Missions & Complexes

Folks - New-Players and Professionals alike,

To the New guys, when asking for help and ideas on how to fit or what ships to buy for various stripes of missions and tasks, please bear in mind that what you probably view as a completely innocuous question; and end up only writing a sentence or two in askance is quite honestly a great deal more involved than you have come to believe.

Many people in this forum visit and ask "what do I get for a L4 mission?"

Unfortunately, this becomes instant flame-bait and political opinion soapbox time for the so-called professionals and slightly more experienced folk.

Let's take level four missions for a moment. When asking your question realize the following:

Whereas more simplistic MMOs such as WoW have only a few 'paths' to follow, EvE is a wholly different animal.

Everything *depends* upon so many factors.

You really need to answer the following questions:

1) How many skill points do you presently have?
2) How soon do you anticipate going into level four missions?
3) How much ISK do you have available for ship/module upgrades?
4) What is the division of your skill points?
5) Are you a Missile Boater, Gunslinger, Drone-boater, etc?
6) Follow-up to 5, what did you concentrate your skills on? (Assuming you don't have the entire category maxed.)
7) Do you have significant CORE skills, or are you all ship/weapon skills? (Many people see the CORE skills much as in the certificates, relating to Engineering and Electronics. I would typically include some of the Navigation skills in this personally.)
8) And finally, and this probably should have gone near the top -- what race do you WANT/can you fly?

Now, please take a look at the above once more. You may find that if you answer all these questions yourself - that the answer to your ship needs will come swimming to you. If it doesn't, that's okay - that's what this forum is here to help.

However, for the sake of discussion -- let's go over some hypothetical situations.

You are a very low-skill point player (2 million), you were just barely doing Level 3s in a Caldari Missile Boat and have about 50 million ISK saved from your efforts. You've placed about 1.1 million skill points into Engineering, Electronics and Navigation, and the rest are all in Missiles. You have zero drone skills to speak. You are a missile boater. While you have decent shield skills -- you really only did the base-line electronics and navigation otherwise. You want to stick to Caldari.

So, given the above -- you want to figure out where you should go ship-wise to get into level fours. You also have the goal of being there very soon (you've been grinding standings very fast and are almost there.)

Now, if you had NOT posted the above information and just said "I wanna do fours." You would have likely been flamed to hell and back for flying a Drake and just how 'newb' that is and how slow going they are. However, given the current context -- Drakes may be for you for now. However, at this point - you would probably be wisely advised not just on what ship to buy (and yes, people are still going to suggest you get 2 billion ISK worth of ship and fittings, mostly because they won't read anything even a one-liner) but, you would also be advised on how to best accomplish the task given your relatively low-skill point value and may even receive advise to stick to threes a bit longer in order to better effect speed.

This has not been meant as a hate or flame. This is just me asking people to take a little time to consider their questions, and make sure to provide the necessary information before expecting to get intelligent answers.

Absolutely. Thank you for the clarifying question -- Yes, I do mean for soloing missions.

As for #6 - if you say... put 2 million skill points in the Electronics category it would be good to know if you focused on the electronic skills itself (and its relevant upgrades) or if you scatter-blasted the category and did just a few levels in about 10 or 15 different skills.

Attack of the Drones:
This is an explosion heavy damage mission.

It should be noted that you can expect to receive as much as:
EXP KIN THM
206 312 576
Now - if you read those numbers - and then examine my first statement, you will see that as more than slightly contradictory.

1) I am pulling these numbers from Eve- Survival - and while they have a good track record, it's not always 100%.

2) The numbers above assume that you are insane and try to aggro the entire room.

3) The thermal damage you take will mostly come from very small drones - that can be easily picked off in the beginning.

A way to simplify this mission for yourself - is examine the initial group when you arrive. You only want to deal with ONE of those ships initially, then tank the rest. Do not kill them all straight-away. Kill one - recall drones, take some heat, spit out drones again, kill the REINFORCEMENTS, then go back to kiling one more from the initial group. This will significantly reduce the incoming damage.

If you are planning on getting into a Drake (which is quite neat for this one mission, honestly, since you don't have to deal with the fact that drones LOVE to eat your drones.), I suggest making sure you focus on shield resistances more than actual recharge rate. You have limited missiles skills though, which kind of takes you out of the running unfortunately. If you develop your heavy missile skills - sure, hop into a drake. If you are looking to develop more into Navigation -- enough to get access to a Tengu: do it.

Let's focus on the Myrmidon though,

the following link is from eve battle clinic -- http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/56598-Myrmidon-Low-skill-L4-Myrm.html#msg792191.

It describes a low-skill point Myrmidon. Now, you are not low-skill points - but, your stuff is neatly spreadout to allow for growth.

Although the Myrmidon is far more ideal for level 3s - it can be done for level 4s, it's just a far more active experience than you are probably used to with level 3s.

One of the biggest things to realize now -- there are new damage upgrades for drones, USE THEM. They go into low slots. They are beautimous.

I hope this helps.