Missioning
Simply put, mission running means going to an NPC agent and accepting a mission, completing it, and getting paid. Missioning pays well… once you hit the level 4 agents. To get there you need to grind your status up from (probably) neutral. You will probably want to do this with a useful corporation. What does useful mean? I define it as an NPC corp that has fringe benefits besides just making ik. Good Loyalty Point rewards, geographically convenient Jump Clone access, and better refining rates can all be gained by choosing wisely.
My recommendation is to ask in your corp what NPC corps people have or are grinding standing with and work towards those. Often this will be one of the faction navies. This gives you the advantage of working towards all of the benefits mentioned above while having people to grind with.
So how do you make money off missions? There are actually a number of ways:
- Mission pirate bounties
- Mission rewards
- Salvage
- Loyalty Point Farming
The first two take care of themselves. Once you hit level four missions, you can actually make about 10-20 million per mission if you kill everything and do it within the time frame for the bonus. Salvage is awesome (in my opinion) and I am going to cover it a bit later. LP farming can be trickier. I made a spreadsheet to calculate isk per LP. You may want to do this, or just save LP to spend on faction gear you want.
Battlecruisers and You
So what should you fly to run missions? I’ll refer to the holy trinity of MMOs: you can flit to some combination of DPS/Tank/Healer (logisitics in Eve). Eve also has the bonus that most mission ships will be self-repping, either through shield regen or armor repair. Also, there are almost no missions in levels 1 through 4 where a dedicated logistics pilot is needed. The rule of thumb for level 4 missions is that your damage (DPS or gank) and armor repair or shield regeneration (Tank) need to total 1000 points. I would argue DPS really needs to be over 200 to be in anyway effective, and tank only needs to be above 300-400 in small, specific situations, but your mileage may vary.
I went Incursus > Vexor > Myrmidon > Drake. I also started Gallente and then cross-trained to Caldari. Although it is cliché, a shield tanked Drake can give you a lot of leeway to learn mission mechanics while not having to worry much about your ship. Below is a very boring but strong as hell Drake template. A few things to note about this fit: as your get better at understanding missions, you can probably start sacrificing shield moduless in exchange for additional BCS units and an afterburner. The point below is to show you a relatively cheap and effective ship, not the be-all end-all of mission fits. The Drone Link Augmentor is meant to give your light drones more time to intercept pesky frigates. Low missiles skills can cause frigs to be a real nightmare for the Drake.
[Drake, L4 Tank McBoring]
Advanced ‘Limos’ Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced ‘Limos’ Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced ‘Limos’ Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced ‘Limos’ Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced ‘Limos’ Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced ‘Limos’ Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Advanced ‘Limos’ Heavy Missile Bay I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Drone Link Augmentor I
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Shield Recharger II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Power Diagnostic System II
Ballistic Control System II
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Other ships to consider are the Hurricane (Eve’s jack of all trades battlecruiser), a Gila (For those that want an exotic missile/shield/drone boat) or the Myrmidon. These are all battlecruisers, but I have flown all of them in level four missions, and I recommend you learn how to do so as well. I think the Myrmidon is also very versatile. You can fly it with any turret system as it has no weapon bonuses to lose, can be shield or armor tanked, and can fit two flights each of medium and light drones, or more creative mixes. I honestly find fitting Amarrian ships tedious, but have corpmates that swear by the Golden Banana or the Harbinger.
I specifically avoid recommending any Battleship hulls. This is because you don’t need a battleship to run level fours, and they require a lot more skill training than any battlecruiser to achieve similar results I have seen many new corpmates lose their first battleship in a seemingly innocuous L4 due to warp-scramming frigs or capacitor issues Here is another rule of thumb once you start thinking about BS and larger hulls: If you need more than one fitting module to make an entirely Tech II module BS work, don’t fly it. Do not copy a fit from Battleclinic or a corpmate without understanding why it works the way it does.
Mission Strategies
Fly with multiple people. I recommend a group of 3-4 people/pilots. My ideal mission group consists of two people playing two accounts. One pilot flies something with a huge tank (see the Drake above) and jumps into a pocket before everyone else, shoots everything, waits for every hostile to target and attack his ship, and then the rest of the gang comes in to mop up. The 2-3 support pilots can fly just about anything. For a newer player, this could be a DPS fit Cruiser or BC. I personally love the Stealth Bomber loaded up with target painters. Cheap and it makes things go boom.
The goal of this setup is to pull missions quickly (2 people flying 4 pilots will make more than 1 person chain pulling) while still keeping the isk pool large. If you get past 3 distinct players, I find it to be a blast but financially ineffective. Also, the more players you add, the more you dilute the LP and standing gains. Having a slew of pilots also makes it easier to be choosey about your missions. Some are worth far more than others, an sometimes you can get a few missions at the same time in the same system, which reduces travel time.
The Kicker
Salvage. Most players hate it. I bought a corpmate a Noctis so I could stop doing it. But salvage makes money if you are smart about it. If you have 3+ pilots in a mission fleet, strongly consider having someone salvage, or rotate salvage duties. Also agree on payout beforehand. I use the following formula: The salvager gets half of what he sells the salvage for, and everyone else gets a cut equal to the time they helped for. And for the love of god, do not just blindly sell to buy orders without looking first. Depending on your luck , salvage is worth about 75% to 125% of the bounties and payout of a mission, so take advantage of this. Also, if you find selling and/or refining salvage interesting, you may be a budding Industrialist ™!
Final Thoughts
If you are in a corp and are working on standing, you can reach agreements with other players to stay logged in and part of a fleet while they grind standing in exchange for the same courtesy to them later on. You can also do this with alts.
Kill missions that target other factions will tend to tank your faction standing real fast. This may be one of the biggest arguments for having two accounts to run missions with: You can decline on one character, and start pulling on the second.
Eve-Survival.org is a great place to read about other player’s experiences with missions.
Learn damage and resist characteristics of the various pirate factions and fit accordingly if needed.
I’ll have more to say about other methods of making money in future articles.
Fly safe!