Winner!

So T'amber's "Ships of EVE Lottery #1" was held today. I bought one ticket for 10 million isk. They sold just under 5000 tickets and ended up adding prizes for 3rd, 4th, and 5th places.

I joined the chat channel about 15:30 EVE time and found out that they were also giving away "spot prizes" in a kind of a trivia contest. These ended up to be 34 additional ships and one guy won 373 Caldari Shuttles.

I was one of these additional winners, I won a Rook!



It will take me a bit to learn to use it, but not too terribly long.

All in all it was a fun time and well worth the investment. So keep an eye our for T'amber's next auction!

Lifetaker

After scanning the contracts from what seemed like the known universe I found what I was looking for. A used Caldari Raven Navy Issue in good condition. Only used by it's pilot on Sundays and has low mileage. Whatever. It was a decent price and i wanted it.

Located out in Sinq Liason about 16 jumps away. I could jump in a shuttle zip out there and take a look at her in a very short time. Oh there were some nearer, but generally more expensive or more beat up. Or if you buy in Jita you never know what you might end up with.

Once I got out there I fell in love with it. It's subtle color difference from the regular fleet Raven sets it apart. And when you walk on board everything is a bit more cramped from the extra shield generators, armor and reinforced structure that makes it tougher than the fleet Raven. An additonal launcher and 4 turret hardpoints make it a bit more versatile combat vessel.

After transferring the requisite amount of money into the seller's account, I boarded her and jacked in. Aura's voice told me all systems were online and ready. I sat back and thought for a minute about a name. I settled on "Lifetaker". A reference to an ancient holoreel about combat soldiers referred to as "Lifetakers and Heartbreakers".

So I paid my money and took her out for the trip back to Lonetrek. Once there I outfitted her. EFT is set for all skills at level V and for Guristas damage profile.














I was able to run the level 4 mission "Angel Extravaganza" and had absolutely no problems with this outfitting (hardeners changed out for appropriate ones of course).

So far I'm pretty happy with it. Now it has to earn its keep and make me back the money I paid for it!

Mission Running Part 2: Ships and Missions

Ships (there is an update at the end of this section)

Level 1 - Frigate.
Level 2 - Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser
Level 3 - Battlecruiser/Battleship
Level 4 - Battlecruiser/Battleship

There are a lot of people that will probably say you'll never need a Battleship for a level 3 mission. The hardest level 3 missions can be comparable to easier level 4 missions. And unless your tanking skills are quite decent you may need to do these in a battleship. And for me I was able to afford a battleship before I've gotten the relevant tanking skills to level IV or V.

Many people go with cookie cutter ship fits. If you are comfortable with this, fine. If not, then outfit your ship the way you want to. But understand what you're trying to attain and what you're giving up.

My favorite frigate for missioning is either the Rifter or the Merlin. I haven't used either an Amarr or Gallente frigate for missioning so I don't know how they would fare.

Typically I'll outfit a missioning frigate for short range, speed tanking. The Rifter I'll outfit with 3 autocannons and a rocket launcher, the Merlin 2 blasters and 2 rocket launchers. Both outfitted with a afterburner.

Level 2 missions I'll use a tanking cruiser. For me a Moa as I can only fly Caldari cruisers.

Level 3 missions I've used battlecruisers and battleships. I started out flying the Ferox and then moved on to the Drake. At the time I did that it was entirely because I had a mission that a few ships kept enough distance that I couldn't hit with the guns I had on the ship, even using long range ammo. The drake with it's missiles could reach out and touch it just fine.

<Update>

Doing a bit of research for this article has led me to re-evaluate my Level 3 mission ship selection and setup.

Using some pointers from this article from Tony at EveWarrior, I've been able to greatly increase the tanking ability on my Drake and am now pretty convinced that this ship is more than sufficient for Level 3 missions.

I've only done a couple of Level 4 missions and have used my Raven for those. This is how I outfit the Raven for missioning. The EFT is shown for all skills at level V and for Guristas damage type (80% Kin, 20% Therm).


















Without the guns firing this fit is cap stable at 57% and with the guns firing, 49 minutes is easily long enough to finish off a room.

I use the medium guns for added dps against cruiser sized targets along with medium drones. I use light drones for frigate sized targets.

I've gone with this build instead of a permaboost build because it still gives a good defense (up to 1068 when replacing the BCS IIs with SPR IIs) and there are some missions that utilize neutralizer towers and completely drain your capacitor very quickly. Replacing the hardeners with 2 kinetic deflection amplifier IIs and a heat dissipation amplifier II and the BCS IIs with SPR IIs still gives a defense 836 completely capacitor independent.

If you need less defense and more dps you can replace an SPR II with a BCS II and bring the dps up to 611.

In general this build gives me good performance with the ability to adjust defense and dps as necessary.

Running the Mission

Now that you have your ship select an agent and accept a mission. If you get a courier mission, deliver the goods. A production mission, make something. But the real fun begins when you get a kill mission.

After you have the mission look it up here: Mission Reports. This will tell you what the mission consists of and anything "special" you may need to know. Some missions have waves that come at you at specific time intervals and if you kill off the preceding wave you just sit and wait. Some missions have triggers and if you kill or attack the trigger, or get the trigger to armor it will trigger a wave. And the next wave may have a trigger that will trigger another wave etc. So, if you're not familiar with what the triggers are you may end up fighting far far more ships than you would have otherwise. To the point of being killed.

Now that your research is done the only thing left is to travel out to the mission location and start the killing!

Make sure the mods that you need on are on and the ones that you need off are off. There is nothing worse than running a armor repairer for so long that you drain all your cap. Ok, so, maybe there are worse things, but not many.

If you're not in a speed tanking ship align to something, I tend to use stations, but anything works and be prepared to warp out to it if the mission starts turning south.

Keep an eye on your overview, your drones, your shield/armor/structure levels, the number of ships, any other players that show up, etc.. Basically, do not be afraid to warp out if you need to. You can always come back.

Once you've killed all the ships there are to kill make sure you pick up anything the mission requires. Loot and salvage all the wrecks and then head back to the agent to turn the mission in.


Links

The single most useful link I've found is the Mission Reports from eve-survival.org.

The Evelopedia has a good article on agents.

Two very important resources are:
EFT - Very useful for looking at ship fits.
EVEMon - Very helpful for planning your training out.

In addition to these links check out the blogs I follow to the right. All are great reading and have great pieces of information and advice.