Monday 17 September 2012

Day 91 : Derailed


My morning trip to New Eden is derailed by CCP Seleene of all people. He posts a Guild Wars 2 review from YouTube via Twitter. The Monty Python bit alone had me laughing. Nice start to the morning but so much for my early Jita run....

                                      

It’s Friday and traditionally I wait all week to get back and have a late night, no work tomorrow, session in front of EVE and then never do it.

This Friday I’m in an odd mood and do manage to log on before collapsing in a heap. I trigger a storyline while doing a mining mission. This storyline mission is a combat orientated one. I get this from mining? I’d been labouring under the false assumption that mining missions would result in storyline mining missions. It means that I had better be careful about triggering storylines when I start doing level 4 missions. I’m hoping that obtaining the required standings for level 4 missions will coincide with both decent skills for the Ishkur and a decent fit for the Brutix that I bought ages ago. I think both should be able to handle level 4 missions. I have some concerns about level 4 missions resulting in Distribution storyline jobs requiring me to head into low sec. My rust bucket haulers are no where near tanked enough to survive anything that might happen down there. I’d have to get the corp involved to do some scouting. If only I could spare the month of training required to fly and fit a blockade runner. Have you seen that Power of Two offer by the way? Yeah. So have I. I’ve stared at it several times now and still not given in....

The current level 3 storyline mission revolves around some Serpentis dude called Garkon Puman. Apparently he has been kicking up a fuss, presumably he is angry at people continually  assuming he is a waiter in France. Time to send in The Sweeney, the Federation Navy Comet I am so enamoured of. I want to play the music from The Sweeney but can’t find the soundtrack to the original TV series so I kick off the soundtrack to an equally cheesy 80s cop show instead - The Professionals. Cheese-tastic. Technically I think they were MI6 rather than cops. It still amuses the hell out of me. I told you I was in an odd mood.

These Serpentis guys must not know what hit them. My fitting skills are poor but even my badly fitted Comet just soars in and sorts them out in short order. Oh, shields gone, in armour am I? Meet my new friend, Armour Repairer II, nosferatu powered by your pal over there. Compared to PVP all this level 3 PVE content is laughably easy even with my shoddy combat skills. The benefit lies in trying modules out, seeing how they work, gauging their effectiveness, and employing them in different strategies. In PVP you don’t get much chance to experiment, particularly when flying frigates like I do. Small PVE missions are perfect places for trying out things like speed tanking and attack approaches. The only problem is that in PVP I’ll still have about a tenth of the time I have in PVE to adapt and use these strategies. This level 3 mission is a kids bike with training wheels and PVP is a motorbike.

Later on I spend some time chatting to Elethiomel, an older hisec pilot with a lot of game experience. I first ran into him in Essence somewhere. His character name is sourced from the same book as my characters first name. Read the book Use Of Weapons, I think I mentioned him earlier in the blog. I’d spoil the book if I told you why we were amused by our character names.

9 comments:

  1. I think you are over estimating the abilities of the ishkur and brutix. I think the brutix will struggle with with dps of most lvl 4's. The ishkur may be able to speed/sig tank them but will have difficulty killing some of the larger rats in a timely fashion. The best option would probably be to get a Dominix or maybe a triple rep myrm.

    I don't have a ton of experience running lvl 4's in anything but a tengu though. I'm sure some one more devoted to high sec missions will let you know for sure.

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  2. The Ishtar is good enough for level 4's actually. Get a remote repper in one of the high slots and 5 T2 heavy drones in with some light drones for frigates and youll be able to speed tank with a decent afterburner and afterburner skills. Dont try to omni-tank it though. Use eve-survival (website) and look up the mission to see what your going to be fighting against and set up your hardeners for the damage type those pirates will be doing. Unfortunately the Ishtar will not fare well with a young pilot. Megathron or hyperion will be your best overall noob ships for level 4 missions. Make sure you keep drones in the drone bay. Mega is going to do more damage but the hyperion will deffinately live longer with its rep bonus. Most say that it is the premier gallente PVE ship although the Dominix is a pretty good drone boat (albeit slow as molasses in january). BS's can be pretty skill intensive though (at least they were for me as I was flying the powergrid needey, cap hungry amarr ships) so dont be afraid of putting capacitor control circuit rigs on them. Being armor tanked you can use some of your mid slots for cap rechargers as well better allowing you to keep your reppers active. Just be very careful with the worlds collide mission. I've lost some pretty expensive boats to that mission. Remember, there is no overtanked. There is only I survived.

    -Mikstopher

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    Replies
    1. You're recommending an Ishtar and T2 heavy drones to an author who is still intimidated by the skill queue for a blockade runner? Maybe we'll throw in some T2 sentries as well?

      Having said that, I'd heartily recommend the Domi out of personal experience with running L4's out of Dodixie with both a Mega and a Domi. And whilst battleships can be a bit skill intensive, they are still easier to get into than T2 and T3 cruisers. They were also a bit cheaper than the aforementioned cruisers last time I checked.

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    2. Some mixup with Ishtar vs Ishkur perhaps? I'm always doing it.

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  3. Made me laugh as soon as you mentioned Elethiomel, having just finished reading Use Of Weapons last week.

    Great book, and I can't look at chairs in the same way now...

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    Replies
    1. New Iain M Banks book out next week "The Hydrogen Sonata". I've pre-ordered it for the new Kindle so expect notes, if not a review, here.

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    2. Excellent- now pre-ordered too :)

      I'll have chance to get through Excession before then too!

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  4. "This storyline mission is a combat orientated one. I get this from mining?"

    Storyline missions come from the nearest Storyline agent of the relevant faction (irregardless of corp within faction or type of missions you've been running).

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  5. I started my LVL 4 Mission career in a Dominix. I eventually trained into a Marauder (Tech II BS with a ridiculous amount of training needed). Mainly for the fun factor. It just wasn't much fun doing these missions this way.

    Fit for a Dominix:
    [Dominix, Green Potato]
    Drone Damage Amplifier II
    Drone Damage Amplifier II
    Large Armor Repairer II
    Large Armor Repairer II
    Armor EM Hardener II
    Armor Thermic Hardener II
    Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

    Cap Recharger II
    Cap Recharger II
    Cap Recharger II
    Cap Recharger II
    Cap Recharger II

    Dual 250mm Railgun II, Thorium Charge L
    Dual 250mm Railgun II, Thorium Charge L
    Dual 250mm Railgun II, Thorium Charge L
    Dual 250mm Railgun II, Thorium Charge L
    Dual 250mm Railgun II, Thorium Charge L
    Dual 250mm Railgun II, Thorium Charge L

    Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
    Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
    Large Capacitor Control Circuit I


    Ogre I x5
    Warrior II x5


    You can just run everything because it's cap stable and has a pretty strong tank. The nice big drone bay lets you carry plenty of replacement drones.

    I think you've already mentioned the skill, but if not, look at Drone Interfacing. It's a 20% bonus to drone damage per level.

    With this fit, you'd want to salvage with a different ship, different character, or swap some guns for tractors and salvagers. (I would carry 1 gun to get aggro, then salvage while drones went to work. some missions get pretty slow as your drones can have a hard time putting out enough DPS)

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