EVE New Citizens Q&A

People getting big ISK/hour out of level III are generally not flying Drakes they are flying Machs and Ishtars.

I do not really run level IIIs but some thoughts:

1) It is absolutely essential you mission for a corp with good ISK/LP ratios. In other words ABSOLTUTELY NOT Caldari Navy, Emperors Family, Fed Navy etc. Something like SOE is good though they have very few level III agents. This will give you better ISK/hour in the IIIs and give you good corp standing for IVs with a solid missioning corp. Mission running is about LP.

2) High ISK/hr generally comes from blitzing which means declining long or slow missions and only accepting quickly completable ones. In the missions that you do accept you look up the mission and do the absolute minimum to complete and get out. No loot, no salvage and only shoot the minimum number of things to complete and get to next mission.

3) As level IIIs are short travel time is even more important than in level IVs. Consider warp speed rigs.

4) There are level IVs you can complete easily in basic ships. Cargo Delivery and Recon I are easily done in shuttles. Some of the low level IVs only have one or two Battleships. However do not fall into the trap of trying to run the bigger longer IVs in a Drake. You can do it but it takes forever and is not efficient.

As Hasikan already said the isk in missions is in the LP not the mission rewards. You have to figure LP in.

Before burner missions were introduced players typically were able to make more isk per hour doing level 3 than level 4's until they had really high Skills.

Null sec missions will pay out way more than high sec.

Running null sec anoms can get you 20+ million bounty ticks ( concord pays out bounties every 20 minutes each bounty payout is a "tick").

This is a game. You will hear people talk about fun per hour. In my opinion if you are chasing after what pays the most isk then you are playing eve wrong. You should be doing what is fun for you to do. You can make isk doing anything in this game.

However it's your game, don't let me tell you how to play it.

Level 3 missions are great for standing, not so great for ISK. As mentioned, you can make more by using a fast ship and blitzing the missions.

Exploration is inconsistent - you may get a run of good sites where you make a lot of ISK and then nothing but carbon for a while. Sleeper cache can be found in highsec and is worthwhile but highsec data and relic sites are only for practice.

You can make decent ISK in highsec running DED combat sites in a battlecruiser http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/An_advanced_guide_to_maximizing_isk_from_hi_sec_exploration

Once again making isk in missions is all about speed running. You want to turn in as many missions as you can in as short amount of time as possible, if making maximum isk is your goal that is.

Doing missions really fast usually involves laying down decent dps. The drake is known for a lot of things but high amounts of damage is not one of them.

I've run level 4's like AE and Worlds Collide in a drake before. It can be done. Granted it took me all night long to run the one mission but I did it. That was before all of the "re-balancing" so IDK if it is still possible.

Like I said already it's a game and it's all about the fun. If you like your Drake and enjoy running missions in it don't let anyone tell you not to. The Drake was my favorite ship for a long long time.

Trying to understand that calculator. I plugged in Caldari Navy, then location was The Forge and I hit "Select Corporation Buy Prices"

So from that do I look for the item that has the best ISK/LP and go for that?

Yep sort by the ISK/LP by clicking at the top of the column. ignore any stupidly high values (higher than say 10,000 ISK/LP) they are probably part of some scam and not genuine buy offers.

Caldari Navy are not good to mission for once you have good enough standings for low Jita tax rates. The reason is the items they sell are also available in Faction War so the prices are a bit tanked.

That is a 0.6 ratio 600 ISK per LP. That is about right for Caldari Navy.

Basically you can either:

1) select a Corp that has consistently reasonable ISK/LP. Generally SOE that comes in between 1400 and 2000 ISK per LP (more than double your CN returns)

2) or chase higher ratios and swap corps when necessary. You can often get 4000 or more ISK per lP for very short periods until the market gets saturated by picking the right corp. This is hard work and you need to be on top of the market.

I would suggest SOE as:

1) the demand for SOE stuff are so high the returns rarely fluctuate
2) the SOE items do not need you to muck about buying or collecting tags
3) the SOE derived standing hit to Caldari is very small and can be pretty much ignored

It's better in the ways that have been stated.

It has it's draw backs.

For starters the mission agents are few and far inbetween. There will be lots of mission intruders in those systems and especially if you are flying something with a huge sig radius like a passive shield tanked Drake or a Marauder you'll have lots of "friends" come visit you in your missions. Just to name a few.

the drake works for lv3s but isn't an optimal ship. When I was a newb I used a drake for a pretty long time. These days I prefer turret ships, and if I use a missile ship it is usually a mordus legion ship because the missile velocity bonus makes them feel almost like turret ships. instant damage at range is a huge advantage, also you can pick off frigs at range as they approach you with a turret ship. That said many of the frigs in lv3s have very low HP so you can often volley them with the drake's missiles, but if you were using a ferox instead maybe that would only require 2 or 3 gun shots. and then you can use the rest of your guns on another target.

As said earlier speed is key. Many bounties are low in lv3s so skipping those and moving on to another missions to get more LP and rewards is often better than sitting around killing ships.

Caldari navy is good to grind some standings with for trading in Jita, but past that I wouldn't bother. sometimes you can get a decent price for it but the window is usually small as FW players have the same LP store with bonus stuff.

if you want to stick to caldari I'd pick someone with Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System Blueprint in the LP store. Between those and the co-proc bpc you should be able to trade at a decent rate with decent volume. there are a few other trades that can be good but any competition pretty much destroys the margin. Or go outside caldari and there are a bunch of other corps with decent trades. Just make sure you look at the volume, and/or understand the item you are trading in. For example a Zainou 'Beancounter' Science SC-801 is not worth 4399isk/lp. out of all the implants that end in x01 the volume is typically very low, and there are some other implants that have different rates. For example the WS-605 is similar to a 1% implant and it goes up to 618 instead of a 6% implant.

SoE is nice as it is typically a fast consistent trade, and you don't have to buy millions in tags for each trade. plus they have some of the best agents. Although the lv3 one is really far away from the storyline agent.

SoE mission hubs, especially the high-level ones, tend to have gankers in them. They can make your life interesting.