Missioning setup

OK, general strategery question for missions...

I currently have about 3mil skill points total on my guys, so keep that in mind. ;) I'm running L3's now, and am up to about 4.6 faction rating with Caldari Navy, so I'll be able to pick up L4's before too long.

Current setup:
3x passive Drakes HML platforms (training for eventual Raven BS)
1x Noctis salvage ho (training for Orca/transports)

Now, I have a 5th account I've been training for hulks though I mine so little I've sorta been thinking about changing his training over to something like a Ferox medium railgun or laser boat for sniping frigates/cruisers. Basically, I have plenty of DPS with the 3 HML drakes but I'd like to have something that I could use instead of drones for those situations where I'm blowing through waves so fast that I'm getting drone aggro and keep having to recall/relaunch them rather than lose 'em.

Any thoughts? I'm thoroughly enjoying managing 4 ships in the missions, so adding a 5th won't be a factor in those terms. Just wondering what the best option for an anti-frigate/anti-interceptor gap-filler would be.

Cheers,
Ugh

My first thought was 'Drone Boat' until I saw you sating that you didn't want drones., so how about a Destroyer? Or an Interceptor to tackle things and slow them down enough for the big ships to blast them.

I think you might like an Interdictor: the Flycatcher. It's a Caldari T2 based on the Cormorant hull and can mount 6 light missile launchers or rocket launchers - like a mini Drake. It's a lot of training but offers something that no other ship does. There's an Amarr version that does rockets as well.

I can't think of anything better for mopping up fast frigs.

Yeah, drone management is something that's proven to be a fairly expensive hassle so far for me. They work pretty well when I have aggro on a BC but when things are spawning frequently (which happens a lot when you're running 3 BCs :D) I end up with some strange aggro swapping going on when I have to pull in drones and relaunch. I'd rather be able to just target cruisers+ with the BCs and let them pound away while mopping up the light craft with a direct-fire ship.

So I got to poking around a bit in the Amarr ships. A laser coercer seems like a good starting point and I'll have the training done for it in a few hours. After that, a Harbinger fit for anti-frigate (pulse-laser) support looks like the best fit for my group.

I actually did my first bit of combat multiboxing yesterday - had a 4 parter L2 storyline mission I tackled with a Drake main and two destroyers.

My biggest problem with that setup was that I couldn't send everyone in at once as the Destroyers didn't have enough tank (or any tank really). But sending in the Drake first and then following up with the destroyers made managing targets very difficult.

I wish there was some form of target of target functionality, it would make EVE so much better. In the end I sent the two destroyers back to base - going to have to skill them up so that they can do a T1 Drake fit and I don't have to worry about them getting targeted.

Only problem I can see with a pulse fit Harbinger is that it will have difficulty targeting and tracking small frigs - unles you're going to fit small lasers?

So I took the coercer into a mission today to try out the laser stuff. OMG, what a waste. I think I'll still push the one account over into a harbinger as he'll be useful in that later on regardless, though I'm pretty much abandoning the small-laser concept as it just doesn't do enough damage.

I rethought my priorities in missions and the last few L3s I ran today I just ignored the frigates/destroyers/drones until the cruiser/BC/BS ships were dead. That seemed to do well enough at keeping the overall DPS down to manageable levels. Once the heavies were dead, I sent the drones out to clean up the smaller ships. Honestly, one set of Hobgoblin II's killed a frigate about 60% faster than my coercer with 8 lasers on it did. And I have shit for drone skills above the minimum required to use the Hobgoblin II. I'm working on Drone Interfacing, navigation and combat drone stuff tonight so I should have almost double the effectiveness that I had today.

I think part of my problem was probably just learning a better approach to target priorities. We'll see how it goes this week.


Cheers,
Ugh

That is actually very bad target priority Ugh. You make it to level 4's and start popping the BS's first and you'll find yourself floating home in pods because the bigger ships are usually the ones that make the next waves spawn when they are popped. Secondly, the frigates are priority number one in missions because they will web you which means all the other rats are doing even more damage because you are going so slow. They will also point you so that you cant warp out (depending on the rats), so ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS kill the frigates first. How you do so is completely up to you though.

Found another potential ship for anti frig mission running: The Caracal and it's variants

Gets a 10% bonus per level to light and heavy missile velocity - meaning that at lvl 5 thats a 50% bonus to range and a 50% increase in effectiveness (cos of missile velocity v target velocity)

The T1 cruiser can fit 5 light launchers and mount a decent tank (2 lg extenders + inv fields/specific hardeners) plus has room for 2x BCS

The Navy version can manage 6 light launchers and the HAC does 5 heavies

Plus it looks deadly

Yeah, I want to drop the 120mil on a Cerb just to fly it around...Caracal was the first cruiser put in the game in beta and my corp was the only one who had one. We couldn't get the damn thing to undock (massive bugs back then) but it still was awesome to look at :)

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Originally Posted by Morganti

That is actually very bad target priority Ugh. You make it to level 4's and start popping the BS's first and you'll find yourself floating home in pods because the bigger ships are usually the ones that make the next waves spawn when they are popped. Secondly, the frigates are priority number one in missions because they will web you which means all the other rats are doing even more damage because you are going so slow. They will also point you so that you cant warp out (depending on the rats), so ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS kill the frigates first. How you do so is completely up to you though.

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Understood completely. I've been getting more accustomed to checking eve-survival for the resists and triggers lately, even though nothing in L3s has been able to scratch my tank since I hit T2 shield modules. The point was that with HML boats + drones, I'm basically managing 2 fleets, and adding a specialized anti-frigate ship in the mix adds a third layer of complexity to it. At one point I had one of the three drakes fitted with AMLs for anti-frigate duty. With the upgrade to T2 drones, they pop frigates almost as fast as that ship did and they don't reduce med/heavy DPS to do it.

Nice thing about Eve is that there are multiple successful strategies for every situation. I hadn't thought about the navy caracal. I'll have to look into that.

It might be a cunning idea (or a stupid one) to set up your overview differently on different toons (i.e. show/don't show by NPC class). Then one could target frigs and ignore cruisers/battleships while another concentrated on cruisers and/or battleships.

Thoughts?

That's not a bad idea at all imo.

I used 3 caracals for a little while. Despite their hideous guise, it was nice hitting enemies 50km away.

Hmm...didn't realize you could filter the overview that aggressively. I'll look into that tonight. I tested having the 4th drake fitted with AMLs for frigate suppression and it seemed to work well. That setup also completely negates tracking disruption and other debuffs that screw with direct-fire targeting. Plus it gives me another 5 drones.

Going to try having the HML drake drones assist my AML drake, which should make popping frigates a breeze and negate me having to manage 4 different drone batches.

So many ways to skin a cat. ;)

No cookie cutters in this game.

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

Despite their hideous guise

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Personally I think that the Caracal hull is one of the better looking designs, until they revamped the Scorpion and Raven all the Caldari hulls were excessively lopsided except for the Caracal - and it always reminds me of a Klingon D7 which was my favourite Star Trek ship (I play Klingon in STO too)

when did they revamp the raven?

Wasn't it in the recent range of revamps? It didn't get a huge change (or I may be mistaken) - unlike the Scorpion which is really evil looking now

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Originally Posted by Morganti

No cookie cutters in this game.

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lie => rattlesnake , cm fof launchers ungrouped + sentry drones == pure epic win in lvl4 missions


aggressive heavy/sentry drones + fof cms are a good combination for eve pve boxing anyways i guess

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Originally Posted by Fuzes

lie => rattlesnake , cm fof launchers ungrouped + sentry drones == pure epic win in lvl4 missions


aggressive heavy/sentry drones + fof cms are a good combination for eve pve boxing anyways i guess

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You mean, for solo PVE? Everything I've read says group PVE is a no-go for FoF missiles. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Im jacking around in RIFT right now but my 4 dudes are still cooking.

Different target priority is how I was slanted as well. I launch my main in and he targets small stuff immediately, he starts with fast frigs and moves his way up the chain. The other 3 come in and start on big stuff and work their way down the chain.

Seems to work pretty well.

Seems to be working very well for anti-frigate duty having one drake fitted with AMLs, though last night I ended up with two cruisers jamming me instead of frigates, and those took quite a while to take down with AMLs. Wondering if maybe there's a few skills (like target navigation prediction, etc.) that would improve HMLs enough to just have him use those, which would make short work of cruisers.

So many decisions.... :P

Ultimately (this will be somewhat enhanced / limited by your ships ) small drones are ideal for taking out the really fast frigs... I have near perfect drone skills on my main and 5 t2 small drones eat through small stuff, fast or not.

I wish it was less annoying using drones. BUt in the end, they're your best bet.

I'm coming around to that admission.

Honestly, I'm in the tweaking-for-max-efficiency stage, at least for L3s. I'm already 100% successful at the missions so it's just a matter of tweaking things for the fastest mission completion.

I'm sure I'll be back here talking about L4's next week when my faction gets high enough. :p

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

You mean, for solo PVE? Everything I've read says group PVE is a no-go for FoF missiles. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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fof missles are a no go if u plan to do damage with em ... if you only want to get aggro on your bs (so your heavy/sentry drones with the 100% dmg bonus can roll in) they are fine :D

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Originally Posted by Fuzes

fof missles are a no go if u plan to do damage with em ... if you only want to get aggro on your bs (so your heavy/sentry drones with the 100% dmg bonus can roll in) they are fine :D

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Ah, gotcha. Hadn't thought about that.

Level 4's tonight. Should be fun. :D

Good Luck Sir!

First L4 down. :D It was an easy one. Tomorrow night should be interesting.

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

First L4 down. :D It was an easy one. Tomorrow night should be interesting.

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Let me know when you want to try some Level 5's :-),.... Downside is that they are in Low-sec :-(

I jumped on last night and added you to my watch list Ughmahedhurtz, i didnt send you a message though, still in the process of transition out of rift and back into EVE again, since all the fantasy genre games are boring again...

Lol im doing the same thing Meeo. Sigh.

Im also considering, when my guys get really good, splitting my 4 guys into 2 groups and running 2 missions at once -_- well see if i want to push it to that level though, and i will have to determine whether thats better (for me) or not.

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Originally Posted by Redbeard

Lol im doing the same thing Meeo. Sigh.

Im also considering, when my guys get really good, splitting my 4 guys into 2 groups and running 2 missions at once -_- well see if i want to push it to that level though, and i will have to determine whether that is better (for me) or not.

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Dual running missions can get bad sometimes depending on the mission. However Running multiple 0.0 anomalies at once in the same system is very advantageous.

I used to run a team of 2 and a team of 3 in a Haven or Sanctum in 0.0, while my other team would be moving to another anomaly as they re spawn, Thats yields 150 mil+ in a few hours.

I'd imagine that 2 Drake missions at once would get to be rather intense - do you have any drone heavy boats like the passive Dominix setups you occasionally see that let you 'AFK' L4 missions? Do all Caldari battleships have 125mbit bandwidth? I'm theorycrafting here as I don't have any experience with L4 missions, most I've done is a couple of L3.

My current plan involves running 2 tengus and 2 golems. Super overkill. I definitely wont consider doing 2 missions if its too hectic or feels too unsafe to me.

We will see. Im not a super fast player and i like to salvage everything (hence the golems) so im already behind the curve there.

Yeah the big thing with running "missions" is that they are involved sometimes, needing to move from gate to gate or moving to a certain area, while running anomalies you just warp in massacre everything and then leave/ move on to the next one.

Like RobinG stated, the best way to do multiple missions is really to have AFK Drones, that way you dont need to watch the whole time or pay 100% attention.

2 Tengu's and 2 Golems is definitely not overkill, that will actually help a bit.

I use 3 Carriers sometimes 4, 1 Tengu, with a Noctis and a Prowler for salvaging, but that is for running anomalies where its much easier and faster to farm iskies.

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Originally Posted by Redbeard

My current plan involves running 2 tengus and 2 golems. Super overkill. I definitely wont consider doing 2 missions if its too hectic or feels too unsafe to me.

We will see. Im not a super fast player and i like to salvage everything (hence the golems) so im already behind the curve there.

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It's probably overkill but you might want to consider a 5th account with a Noctis - they're shockingly effective at salvaging, huge 50+km tractor range and very fast salvagers. Then your salvage guy comes along one room behind.

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Originally Posted by RobinGBrown

It's probably overkill but you might want to consider a 5th account with a Noctis - they're shockingly effective at salvaging, huge 50+km tractor range and very fast salvagers. Then your salvage guy comes along one room behind.

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This is what I do. 83km targeting range and 68km tractor range = win. And my salvage-related skills suck.

Well some one might have posted this already.
However as a mission runner this link is your best friend.

http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=missionreports

You can look up every mission there and you know what resists to change out, who is the trigger ship(s) ect.