Missions & Complexes

I am curious as to whether or not I should go ahead and do level 4 missions, or stick to doing, (Currently) 1 of each level 1, level 2 and level 3 missions simultaneously. Level's 1-3 are no match and are easy to me in any ships from frigate/assault frigs to Cruisers. I can do these missions in a BC or BS, yet there is no need, at least for me.

I have enough skills to fly all T1 ships of any factions, use most t2 armor tanking mods, and all t1 drones. I can and have flown some assault frigs, Gallente and Caldari.

I am flying a drone boat cruiser Stratios. I chose this over the Vexor, for the trait of armor resistance.
If i do level 4 missions, then I will most likely choose the Dominx, possible the Armageddon.

I am currently doing security missions for Sisters of Eve.

What I am trying to decide is it the rewards from lvl 4 missions are worth changing to.
As of now I am making at least:

at least 1 mill in mission rewards and bonus.
at least 1.5 mill in bounties
and
at least 12.5 mill in loot and salvage.
total of at least 15 mil every combo of 1 lvl 1, 1 lvl 2 and 1 lvl 3.
My agents are all in the same station, I have no need to change stations to get this combo of missions.

Are the rewards for level 4 missions approx the same on avg?
Is it best to continue what I am doing?

As for weapons, again any faction, for turrets small-large, for missiles rockets-cruise. Both have all skills needed to at least lvl 4.

Thank you for any input.

Running L4s with occasional Burner missions will consistently net you in excess of 60m ISK/hour. This is considerably higher with SoE agents, and more than a few players earn in excess of 200m isk/hour blitzing L4s and Burner missions. So it really comes down to what you enjoy most.

And unfortunately, you won't (there aren't any race-specific ships you can use for all Burners).

12.5 mil loot salvage for a level 1, 2 and 3? Good grief, I struggle to get that doing 3 level 4's!

In general, people say blitz 3's for standings and blitz 4's for iskies. If isk is all you are interested in, get a few pirate faction ships and start doing 4's with burners. You will need good skills though - better to fly a few ships perfectly than being able to fly every ship averagely.

That stratios won't handle too many level 4's. You really should upgrade to a pirate bs, marauder, or hac at the least.

If you have the skills, stop being a scrub and cough up for t2 and faction kit.

For burners, you want pirate faction frigates, not a cruiser.




Being able to sit in a ship and undock it is not the same as flying it. By "flying perfectly", people generally mean having all V in support skills, max tank skills and max offensive skills for the ship. From your fit (and statements earlier) you cannot fly the Strat perfectly and because you can't use t2 drones yet, you can't fly "most" ships perfectly.

For that strat, to fly it "perfectly", you want all V in your core skills (fitting skills, navigation, evasive maneuvering, mechanics, shield management, shield operation, capacitor management, capacitor systems operation, etc.), T2 drones with very good supporting skills, good targeting skills, very good tanking skills (armour compensations skills included), etc. etc.



There is a saying in Eve, don't fly what you cannot afford to lose. If you are flying a hill that is worth over 260 million ISK and can't afford a basic T2 fit for it then there is something wrong there. T2 modules are not expensive at all (Damage Control II is under 1 mil for example) and skimping on them gives you an inferior fit which marks you out as an easy target.




The first thing I will say is that the Nestor is a flying gank magnet. The armor resist bonuses are not everything and I would question why you want to fly an 800million ISK boat when you skimp on the fit for your current one and other, cheaper ships are more efficient. The Nestor is not really well bonused to being a mission boat at all.

Remember, rats do two types of damage and you know what these are before you accept the mission so you can tailor your tank to them.

You don't have the skills to fly anything for L4 missions yet and finish fast enough to make good isk on it. You need T2 where applicable so that you can maintain high dps and/or acceptable burst tank (perma tank is a thing of the past for L4).

If you insist on drone dps while having little need for tank management/target priority then train into a MJD rattlesnake. It is the quickest and risk free way of clearing L4 bountys for you to train into at current. Looting and salvy is not optimal in this ship, waste of time. Bonus is you can basically attack w/e you want because nothing will ever survive long enough to get close if you know how to cycle missiles. You only need to learn triangular MJD trick so that you can land near the gate once done clearing the room. In essence the money you lose on loot you should make up by quicker getting to the next mission and getting more bountys. With this ship you can get away with having most applicable skills to level 4 only. It will be optimal to have T2 drone damage upgrades and L4 sentry drone skill before going for T2 cruise launchers.

If you want a ship better suited to clearing bountys+looting/salvy then train into a macherial. With this ship you take a mobile tractor unit and drop it at warp in then sit at it (for most missions, in one or two with close range trigger spawns you go directly back 30k from your MTU/warp in becon, check guides). In any case allow all frigates to get to 30k before you start popping them with 7 stack autocannon alpha (only take out light drones if a frigate gets under gun range but gun down the other frigates first so you don't get multiple jam). Keep out salvy drones working away otherwise. Let all battle cruiser/cruisers get to 20k before popping them (unless theirs more than 10 of them, then start killing at 30k instead so you don't get overwhelmed). Most battle ships will be around 30-15k once bc/cruisers are dead so you can make mince meat of those at the end. Some rats sit at about 50k, leave those until last, they often do little damage and you can kill them at the end while your drones are still clearing up salvy (I rarely chase them down. just sit at MTU and autos can still hit at that range to down them).
Because you let all the rats come close before popping it's less time for drones to travel to salvy and for tractor to pull in loot. Usually by the time I'm done with last battle ship 80% of loot and salvy is done. I will open tractor unit and only loot mods worth 200k+, then those over 100k if still have room. I will then scoop MTU to cargo and leave remaining rat wrecks at this point because they are not worth waiting around for, jump to next room or finished mission. I find that a mission taking about 20 min will consistently give around the same in loot/bounty when doing things this way as a minimum, especially you get use to ranges to start popping and keeping those salvy drones working throughout. Avoid missions that have you fighting a main faction like caldari/armar etc. They do tend to give more isk in tags/loot but the standing hits are huge and likely regretful. Main faction rats also seem to hit a fair bit harder than pirate ones, they have made me overload a few times, even with high support/dps skills.

Always sit still when poping frigs in mach. Once they are dead, if you are taking a little too much damage from incoming cruiser/bs then orbit your MTU at about 5k to reduce damage (make sure the orbit is from left to right for max transverse). As they are still out at 20-30k+ you will reduce incoming damage but still doing more than enough to pop the cruisers>bc's and your tank should be good by then. If tank steadily breaking let it get to 70% before you think about warping out, as long as you are popping cruisers/bc fast your tank will settle. Fit the mach or any other close range BS you decide to use with a MJD for the first few days so you can jump out due to inevitable early mistakes. Once experienced you can swap it out with a afterburner for gate travel.

When you do get use to the various mission types you can start agroing multiple groups who are at varying ranges so that by the time you've killed one group, the next is approaching optimal. This is the vital part in starting to make this mach style of MTU looting/salvy pay off.

Mach is a higher skill requirement. You really want L4 in both battle ships, you want T2 shield resistance mods with a faction XL booster and also T2 large autos. You could get away with L4 large auto only and use +3% large turret and +3% all turret damage implants (5 and 9 slot if memory serves me right). Never use faction ammo for any ship. Don't fly any ship (especially these two until you have the requirements I pointed out).