Missions & Complexes

Essentially I'm making this thread because of this thread here, I won't bore everyone with the details but most of it consists primarily of people crying over how they can't go to low sec because the pirates ruin it by being mean. And the pirates crying because there's nothing there of value.

This, IMHO, is simply not true. I've done PvE in low, high and null and I can honestly say I made considerably more money in low sec than either of the other two. With the exception of dual boxing incursions, but quite frankly that was boring as hell because I couldn't even watch a film while I was doing it. Not only that but low sec is really, really safe.

Anyway, in null sec quite a few sites cannot be solo'd easily or in cheap ships (the blood/sansha 10/10 spring to mind), and finding a decent rated plex can also be a serious pain. So you end up chaining sanctums. Now in my carrier and machariel setup I can maybe pull a little under 100m an hour doing this, with the carrier repping the mach and fighters (coz I cba to pull them) and the mach being purely gank fitted.

Escalations will raise this mark slightly, but again cannot easily be done solo. So you end up running them in a gang, and splitting the reward. This brings the amount you actually make from them in line with, say, the 5 or 6/10. The only difference being you have to go 14j through null sec to reach them.

In low sec however I can merely fit up an anathema and a T3, and fly around system to system scanning down two systems at a time. Thanks to the lack of bubbles I can cover entire regions with impunity, scanning down 20+ systems in one go and running the 4, 5 and 6/10 multiple times a day. Not to mention the odd few unrated sites which are almost guaranteed to escalate (I admit, most unrated don't very often and aren't worth running).

In low, all the sites are soloable for a semi pimped T3, and the existence of acceleration gates and T3 subsytems mean you can operate with utter impunity. Either by sticking your scout off the gate, or by lowering your d-scan range to 50,000km when you see something dodgy on scan, if it isn't in 50,000km, it's not at the entrance to the site.

The only time in low pirates can mess with you is when they have seriously bad ass gate camps up, and the gate is littered with drones and cans, or when you're on station. As long as you are careful docking, and do things like running up to the top of the station making them follow, then docking and popping out at the bottom out of point range again, you will be fine. I have never lost a PvE ship to pirates (unless you count an anathema that got smartbombed, note to self: virtues make bad loss mails).

(This thread is purely in relation to exploration. Also, getting in a good corp that "controls" a system and blitzing level 5s is quite good ISK I've heard, monkey circus seem to do this a lot and they keep their system locked down pretty tight. In terms of mining, I have no idea. You could probably do it easily in a dead end system, but I have no knowledge of payouts.)

Anyway, this is my opinion on the whole "low sec is worthless" thing, it did start out as a post in a different thread, but got a bit long/off-topic so I thought I'd post it here and see what some other low sec bears think.

tl;dr: low sec is profitable, people should quit whining about it. Similarly high sec carebears should stop being pussies and learn to fly cloakies.

Implying everyone who goes to lowsec is/should be an explorer or piwat looking for the former!?

I've done lowsec exploration for over a year. Never needed a cloaking combat ship. It's that simple if you know what you are doing.

Having said that - I officially condone the myth that you will die horribly the moment you cross the gate into the hell of lowsec. It's a beautiful myth which serves me well - venture not beyond the columns of hercules for only death lies beyond!

The Sansha 10/10 can be solo'd in a relatively cheap Abbadon

To be fair, I'm getting 50+ kk per hour in high sec running borring missions on one screen, and watching movies on another. No need to spam d-scan, no need to worry about someone trying to find you.
And 10 hours per month just to keep account running is not that bad.
Since I'm PvE guy, and PvP is not interesting for me at all, I see no purpose going somewhere out from H-sec.
Maybe I would if I'd found a corp that would accept me for pve purposes, but everybody want pvp only.
So no thanks. I'm totaly fine in h-sec. Maybe if income would be cut in half or plex would go up to 1b, then maybe I would consider ninja WH's. But still not a low sec.

Read what I wrote again. This time actually read it. I honestly don't care about ISK, and the thread was not about nerfs/buffs. If you thought it was, sorry, looking back I wasn't particularly clear in the first few paragraphs.

Anyway, it was about people claiming there is no profit in low sec, and that it is incredibly dangerous, when it simply isn't true.


I wasn't complaining about this, I was just making the point so I could highlight that in contrast low sec plexing is highly profitable (and safe, did I mention safe?). Especially for solo players who don't want to shell out for multi-billion ISK T3 builds.


Acceleration gates. Hell, I even mentioned that. Did you read my post?

If you have an alt on the gate, they cannot kill you. If you use d-scan, they cannot kill you. Only the extremely determined pirates who actively wait inside the complex with a stealth bomber (for instant point), and a pilgrim + cloaked T3s will get you. And in all my time in low I have only ever seen that happen a handful of times. (Even then, I was the pirate. Lol.)

The only exception to this is if you're running mags/radars, and for the most part they suck anyway. Your time would be better spent hunting for the rated sites. If not, I used to sit and tank them in a crappy warp core stabbed BC while my alt hacked cans. Pretty sure there are a few fits with WCS that can do this solo (In fact I know other people do this, because I've tried killing them and failed).


Meh, there's plenty of solo content in null. You can run mags/radars and as I mentioned you can solo/dual box a lot of the sites, just not all of them. And you'll die more often. Still, it makes it more fun.

Anyway this wasn't a buff/nerf thread, nor was it some kind of re-balancing proposal, please read more carefully before rage posting in future.

Hey Kumi

Guess you better start killing the drake armies that land in your radar sites, you now get free t1 drake crap to go with your nanite control skill books


I think bogsy is a good example of how incredibly difficult it is to kill people who know what they're doing

Every damn time I flash scanned him he noticed, warped to his safe 200km off lol and cloaked the damn Ferox Then the one time I do point him with two scrams it turns out he has four WCS on his ship

Are you still out in Aridia btw dude? When you're done saving for le new toon you should try coming out to null for a bit, been messing around in my vaga the last few days and it's so nice not having to worry about gate guns Plus le iskies from anoms is pretty good, not as much as plexing, but you don't have to scan out system after system which is awesome.

Let me know when you start flying that pimped T3 around forge low sec and I'll come give you hand in some of those sites


You'd run wormholes but not go to low sec? Lol.

More or less.

On a more serious note, outside of the busier fw pipes and a few pirate hubs (which usually overlap), cloaky isn't required. A scout is essential and I wouldn't do without that, but a cloak is just going to slow down site clearing too much. The name of the game is speed. Get the sites down quickly, get the shiny back to market or a well-placed gsc for later pick-up in a blockade runner.

Missions are another animal entirely though. I wouldn't bother with the good agent hubs in lowsec as they're predominantly taken by locals who don't want neutrals hanging around, even if they aren't pirates themselves. Key stations can be camped by fast-locking alpha gangs and there isn't much to do but log out til they get bored, not a good use of time if your motive is isk.

Not much experience raiding wormholes. I've tried it once with some militia members and it didn't turn out well for us.

Ahh, Emperor salazar. Always so polite and courteous.

If you can't make ISK in low sec bro, go QQ elsewhere.


Tbh most people use T3s. Cloak to get to system and scan, refit in station if you find a site. Just using the MWD trick works too for people who don't want to risk a T3, but I wouldn't recommend covering very large parts of low sec without one of the two.


Yeah I personally wouldn't bother with missions unless I was in an alliance/corp that specifically locked down a few systems for that purpose. Even then, meh, they're dull.


It's usually good fun tbh, as long as you scout it out pretty thoroughly before hand. Once I set up I used to just run them while watching a film, with my alt afking in a deep safe in a salvager. Hitting d-scan in the background and pausing the film to dual screen when I had to salvage a site seemed to work fine.

I still had to leave a site half done every now and then, but I always got out ok.