Title: Fuck level 4's Post by: Nerf on February 22, 2008, 12:48:25 AM What the fuck is wrong with me, I used to solo these things half afk in my raven, now I'm having to warp out 2-4 times per group of mobs.
There has got to be an alternative to the x-large booster+amp+3 hards+t2 LE setup, I know for a fact it's not what I ran before (shitty booster skills) and I don't fucking like it at all. Someone HALP! Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Nerf on February 22, 2008, 01:49:28 AM Also, explain how explosive does more vs. NPC shields than EM. Seriously, WTF?
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Trigona on February 22, 2008, 01:58:57 AM My theory is that missions have become much harder than they ever used to be, in the past month or so. I think the devs are trying to get the economy going by forcing people to buy ships after they get blown away in a mission.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Nerf on February 22, 2008, 02:39:42 AM First spawn of 2nd room of assault and I warped out with 40% hull. Thank god for drones that automatically attack the frigs scrambling me when it takes 25 seconds to lock.
Finally finished it after a few hours, brought in a domi pilot from local, who smartbombed phil's drones and got concordokkened. Total net for the mission - 15mil, 5 ogre ii's, and 4 hammerheads ii's. I love pilots who leave drones behind. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Reg on February 22, 2008, 02:55:47 AM For as long as I can remember every patch has included something to either make missions harder or make them less rewarding. The CCP devs seem to really resent the fact that some people would prefer to stay in empire and run level 4 missions for a living rather than being out in 0.0 the way we're all supposed to be. It's important to play the game their way and if we don't we must be punished.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: sanctuary on February 22, 2008, 03:16:30 AM I run level 4's for Theological Council in an Abaddon. Mega Pulse II's with scorch crystals give me 45 km. Lows are rat specific hardners and heat sinks to fill out. Rigs are 1 trimark armor pump II and 2 CCC II. My resists are better than 80% and with a 1600mm plate have over 20k armour. But I cannot run my large repper indefinitely whilst pew pewing. But such a large passive tank usually gets me the kills and whilst flying to the next pocket or gate I can repair the damage to my armour. It does get hairy, so my next investment is a paladin. Using EFT I can fit with the same mods (only 4 guns though) and can pew pew and rep indefintely and do slightly less damage than with the abaddon. I doubt very much whether an Amarr ship is worthwhile for missions with any faction other than Amarr. Sansha's ftw.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Merusk on February 22, 2008, 03:23:47 AM For as long as I can remember every patch has included something to either make missions harder or make them less rewarding. The CCP devs seem to really resent the fact that some people would prefer to stay in empire and run level 4 missions for a living rather than being out in 0.0 the way we're all supposed to be. It's important to play the game their way and if we don't we must be punished. This. The same is true of L3's I used to run in my Battlecruiser. They got a LOT harder and a LOT less rewarding in my time away. Running them out of the .4 system I used to use I would get 1.2 mil bonuses and payouts on a regular basis and a lot more loot modules than have been dropping. I know the party line is "well they lowered rewards to account for salvage" but this is bullshit. Even salvaging every wreck I still come away at about 80% of what I used to haul in for missions that are a LOT tougher than they once were. CCP has hinted several times in the past that they dislike mission runners and think of 0.0 as the "real" game. They know they can't just wipe out all profitability of living in Empire, however, as that's where the bulk of the economy's driving force is. That 2/3 of the population goes away, then there's a lot of 0.0 pilots wondering why they can't get ships/ modules the way they used to. The game suffers from "Visionitis" as much as any other, the devs just are a lot quieter about it. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: cmlancas on February 22, 2008, 03:51:26 AM It's just baffling. Why fuck with something that isn't really broken? :uhrr:
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Slayerik on February 22, 2008, 05:43:48 AM qq
Your carebear tears amuse me. ;) Its just risk vrs reward, plain and simple. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: LC on February 22, 2008, 05:53:20 AM Try out some of the raven setups on the shinra killboard. http://kb.snra.us
My cerberus can solo level 4s. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Slayerik on February 22, 2008, 05:57:32 AM Hey LC, whats Shinra's story these days anyways?
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 22, 2008, 06:15:39 AM Apparently they are killing mission runners in high sec :awesome_for_real:
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: bhodi on February 22, 2008, 06:15:56 AM Also, a good Named XL-SB. That made ALL the difference in the world.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 22, 2008, 06:18:07 AM Those dirt cheap shield hardener rigs seem pretty popular too.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: bhodi on February 22, 2008, 06:18:51 AM Generally you use 3 CCC rigs on a raven. It's cap is shit.
Come on nerf, I did this with 2 million SP. Don't let me down! You can see my build: http://f13.7mph.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=154 (Replace the AB with a hardener, I was using the AB to try and get in range of that awful 2.5m spawn) Aso, this (http://www.eve-survival.org/howto.html). Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: LC on February 22, 2008, 06:29:36 AM Hey LC, whats Shinra's story these days anyways? We are in the planning/waiting/recruiting phase. Raising corp funds, and just enjoying our freedom. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: LC on February 22, 2008, 06:30:26 AM wrong button...
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: LC on February 22, 2008, 06:36:33 AM Generally you use 3 CCC rigs on a raven. It's cap is shit. Come on nerf, I did this with 2 million SP. Don't let me down! You can see my build: http://f13.7mph.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=154 (Replace the AB with a hardener, I was using the AB to try and get in range of that awful 2.5m spawn) Aso, this (http://www.eve-survival.org/howto.html). Plain tech 1 stuff fitted? Talk to me next time you are in game. I have named junk everywhere I dont bother selling. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Kamen on February 22, 2008, 06:54:11 AM Level 4's being harder than they used to be isn't a result of CCP hating empire dwellers, it's a result of them being exactly what you said they were - stupidly easy to solo.
The reward for doing them is pretty damn good for beginning/intermediate players, and they are still easy to do as long as you set up a racial specific tank. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Reg on February 22, 2008, 07:19:19 AM qq Your carebear tears amuse me. ;) Its just risk vrs reward, plain and simple. Why don't you tell us all about the huge risks you take suicide ganking transports in high sec? Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Murgos on February 22, 2008, 07:42:26 AM Actually, what I think they are doing is trying to make some l3 and l4 missions more small group oriented. Either you run them in a superbly fitted out/skilled top end rig solo or you get a buddy. They essentially wimped the mission system with the T2 ships and mods and I think they are trying to counter that, I've seen people on eve-o saying that even l5's are too easy and they need to go make l6s, 7s and 8s and that way probably lies serious mudflation.
How does it work with mission payouts now? Can everyone in the gang get the payout and the bonus or just one person? If they really want this change in direction they need to make it worthwhile for each person and seamless as well as putting in mechanism that reward cooperation. Then there is all the effort they put into exploration, I've seen reports of people pulling Billions out of 0.0 escalating combat explorations but I don't know that people are really organized and doing them consistently. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Simond on February 22, 2008, 07:47:46 AM CCP should just remove L4s (and probably L3s) from highsec completely if they're that concerned about Empire mission farming. Drop the Empire-faction (+ misc. like Interbus, etc) missions into lowsec, and leave the pirate missions where they are.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: bhodi on February 22, 2008, 08:02:55 AM How does it work with mission payouts now? Can everyone in the gang get the payout and the bonus or just one person? If they really want this change in direction they need to make it worthwhile for each person and seamless as well as putting in mechanism that reward cooperation. All bounties are split between people who are in-fleet and on-grid at the time of mob death. (I believe; I need to double-check this one, in-system might be all you need)All mission payouts (and mission completion time bonuses) are split between people who are in-system and in-fleet at the time of mission turnin if you use the "My fleet and I (max 5 persons) have completed the mission. All corp and faction gains are given for each person individually, the same as mission payouts, but they are NOT split. That means that if you are grinding for reputation, you can go faster if you do it in a group (even if you are running different missions) since you get full rep per person per turnin. The other advantage is although you still have the 'warping to mission' delay, you kill mobs more than twice as fast with two people, especially if you are in L4s. This is due to the amount of damage NPC battleships "soak" per round; putting only double the DPS on the target can kill it 3-4 times as fast, thus you have greater efficiency if you coordinate and focus fire than if you have 2 people doing missions alone. I'm curious to try L4s with maybe me nerf and a few other people in BCs and destroyers as frig killers and see if the time/reward payout is there. I also have access to L5s we could try. I've been looking here (http://www.evemissions.com/CaldariNavyLevel5Missions.html) and I think 2 BSes and one or two additional frig killers should be able to beat them. People are soloing then in nighthawks and such. From the way it's structured, they seem to assume you want to have the option of flying carriers and other capships in to help. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Merusk on February 22, 2008, 08:06:55 AM CCP should just remove L4s (and probably L3s) from highsec completely if they're that concerned about Empire mission farming. Drop the Empire-faction (+ misc. like Interbus, etc) missions into lowsec, and leave the pirate missions where they are. They did that once before, when Empire space was WAYYY to fucking crowded. (not all, but some) Something like 3 years ago when I first started, because I recall reading people bitching about it. Ditto with the movement of higher level ores to spawn more in lower-sec. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 22, 2008, 08:07:31 AM Quote Actually, what I think they are doing is trying to make some l3 and l4 missions more small group oriented I read somewhere they are planning a remake of the grouping/reward mechanisms to promote grouping on missions. L4 missions were initially intended to be small group content. Once they implement this they'll probably up their pace in making missions harder.Quote Then there is all the effort they put into exploration, I've seen reports of people pulling Billions out of 0.0 escalating combat explorations but I don't know that people are really organized and doing them consistently. They are, DED complexes have been moved into exploration as wel. DED7 and higher spawn randomly in the same constellation the static complexes were in, so people have an idea were to scan but run into other exploration content too. Since the last buff to exploration escalating combat missions feature one faction spawn every step, combined with a 30+ million faction rat that drops multiple faction items when you get a 'good' ending, 0.0 exploration can be very profitable. 0.0 exploration is mostly small gang stuff (some of it requires an insane tank, structures firing 40k damage torpedoes and other exotic stuff).Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: amiable on February 22, 2008, 08:13:34 AM Why don't you tell us all about the huge risks you take suicide ganking transports in high sec? I think slayer was kidding. I still think missions are crazy profitable, even with the nerfs. 0.0 would be a lot more populated if it wasn't so hard to move around solo. Sure you might be able to Rat in some forgotten corner of 0.0 as an individual but: A. How the heck do you get your loot back to sell? B. How the heck do you replace your ship when it gets blown up? Obviously this is much less of an issue if you join a good corp, but to be honest, is there enough space and enough people dedicated to logistics if everyon decided to head out to 0.0? Probably not... Worse is low-sec, which ratting/mining in is just completely suicidal (because you can't secure space). They need to really examine the risk reward ratio of that place... Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Kamen on February 22, 2008, 08:23:34 AM CCP should just remove L4s (and probably L3s) from highsec completely if they're that concerned about Empire mission farming. Drop the Empire-faction (+ misc. like Interbus, etc) missions into lowsec, and leave the pirate missions where they are. That's exactly the point, CCP isn't that concerned about Empire mission farming of level 4's. It needed, and received, some small tweaks to counter how stupidly easy they had become for intermediate players to solo. Level 4's were intended to be a group oriented type of mission. Advanced/intermediate players were always able to solo them, which was fine, but after a while barely intermediate players were soloing them blindfolded. All the recent changes to them have done is move it back to easily soloable. No big deal. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Teleku on February 22, 2008, 08:28:34 AM This game is fun DESPITE CCP, I've always felt.
But yeah, even with my skills up pretty high now, there are a number of L4's I have to warp in and out of constantly. Takes a long as time to complete many of them. Once I have my faction up (in the 3 different damn corps I'm grinding faction with) and some extra cash, I'll probably be moving on to other money making methods, but still, it's kind of annoying they seem to hate the player base so much. And moving missions to low sec only would be the death of the game. Mass sub canceling. Mission running in any low sec is an abomination and retarded. Only way that would work is if they remove scan probing from anything above 0.0 space, and made the sentry guns at gates and stations actually kill people. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 22, 2008, 08:29:16 AM I don't think they can do anything about risk/reward ratios when the reward is controlled by some PVE formula, and the risk is controlled by players (PVP).
Well, actually, they can, but I think they're afraid to put so much reward into missions that if you have, let's say, 60 mission runners running constantly, and 30 pirates ganking them constantly and taking their ships and loot, that the mission runners end up still making more profit than doing missions in empire currently. I mean, one mission would have to give enough loot to cover the loss of 3-4 CNR's + officer fittings AND profit on top of that, compared to what you get from L4 high sec agents. They're not gonna do that. They'll probably move the agents the hell out of Empire once they start the factional warfare stuff; I expect the Empires will re-structure themselves at that point. Maybe CCP will even introduce some sort of dynamic solar system sec rating, so that the Empires can grow or shrink, or roam over the map (slowly of course) as the faction wars go on. The sovereignty system that they have for players, they could adapt that to Empires, except instead of Outposts the Empire would have to cultivate and populate planets, and if the planet gets nuked and dies off, well, repercussions. I'm sure they're looking to generate all sorts of missions that mix PvP and PvE in some sort of attack/defense patterns. In any case, the loss of high sec agents will directly translate into a loss of playerbase. A majority of the EVE players are looking for PVE, and they'll lose those people. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: LC on February 22, 2008, 08:37:51 AM To be honest I haven't noticed any difference in l4 missions. I have only run them for sec status gains recently.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Simond on February 22, 2008, 08:44:54 AM And moving missions to low sec only would be the death of the game. Mass sub canceling. Mission running in any low sec is an abomination and retarded. Only way that would work is if they remove scan probing from anything above 0.0 space, and made the sentry guns at gates and stations actually kill people. I never said that it was a good idea, just that if CCP sees low-risk Empire missioning as an issue that there's an obvious solution. :grin:Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Slayerik on February 22, 2008, 08:46:56 AM qq Your carebear tears amuse me. ;) Its just risk vrs reward, plain and simple. Why don't you tell us all about the huge risks you take suicide ganking transports in high sec? I'd probably make similar cash grinding missions for as much time as I spend scanning things. My risk = Loot thieves Loot exploding Sec status problems, thus causing me to risk it out in 0.0 to raise it (and make money) Not doing enough damage, attacking a ship that is tanked better than most or has active hardeners Someone popping the wreck Since I have moved up to doing it with friends, and us using battleships (and me funding more than half the venture) I am indeed taking a risk, so don't talk shit about stuff you dont understand. I understand Lvl IV missions just fine so I can talk shit about them. If you think it is a big walk in the park you are mistaken. Sorry you take offence to the carebear comment, but if you want to make good money you could just goto venal and find a spot and rat your ass off, warping to a safe when someone enters local or cloaking/logoffski - but wait...there is risk getting there and risk staying alive Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Reg on February 22, 2008, 09:01:57 AM Quote Sorry you take offence to the carebear comment, but if you want to make good money you could just goto venal and find a spot and rat your ass off, warping to a safe when someone enters local or cloaking/logoffski - but wait...there is risk getting there and risk staying alive I find it amusing that you consider getting your internet spaceship blown up to be "risk" in the first place. And I'm way past being insulted when some relic from pre-Trammel UO calls me a carebear. It's just seems a shame that people like you can't let others play the game the way they want to play it. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Slayerik on February 22, 2008, 09:07:01 AM (http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:EQRm_P6tdoz-2M:http://www.emofaces.com/en/emoticons/f/fishing-emoticon.gif)
Jeez, carebears are easy to land. The ;) didn't even slow you down! EDIT: Also, if it wasn't risky to you how come you aren't out doing it? Is it because the enjoyment of Level 4 missions? Cause, if you enjoyed it I'd understand. If not, you are scared to take the RISK of losing your ship...plain and simple. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Slayerik on February 22, 2008, 09:12:54 AM Anyways, to each is own...i'll stop trying to force you into my game. That is unless you are an afk dumbass with a lot of loot. Then you are fucked.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 22, 2008, 09:43:26 AM Quote To be honest I haven't noticed any difference in l4 missions The last change was when they buffed their ew I think.Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Reg on February 22, 2008, 09:43:56 AM Quote EDIT: Also, if it wasn't risky to you how come you aren't out doing it? Is it because the enjoyment of Level 4 missions? Cause, if you enjoyed it I'd understand. If not, you are scared to take the RISK of losing your ship...plain and simple. I make all the money I could ever possibly need building stuff and selling it rich mission runners. I'm not real interested in taking a pay cut. And golly I sure wouldn't want to lose my internet space ship! Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Murgos on February 22, 2008, 10:06:45 AM Quote EDIT: Also, if it wasn't risky to you how come you aren't out doing it? Is it because the enjoyment of Level 4 missions? Cause, if you enjoyed it I'd understand. If not, you are scared to take the RISK of losing your ship...plain and simple. I make all the money I could ever possibly need building stuff and selling it rich mission runners. I'm not real interested in taking a pay cut. And golly I sure wouldn't want to lose my internet space ship! You're both retarded, ice mining is obviously the only truly rewarding profession in Eve. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Reg on February 22, 2008, 10:08:11 AM Well that's true of course but ice mining is only for the bravest of the brave. :)
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Murgos on February 22, 2008, 10:10:01 AM Well that's true of course but ice mining is only for the bravest of the brave. :) (http://www.theperlmanpages.i12.com/bsmovies/gfx/icecol01.JPG) Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Hoax on February 22, 2008, 10:50:22 AM Fuck running missions either way, I'm pretty sure nobody is going to say "zomg mission running is great and fun!" because that would be utter bullshit. Hisec mission runnung and hisec mining are the only two ways to play eve where it plays like every single other boring ass diku pos mmo in existence if that is all you want to spend your time doing? I just don't get it. Not saying there aren't people that end up playing like that, but I just don't get it.
It is also a low risk way to make the isk to do other shit, so making it ball crushingly hard to do is not cool either. There is nothing wrong with it not being cakewalk though. You don't need to grind up that much isk before you can branch out and go after other income revenue streams. People who can't step outside their comfort zone and run L4's 24/7 in faction fitted Ravens? I say that they are the sheep and we are working towards being the wolves. Gogo cov ops pilots and whatnot, wardec'ing these stupid rich mofo's is going to be interesting because you know they wont take it lying down or else they are inviting wardecs from everyone else. Either that or they are going to be forced to run to alliances, mercs, switch corps (ala those miners in Niya) to avoid us. But no matter what it'll be a fuckton more interesting and fun then being one of those guys. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: tazelbain on February 22, 2008, 10:59:01 AM In any case, the loss of high sec agents will directly translate into a loss of playerbase. A majority of the EVE players are looking for PVE, and they'll lose those people. True. That seems anti-thetical to EVE's position as the leading PvP game with the bulk of its players avoiding PvP. It think dovetails nicely with the market trend of "Carebear Intregation" as the primary issue for the PvP market.Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 22, 2008, 10:59:46 AM Hisec mission runnung and hisec mining are the only two ways to play eve where it plays like every single other boring ass diku pos mmo in existence if that is all you want to spend your time doing? I just don't get it. Not saying there aren't people that end up playing like that, but I just don't get it. I don't want to perpetuate the flaming here, but any single activity in EVE is boring and pointless if done endlessly. For me, high sec mining is for when I want to be afk, and high sec mission running is for when I'm tired from work and am looking for some mindless blowing of stuff up, and absolutely not looking for adrenaline, stress, or being required to pay attention too much. EDIT: to clarify, nerfs to risk-free mission-running wouldn't irk me because there's less income, they would irk me because they'd be taking away my options for absolutely mindless wasting of time, which I want to do now and then. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: TheDreamr on February 22, 2008, 11:00:34 AM What the fuck is wrong with me, I used to solo these things half afk in my raven, now I'm having to warp out 2-4 times per group of mobs. There has got to be an alternative to the x-large booster+amp+3 hards+t2 LE setup, I know for a fact it's not what I ran before (shitty booster skills) and I don't fucking like it at all. Someone HALP! Something changed at/around the introduction of Trinity afaik - I think the damage has been tweaked a little, but I'm finding the biggest problems come from my own mistakes with regards to triggering additional waves of ships -- I rarely have a problem with the initial spawns, every time I have a problem it's with additional waves of ships and one of three things... 1) Mass Reinforcements - it's all too easy to trigger an additional wave / waves of ships by blindly shooting, and in some cases it seems like CCP have gone out of their way to make the most irritating targets the trigger; destroyers, interceptors, that kind of thing - so as you go for the easy / safety kills you get more ships dropped on you. I'm pretty sure that triggering the secondary waves too early within "The assault" was one of the few missions where the normally solid perma-tank of my ship and a friend's basically crumbled under the combined fire & jamming from around a dozen battleships + support. From what I'm told "Recon" also has a similar reputation with players not expecting so much support to appear on timed triggers. 2) Positioning - even when you're tapping the triggers sensibly it's still possible to screw yourself up by being too close to where the reinforcements arrive, basically leaving you to take wide-spectrum damage (angels & mercenaries) from a large number of ships who have you nicely in optimal for their guns ... and hey that nice frigate just webbed you, making it almost impossible to manouver evasively. Case in point "Stop the Thief" - without moving too far I cleared the initial rats, triggered the second wave cleanly ... they promptly warped in on top of me and commenced firing, within 5 seconds I'm also webbed, making defensive manouvering impossible. Fight was very close, with it only turning around as I was fighting to keep my shields at 10%. Same mission a few days later, assumed the cliched Caldari stand-off position rather than being lazy and staying in close and took out the second wave at range without dipping below 98% shields. 3) Shooting stupid - same mission as above; my natural instinct is to kill the tackling frigates as they're webbing me, which I do eventually but it takes longer than I anticipated during which time I'm not taking out the damage dealers. In retrospect it seemed the the smarter move would have been to target the cruisers (dealing EM, thus eating my shields) over the frigates -- the non-cruiser damage was tankable and being webbed while taking tankable damage worries me a lot less. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 22, 2008, 11:04:07 AM Quote high sec mining is for when I want to be afk, and high sec mission running is for when I'm tired from work and am looking for some mindless blowing of stuff up too true :grin: Pirating in low sec is a lot of fun but I can't take too much standing hits. Having to run missions for a week just to recover your lost sec rating is quite a downer. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 22, 2008, 11:08:37 AM I'd be ok with them making sec standing revert back to normal when idle, TBH. Exponential curve, so that if you're at -10 it goes to -9 and down fast, but if you're at -1 it goes to 0 very slowly. Similar for positive sec standing. And yes, I realize that those with a "perfect" -10 will hate losing their badge of honor, but, shrug, work for it!
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Kamen on February 22, 2008, 11:09:19 AM Pirating in low sec is a lot of fun but I can't take too much standing hits. Having to run missions for a week just to recover your lost sec rating is quite a downer. Which is why my pirate character has a -10 sec status :ye_gods: Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Hoax on February 22, 2008, 12:13:50 PM Hisec mission runnung and hisec mining are the only two ways to play eve where it plays like every single other boring ass diku pos mmo in existence if that is all you want to spend your time doing? I just don't get it. Not saying there aren't people that end up playing like that, but I just don't get it. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: JoeTF on February 22, 2008, 12:26:25 PM Apparently they are killing mission runners in high sec :awesome_for_real: Sorry for hijack, but I cannot stop laughing. Chow and his "yeah, we're leaving you in a middle of a shitstorm but we will be fighting alongside you like brothers, till the end, promise, promise promise!" post on BoB forums. And people were surprised why some of us had unfavorable view on whole splintering thing. I'd be ok with them making sec standing revert back to normal when idle, TBH. Exponential curve, so that if you're at -10 it goes to -9 and down fast, but if you're at -1 it goes to 0 very slowly. Similar for positive sec standing. And yes, I realize that those with a "perfect" -10 will hate losing their badge of honor, but, shrug, work for it! Ekhm. EKHM. You want to remove only real drawback to piracy and lag the game more? On general note. Every fucking mmo needs a large base of PvE enthusiasts to fuel the PvP crowd. 92% EVE players are high sec dwellers. They like it there. They want to play Elite/X-wing Online and not some "retarded" play2crush metagame. They don't flame us 0.0 dwellers for doing pew pew, what right do we have to flame them for their carebear ways? Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Slayerik on February 22, 2008, 01:17:59 PM Cause they are pussies? ;)
You know what's pretty sweet about this game? The sheer amount of carebear options you have. Exploration, ratting, invention, trading, delivery, missions, mining, moon mining, building,research...and non carebear stuff like piracy, griefing, ganking hi sec, suiciding haulers, scanning and suiciding rich carebears, scamming, corp theft, ore theft..... I wanna give a big 'Fuck yeah' for sandbox games. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Hoax on February 22, 2008, 01:30:24 PM I have to say that I think that Security Status is something they need to take a much closer look at. I have the following issues with it.
-stealing in hisec should give some sort of standing hit. Not a big one, but something. -getting your standing back up from -.5 or lower should be hellsa harder. -traveling in a pod as a -.5 or lower should incur way more risk. -taking sec hits when you are lawful or neutral should be less drastic. -make bounties work. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Tige on February 22, 2008, 01:54:36 PM Knowledge is power, or something like that.
http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/pdf/QEN_Q4-2007.pdf For the purpose of this thread, see Page 5, Table 2. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: K9 on February 22, 2008, 05:04:32 PM Knowledge is power, or something like that. http://ccp.vo.llnwd.net/o2/pdf/QEN_Q4-2007.pdf For the purpose of this thread, see Page 5, Table 2. This is only further convincing me that CCP managed to do something quite special with EVE. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Phildo on February 22, 2008, 06:25:16 PM Great call in the Ice Pirates pic, Murgos! I tried to give Tragny a hard time over that movie a few days ago and it seems no one else has even heard of it!
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: amiable on February 23, 2008, 01:57:12 AM Great call in the Ice Pirates pic, Murgos! I tried to give Tragny a hard time over that movie a few days ago and it seems no one else has even heard of it! Is the guy on the far right Jane from Firefly? Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 23, 2008, 03:40:25 AM No, the guy on the far right is Ron Perlman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Perlman); Jayne from Firefly was Adam Baldwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Baldwin).
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Tige on February 23, 2008, 06:00:01 AM This is only further convincing me that CCP managed to do something quite special with EVE. I agree. The thing that jumps out at me here is CCP went and actually got an economist, something I wish more developers would do. Watching development of games for years it is comical to watch many developers who view themselves as experts on everything. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Endie on February 24, 2008, 12:20:01 PM To be honest I haven't noticed any difference in l4 missions. I have only run them for sec status gains recently. I agree with this: you just need to tailor your setup a little for certain missions. I'm saving hard for capitals, and am running L4s at a tedious rate, and have only had one "oh shit" moment in thirty or so of them. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Phred on February 25, 2008, 03:17:05 AM Level 4's being harder than they used to be isn't a result of CCP hating empire dwellers, it's a result of them being exactly what you said they were - stupidly easy to solo. The reward for doing them is pretty damn good for beginning/intermediate players, and they are still easy to do as long as you set up a racial specific tank. Try starting a new player and doing missions now. They are tough enough to chase someone out of the game real fast once you breeze through the 10 tutorial missions. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Merusk on February 25, 2008, 03:35:57 AM Try starting a new player and doing missions now. They are tough enough to chase someone out of the game real fast once you breeze through the 10 tutorial missions. Was that you having all the trouble yesterday, Phred? Man I felt bad for you. Did it wind-up getting better with a different ship? Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Endie on February 25, 2008, 03:37:38 AM Try starting a new player and doing missions now. They are tough enough to chase someone out of the game real fast once you breeze through the 10 tutorial missions. I really don't agree with this. I started a clean mission-running character for certain purposes recently and immediately went to lowsec to run my level 1s (you never get ganked in quiet L1 mission minmatar lowsec systems and the money per hour is better than highsec L2s) and breezed through them. That was in a merlin, so I can't speak about other frigates. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Phred on February 25, 2008, 04:12:01 AM Try starting a new player and doing missions now. They are tough enough to chase someone out of the game real fast once you breeze through the 10 tutorial missions. Was that you having all the trouble yesterday, Phred? Man I felt bad for you. Did it wind-up getting better with a different ship? Ya that was me. It sort of got better, if I spend a lot of time tracking down and picking off stragglers. If I can reduce the groups to 3 or so I can usually survive long enough to take one out before they down me. Can I fit any of these armor resist modules on a frigate? The difference between a normal mission and one of the 10 tutorial missions is night and day though. In the tutorial ones they barely scratched me, now 4-5 shots rips me to shreds. I've lost a few ships today thanks to jump to 0's not responding fast enough. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 25, 2008, 06:31:41 AM The problem with missions is that what mission you get is random. And, at each agent level, they have some that are easier, and some that require support skills to be in order, and a proper ship setup. And the problem is that the 1-day-old newbie who's just gotten into the top combat frigate that the tutorial missions give might get hit with a L1 mission involving waves and T2 npcs, and get killed, on the first day.
There is no ramp-up. They should have something like a 2 week period where the agent doesn't give the harder missions. Or, better yet, frequency of easy vs. hard missions should depend on your standings, so that the difficulty ramps up naturally as you progress. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Endie on February 25, 2008, 06:44:59 AM While I stick to my guns in saying that I found L1s no more challenging than before (less so, now that Worlds Collide has been nerfed) i think that there is a problem in CCP's design of missions in general.
If you do the research on what to fit for a given mission and enemy, and are able to find out what the triggers are, then the missions are eminently doable. If you are a new player without yet having discovered how to access to that information, or are of the "explorer" archetype who prefers to find out for yourself, then you can find yourself eminently frustrated, or even just plain dead. Clearly, CCP have to satisfy advanced players who want a challenge, and also new players who are starting out, while only having six gradations from tutorial to L5, where the bell curve shows almost everyone is at levels 3 and 4 for almost all of the time. Old MMO story: you have to assume that everyone is reading the Cliff Notes, or else the ones that are will walk it. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Murgos on February 25, 2008, 06:45:55 AM The newbie ship sucks. You have to get out of it ASAP. Really, for Gallente frigs the most survivable one, for a low skill char, is the Tristan. Even then I managed to lose one when I was a day or two old in a mission.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that there is so much to know to be effective, just minor differences in fitting can be drastic in terms of survival. I cringe thinking of the newbies with their brand new tier 1 frigate armed up with civvy reppers and guns wondering why rats they wtfpwnd in the tutorials are eating their lunch and giving them swirlies in real missions. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 25, 2008, 06:56:24 AM It's not like that anymore, though, Murgos. They actually give you a tier 1 frigate, then a tier 2 frigate, as well as the good frigate weapons, as part of the 10 tutorial missions. And you definitely have the money to insure and fully fit it by the time you're done with the 10th mission. It's just that your skills suck (Engineering 2, Electronics 2, Navigation 2, Afterburners 1) and you can't really fit a proper tank on it (and I'm talking "proper" and "tank" for a frigate), and you get killed.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: bhodi on February 25, 2008, 07:04:27 AM The problem is that you need to be able to put basic hardeners on your ship to be able to do missions like worlds collide, and missions like recon are still going to kill you if you didn't pay attention.
It's pretty unfriendly to newbies. I ended up burning straight into cruisers because I *knew* how bad the newbie frigate experience was from a previous trial. I pretty much recommend everyone get into cruisers if they are a newbie, then you have some leeway to figure out the game before it kicks your balls in. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Murgos on February 25, 2008, 07:05:13 AM Meh, I'm a month and a week old. My experience, last month, was fairly successful but that comes from being an anal fucking bastard when it comes to scouring boards for info and then doing the work to figure out whats real and what's board bullshit.
Without the time investment for research and the 10 million Slayer fronted me (thanks again btw) I probably would have been far less happy with this game. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Slayerik on February 25, 2008, 07:50:47 AM No prob man, ill give Phred the same if I havent yet. kinda lose track of my donations...
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Numtini on February 25, 2008, 09:07:09 AM Quote The problem is that you need to be able to put basic hardeners on your ship to be able to do missions like worlds collide, and missions like recon are still going to kill you if you didn't pay attention. The big thing I think is some of those missions, and recon comes to mind, will kill you unless you've read the cheat notes for it and set up specifically for it. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 25, 2008, 09:22:02 AM Missioning in Eve is probably the most cheat-sheet intensive quest system in any MMO. Knowing what resists to fit, who will scram, what will aggro or what will spawn is paramount to your survival when entering a new level of missions during your first half year of playing. Especially so because of the gear loss involved and the fact there is no in-game way of knowing how hard a mission will be.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Phred on February 25, 2008, 09:38:45 AM No prob man, ill give Phred the same if I havent yet. kinda lose track of my donations... Ya that'd be cool. Trying missions on a cruiser might be fun. heh. I've been ratting in asteroid fields but that's a bit lame because all the bulk miners kill most of them as they spawn it seems so I have a lot of time spent warping around looking and finding maybe 2 or 3 pirates. On the plus side the roid pirates are perfect for killing with a Frigate. A bit too easy actually. If that is the way missions used to be it needed a bit of a nerf. I'm playing as Phaeydra btw. Faeyd was a bit of a failure. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: spotd666 on February 26, 2008, 04:59:36 AM .................I've been ratting in asteroid fields but that's a bit lame because all the bulk miners kill most of them as they spawn it seems so I have a lot of time spent warping around looking and finding maybe 2 or 3 pirates. On the plus side the roid pirates are perfect for killing with a Frigate. A bit too easy actually................. You can make things more difficult/interesting by leaving your pirate wrecks in the belts. Keep warping round the belts in killing rats until eventually some miner/newb steals some of your stuff. Now you have a more testing target....and slightly better loot (T2 Mining Lasers, anyone). I have used this process successfully to test various fits for my Suicide Tackling Kes. Rats don't last long enough for useful test results. ....but miners do, and even newbie frigates can last for 30 secs or more..... Additionally this acts as a useful teaching aid for newbs and carebear miners, that while they are in the sweetshop to be very careful how they steal the sweeties. NB - This will also pull in a fair number of other testers eager to see how long your frigate is going to last against their BS.....:) Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: bhodi on February 26, 2008, 06:32:54 AM It's the eve circle of life! :)
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: VickeVire on February 26, 2008, 02:04:36 PM I must say it's pretty easy as a beginner. You pick a 'high pay' L1 mission and get blown to bits, then you SHOULD think 'hmm this was a bit harder than that other not so good paying mission'
1. Ask someone about pointers 2. Dodge 'high pay' missions until my skills are better 3. Search the net... (Warning, reading required!) Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: cmlancas on February 26, 2008, 02:06:25 PM You must be an EVE god then. I had some problems last night when I got assigned "Worlds Collide" and got blown up in five missile shots before I could warp out.
:oh_i_see: Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Morat20 on February 26, 2008, 02:28:19 PM You must be an EVE god then. I had some problems last night when I got assigned "Worlds Collide" and got blown up in five missile shots before I could warp out. Worlds collide is a fucker. If you don't already know you have to turn and burn through that room, you die. :oh_i_see: Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: VickeVire on February 26, 2008, 02:39:41 PM If you get WC as you first mission ever that sure is bad luck... but I did learn very quick 'good pay' meant more planning/work and if I wasn't in the know I asked around.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Phred on February 26, 2008, 06:19:29 PM I must say it's pretty easy as a beginner. You pick a 'high pay' L1 mission and get blown to bits, then you SHOULD think 'hmm this was a bit harder than that other not so good paying mission' 1. Ask someone about pointers 2. Dodge 'high pay' missions until my skills are better 3. Search the net... (Warning, reading required!) None of these 3 were likely to help. I did search on the names of the missions. There are so many L1 missions I don't think anyone has documented more than a fraction of them. At the time, they were the first bloody missions I'd had outside the tutorial so I had no point of reference as to just how insanely hard they were. I managed to actually finish the second one today and every damn mission has been a cakewalk since then, sadly I'd like a bit more of a challenge in the missions but that's the price you pay for that CoH style of content design. To give you some idea of how hard they were, picture groups of 4-6 pirates, clustered tightly enough that it was stupidly difficult to seperate them out, each rocket hit from which you'd take 25% of your total hp. With a group of 6 if they all agro you can kiss your ship goodbye very quickly. Often the first tic of armor regen didn't show up until I was half way into structural. I even trained up hulls 3 overnight so I could go out and get a resist damage nano which helped a bit. From the sounds of the noobie chat the last few days I'm not the only one this has happened to. Now I know better if I ever get another mission like that I'd dump it back in the agent's lap where it belongs, but as a complete newbie I had no frame of reference other than the tutorial missions which were even more of a cakewalk. I've even gpme bacll tp am inicus from an incursus I was using. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: TheWalrus on February 26, 2008, 08:37:35 PM I've gotten worlds collide three times. Each time I go "Oh yeah". Warp out, dock put on my afterburner and shield recharger, fly like a fucker to the gate and get to the last room where the guys are cake. Sucks. I've only bitten it hard once though, and been close the other times.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: IainC on February 27, 2008, 02:15:35 AM A few general tips for tough missions, apologies if this sounds like teaching you to suck eggs but they're noob tips that I wish I'd known when I started out.
Kiting: This works. If the bad guys are bunched up then spread them out. Warp in, align to something, start flying towards it and lock the nearest target. You can aggress anything that you can lock even if you're well out of your weapon range. Fire something at it until it notices (you don't need to hit or be in range) then fly away pulsing your AB as needed. As the bad guys are following you, snipe the closer ones and use your drones to thin their ranks down. Also if you can't kill them at that range then keep kiting them away from the rest, warp out then warp back in, the ones you kited away will still be strung out across space. Tank: Whole articles have been written on this but for PvE, tanking is very easy as you're usually up against a known enemy. Firstly don't try and tank both armour and shields, it doesn't work. Pick one for your ship and stick with it. If you have a lot of spare midslots then shield tanking is usually best, lows are for armour tank. When talking about tank, three things are important: Resists, HPs and sustainability. Resists are the most important of the three, the better they are, the less damage you'll take and your repper won't need to work so hard. Remember that resists are separate for armour, hull and shields. If you're armour tanking, don't panic if your shields vanish in seconds as long as your armour holds up. Have your active resist gear running as soon as you hit the mission room and turn on your repper before your shields are gone. I was running a level 4 mission in my Domi the other day and I had the entire room aggroed at me. My shield lasted about ten seconds but once the damage was hitting my armour resists it barely made any impact at all - I didn't even need to have my repper running most of the time. Drones: As a Gallente pilot these things will save your ass. Just get used to making them work for you. They are pretty stupid and require some degree of micromanagement. Create a group for your drones so you can order them all at once. Don't send drones to their deaths unless you need to buy time to get away, make sure the aggro is on you before you commit them. Focus the drones on your targets - don't let them pick their own targets - and they will destroy most things well out of weapons range (further helping your tank issues). Drones by default have a 20k range, but the skill Scout Drone Operation adds 5k per level, Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing adds 3k per level and a Drone Link Augmenter adds 20k. The module may be hard to fit on a frigate but with skills alone you can easily have a 40-50K drone range - which should be more than enough for sniping L1 frigates. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 27, 2008, 06:04:27 AM My opinion is that, due to all the whining about how PVE sucks in this game (it does), and also because a majority of the playerbase seems interested in PVE rather than PVP, CCP decided a while ago (about a year and a half ago, when they revamped the agents and missions and added some more) to copy some of the features that other PVE MMO's have. As a result, they decided to introduce "surprises" rather than just add HP to NPCs to make them harder.
So, there are missions where you're not supposed to fight; winning depends on speed and quick reflexes. There are missions where you're supposed to just observe, and if you fight they are designed to outright kill you. There are missions where you're sent to just salvage something but instead it turns out you have to fight (but nothing in the description tells you this). The majority of missions are still straight tank and spank, but with the random way in which missions are picked for you, you may get the tricky ones. I did farm Worlds Collide for the kills/loot in the past, but what I did was I rushed to the last room first, looted the mission objective, took it to station, then went back (making sure I had a damn good tank) and picked my way through the earlier rooms, warping away and coming back as needed. Sometimes you're only able to take one of them out before you have to warp, but if you do that when you come back the DPS on you is reduced a bit, and maybe you can take 2 out before you warp again. But anyway, all of it was just an exercise, the mission was completed and I could have moved on if I wanted to. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 27, 2008, 06:46:43 AM Quote There are missions where you're sent to just salvage something but instead it turns out you have to fight (but nothing in the description tells you this). There is a combat mission 'cargo delivery' which is disguised as a courier mission. You get jumped by npc's while picking up some quaffe. CCP was sneaky enough to lower the isk reward to that of a normal courier mission, making the death trap complete for a casual first timer.Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: IainC on February 27, 2008, 07:23:00 AM Quote There are missions where you're sent to just salvage something but instead it turns out you have to fight (but nothing in the description tells you this). There is a combat mission 'cargo delivery' which is disguised as a courier mission. You get jumped by npc's while picking up some quaffe. CCP was sneaky enough to lower the isk reward to that of a normal courier mission, making the death trap complete for a casual first timer.That mission says 'combat' in the mission type field of your journal though and the agent warns you that it *might* be dangerous. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Endie on February 27, 2008, 08:01:01 AM Quote There are missions where you're sent to just salvage something but instead it turns out you have to fight (but nothing in the description tells you this). There is a combat mission 'cargo delivery' which is disguised as a courier mission. You get jumped by npc's while picking up some quaffe. CCP was sneaky enough to lower the isk reward to that of a normal courier mission, making the death trap complete for a casual first timer.On the other hand, if you are blitzing missions for standing gains and storyline missions there are few things quite so sweet as getting three cargo delivery missions in a row: you fit an MWD (I seem to remember it's not in deadspace) and sprint to the warehouse, pick up the cargo and warp off. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Murgos on February 27, 2008, 09:46:02 AM There is a similar one where you have to pick up some reports. Only, when you get there all hell breaks loose. I tried to loot the box that had the reports but I got the message, "You may not open this container while it is being guarded." So, it's not true that you can blitz the pick-up in every case.
First time I did that mission I thought, "0.5m of cargo? I'll use a shuttle." I knew things were screwy once I realized there was no station to dock at so I turned around and got my combat ship but yea, if I hadn't been paying attention I probably would have got popped. No big deal in a shuttle but if I had grabbed and indy thinking there was a real cargo I would have been pissed. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Phred on February 27, 2008, 12:51:15 PM . Kiting: This works. If the bad guys are bunched up then spread them out. Warp in, align to something, start flying towards it and lock the nearest target. You can aggress anything that you can lock even if you're well out of your weapon range. Fire something at it until it notices (you don't need to hit or be in range) then fly away pulsing your AB as needed. As the bad guys are following you, snipe the closer ones and use your drones to thin their ranks down. Also if you can't kill them at that range then keep kiting them away from the rest, warp out then warp back in, the ones you kited away will still be strung out across space. . As a gallente with rail guns kiting seemed to not work so well against missile boats as they seem to have about a 10 minle range. As gallente come a bit light on missile skills do you think it's worth training a few for missions where the only solution is a long kite? or save the sp and dump the mission? Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Tige on February 27, 2008, 01:51:53 PM As a gallente with rail guns kiting seemed to not work so well against missile boats as they seem to have about a 10 minle range. As gallente come a bit light on missile skills do you think it's worth training a few for missions where the only solution is a long kite? or save the sp and dump the mission? I'm a big fan of I'm of the mindset now to grind faction missions with my AF and skip Cruiser and BC completely while I finish training up all the skills that will help no matter what I fly. I just don't want to spend all that time training medium skills if I'm not going to use them. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Furiously on February 27, 2008, 02:55:28 PM The problem with that is when you take large XXX specializtion, you have to go back and train everything you missed.
I was mentioning to Nerf, it's pretty amazing there is really only a 3 difference between the damage a well setup AF can do and a well setup BS. If I had a full-time missioning group I'd be happy to fly a AF all the time. You just lack the DPS to break the tank on the BS's. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: IainC on February 27, 2008, 03:28:00 PM As a gallente with rail guns kiting seemed to not work so well against missile boats as they seem to have about a 10 minle range. As gallente come a bit light on missile skills do you think it's worth training a few for missions where the only solution is a long kite? or save the sp and dump the mission? Drones. Seriously. Those suckers will rape crappy L1 NPC frigates at well beyond their engagement range. As I recall you have the Gallente Special Forces build which starts you with Scout Drones 4 or so. That's 40k range on your drones. With some judicious kiting you shouldn't ever have more than a couple of ships able to fire at you at any one time and those that can should die pretty fast to your drones. I wouldn't bother training up missiles just for missioning - NPCs can fire missiles faster than you can anyway (I appealed this as I was being hit by heavy missiles from about 120k range in a mission and was told that for balance reasons, NPCs weren't limited to the same ranges as players). Train up your tank fitting and drone skills so you can live longer and kill faster. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Logik on February 27, 2008, 08:54:42 PM As a gallente with rail guns kiting seemed to not work so well against missile boats as they seem to have about a 10 minle range. As gallente come a bit light on missile skills do you think it's worth training a few for missions where the only solution is a long kite? or save the sp and dump the mission? It's been said before (many times, most recently by IainC), but it bears repeating: if you're flying Gallente for missions, it's really drone boat or bust. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Phred on February 27, 2008, 11:32:35 PM As a gallente with rail guns kiting seemed to not work so well against missile boats as they seem to have about a 10 minle range. As gallente come a bit light on missile skills do you think it's worth training a few for missions where the only solution is a long kite? or save the sp and dump the mission? It's been said before (many times, most recently by IainC), but it bears repeating: if you're flying Gallente for missions, it's really drone boat or bust. I need to study the problem a bit more, though it's hard to do while you are watching your armor drop like a rock, but it seemed to me the drones wouldn't attack without a locked target and getting a target lock on npc missile boats appeared to be a bit tricky while still getting away successfully without a face full of missles. Also, the drones tend to ignore all commands once they are at a distance. Today I tried to move them from one target to another and even after I killed the lock on the old target they stayed on it until it was dead. I played all day on my Gallenite and my Calderi today staying mainly on frigates trying to get a handle on why I was having trouble. One thing I wondered. Is anyone else getting weird video hitching where the screen just stops updating for a few seconds every couple of minutes? It was especially bad when enemy fighters flew into my in front of my ship view. I've turned off all the graphic effects I could find like turrret effects, and trails but it really hasn't helped much. It feels like there's a garbage collection thread running that steals all the cpu when it runs or something. I don't have too bad a system, AMD 3200+ Nvidia 7600 gt, 2 gig of reasonably fast memory and a new SATA hard drive running on an Nforce 4 chip set. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: IainC on February 28, 2008, 01:42:18 AM The base lock range on an Imicus is 35km. Even without skills like Long Range Targeting you're likely to be able to lock them well beyond their aggro radius.
You don't need to fly right up to them to target them and get aggro, if they're in lock range, they're aggroable. Fire a gun at them to get their attention then fly away and let them chase you. Select all your drones - either create a drone group or use the 'drones in space' heading to command them with rather than ordering them one at a time - and send them at a bad guy. Drones often forget their orders so you need to keep an eye on what they are doing. Losing lock does not cancel their orders, only new orders or the target's destruction will do that (this is actually very handy when you're damped to hell but you already have your drones murdering the AFs that are scrambling you). I tend to find that if they're flying for a long time without engaging they'll often revert to AI behaviour, you may need to order them again as they get close to their target. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Endie on February 28, 2008, 02:59:25 AM I don't envy the Gallente pilots the task of running missions with drones.
In something like the L4 version of The Assault, when you get it from a high quality agent (thankyou, Bhodii for pointing out the L4Q19 Kaala admin agent!) you have four pockets, with a total of 10 battleships, half a dozen BCs, a dozen or so T2 cruisers (how I hate the 250k dire inferno cruisers) and a swarm of frigates and T1 cruisers. Since they are in four groups, this is a piece of cake: you never face more than 4BSes and a few support at a time. But drop some drones and one of two things happen: 1) Everything in the room not currently aggroed now aggros your drones, blows up any of your slow-ass mediums you were dumb enough to send more than 30km from your ship then relaxes when they are dead or you recall their damaged asses, rendering their use expensive and fleeting. Or, 2) Everything in the room not currently aggroed now aggros your drones, blows up any of your slow-ass mediums you were dumb enough to send more than 30km from your ship then aggroes you en masse when you recall them. Gratz on warping out. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: IainC on February 28, 2008, 03:06:29 AM I really don't find that is the case. I run a Domi for L4s, before that I had a Myrm in L3s and Vexxor for L2s. As you can imagine I've been heavily into drones since leaving the noob ship behind. You so need to be careful about how you commit them, but I find that my medium and light drones never take damage ever from NPCs that aggro them from afar. Only my heavies are big enough and slow enough to hit. I can snipe AFs out of a cloud of unagressed NPCs using Hammerhead IIs without them taking any damage back.
The only ones that are tricky are the missions with reinforcement waves and for those I generally just pull my drones in until the reinforcements have aggroed me. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: ajax34i on February 28, 2008, 05:53:02 AM As far as finding targets to lock, easily, use the Overview, don't try to lock them from in-space. I've re-sorted my Overview by distance (dunno if that's the default) by clicking on the Distance column. Plus, I re-ordered the columns around so that Distance and Speed are next to each other, followed by Name and Type. And then I just ctrl-click to lock whatever's closer or whatever seems to approach me the fastest way.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Morat20 on February 28, 2008, 07:05:44 AM I don't envy the Gallente pilots the task of running missions with drones. I haven't run the L4 version, but while drones DO aggro the universe, the effective aggro range is really only about 15 to 20k (at least for Hammerhead 2s). In something like the L4 version of The Assault, when you get it from a high quality agent (thankyou, Bhodii for pointing out the L4Q19 Kaala admin agent!) you have four pockets, with a total of 10 battleships, half a dozen BCs, a dozen or so T2 cruisers (how I hate the 250k dire inferno cruisers) and a swarm of frigates and T1 cruisers. Since they are in four groups, this is a piece of cake: you never face more than 4BSes and a few support at a time. But drop some drones and one of two things happen: 1) Everything in the room not currently aggroed now aggros your drones, blows up any of your slow-ass mediums you were dumb enough to send more than 30km from your ship then relaxes when they are dead or you recall their damaged asses, rendering their use expensive and fleeting. Or, 2) Everything in the room not currently aggroed now aggros your drones, blows up any of your slow-ass mediums you were dumb enough to send more than 30km from your ship then aggroes you en masse when you recall them. Gratz on warping out. My L3 habit (Myrmidion) is to lock at 60k, fire off my popgun (2x250m rails) for a single salvo to aggro the group, then sic Hammerhead 2's on them while heading towards them with full burners. As soon as I make the first wreck, I select "orbit at 500" on it (not that it can do that, but it tries). I'm generally left with a cluster of wrecks convienently placed for salvaging, and it takes 4+ merc cruiser to put me into my armor. (I have no shield tank, obviously). Now that I thought ahead and added two rigs (explosive damage resistance to armor and a +armor rep rig), it's really hard to overwhelm my armor tank, and that's with a single T2 medium repper. When I move BC to 4/5 instead of 3/5, I don't see any of the missions really bugging me. My drones rarely get aggro, and when they do it's just recall and as soon as they hit the bay, pop the guys who shot them with my guns for a second, then redeploy. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Endie on February 28, 2008, 08:03:11 AM I don't envy the Gallente pilots the task of running missions with drones. I haven't run the L4 version, but while drones DO aggro the universe, the effective aggro range is really only about 15 to 20k (at least for Hammerhead 2s). In something like the L4 version of The Assault, when you get it from a high quality agent (thankyou, Bhodii for pointing out the L4Q19 Kaala admin agent!) you have four pockets, with a total of 10 battleships, half a dozen BCs, a dozen or so T2 cruisers (how I hate the 250k dire inferno cruisers) and a swarm of frigates and T1 cruisers. Since they are in four groups, this is a piece of cake: you never face more than 4BSes and a few support at a time. But drop some drones and one of two things happen: 1) Everything in the room not currently aggroed now aggros your drones, blows up any of your slow-ass mediums you were dumb enough to send more than 30km from your ship then relaxes when they are dead or you recall their damaged asses, rendering their use expensive and fleeting. Or, 2) Everything in the room not currently aggroed now aggros your drones, blows up any of your slow-ass mediums you were dumb enough to send more than 30km from your ship then aggroes you en masse when you recall them. Gratz on warping out. The aggro range for drones in the Assault certainly extends to 80km, as I had them attacking the nearest targets (40km thanks to those kiting NPC scum) and they were hit by an unaggroed group 120km away from me. Doesn't bother me, as my guided missile precision means that drones are just bonus damage on everything but the NPC inties. But I'd not like to try it in a dominix. On really rough missions with multiple fast, tiny tacklers I have to aggro everything, warp in my alt in a logistics cruiser to shieldboost me, and then release my drones to kill the tacklers without getting popped. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Murgos on February 28, 2008, 09:21:15 AM I stepped up to an L4 last night. I decided to come in with a bang and did Serpentis Extravaganza, three rooms, 6+ BS per room including a couple of 850k Core Admiral rats in the last room. I used a Myrmidon with a ~270 dps perma tank (2x med repper II, DC II, KIN & Therm active hardner, cap relay) and 4 250mm scout rails.
The first two rooms were cake, each group had independent aggro so all I did was target something, blast it, wait for aggro, send drones, repeat. Dropping 550k rat BS's takes a while though as I am still using T1 drones, I have the skills for T2 just havent got to the store to get them (8 jumps :-P ). No problems with unexpected drone aggro, though when it happens I just recall drones, get aggro and then relaunch. The third room was a bitch though, right on warp in I got a buttload of aggro and my tank started dropping right away (for the first time all mission). So I did the warp out and come back and get what you can in between method. Frigs and Destroyers on first pass, Cruisers and BC's for the next two or three passes, and then once it was down to just BSs and the last BC or two I was able to tank em again so started working them down. So, my tank is workable (and I figured out a minor change that will give me 330 dps with less power issues, 2xtherm/kin, med repper II, small repperII) but that last room took me over two hours to clear due mostly to my lack of DPS. The 850k BS rats took upwards of 15 minutes EACH! Fiddling with EFT shows me that I can get quick damage gains by training gunnery and dropping from 4x250s to 5 or 6 200's (about 50% more damage for two or three days training) and another 50% increase to drone damage but for a week and a half or so of training) with another very large gain if I jump from BC 2 to BC 4 (2 weeks +). I'm thinking it's probably a better idea to just jump to a Domi and blitz training up to Ogre II's. So, it took me about four hours to do Serpentis Extravaganza and I made about 18 mil in bounties and payout with an unknown amount of salavage and lewts (no big named items but lots of heavy blasters) so maybe another 10 mil there for an average of about 7 mil an hour. Not bad but I think I can really cut the time down with some work. Hideo Ah is 1 month and 11 days old :awesome_for_real: . edit: my point in posting this wasn't to brag but because there were concerns about the usability of drones in L4s and also to talk about the issue of if the difficulty had been quietly increased to stupid levels. My experience from 1 L4 is that Drones are uber and that even a fairly newb < 2m SP character can be successful in an L4. Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: Reg on February 28, 2008, 09:45:54 AM I'm impressed Murgos. At this point I'm wondering if my character is actually bugged because every time I've ever done that mission I aggro the entire room the moment I release my drones. I've no idea what I'm doing wrong.
Title: Re: Fuck level 4's Post by: lac on February 28, 2008, 10:36:58 AM Kiting the rats away a bit before you unleash your drones usually works for me. I start shooting at 80km (or burn away as soon as I enter a room), I pop frigs and cruisers as they zoom towards me and let the drones go when a rat comes within 45km and I have 25+ km on non aggroing rats.
I almost never have drone agro issues and I only lose drones when I send them on one of those smartbombing bs without paying attention. |