Missions & Complexes

Rigors, Flairs, and Target Painters increase applied DPS against mid/small ships: Cruisers, Destroyers, and Frigates.

If you are having trouble killing Cruisers, but not Battleships.... your problem is applied DPS.

Drone skills really should be a priority for you. They are useful in both pve and pvp. As a low skill mission runner they are very important, as low skill means it's hard to kill small targets, which is where drones shine.

With Drone 4 not only can you not even use the max amount of drones, you can't train drone interfacing. By spending the time for Drones 5 and opening up drone interfacing you can then spend roughly 1.5 hours training for a 40% damage boost (drone interfacing 2, 20% damage increase per level) to your drones, or in under a day you can have a 60% damage boost to 5 drones, instead of 0% to 4 drones. That is a pretty sizable difference for someone having trouble with frigates.

T2 drones should be on your train very soon list as well, but just getting drones 5 and drone interfacing to 2-3 would be a big help for you.

OP it still sounds like you're not skilled up enough, but there may be some other mission tricks to think about.

1. Understand the mission space itself. Depending on the mission, you'll either start the mission by activating a gate or by warping straight to the mission space with no gates. Whenever possible, you want to warp at maximum range (warp within 100km option on the list). You might also consider going there in a shuttle or rookie ship first, warping in at max range, then turn and fly back in the direction you warped from, get the distance even greater from the mission sight, bookmark it, and then fly back in your raven and start the engagement outside of their aggro range. This will allow you to maneuver in close enought to pull aggro on some NPCs and then let them cover that vast distance while you plink away. If they actually close in you, you're already far enough away from the original mission 0km point to warp to it, leaving the NPCs at your bookmark and still very far away. Rinse, repeat. Note: I'm not sure if this is still the case, but it used to be that some missions only provided you with the "Warp to Mission" (warp to zero) option, with no other choices available. If that is the case, all you need to do is get into a fleet. You will always have the Warp Squad to Within 100km option in fleets.

2. If there's a gate, you still have similar options, but they're totally mission dependent. In some mission spaces, once you cross through the gate, you can't warp within the mission space. In some you can. In the ones you can, you can cross the gate in a cloaked ship, arrive on grid, then manuever to a point 150km or more from the warp in point. Then come back in your raven and as soon as you warp into the first pocket, you warp to the 150k+ bookmark. (I may have the specifics of warping in missions a little mixed up. I've never tested things in an orderly manner. I have had missions where I brought a salvager into the pocket, set it to MWD far away from teh action, then, once the NPCs were dead, turned right around and warped back to a fleet member. You may want to play with this a bit to get the hang of it.)

3. Get crafty! On occasion, I've put a cloaky ship or other ship to use. I get into position and grab aggro with it and then kite the NPCs away from the warp in point. When they're far enough away, I bring in the battleship to kill at range.

4. EVE survival. Use it. Breathe it. Live it. You should never be surprised by a mission if you're using it religiously. That said, it has a few flaws. Most notably, it tends to put tank/gank types into absolute terms and uses the best "average." For example, if a mission had 3 Minmatar BS in it, but also had 10 Caldari BCs, it might tell you to use the tank/gank for the Caldari. If the Minnie BS are the real problem in the mission (e.g., long range damage w/ MWD), tanking/ganking for a slow Caldari short range BC is just going to make the mission that much harder. I've run into this problem more often with teh epic arcs on eve survival, but it still happens with other missions. Particularly ones that use mixed race "mercenary" types. I always carry the 4 main damage types so that I can swap ammo to fit the target ship.

5. An alt is always good. Let's say you don't want to make bookmarks or any of that. If nothing else, start a trial alt, put him in a frigate with MWD, warp to mission with the alt. Set the alt to fly back the way you came in. You fly in the same direction and begin the engagment. By the time you get to the point where the NPCs have closed on you and it starts to get hairy, you can warp to the alt, who should be far enough away by now (the basic version of MJD, in a way).

Just some thoughts.

I can assure you that shooting 30 battleships an hour is more isk/hr net after expenses than shooting 27 in the same time with cheaper ammunition.

Even if that wasn't the case, the act of handing in an extra mission per session can be worth 7k LP to me, or somewhere between 5 and 20 million isk to different people depending on how terrible they are at selling their LP, and for a 7k LP mission, I'd earn an extra 3mil in bonuses too.