EVE General Discussion

They can fly their faction T1 ships and Navy, up to cruiser. Also SoCT and some gift ships requiring only spaceship command I. No crosstraining for other faction ships for alphas.

I've always qualified from the very beginning exactly the limits I expect from Alphas. I've said, no, I don't think they can solo lvl 4's and exactly why (lack of DPS.) But as far as I can tell, this thread, the OP and the title, never said anything about soloing. OP never said anything about running them for the sake of income or efficiency. As far as I can tell, the point of the thread was about pushing the limits of Alphas. And yeah, I'm totally convinced that a small fleet of alphas, even as few as 2 or 3, could do lvl 4's with much fun to be had. Alphas does not automatically mean rookie, inexperienced, unguided, or uninformed, though I'm convinced that even a rookie alpha could be able to succeed in taking part in lvl 4's with some fairly basic knowledge and an accelerated experience opportunity (i.e. lots of replacement ships for when things go wrong.) And I'm not even that smart, that I could figure out the mechanics to survive the missions the way I did, I expect pretty much anyone could figure it out quicker and at a much lower cost. But it is about a tactile understanding of the engine, not about bling.

I also want to point out that I've never been a fan of the gnosis. It has the same problems that mixing tanks or mixing guns has... mediocre at everything ends up being the same as functional at nothing. Pick a ship that's actually good at something and figure out how to exploit the hell out of it.

It's ahrd to make mission unprofitable. You literally have to shoot more ammo than the ISK you get from the NPC kill itself, the mission reward, the bonus reward and the effective value of the LP reward. Faction ammo in a level 1 mission with large gun might run you in the red I guess...

[Gnosis]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Damage Control II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
EM Ward Amplifier II
Thermal Dissipation Amplifier II
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II

Drone Link Augmentor I
250mm Prototype Gauss Gun
250mm Prototype Gauss Gun
250mm Prototype Gauss Gun
250mm Prototype Gauss Gun

Medium Core Defense Field Purger II
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I


'Integrated' Hobgoblin x5
'Integrated' Hammerhead x5

Antimatter Charge M

This is my level 3 missions Gnosis, with my current alpha skills, it does 354.5 dps and has 43,475 ehp, with 70/70/70/53 resists on shield. I want to swap another field purger for the tech two variant when I get more isk and maybe swap the ammo for faction ammo if the dps is not enough for level 4s. The speed is awful, 155.3 m/s but I don't much moving around except slowly move away from the groups while aggroing them with my rails, then when I got solid aggro, let the ligths take out the small stuff, then swap with mediums for cruisers and above. I have just hit the rating necessary for level 4 missions, but haven't done any yet, I'm tired and I'm going to bed. I'll post a reply again tomorrow after I have done a few level 4s. By the way, my tank doesn't fall below 80% during level 3 missions, and I've only been running security level 3s so far.

OK so an update. I just did my first level 4 mission in the gnosis I posted above, it was a Serpentis Extravaganza Level 4 security, my tank was more than fine, I never needed to warp out, I took my time clearing one group at a time, the damage was fine, and with this occasion I discovered that my light drones are faster and better at killing the mission battleships than my medium drones. It took a bit to finish the mission, I spent some time after clearing each room regenerating my capacitor (my gnosis is not cap stable while using rails and the invulnerability field at the same time, it takes about 10 minutes to deplete, but I'm not using the guns all the time), while my mtu gathered up all the stuff, but the point is, as an alpha, with about 1.5 mil sp, most of them in drones and shields, it is perfectly doable to run level 4 missions with a decent fit.

edit: I forgot to add that I did it with a 5% penalty to resists, shield and damage, due to the incursion currently taking place in the region where I can do level 4 missions.

Yeah my gun skills are garbage, haven't trained anything in there yet, I focused early on maxing out all gallente alpha available drone skills and then shield skills, I know my dps still needs working on. I'm still training engineering skills now because I could use a bit more cap.

The point was that it is perfectly doable for alphas to run level 4 missions, even security ones, by paying attention to what you fit, what you fight, how you fight, etc. Was mostly addressing the guy on the first page of the thread that was so vehement in saying that it's impossible.

As an addendum, I would like to say that being an alpha, I don't have to focus on maximizing isk/hour, being an alpha I don't have to worry about the subscription time running out and trying to get isk for a plex as quickly as possible, I like to take things at leisure and explore what I can do with the limited tools that I have at my disposal.

Hi,

I´m an Alpha with nearly all skills learned that are available for me and tried a ton of fitts for Gnosis to get the L4 done.
The only problem solo are the Warlord class ships. On long range with drones not enough dmg to bring them down on
close range possible but it will take for ever and you will need a lot of cap booster to stay alive for every single warlord.

Also it´s only possible if you only have to tank two of them at a time. If you face more than two close together no chance.
Same for the L3 extra rooms also Warlords here.

Because of this the time you have to spent is enough to do two L3 what will be more ISK than one L4

If someone want´s to try go in with a railgun long range gnosis to to kill the smal ships out of range of the warlords
after that switch to a short range blaster gnosis to finsh the warlords (or antimatter charge for the rails -> takes longer but don´t have to change ship)

In addition I think there will be some missions with sentry guns that fire very long range what will make it impossible !

If we are talking solo: tis a no

but in a fleet; hell yes i run l4 missions with a group of people :D

Level 3's can be run solo in a frigate. Needs a little bling, but no skills that are alpha-locked.
Most level 4's are doable in a cruiser.

Neither is very efficient (or efficient at all), but it's doable.

As a man who runs a lot of missions, there isn't a point, it'd be neat and maybe doable with 5 cruisers, but it will always be mission dependant and even then it could be a very long, gruelling slog for a significant chunk less money than any Omega character could make doing the same thing solo.