Missions & Complexes

Dear Minmatar Pilots,

I'm currently skilling for Minmatar ships to do Missions (atm in a Cane with T2 Artillery).
Lately i was checking out some Minmatar BS fits for lvl 4 missions on battleclinic and
figured that most ppl actually prefer ACs over Arty on lvl 4 mission runner ships for some reason.

Now i'm curious which way i should go cuz i dont want to find me having all the skills for the wrong weapon
type later on. So what would be the better choice? Arty or ACs? (Speaking of Missioning and Incursions)

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Also are Minmatar ships any good for PvE or should i better think of crosstraining to Caldari?

Thanks already

-Blaze

Straight answer, thank you sir thats exactly what i was looking for!

Well a straight and simple answer is not always the best. The better answer is that it is situational, and "it depends."

If you are flying a ship that gets a falloff bonus then ac is preferrable. Conversely an arty Mael or Tempest can compliment some missions. Blockade immediately comes to mind. Missions that you can warp to and land at distance and thus snipe would be better using arty. So the mission parameters are important in the choice of guns. Most people flying minmatar are flying for minmatar agents or in minmatar space and thus fighting angel rats. While some angel rats prefer to orbit at distance, most prefer to get close, so ac has an advantage usually.

A fairly sensible progression for minmatar would be shield tanked Bellicose -> Cyclone -> Maelstrom and then maybe Vargur or Mach when you have accumulated a good amount of ISK. A harder route is armor tanking a Rupture -> Hurricane -> Typhoon/Tempest -> Fleet Phoon/Tempest. That is because while the Rupture and Cane are relatively easy to skill into and fit economically, the Phoons (and to a lesser extent the Tempest) are difficult to skill into properly. The armor route would be more advantageous though if you are getting a lot of blood raider and sansha missions from your chosen agent(s). My tech II cruise launcher, tech II arty, and tech II sentry drone fleet phoon is fun to fly against those rats.

Also, regardless, it would be wise to train a second race. Whether that be Caldari or Gallente or Amarr is up to you. Gallente opens up the Domi and Vindi and Macharial for you. Caldari missile boats are tailored for pve. Amarr is probably a better choice if you think you will be doing pvp, although if you are missioning for amarr agents or in amarr space they would be a wise choice for that as well.

That's like saying skill all 4 races because they all have their uses somewhere. Arty niche is small enough that most people will have some other more useful skills to train before getting to t2 arties.

Alright, big thanks for all the informations guys!

I have one more thing though:



Why actually crosstrain Amarr if i'm aiming for pvp? I was always thinking Minmatar has some nasty ships for pvp?
or is this probably a matter of the fact that Minmatar has the worst BS and Capital Ships?
Well tbh my main goal actually is pvp thats why i started as minmatar but i gotta do pve aswell to get some cash.
So can you guys probably tell me more about crosstraining and the 4 races to find out which is the way to go for me? :)

-Blaze

Except that it takes quite a long time to train all 4 races, but is very fast to train both arty and autos...

You end up using autos more, but there are quite a few places where artillery is useful as well, the minor extra training is worth it. If you MUST only skill one, then autos aren't a bad choice, however there are cases where you're still going to want artillery. For instance level 4 missions in a Maelstrom. Some are very inefficient with autos because the BSs orbit too far away.

For incursions you need autos for Vanguard sites, but you are also going to want to be able to use artillery for assaults where snipers are in high demand.

As for crosstraining, I would go Gallente (after you've already got very good Minmatar skills). This opens up the Angel cartel ships which are awesome and require no new weapons system training. The Machariel will destroy missions and incursions as well as pvp. It also opens up the Vindicator/Vigilant/Daredevil which can be good as well with some additional blaster training (and maybe some more points into drones).