Missioning setup

[Ughmahedhurtz]

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

[RobinGBrown]

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.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

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 ) 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.

[RobinGBrown]

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?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

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

[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.

[RobinGBrown]

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

[Morganti]

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

[Ughmahedhurtz]

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.

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.

[RobinGBrown]

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?