Missions & Complexes

I achieved one of my long-term goals this week of getting all corps with a security agent to 5.0 or better. I'm now setting my sights on those pesky corps who do not have such luxurious accomodations and require me to mine or haul to better my standings. My faction standings are quite high overall, so I don't have to fuss with L1/2 missions, but I haven't run a courier mission aside from the odd storyline in quite a few years.

My primary concerns are this: Will my blockade runner (crane) be able to handle the loads of L3 or 4 courier misisons (cargo rigged ofc) or will I need to use my bustard? And secondly, what mining ships are appropriate for L3/4 mining missions. I presumed the covetor or hulk would be first choice, but if there are many rats or distances to travel I may need to consider ye old mining battleship fits (nostalgia).

Oh and just to head anyone off who wants to suggest something mutli-box or whatnot, I only have one account and have been happy with just one account since 2005 so no thanks to anything that involves alts. =)

TIA

1) Hauling missions don't go above 8k but I recall storyline giving up to 40k. The 40k are a stack of smaller stuff though.

2) Mining missions are not just mining.

- There are some where you actually do mine stuff and get attacked by frigate sized drones. Hi sec fit Hulk is more than fine.

- There are some where you will get BC sized rats. In that case you should either overtank the Hulk or actually make some money by popping these ships with your own BC.

- There are some where you get to mine gas. Those too will have rats (I don't recall the size), in that case an Hulk is useless. You should take a ship with many gas mining modules because otherwise it'll take you a long time (I did some in Osprey, way too boring).

My crane holds 9450m3 with all the rigs and low slots used up for cargo. Not bad really and still has covert ops (just cause I had one laying around and wanted to be cool) and booster etc. There is only a 1 L4 Mission I can think of and it is a storyline that is over 8000 although forget the name but it is like 40000m3 and I pushed my cargo to hold as much as possible to get it finished in as few runs. That was back when I ran missions out of Motsu which was not only 40,000m3 every time but also 8 jumps one way.


Ops I notice people already said that ...

If the ferox has another role, I wasn't aware of it.

ORE MISSIONS you get it all. sometimes 3 admirals and 4 frig and the actual mission drones. I hate the admirals they can snipe you out around 60km. so auto targeting is nice. EW , drone and rocket them up. I use a Vexor. nothing like sniping with drones and small radar. Too many *snip* Spitfire to deal with out in 0.0 sec to waist a BS. I love my vexor. I say the best ccruiser in the game.

The biggest Gallente courier load I was given was 7200m3 which usually fits in an Itty4 with two containers as the load was usually made up of 8x mission items though I did get one of roughly the same capacity which was 9 units so couldn't fit.

Just beware of maxing cargo on your blockade runner - you will be making it an easy gank target.

This such such poor advice it deserves a slap.

Level 4 couriers are the best source of faction gain in the game. If you blitz level 1 missions but have the standing to run higher level agents you are a fool.

Look up the 'Faction Standings Repair' thread for full details, but basically you raise one faction up, then the opposing one, and repeat in a ping-pong state until everyone's at 5. Also, get Social/Connections V (IIRC) when possible, you'll have access to higher-end missions sooner and raise base standings faster.

I personally raised two similar factions from ~2.5 to ~4.5 in just over a week, using nothing but a string of L3 couriers. The important trick is to have a ship which can be quickly re-configured to hold two max-size courier loads, and don't dead-head when possible (that led to some very amusing roundabout trips, but hey it made the work fun). I'm also blitzing the couriers, not running on AP.

Primary opposing faction only dropped by just over 1 point, a good trade and I'll be able to recover most of that in a month with an SoE arc run.

One interesting side-effect is that I've not seen implant Storyline events in awhile; My last 7-8 were all courier (decent bump), except for the two combat (really nice bump). Until now storylines were almost exclusively implant-based, but that's when I would get one very six weeks, not the other way around.


Edit - For the OP: Mammoth (L4 Indy skill), two T2 I-Stabs, two T2 Nanofiber, one EC2 (in hold), one AB of choice (inactive - otherwise affects align time). 6750 m2 base, about 8500 with the EC2. I did not originally carry an AB, but keep misreading the AP dots (multiple stations in the route) and would derp one hop too far. At that point, activate the AB, burn back to previous system, disable after the hop, continue to station.

For faction gain, datacenter missions are faster. And I'd say that level 3 courier missions are probably faster than level 4 courier missions. You generally can find larger stacks of such agents (sometimes next to each other), you can carry more level 3 payloads than level 4 payloads, and the level 3 payloads tend to be a bit less travel. So I think it's not that hard to complete level 3 courier missions more than twice as fast as it would be to complete the level 4 missions. That compensates for the roughly half standing of level 3 storyline missions compared to level 4 storyline missions, though you do run the risk of hitting multipart level 3 storylines.

It's worth noting here that this thread is about raising corporate standing often with corporations that don't have storyline agents. For Top Down, the fastest way to raise Top Down standing is blitzing level 1 security missions. The average level 1 security mission has better corporate standing gain than level 4 courier missions and completes faster.