure you can use them for missioning, but they really shine in pvp. Tech III cruisers are another option. However, they are slated for some alteration/trimming "soon." So I would suggest you just go with the tech I ship progression until things start to settle out with the tech III cruisers.

You have probably sunk some sp already into tech II hybrids. So Ferox then Rokh or Brutix then Hyperion or all 4 would be efficient paths of least resistance. And you really should go two races anyway because you will be thankful later on if you decide to pvp (which is where eve becomes really fun imo, but I do understand the sense of accomplishment with getting to level 4s). Two races like Gallente and Caldari give you options in tanking and weapons while retaining some initial skill efficiency because of hybrid turrets for pve. And if you pvp you will be able to go out with armor or shield fleets.