Skill Discussions

First, use the same type of guns, either all arty or all ACs. Then train up medium projectile turret some more and work on the gunnery support skills. Minmatar battle cruiser is screaming for more training as well. Train your cap skills and try to get some tracking computers in your mid slots instead of all those cap mods. Use active hardeners instead of energized adaptive nano membranes and get a gyro stabilizer or two in your low slots. Drones V and a few levels of drone interfacing will also help a lot.

You have a lot to train to be really effective in a BC. But you will get there.

This is what I use for L3 occasionally. Works very nicely. What you can't fit as T2, downgrade to a meta mod.
Yes, it's probably well over-tanked (passive shield tank). Still tears most L3s apart

[Hurricane, L3]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I

650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, Phased Plasma M
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, Phased Plasma M
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, Phased Plasma M
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, Phased Plasma M
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, Phased Plasma M
650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, Phased Plasma M
[empty high slot]

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

Skillwise:
I'd say until your core skills for a ship are at about level 3, you shouldn't worry too much about low performance; proper DPS takes time, as you've noted. Get your guns, tank, and navigation up to par and you should be golden for level 4s. Try not to deviate too far out of shield tanking, speed/agility, and tracking/arty dps (in that order) if you're focusing on minmatar ships. Most of them aren't built to park in the middle of space and tank a room, but their shields are more than adequate to absorb glancing shots from BC/BS and frigate damage. Your main objective is to be too fast for anything heavy to hit you for more than a few seconds while you open a gap. Having passably good shield tanking skills on top of your ship's speed/agility simply makes things that much easier.

That said, there are a few tips that should help, especially with the observation that you're having trouble cracking things in a 3 (which indicates misses and weak hits rather than low skills (I can run most 4s in a proper battlecruiser with core skills at 3 or 4 if I want to):

Artillery has perilously bad tracking, but works wonders with a kiting setup. Set your keep-at-range to inside of your optimal for the ammo you're using.You should not find yourself to be orbiting in an arty boat too often, as this generates too many misses and glancing blows, even with tracking enhancers (the relatively small amount of tracking that large turrets have sees very little benefit from any sort of tracking speed boost, rather). If you NEED to orbit (out-gunned by a larger ship), minmatar boats are at least good at having better tracking than their opponents at the same orbit, so you should be able to reduce damage from bigger ships in a range fight by orbiting. For everything else, outdistance and outgun.

To find out how fast you can actually go (transversal split OR orbiting a stationary target), multiply the tracking number listed on your gun by your optimal range (in meters; so 35km will be 35,000m) This will give you the maximum transversal speed AT THAT DISTANCE that you can go and still hit things somewhat reliably. I would make sure that you can see transversals on overview, as your tracking cares about that number, not necessarily how fast you are actually going. You can check this on by going to overview settings and clicking the columns tab if you have not already done so. Radial velocity can be used for a direct 1:1 with your tracking, but is less convenient to read and memorize due to the way the brain works. Your mileage may vary. I use transversal.

If anything, fit for speed, let drones sort out frigates, and focus your attention on the larger ships. Minmatar boats of all sizes tend to be fast, so a speed fit with an AB or MWD will perform fantastically regardless of whether you're using artillery or ACs.

Also, make sure your ammo types are matched to the mission resistance gaps, since you're using projectiles and have that option. I haven't come across anything in a level 3 that can withstand even 200dps, and I've been playing a while, although you might have to chip at a few enemies (drone BS come to mind).

A slight modification for an artykite (using Elena's kit as a base) would be to trade out the tracking enhancers for prop overdrives for the flat speed boost (nanofiber also works, but for a kite BC/BS fit, your top speed matters slightly more than the extra second or two you gain in acceleration) and switch the AB to an MWD. If you have issues with power grid, swap a shield relay for a power diagnostic; you lose some of passive regen but get some extra grid, shield hp, and cap/regen. Tracking only matters when looking at the target's transversal speed (how fast they're moving around you). Things that are being forced to charge your guns have no actual transversal; moreso if you are faster than them, so the actual distance you can maintain means more at this point. This holds true for enemies firing at you, which is why range superiority is mildly important: you want to be able to hit them within your optimal while taking minimum/no damage from your opponent(s).

The damage in 3s isn't typically high enough to warrant a full-out tank, so there's room to play around with a L3 runner. L4s can be more of a bear, though, so get comfortable with kiting in the 3s first. Although as a support ship, you should be fine in 4s.

At 2.5m SP you'll probably have a hard time doing L3s - the impact SP can have on the efficiency of a ship is quite insane (compare your output to an all V char ^^). We talk about differences of up to +50% and potentially more.

The above shieldfit isn't bad but I'd recommend more skillpoints in Shield Managment and Shield Operation to run it. An armor alternative below.

In it's most basic incarnation an armortank is something like a primary hardener, a secondary hardener and then a repper. The rest are usually filled with damagemods or application mods. In the mids you'll find a propmod (important) and then Tracking Computers and Cap Rechargers. The highs are filled with the hulls bonused turrets. Going with that we arrive at something like:

[Hurricane, Hurricane: Terror 650s]

Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Tracking Computer II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I

650mm Artillery Cannon II, Phased Plasma M
650mm Artillery Cannon II, Phased Plasma M
650mm Artillery Cannon II, Phased Plasma M
650mm Artillery Cannon II, Phased Plasma M
650mm Artillery Cannon II, Phased Plasma M
650mm Artillery Cannon II, Phased Plasma M
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Inferno Light Missile

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I


While this is all T2 downgrading to the appropraite Meta (as long as those still exist) shouldn't be to hard. In this configuration the fit puts out about 500 DPS close range ammo drones included; which is more than enough for an L3 (though if you run L3s with an all V char ....)
Use specific hardeners, this tanks 129 against Angels and as every armorpilot knows - angels are !§%$)=("!§&. The tank against say, Sansha and Blood will obviously be vastly superior due to the innate resistances of T1 armor against EM/Th.

The trick with an artillery setup is, as Junkiloton said trying to keep the rats on the approach (aka you are running away) to negate the, excuse me, crap tracking of Arty.

It also needs slightly better cap management - though this particular setup can run capstable (guns that don't need cap...).

i'll have a look at this one tonight, pretty sure the only thing on that list i can't use are the Arty II's - at the moment !