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Making The Universe A Safer Place – A guide to running missions

Published on 17. Jul, 2009 ... written by Ecaf Ersa, Tags: Articles

This article is primarily aimed at newer players but will cover all combat missions up to level 5. Level 5 missions are a special topic all on their own so consequently have their own section and are not mentioned elsewhere. We will also for the most part ignore anything directly related to capital sized ships.

It should be pointed out here that, due to the complexity of EVE, nearly everything in this article should be taken as a general guideline and not an absolute rule. There are often ways to successfully achieve something which may not in general be a good idea and indeed this is one of the joys of EVE!

The Right Tool For The Job

There is a fairly clear distinction between the difficulty of each mission level and there are corresponding classes of ship which best suit them. The order of the ships given indicates the general ease with which each ship class will cope, from worst to best.

Level 1: Rookie ship, Frigate, Destroyer.
Level 2: Destroyer, Assault Frigate, Cruiser.
Level 3: Heavy Assault Ship (HAC), Battlecruiser.
Level 4: Battlecruiser, Command Ship, Battleship, Marauder.

This list should only be taken as a rule of thumb as of course nothing is ever this clear cut in EVE. As examples, Rookie Ships will manage most level 1 missions but will struggle badly with a few of them; Destroyers will manage a few level 2 missions but are not generally a recommended choice; a well fitted Battlecruiser with good skills will fare well in most level 4 missions. You can of course take a Cruiser into most level 1 missions or a Battlecruiser into a level 2 mission but this is generally considered overkill. There is also the fact that larger ships are generally slower and larger turrets track their target slower and you may struggle with the smaller, faster npc pirates (rats) you are facing if you do this.

It is worth briefly discussing here the different hull sizes of ships. Excluding capital and non-combat ships there are basically just three sizes of hull. The smallest of these is the frigate hull, the next largest is the cruiser hull and largest is the battleship hull. Whilst destroyers are seen as a step in-between frigates and cruisers they actually use a frigate hull and the same is true of battlecruisers which use a cruiser hull. The ship classes given above are listed here in hull sizes.

Frigate hull: Rookie ship, Frigate, Destroyer and Assault Frigate.
Cruiser hull: Cruiser, Heavy Assault Ship, Battlecruiser and Command Ship.
Battleship hull: Battleship and Marauder.

The important thing to bear in mind is the need to train for larger sized turrets and bays and even modules for your new hull size. The most significant of these is turrets and bays as in addition to learning, for example, Gallente Cruiser you will also need to train Medium Hybrid Turrets. There are also extra skill levels needed for Medium Armor Repairers, Medium Drones, 10MN Afterburners and so on. Each race has it’s own similar problems.

It is for this reason that I have included some Tech 2 ship classes in the list, Assault Frigate, Heavy Assault Ship, Command Ship and Marauder. Depending on how you have developed your skills it may actually be quicker and more fruitful to train, for example, Assault Frigates than Cruisers due to the fact that you do not need to train for larger turrets, bays, drones and modules. You should bear in mind here that while T2 ships may cope very nicely with the rats in the mission but this can be an issue if there are large structures that need to be destroyed to complete the mission. For example, even a well-fitted passive shield tanked Drake will take much longer to destroy Krull’s Pleasure Garden in the level 4 mission Damsel in Distress than an average fit Raven with average skills.

So you have decided which ship type to use now you need to decide which specific ship to use. You need look no further than the series of articles “Noob! The First PVE Ships and Why!” on this very site.

First PVE Ships – Amarr

First PVE Ships – Gallente (coming soon)

First PVE Ships – Caldari (coming soon)

First PVE Ships – Minmatar (coming soon)

Once you’ve been through the appropriate article and decided on your exact ship you then need to know how to fit it out to best suit the mission at hand.

Staying Alive

Your first priority when running missions is to stay alive. You may have found that you can finish a mission by warping out to repair then returning but it is much more time efficient to fit your ship so that it can survive the mission in one go even if that means you have to reduce the damage per second (dps) that you inflict on the rats. In addition to this, once you get into level 3 and 4 missions, you will begin to encounter rats that will warp scramble you so you cannot leave unless you first kill them and that may raise it’s own problems which will be discussed later.

You can help make sure your ship survives the mission by fitting it with a tank. Tanking is the act of reducing and/or repairing the damage that your ship takes and/or increasing the amount of damage your ship can survive before it blows up.

A more detailed guide regarding most of this section including lists of the applicable modules and skills can be found in my article Tanking 101 but we will give at least brief descriptions here.

A. Reducing the damage you take.

There are three ways of doing this.

1. Speed Tanking:

   This involves making your ship go faster than your opponent’s weapons can track or reach you. This is not a particularly viable option in missions for three good reasons, the main one being that you cannot use a microwarpdrive (mwd) in most missions and that is the main way of getting your ship fast enough to speed tank successfully.

   The second is that speed tanking usually relies on what is called transversal velocity. This is the speed at which an object is moving across your field of view as opposed to the speed it is approaching or moving away from you. An object moving directly toward you at 100 metres per second (m/s) has a transversal velocity of 0 m/s and will be extremely easy to hit as your turrets do not need to move to stay trained on it. The problem with transversal velocity in missions is that there are usually so many rats at all angles from you that it is impossible to maintain a high transversal velocity to them all.

   The third reason is that in order to make a ship fast enough to speed tank it will usually have paper thin defences and will often die from just a few hits. This usually happens if something gets in the way of your ship and slows or stops it, even for just a couple of seconds. Given that most missions have lots of asteroids, buildings, other ships, drones and general debris scattered around in them there is a good chance of this happening. It’s an all-or-nothing tactic that isn’t generally reliable enough to make it a steady proposition for mission running.

2. Electronic Warfare:

   Here I refer specifically to Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) and Remote Sensor Dampeners, both of which are designed to prevent your target from locking and shooting at you, and Tracking Disruptors which reduces your target’s turret’s ability to track your ship. These are not realistic options in missions due to the high number of rats you are likely to be facing. You will simply be unable to affect a high enough number of the rats to make an appreciable difference.

3. Enhanced Resistances:

   This is the most viable option for reducing the damage you take in missions. Given that it is very difficult to avoid being hit, simply raising the resistances of your shield or armour is the best way to cut down the damage that is actually inflicted. The equation for this is unusually simple for EVE, a resistance of 50% to one damage type will reduce the raw damage dealt in that type by 50%.

   This suits missions particularly well because you know in advance what rat types you will be facing and you can tailor your tank by boosting the resistances to the damage types that your opponents will be dealing and ignoring the other types. You can tell which faction you will be fighting against from the mission details that your agent shows you. If they are not mentioned by name then their corp/faction logo will be displayed as shown in the picture below. Note that sometimes there is no logo shown. In these cases your opponents are non-factional, eg. drones or mercenaries.

   

   You should be aiming for a resistance of at least 85% in the primary damage type you will be facing and at least 70% in any secondary damage types.

B. Repairing the damage you take.

This can also be done in several ways.

1. Passive Shield Tanking:

   This is done by enhancing the natural regeneration of your shield which numerous modules can help you achieve. The advantages are that it is generally considered to be the toughest type of tank there is and also that it uses no capacitor. It’s disadvantage is that generally it will take up most of the slots on your ship leaving you with very few other options and a low dps. It will also in most cases decrease your capacitor’s size and regeneration rate reducing your ship’s ability to use capacitor using (active) modules.

   This tank type works best on Caldari ships due to their high number of mid slots and naturally good shield statistics but can be made to work nicely on some Minmatar ships.

2. Active Shield Tanking:

   This differs from the passive shield tank in the fact that it utilises the active Shield Booster and Shield Boost Amplifier modules to repair damage to the shield separately to the shield’s natural regeneration. Whilst not as strong as a passive shield tank, it generally needs fewer modules to make it work allowing you more options.

Again Caldari ships are the best suited to active shield tanking but many Minmatar ships and a few Gallente ships can also fit them well.

3. Active Armour Tanking:

   Similar to the active shield tank, the active armour tank utilises active Armor Repair modules to repair damage to your ship’s armour. Armor Repair modules have a longer cycle time than Shield Boosters, meaning they give their effect less often, but are more capacitor efficient repairing a greater amount of damage per unit of cap energy. There are fewer types of module to select from for armour tanks than there are for shield tanks giving you fewer options but, unlike many shield tanking modules, they have no drawbacks that need to balanced or negated.

   Armour tanking also suffers the disadvantage that if the tank fails (breaks) then you are only left with your structure (hull) as a fallback whereas shield tankers have both their armour and hull giving them a little more time to escape if things go wrong. Having said that, shield tankers should not rely on this as good shield tanking ships will have weak armour which will not buy you much more time.

   Amarr and Gallente ships make the best armour tankers due to higher numbers of low slots and higher armour hitpoints, particularly Amarr ships with the latter. Some Minmatar ships can also fit nice armour tanks.

4. Hull Tanking:

   The standard joke is that this is only for the real men but in all seriousness there is more than a little truth in that statement. It can be done but you need very good skills and a particular style of fit that only works well on certain ships.

   The big problem with hull tanking is the efficiency of hull repair modules. These repair a lower amount of damage per cycle than their armour counterparts and in addition the cycle is longer resulting in a significantly lower amount repaired per second. This introduces the need for Reinforced Bulkhead modules which increase hull hitpoints but also slow down your ship.

   Another problem is that there is only one module that gives your hull resistances, the Damage Control, and while this is a nice 50-60% across the board you can only fit one of these and you really want to see at the minimum a resistance of 85% or so in the main damage type you will be facing.

   A further reason for not attempting this is that if your tank does break you have zero time to escape and that is good enough reason in itself.

C. Increasing the amount of damage your ship can survive.

This is called buffer tanking. It involves using modules that increase the size of your shield, armour or even structure. This is often utilised in PvP combat where it is commonly the case of a race to deal enough damage to kill your opponent before he does the same to you. It works in PvP because the combat is usually over quite quickly but this is not generally the case with missions so using a pure buffer tank is a bit of a gamble. If you struggle to hit the rats consistently or deal enough damage per hit then you can find yourself running out of buffer before you finish the mission.

You should also bear in mind that armour plates and hull bulkheads add mass to your ship, slowing it down and making it less agile, and shield extenders and regenerative plating increase your ship’s signature radius making it easier to hit.

There is nothing to stop you adding a module or two like this in to your tank but generally speaking if the dps you are facing is enough to break a tank with 5,000 hitpoints (hp) then it will also break a tank with 6,000 hp. The exception to this is passive shield tanks. Their strength lies in the fact that your shield’s natural regeneration is stated as the time to regenerate the entire shield. This time stays the same no matter how large or small the shield is, so Shield Extender modules not only increase the size of your shield but also the amount of hitpoints regenerated each cycle.

D. Other considerations with tanking.

1. Capacitor Recharge

   The important thing to bear in mind with an active shield or armour tank is that you must have enough capacitor recharge to keep it running. Critical to this are the Engineering skills Energy Management, which increases the size of your capacitor, and Energy Systems Operation, which increases your capacitor’s recharge rate. Modules that increase your capacitor’s recharge rate are Cap Rechargers, Capacitor Power Relays and Power Diagnostic Units (PDU). There is also the Capacitor Control Circuit ship modification rig.

2. Flexibility

   The ideal situation for any tank is to have more than one possible setting to allow for the varying difficulties of missions. You should have a general set up that will cover 80-90% of the missions in the level you are tackling. For missions that pose a particular challenge, for example Recon part 1 or Blockade, you should be able to add one or two more modules to toughen up your tank. For easy missions, for example Duo of Death, you should be able to remove a module or two to make way for things like afterburner, stasis webifier or target painter modules. There is more on these and other useful mission modules later.

   You can also use this flexibility to cope with the different damage types dealt by different rat types. For example Sansha rats deal EM and thermal damage making it an easier task for an armour tanker than a shield tanker. In this case an armour tanker can survive using fewer resistance hardeners than a shield tanker will need. However Mercenaries, the Angel Cartel and Drones, as examples, deal three different damage types which may require you fit more types of hardener.

One thing I will advise against here is the use of one single “omni-tank” set-up for all missions. This is a tank with average resistances across the board and whilst this works nicely in PvP where you generally have no clue what you will be facing, the players I know that use omni-tanks in missions are also the ones I know that lose the most ships.

So now you have your tank sorted out and the capacitor recharge to run it you can look at making sure you can deal enough damage to kill the rats you will be facing off against.

Make War Not Love

There are six damage delivery systems that you can make use of:

1. Projectile Turrets

   Whilst these are an invention of the Minmatar you can fit them to any ship that has turret hardpoints. They use little or no capacitor and can use different types of ammo to deal different damage types and provide a variety of optimal ranges. There are two different types of projectile turret, Autocannons (ACs) which are rapid firing but short range and use a small amount of capacitor to run and Artillery which is longer range but slower firing and uses no capacitor to run.

2. Hybrid Turrets

   These are favoured by the Gallente and Caldari races but again can be fitted to any ship with a turret hardpoint. They fire a projectile, as with projectile turrets, but it is charged with energy when fired using capacitor in the process. This reduces the optimal range when compared to projectile turrets as the energy causes the round to disintegrate on it’s journey. Hybrid turrets can only deal Kinetic and Thermal damage, and always both, making them less versatile than projectile turrets. The different ammo types slightly alter the kinetic/thermal balance and provide different ranges with the longer range ammo types dealing less damage. The two hybrid turret types are Blasters, which are powerful but short range and Railguns which are less powerful but give a much longer range.

3. Energy Turrets

   The brainchild of the Amarr, energy turrets are basically lasers. Again they can be fitted to any ship with a turret hardpoint. They use a great deal of capacitor to fire compared to the other two turret types and can deal only Electromagnetic (EM) and Thermal damage types. The turrets can be fitted with a variety of crystals which modulate the laser beam into different frequencies to achieve different ranges and some of these crystals will only deal EM damage. The different crystals also affect the capacitor needed to run the turret. The crystals become damaged with use and need to replaced once broken. Again there are two types of energy turret, Pulse Lasers which are short range and powerful and Beam Lasers which give a longer range but are less powerful.

4. Missile Launchers

   These are used primarily by Caldari and Minmatar ships, although some Gallente and Amarr ships can also fit them, and they function quite differently from turrets. Instead of a single optimal range figure they have two figures, velocity and flight time. The range is not simple to calculate because the missiles will not always travel in a straight line. There are a multitude of launcher types, some of which can fire more than one type of missile, but because of the additional factors with missiles, which types are good or bad in those various factors is less straightforward and a topic all of it’s own. I recommend further reading on these weapon systems.

   Advantages of missiles include their nil capacitor usage and that different missiles can be loaded to deal different damage types. They are also good in that, assuming they have sufficient flight time and velocity to catch their target, they will always hit.

   What is interesting about missiles is the two special varieties, Friend or Foe (FoF) missiles and Defender missiles. FoF missiles will home in automatically on anything that is aggressing you so you do not need to target for them work, you only need activate the module. Defender missiles are anti-missile missiles and will home in on missiles approaching you, again without the need to target them.

5. Drones

   These automated mechanical mini-ships are much beloved of the Gallente, who make the best use of them, but ships of all races have drone bays of varying sizes. Whilst there are a variety of utility drones that perform various tasks we will only mention combat drones here.

   There are three sizes of drone, light and medium, both classed as Scout Drones, and heavy. Each size of drone has four varieties, considered to “belong” to each of the four races, which each deal a single damage type. These varieties also differ in velocity, tracking speed, damage dealt and the damage they can take. In missions your prime motivator for selecting which varieties to use will be the damage types that your opponents are weakest against.

   All these drones, when launched and engaged against an enemy will chase after it and orbit it shooting away until the enemy is dead or they are called away to return to the drone bay or attack a different enemy.

   Light drones take up 5m3 of drone bay, mediums 10m3 and heavies 25m3 so your drone bay will only hold a certain number of drones. Your ship also has a “Drone Bandwidth” through which your ship controls these drones. The bandwidth required for the three drone sizes is 5 Megabit (Mb), 10Mb and 25Mb respectively.

   The number of drones that you can deploy simultaneously is limited by a number of factors. Firstly your level in the Drones skill, one drone per level to an absolute maximum of 5 drones; secondly your ship’s bandwidth, the total required bandwidth of your deployed drones cannot exceed your ship’s bandwidth; and thirdly the number of drones you can carry in your drone bay.

   You cannot transfer drones from your cargohold to your drone bay in space but you can however have a friend in another ship launch drones and then abandon them leaving you free to scoop them to your drone bay and then launch them yourself.

   There is an additional drone type to mention here, Sentry Drones, which require their own skill to train before you can use them, Sentry Drone Interfacing. These are large sized drones which instead of chasing after your enemy stay where you launched them. They deal much more damage than normal drones but do not track their target as well and their range is variable depending on which variety you are using. The disadvantages to using these is that they are sitting ducks for your enemy and that you must return to them to return them to your hold.

6. Smartbombs

   Despite their name these weapons are not actually very smart. They are an area of effect weapon that will damage anything in their range whether it is friend or foe, and herein lies the danger in using them, especially in empire space. If you accidentally damage another player or structure that does not belong to a pirate faction, CONCORD will storm your mission and destroy your ship. You will also suffer a loss in your security standing and possibly faction standing too. Given that it is not uncommon for other players to come into your mission to salvage your wrecks for you, whether you want them to or not, this is a very real danger, especially if you are at the mission’s warp in point when they enter.

   An additional danger with smartbombs is that they will damage your own drones if they are orbiting you so must also be careful when you have drones launched that they are off attacking something or your smartbombs are switched off.

   Smartbombs, especially the smaller ones, do not have a long range but can be very effective against close orbiting frigates and are a potentially good solution against them. They also use quite a lot of capacitor to run. The main thing is to be careful where and when you activate them and to be aware of what is in their range all the time.

7. General information

   One theme runs through all of the first five of these six systems and that is that small weapons work best against small opponents and large weapons work best against large opponents. Small turrets will track their target more quickly than medium turrets which in turn track more quickly than large turrets. This basically means that large turrets will not hit small, fast targets very often, if at all, although they will often only need one or two hits to destroy them. This is also true of drones, the smaller of which fly faster and will track quicker than the larger ones. Heavy drones may not be able to keep up with fast, agile targets.

   It is also worth mentioning here Optimal Range and Accuracy Falloff. The optimal range of your turrets is the distance at which they will do normal damage but at longer ranges their effectiveness reduces. Between optimal range and optimal plus falloff you have a 50% chance of hitting and at optimal plus twice falloff you have a 0% chance. This also works the same way with objects that are closer than your optimal range. At optimal minus falloff you will have a 50% chance to hit and at optimal minus twice falloff you have a 0% chance.

   With missiles range is a different story entirely. The damage a missile deals to it’s target depends upon, among other things, the target’s signature radius, ie. how big a target it makes. This doesn’t just mean physical size though as various modules will increase a ship’s signature radius. If you imagine a powerful missile with a large explosion hitting a small ship it is easy to appreciate that a large proportion of the explosion will radiate away from and around the target dealing no damage in the process. Generally speaking larger missiles have a larger explosion radius and they also fly slower making it more likely for them to run out of flight time before hitting a fast, agile target.

Choosing which of these damage delivery systems you want to use depends on many factors.

1. Which ship you are flying.

   Combat ships have varying numbers of turret hardpoints and missile hardpoints, each between zero and eight, and a drone bay of a size between zero and potentially hundreds of cubic metres. In addition to taking up a high slot on your ship, a turret will need a spare turret hardpoint for you to be able to fit it and the same applies to missile launchers with launcher hardpoints. Clearly your drone bay needs to be large enough to accommodate the drones you want to carry.

   Make sure you check the bonuses that your chosen ship gives as often you are granted a per skill level bonus to the damage dealt, range or capacitor usage of a certain weapon system. These bonuses can make a considerable difference to the damage you deal.

   In addition to this you should take into account the levels you have in the skills that affect the various weapon systems. Good skills in one weapon system could override the bonus given by your ship to a different system which you have poor skills in.

   You must take care that you have sufficient powergrid and cpu to fit the weapons you desire and also, particularly in the case of energy turrets and smartbombs, the capacitor to run them.

2. Which ships you will be facing.

   Here the primary concern is the size of the ships you will facing and this depends mostly on what level mission you will be doing but also sometimes which specific mission.

   As a general rule of thumb you can expect to find the following ship sizes in your mission level:

   Level 1: Frigates and Destroyers
   Level 2: Those listed above plus Cruisers
   Level 3: Those listed above plus Assault Frigates and Battlecruisers
   Level 4: Those listed above plus Heavy Assault Ships, Command Ships and Battleships

   There are some exceptions to this with a couple of level 3 missions also containing battleships. One notable exception that can be a big influence on your choice of weapons is the level 4 mission Buzz Kill which is a swarm of frigates, assault frigates, destroyers and the odd cruiser.

   The significant thing to note here is that level 4 missions can, and most probably will, contain ships of all sizes. You will need weapon systems that can cope with fast, small targets as well as slow, large targets. Large turrets for the bigger ships and light or medium drones for the smaller ships is a tried and tested combination but you may find others that work as well.

OK so you now have a tank, dps and the capacitor recharge to run them. Do you have any spare slots? Fantastic! Next we will look at various other modules and why they may be good or bad modules for mission runners.

Good Mod, Bad Mod

First we’ll talk about modules that are no use or even bad for mission runners.

1. Energy Vampires and Neutralisers

   These high slot modules are very useful in PvP combat as they drain energy from your opponents capacitor, and in the case of Nosferatu, also called Nos or Energy Vampires, even provide you with capacitor recharge. However, npc rats have a special capacitor setting that basically means they don’t work on them. Forget these modules for missions or belt ratting.

2. ECM, Tracking Disruptors and Remote Sensor Dampeners

   As was mentioned earlier, these modules do affect npc rats but the problem is that you will be facing so many rats that taking one or two out of the equation won’t make a significant enough difference to the dps you are taking. There are much better options for filling your empty slots. This also applies to the utility drones that perform the same tasks. Worth a special mention here is the ECM Burst module. This is differs from normal ECM modules in that it gives an area of effect rather than needing to target the enemy. While these can be useful for escaping from warp scrambling frigates that come in close to you it suffers the same disadvantage as smartbombs in that if a player wanders into the area of effect then CONCORD will ruin your day.

3. Microwarpdrives

   The simple fact is that microwarpdrives (MWDs) do not work in deadspace areas and 95% of your missions will be in these areas. You could fit one if you know it will work but also bear in mind that these modules significantly increase your signature radius which is likely to increase the dps you take. They are also very capacitor hungry as well as reducing your capacitor size.

4. Warp Scramblers/Disruptors

   As it stands at the moment, mission rats do not run away so warp scramblers and disruptors will do you no good whatsoever. Having said that, since Apocrypha we have seen asteroid belt rats warping off from a hopeless battle so maybe this will also change for mission rats in the future.

5. Warp Stabilizers

   Whilst it might seem like a good plan to increase your chances of escape if there are scrambling rats in the mission there are two problems with using warp stabilizers. Firstly the chances are that you will be facing more than one scrambling ship so one stabilizer may not be enough. The main reason though is that they reduce your targeting range by 50% and double your locking time.

6. Cloaks

   Cloaks can have potential use in fleet missions which we will mention later but if you are soloing then you don’t want to be hiding from your opponent as then you can’t kill them! You also cannot cloak while locked, if you have anything locked or if any object is within 2kms of your ship which will be the case 99% of the time in missions. They also lengthen your locking time.

7. Capacitor Boosters

   These are potentially the single most effective capacitor recharging module that you can fit to your ship. Unfortunately they have one significant disadvantage in that they need booster charges to run. These are quite space intensive so you will probably not be able to carry enough charges in your cargohold to keep the booster running for more than ten minutes or so and that isn’t long enough to complete your average mission.

8. Gang support modules

   In addition to the items linked above I also refer to modules like Remote Armor/Hull Repair Systems, Energy Transfer Arrays, Shield Transporters and any other module or drone that gives benefit to other ships. Unless you are doing the mission in a fleet then these modules are of no use to you. They can actually be very bad as aiding and abetting rats is an offence in CONCORDs eyes and if you accidentally activate that remote repair unit on a rat then CONCORD will arrive and end your mission prematurely!

What modules do work well then?

1. Stasis Webifiers

   This mid slot module that reduces the speed of your opponent’s ship is one of the top choices for a mission support module. It is especially helpful when you are in a bigger ship that struggles to hit the small, fast ships which will generally come within the range of your webber, which will most likely be 10kms. You can also consider the stasis webifying drone Berserker SW-900. This large size drone is much less effective than a webber module but will chase after your opponent and slow it down so can be used at much greater range.

2. Tracking Computers/Enhancers

   Both of these modules increase the tracking and range of your turrets giving you a boost to hitting smaller, faster ships and also those that like to sit far away. Tracking Enhancers are passive modules meaning they cost no capacitor to run and fit in a low slot. Tracking Computers are active mid slot modules that cost capacitor to run and also need to switched on to give their effect. They do however give a higher benefit than enhancers and can also be loaded with one of two scripts, Optimal Range which doubles the benefit to range but removes the benefit to tracking and Tracking Speed which does the opposite.

3. Target Painters

   Painters are also a popular choice and most effective against smaller ships. These modules increase the signature radius of the enemy ship making it a bigger target to hit. It is also useful for attracting the attention of far away ships that may be out of your turret or missile range. These work particularly well with missiles as the damage dealt is reliant on the target’s signature radius and using a painter will nicely increase the damage smaller ships take from bigger missiles.

4. Ballistic Control Systems, Gyrostabilizers, Heat Sinks and Magnetic Field Stabilizers

   These low slot modules all increase rate of fire and damage dealt for their respective weapon system. Use Ballistic Control Systems for missile launchers, Gyrostabilizers for projectile weapons, Heat Sinks for energy weapons and Magnetic Field Stabilizers for hybrid weapons.

5. Afterburners

   An extra spurt of speed is often useful, especially for big, slow ships. The difficulties are the powergrid and capacitor requirement. If you have sufficient powergrid to fit one and the cap to run it then it can be of great use. They are particularly useful in multi-area missions where you may have some distance to travel to a gate to the next area.

6. Overdrive Injector Systems

   These low slot modules give an increase to speed and require no powergrid or cpu to fit nor do they use any capacitor. They do decrease your cargo bay size but if you have enough room for all your ammo and don’t need it for loot and salvage then it’s a nice option, especially if you have a spare low slot but not enough powergrid or cpu to fit anything else.

7. Drone Link Augmentor

   This high slot module is a good choice if your drones are not able to reach your enemy as it increases drone control range by 20kms. It also provides an option for when you don’t have as many turret or launcher hardpoints as you have high slots. It uses only 1 powergrid but has a high CPU requirement.

8. Omnidirectional Tracking Link

   This mid slot module increases the range and tracking on all drones which is good if you rely on drones for your main dps. They work particularly well with Sentry Drones or if you are using heavy drones against small targets.

Mission Objectives and Styles

Most of the time your objective will be to destroy all the ships you encounter but sometimes it is just to destroy one specific ship or group of ships or a building. Some require you to collect an item to take back to the agent. This is often dropped by the last rat destroyed or by a specific rat or building.

Another factor to bear in mind is how the rats come at you. There are three main categories of rat behaviour in this respect.

1. All at once

   In this type of mission all the rats in any one area will target (agro) you. These are often a real test of your tank and it is sometimes a race to destroy enough of the rats to reduce the dps to a level that your tank can manage before it breaks. It is often a good tactic to fly straight away from the ships as this usually reduces the overall damage you are taking. Be careful to take out any rats that are webbing you if you do this. Also bear in mind that you may have to slog a long way back to get to a gate to another area so turn back once you are happy that your tank can handle all the dps.

2. A group at a time

   In this type the rats are arranged in groups and shooting one rat in a group will usually only cause that group to attack you. Bear in mind though that sometimes shooting at a certain group can agro other groups. You must also bear in mind that in a few missions shooting at certain specific rats can cause other previously dormant rats to start locking and shooting at you. One particularly nasty example of this is in the level 4 mission Worlds Collide. In the second areas are two warp scrambling frigates that will agro you as soon as you enter the area. Even one hitpoint of damage to either of them will cause the whole area to agro you and the total dps the whole area deals is significant. This basically means that you need to complete the area while warp scrambled the whole time remembering to keep a very close eye on your drones to make sure they do not attack these frigates.

   This type is easier on your tank but keep an eye on your drones as they may decide to go off and attack the unagroed ships. Also note that sometimes a group will agro if you or your drones get within a certain range of them.

3. Triggered spawns

   In some missions the rats call for reinforcements in which case more rats turn up as you get further through the mission. This usually happens when a certain rat is destroyed but sometimes as soon as it is first hit. Occasionally the triggers are more complex though, for example with Rogue Drone Harassment, which features a single drone battleship which calls for reinforcements four times at various points through its armour.

   Generally speaking the largest ship in a group will be the trigger for the next spawn. If there is more than one of equal size then the trigger is, in most cases, the one that has a different name to the others.

   Keep a close eye on your drones in this mission type as the spawned rats can just as easily target them instead of you. If this happens just pull your drones in until the rats target you and then relaunch them again.

   Some missions have time-triggered spawns. In these missions the key is to keep destroying the rats as quickly as you can to avoid the total dps becoming higher than your tank can handle.

   It can be extremely important to control the spawn triggers carefully, especially in certain missions. The spawn groups will often have a much higher dps output than the same amount of ships will in the other types and it can easily get out of hand if you start killing triggers, bringing in more spawns, before clearing out the rest of the group.

The Blitz

Blitzing missions refers to completing the objective as quickly as possible then getting out. It often leaves active rats behind which means that looting and salvaging is not an option. The best blitz missions are those that just need a specific ship or building destroyed. Keep an eye on your journal button as when that lights up then generally the mission objective is completed. A tractor beam can be handy in this situation to pull over the can or wreck containing your objective item.

Missioning in Fleets

The main method of missioning in fleets is to have one ship tanking all the damage while the others are fitted more for dps with just a basic tank. The tanking ship will enter the area first, get all the agro then call the others in. This of course works best in missions where the whole area agroes or the rats are in easily controllable groups.

It doesn’t work so well in the spawn type missions as the rats that spawn will often target your team mates who may not have a tank that can cope with the dps. The criteria that the rats use to determine who they lock and shoot at vary from mission to mission. The various factors include distance, signature radius, whether you are shooting or not and, if you are, who at.

In some missions the rats will only ever target the ship that shoots at them, ignoring your team-mates and drones, and in others they will target anything that comes in their range. Some rats just seem to love targeting drones while others will choose what to target based on a combination of the distances and signature radii of the various options. In general the bigger your signature radius and the closer you are the more likely you are to be locked.

In missions that have a lot of dps in one group then two tanking ships can enter first to share the dps so that each ship’s tank can cope.

Fleet missioning can be fun and efficient for many reasons.

1. Different ships for different purposes

   This is especially applicable to level 4 missions that have everything from frigates to battleships. The smaller ships in the fleet can concentrate on the small, fast ships leaving the bigger ships to pound away at the slow, big targets. You can also call on a frigate in your fleet to run off and collect the mission objective item.

2. Combined dps

   The effect of concentrating fire cannot be stressed enough. If you can only muster 200 dps against a ship that can tank 180 dps then you will destroy it but very slowly as you are only effectively dealing 20 dps. If another ship comes and adds another 100 dps then you are doing 120 dps between you and the ship will die much quicker.

3. Fleet bonuses

   The whole fleet can benefit from the leadership skills of the squad commander. Move the character with the best leadership skills into the squad commander role. There are five skills which improve ship speed, shield hitpoints, armour hitpoints, locking time and range.

4. Dealing with sniper rats

   If you are solo and especially in a battleship then often your biggest pain is a ship that is faster than you and likes to sit a long way away, maybe out of the effective range of your weapon systems. If you have team mates with you then they can get up closer as the rat will be keeping range on you and not them.

5. Gang modules

   Using logistics, eg. remote repair modules and drones, can be very effective in fleet missions, especially in total agro, high dps situations. The tanker can enter the area, get all the agro then the logistics ship can enter and safely remote repair the tank ship.

   The previously mentioned Omnidirectional Tracking Link will also augment everybody’s drones and the effects will stack if more than one of your fleet is carrying them.

   It is worth mentioning here the “Turtle Tank”. This is a tanking system that takes advantage of the fact that remote repair effects are much more efficient than self repair modules. Without skills, the basic medium armour repair module repairs 240 hp every 12 seconds using 160 cap which equates to 20 hp repaired for 15 cap per second. The basic medium remote armour repair module repairs 160 hp every 5 seconds for 118 cap which equates to 32 hp repaired for 23.6 cap per second.

   The idea is that each person repairs the armour or shield of the next in the line creating a repairing “loop”. One disadvantage here is that all fleet members really need to be using the same kind of tank, ie. armour or shield, although it can still work if not. You may also need to also use energy transfer modules too as the per second cap expenditure is higher.

   The main problem with this setup is that you all need to stay close together. The previously mentioned medium remote armour repair module only has a range of 5kms which doesn’t leave much margin for error especially if your top speeds are different.

Other useful mission information

You can decline one mission every four hours with any particular agent without losing any standing with him or her. The agent is even kind enough to tell you how long you must wait before you can get away with declining another one. If you decline a second mission before the four hour timer is up then you will lose standing with him or her and, to a lesser degree, the agent’s corp. You may find that will not be able to do missions for that agent again until you have brought your standing back up.

Allowing a mission to expire, whether you have accepted it or not, carries the same standing penalties as failing the mission.

Assuming you do not fail or decline any missions, after completing sixteen missions you will be offered a special “Storyline” mission. These are missions for the faction that the agent’s corp belongs to and will gain you a faction standing increase as well as for the corp that the storyline agent works for. This may not be the same corp as the one you have been working for. As well as netting you a standing gain for the agent’s faction, you will also receive faction standing gains for that faction’s allies but also losses to their enemies. For example a storyline mission for the Minmatar will give you gains in standing to the Minmatar and Gallente factions and losses to the Amarr and Caldari factions. There is much more detail about this in my guide Factions – Love Me or Hate Me.

There is a very nice guide for missions that works in the in-game browser although there are not that many level 1 and 2 missions included in it. You can find it at www.eve-survival.org

Level 5 Missions

Whilst level 5 missions follow the same theme as all other combat missions, there are some significant differences that you must be aware of.

Level 5 missions are a great deal higher powered than level 4 missions and inflict considerable amounts of dps that even your rock-solid level 4 mission battleship cannot hope to cope with for very long. They also invariably involve either a large structure with many sentry guns or a capital sized ship that deals a lot of damage and will take quite some time to kill.

For this reason it is almost a requirement to take on these missions as a fleet. There are three main ways of handling the dps that level 5s deal out:

1. Multiple tanking ships

   You can have several tanking ships and try to keep the agro spread out amongst them. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as most ships in the mission will use the same criteria to decide who they should lock so you may end up with one ship taking most of the damage.

2. Logistics

   This is a nice solution to the problem as a logistics or command ship can support a single tanking ship as well as help out any others that get too much agro to handle. The difficulty comes when the logistics ship takes too much agro. Then you will need to either quickly destroy those ships or the logistics ship will need to leave the area. If it will then take too long for the logistics ship to re-enter then everyone else may have to leave as well. You could also consider the turtle tank system previously described – assuming one ship has all the agro all the others can remote repair that ship – although bear in mind the problem of needing to stay close together to make this work.

3. Capital ship

   Capital ships are quite nicely suited to level 5 missions. They can generally handle the dps and also deal enough damage to solo these missions. Carriers score well in fleets with their warfare link capability as well as ship maintenance bay and corporate hangar area for on-site refitting. They can also assign fighters to other fleet members, especially those with small drone bays.

   Dreadnoughts make the better solo vessel with their significant tank and turrets or missiles for the structures, capital ships and battleships that need dispatching. Drones should be capable of taking care of the smaller ships.

You will need to allocate tasks between the fleet members carefully and ensure everyone knows what to do in the various possible situations. One possible situation, not connected with the mission, that needs a contingency plan is the invasion of the mission by player pirates. Due to the fact that all level 5 missions are in low security space this is a very real possibility and you should strongly consider using a scout at the mission entrance to give you a few more seconds warning to get to a safe place.

So hopefully you are now armed with all the information you need to help make the universe a safer place for all!

Have Fun!

Tags: fitting, guide, mission, PVE, tanking