Ships & Modules

So I've been breezing through (having a blast while doing it as well) L3 missions in a Scythe Fleet Issue and Caracal Navy Issue and finally got sufficient enough training to make the jump into Battleships and L4 missions. I Fitted out my new Raven and still doing extremely well, however, I'm NOT having fun at all. In comparision to everything I've flown I'm a brick that takes forever to get anywhere, looting has become tedious, the adrenline involved with zipping around my enemies is gone, and I now dread doing something I use to enjoy. I've already sold my Raven and went back to L3s and took my isk/hr loss and now need some advice on how to continue.

So my questions are:
What is a good Battleship or general Battleship fit to bring back that Cruiser/Battlecruiser mobility (sacrifices expected)?
Is there a good T2 Cruiser to work towards that would sub for it or should I go for a T3?
Are there any Battlecruisers that are worth looking at?

PS I'm mainly Caldari (shield/missiles) with some Amarr (Armor/lasers) and Minmatar (Focused on just ships up to Battleships). I'm primarily looking for that fun factor back and not the optimal isk/hour mentality for L4 Missions. Any additional help or advice is much appreciated.

I have heard about the Mach having fantastic mobility on top of good gank and tank, unfortunately, I have no points spent in projectiles. If long term says that would be the best fit for me I'm actually willing to head in that direction, but I'd prefer to do something not so quite out of the way if there are better/equal opportunities elsewhere.

Definitely like the idea of the Barg over the Mach with remaining in missiles/shields, but it seems very much a pvp ship with the gallente bonus and if used as a pve ship it comes with a big gank me sign attached. Or am I reading too into it? Other then those two problems I like the look of it and the velocity bonus is what I like the best.

Now that I check its quite a bit more costly as well.

I will for sure echo the recommendation of a Mach, probably the best bs for missions in game. I think the typhoon would be your best bet at BS size, in a t1 hull then. Can armor or shield tank it, and lob missiles, and go reasonably fast for a bs.

Barghest looks to be pretty decent for pve, the one bonus is indeed wasted, but it gets nice dps, and the velocity bonus is awesome as it makes it harder to waste volleys. looks like the CPU might be a little tight, but that can be worked around.

also don't loot in a battleships, just the thought of that is boring (for that matter probably don't even loot). get a noctis if you must. Loot values are at the lowest I've ever seen. in the time it takes to loot a rare item you could have easily killed a few more npcs, got some LP, and made more money.

I'm not sure I can quantify fun. but imo zipping around NPCs gets boring, doing as much dps as possible is my preference. Although I certainly respond to the slow warp speeds of standard bs now. I fly a mach almost exclusively, and a few t2 battleships. Fitting warp speed rigs helps. And warp speed implants on top of that. I tried using an alt in a rattlesnake and I almost fell asleep just warping around.

The other fun thing with level 4s are burner missions. you get to fly a small ship and zip around. some can be done with a rather low sp and isk investment.

You can also run level 4 missions in a Gila - drones provide most of the dps. Other cruiser size ships can do it but will normally be slower than a battleship because the smaller weapons do less damage.

The solution to that is Marauders. Sure, the Marauders costs way more than a normal battleship or even a Mach. But with a Vargur for example like i have, you can loot and salvage while killing the rats. So when you are ready to move to the next level after killing all of the rats on the first level (if there is several levels in a mission), then you have looted and salvaged everything.

In some level 4 missions, i can actually earn like 40-45 million isk in just loots and salvage from battleship npc's alone in one mission. So in the longer run, you will earn much better with a Marauder over a normal battleship where you have to either use an alt to loot (which defeats the point of running just one character) or where you have to dock up your battleship and then bring out a Noctis or a looting ship which will still be more effort or more time spent over just having a Marauder.

If you want isk use the mach, if you want something a bit more fun look at doing burner missions.

You really have to know what you're doing in those things. I nearly lost my Deimos in one those newer ones last week (had to sacrifice my blackbird so the Deimos could escape)

I think I'll go for the Cerb and after go for the mach. That seems like the best way to go about it at the moment. I'm really not that interested in the bigger ships so getting some T2/T3 cruisers and working towards the mach as I play in those would be fun. Not sure about getting a mara, would be too long a time investment for something that I may not enjoy.

my main problem with cruisers in level 4s is that for the most part they can just zoom around and be near immune to damage. My tengu fit used a deadspace small shield booster which was turn it on and forget about it. Also since they don't do a lot of damage it takes what feels like forever to chew through NPC battleships.



with high faction standings (pretty much as long as they stay above 5.0, I would suggest 6 or 7 for some buffer) you can run almost all burner missions on one agent. You can decline a lot of missions and stay above -2.0 standings (especially with diplomacy) as burner missions give pretty big standing boosts.



Maruaders are better for sure, but I don't usually come away with more than a few mil in loot. So little I should probably just stop using marauders and switch to a mach. I simply kill so much faster than I can loot, and many wrecks end up outside of tractor range. I tried an alt in a noctis for a while, but that loots so fast I end up spending most of my time on that character sitting there doing nothing. And especially now with burner missions the noctis has even less to do.