Missions & Complexes

I just ran The Maze for the first time. Hats off to that little muther! Nasty.

While it was nicely profitable (close to 2b isk by the looks) I also came very close to losing my ship ... twice. So I'd like to outline what I used and what I did, and seek your advice on how I might do a bit better next time. I’m mainly interested in how sub-caps guys solo or multibox this site.

I'll ignore the first rooms because, except for a bit of irritating jamming, they were pretty unremarkable. The escalation I’d received had all the acceleration gates jumbled, rather than in a nice 'daisy' pattern, but that wasn't much of a problem either.

My problems, surprise, surprise, all happened in the last room.

My DPS ship was the 6HML tengu. I used two of them with fleet boosts to bolster shield and AB, and to reduce sig size.

My tengu were pretty standard shiney PvE setups. It’s the setup I use for not-so-tough sleeper sites (easy C4s, C3 and below) and any missions. My tank was 1 x Medium Shield Booster (?Gist B), 2 x Shield Boost Amplifiers (Pith A), 1 x invul (CN), 1 x EM hardener (CN), and 1 x Damage Control II). Otherwise I had a faction AB and 3 x CN BCUs to boost my DPS. I chose this over my tough-site setup (LSB and 5 x HML) figuring that I'd need the extra DPS to break the station.

When I warped into that last room I found myself landing in the middle of a million ships and other nasties. In very short order I am locked, webbed x 6, and scrammed x 4 .... I wasn’t going anywhere right then. I start locking targets and set a 70km AB-assisted orbit on the station, despite having close to zero velocity.

My target priorities were the static webbers, and then the web / scram frigs.

The first major wave of incoming damage is pretty huge. I have never lost tengu shields in one hit before ... even in C5 sites. Anyway my shield booster fights a good fight as I continue picking off the dire frigs, but all too soon I find my armor has disappeared and half my structure has also gone missing - gulp! I start my last ditch GTFO efforts (try kill the remaining two scrammers), fingers crossed, and can see the next huge torp heading my way as the last scrammer on me dies. It seems to take forever to warp out.

After a quick rep I head back into the site to start where I left off. Damn them, they'd found another half-dozen webbers and scrammers. This is basically a repeat performance, with the last scrammer dying with me again in around half structure as I finally get a warpout.

When I land on my third visit I only have two webber / scrammers and they die quickly. Then I turn my attention to the missile batteries, which also die quickly. After that it was pretty easy, although I did start to worry that I was not going to be able to break the station’s armor reps. I didn’t shoot the further ship waves, just tanked them and kept on peppering the station.
The station, when it finally had the good grace to die, dropped me a Pith-X LSB, one each Pith-X therm and em shield hardener, a ‘snake BP, and a 23 tier effects … which all made me very happy.

So, clearly either the approach I took, or that tengu setup, is not really viable. It was just dumb luck that I didn’t lose a 3b-ish isk ship trying to complete that 2b-ish isk site.

Could I have approached the room differently?

I wonder whether I’d have been better taking out the missile batteries before going for the webbers and jammers. I didn’t check my log but wonder whether they were the main source of my grief rather than the big-guy’s citadel em-torps.

Is the tengu a bad ship for this, or did I just mis-fit my tengu for the site?

The damage types in this site do suggest that a shield tanking ship is not the best choice – both from a resists and sig-size PoV - but, up until now, I’d never met anything that griefs my tengu like that. Hell, I solo run C5 sites in tengu – albeit the gimpy LSB setup.

Do I refit my tengu, or do I try something else altogether?

I could gather a larger fleet, but I’m more interested in refining what I can do than just bringing in larger numbers – and I do also kinda like getting 2b isk in booty all to myself. I am also not particularly interested in using capital ships … one day in the future maybe, but not now.

Can I make a go of future Mazes by refitting my tengu? I could drop a boost amp, and run 3 x EM hardeners. I could drop the AB and put in an invul also. I could go to the large shield booster and take my chances with the DPS of the 5 HMLs. Do I run one tengu plus a scimi to keep the T3 alive? But I doubt that one tengu is gonna break the station’s tank.

Is there a different ship combo (that I can fly) that would be better for me? Shipwise I’m fine for everything below T2 BSs, but my laser / hybrid weapon skills are poor. I am all-5s for caldari, gallente, & minmatar T3s and 4s for amarr. I have decent (T2 everything) armor skills, altho my shield skills are a fair bit better. What to do? What to do?

Do I swap to armor tankers … T3s or HACs or BSs? I’ve only been null-ratting a few days now, long enough to get a couple of decent escalations, but I do like using T3s because I can travel fit them (covops, nulli, and stabs) and move to the escalation sites relatively easily. My first one (shipyard thing with a 22 tier effects and Pithi-A drop) was twelve jumps away in warzone hostile space.

Being as how i used to be in your corp.. and know most everyone send me a convo when you see me online... I will give you the wisdom of the gates... There is actually a trick...

PS Any well tanked Hic with full buffer and a logi will tank it. I use an Onyx with full buffer and a scimi to rep it, then my alt in a Mach to dps. The combo of the lot gets threw it pretty fast and can kill the station. They say that a Broadsword can tank it but I have lost a full xtype hardner set on one trying to "solo" tank it so I would just recommend a buddy it makes it go by alot faster.

The maze is the most ridiculously easy and safe "10/10" in the game. It can be done with 2 ships, I use one. There are 2 verions of the maze, one you scan down, the other you get from escalations of Guristas haven and sanctum anomalies. The scanned down maze is a bit more annoying, but just as easy.

1st the "easy" part:

I use a Machariel and a Tengu. The tengu is cloaky, nullified, has a deadspace XL booster and hardeners (inclduing EM hardeners for the EM torp in the last room) and it is cap stable. It does not ever need logistic support (the only thing that could hurt it is neutralizer batteries, which the maze does not have, now the final room of Fleet Staging point is another matter, but I just drop a dread on that lol). The tengu has only 3 HMLs and I use FoF (Im sorry, "auto-targeting" lol) missiles and faction scourge with them.

I use the mach because of its massive dps, but any dps ship will do as long as it can fit a cloak.

The trick to the maze is knowing which gate to use. In rooms 1 through 3, its always the gate that points to the 8 to 9 0'clock direction (ie, point to the left, away from your ship)

1st room- send in tank ship get aggro, send in dps ship, launch light drones, assigned to GUARD tank ship so they kill the dire frigs along with the FoF missles. I kill only the dire frigs that are pointing my tank ship, and leave at least 2 dire frigs alive in each room, and i don't kill any battleships (more on this later)

2nd room- same as 1st

3rd room - same

4th room same except in this room there are only to gates, the one that points to the RIGHT as you warp in is the right gate.

The 5th room is the killed. I send in the tank and have it orbit the beacon, and target the station, shooting it once to get the 1st battleship spawn. When everything aggros the tank, I send int he dps ship and kill all the gun batteries and all the dire frigs, and move the dps ship off to somewhere it can cloak near the station.

Then I shoot the station till the next spawn comes, cloak the dps ship so the tengu gets all aggro, rinse and repeat till station is dead, scoop the loot, kill anything pointing the dps ship and leave. Takes 25 minutes tops.

Now for the SAFE part:

The maze is the safest 10/10 to do, because even if bad guys scan you down, You left dire frigs alive in the 1st 2 rooms, along with all those battleships, so if they come after you, it's a good chance the GURISTAS will scram and kill them before they can get out of the room. I watched a squad of guys lose their ships trying to get to me this way lol.

Using the NPCs you are getting loot from to protect you from PVP is ironic, isn't it :) .

That plus the fact that the average PVP'r doesn't know crap about how to do the maze (and won't come to this forum section to find out :0 ) and thus won't even know which gate to go through helps a lot. Once I even allowed myself to be scanned down so I could gank some guys in the 2nd room (I just cloaked on warp in to avoid all aggro, when they came in, they got aggro then i proceeded to kill them with my plexing ships LOL.).

Hope this helps

this is very imformative

Nope.

Serp 10/10 is easier and can be done with 1 ship.

Interdiction nullified, cloaky perma tank tengu.

As many Talos alts as you have.

Simple as that.

why the Interdiction nullified?
I just got a tengu and I havent played with it enough to learn everything about it. But I have tried the maze and died in it cause whne you warp in to the different pockets you land at 0 and get x7 webbed and scramed? So how come a cloaky tengu will fix that? when you land you can cloak since you are to close and x7 webs isnt going to get you anywhere?

So how did you manage that? I tried it using a gist b booster small harpy with a 10 mn afterburner on it. overheated everything and it had 98 on thermal and kinetic and still died after a while. couldnt kill the dire frigs fast enough with the talos being to close.

think that setupd gives me 800 dps + something on kin and thermal shield but apparantly it wasnt enough when webbed like that.

Like I said in OP, no problems with the prelim rooms ... tengu tanked ok and could kill them all without hassle. I did survive and complete the last room but luck was a big part of that.

The approach ppl are suggestinging is an even tankier tengu ... gimped to have an even better active tank, at the expense of throwing out bugger all DPS. So it sounds like they warp that uber-tank tengu in and let it get the aggro, and then bring in their actual damage delivery ship ... machariels are good for that.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of point having that tengu covops, or nullified, in that setup but i guess if you also using another tengu as your DPS ship then their may be some benefit in having it able to cloak when new waves spawn ... I suppose. Like you I can't see much benefit in nullifying it ... altho when I am travelling to the escalation system all my tengu are covops and nullified.

Not sure I want to drag a machariel along ... I do use machs as my main site runners, but that is in very blue systems ... so might look at exploring some armor-tanking T3 options, altho I guess DPS will becaome a limiting factor then.

Nullified tengu is a scout/scan/tank ship, hence the nullification, covops cloak, scanner and tank fit. Mach has a cloak so you can always safe up in case of emergency.

Not terrible I guess, but seems like more managing ships and reps than I care for. i'm lazy and try to balance speed with ease of use.