Posted - 2008.02.21 16:17:00 - [62]

 

Yes it is a very hard but fun mission, i have completed this twice now in a passive tanked drake. I used 3 passive hardiners and 3 large shield extender 2's in my mids. I usually run 2 bcu 2's in my lows but only ran 1 for this one opting for the extra shield recharge. I also use 3 purger rigs. I have also lost a big shiney amarr battleship on this mission LOL, the 1st time I did it.

Posted - 2008.03.15 04:24:00 - [64]

 

Edited by: Gwen Rockpounder on 15/03/2008 04:28:16
I just did all the steps in a ishtar with 2 x ccc and 2 x medium t2 armor reps and 3 energized adaptive nano t2, worked like a charm didnt even have trouble with the neut. towers :)

could run my 1 rep perm and the other rep on and off every 10 sec without problems, however if you let those small drones get close it hurts so fit a smartbomb guys =D +5k range pls ;)

and lost 0 drones =D

Posted - 2008.03.15 15:23:00 - [66]

 

Yes it does, i was also worried about my ishtar because it said this, but due to my good target calling etc i where holding it pretty good, sometimes i was licking the hull but that was due to crap calling =D

Posted - 2008.03.17 17:16:00 - [68]

 

Originally by: Keyn Thror

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And the damage is enough to destroy the heavily tanked battleship, that survived most lvl 4 missions... Isn't it too much for a lvl 3 mission, that is supposed to be done with a Battlecruiser at most?

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Didn't it cross your mind that a BC is actually a better ship than a BS for level 3 missions?

Even with less theorical DPS on small target the effective dps of cruiser guns will be much higher on the target you usually encounter in L3 missions (no BS).

Not having done this particular mission yet I can't comment on its possible imbalance, but when I feel like doing a L3 mission I take a HAC or BC, not a BS.

Posted - 2008.03.17 21:56:00 - [70]

 

I'd be fine if this mission said that you would be reamed with scramblers or at least told that it's an almost guaranteed loss of your ship if you go in with anything other than a beefed up passive tank. But that's just my opinion. I actually think it's good to have some humility once in a while.

Posted - 2008.03.18 00:07:00 - [72]

 

Just been reading through all the posts, and it seems to me like it's an ideal mission if you are an experienced player who usually does lvl 4 missions, but would be very hard for a few month old character who is only able to do lvl 3 missions.

I've not done it personally, but sounds like fun

BTW, if anyone is struggling doing it, i've created a channel specifically for helping people on missions called "helpmymission".

Please feel free to pop in there and take a look. It's totally genuine, with lots of very experienced people happy to help out

Posted - 2008.03.18 12:01:00 - [74]

 

Edited by: Hanneshannes on 18/03/2008 12:13:00
Edited by: Hanneshannes on 18/03/2008 12:07:24
Edited by: Hanneshannes on 18/03/2008 12:01:57

I was using active hardeners and the neut towers annoyed me but anyway:

Drake

7 Malkuths
1 Tractor

2 LSE II
2 Hardeners (Invuln and Photon Scattering Field)
2 SR II

3 SPR II
1 BCS I

There was one stage with 5 or so neu towers and a ****load of frigates spawned when I attacked and killed the towers I think, but I killed the neut towers, thent he scramming frigates (Strain), then warped out with 40% shield left. Let my cap and shield get up to normal lvl, warped back in and finished the mission.

nor probs at all really, but one of the missions that require a bit more attention.

I reworded my post a bit, think I sounded too rude :(

Oh and yes, drake is teh most awesome ship for missions lol. Thx ccp for giving us this baby xD It's like reading a book or watching TVwhil emaking money, much like mining :D

Posted - 2008.03.18 12:16:00 - [76]

 

Originally by: Evil Incarn8

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ok I have read most replies but cant seem to see a solution other then fly a drake you noob.

I am Amarrian I fly Amarr with lasers and have a few basic drone skills, i would appreciate a solution that would work for characters that are not caldari, dont fly caldari and/or dont have millions of ISK/sp to burn on fittings.

---

Train caldari cruiser to lvl 4 (about 6 days with +3 implants and learning + advanced ones at 4) and get a drake.

It's the best choice for lvl 3 missions really and while you are at it, train for a raven as well and get your engineering, esp cap skills up for that.

Posted - 2008.03.21 03:11:00 - [78]

 

Here's one question, does anyone know if there's a damage breakdown of this mission? It's not in eveinfo's database of missions.

Was curious to see the ratios of damage -- I know you get all 4 types but they're probably not a 25%/25%/25%/25% ratio, and so when I'm fitting as if they are all equally important, I may be fitting suboptimally.

Posted - 2008.03.24 22:21:00 - [80]

 

Edited by: Tomogara on 24/03/2008 22:25:48
By the way, this is absolute cake if you:

1. Don't need capacitor to deal DPS (missiles or drones),
2. Have long DPS range (again, missiles or drones).

You'll need to set up yourself to passive tank, but it need not be all that great -- really you need to be tanking only a single NPC (the battleship drone) for most of the fight.

The ideal of course is the drake (easy to set up a strong passive tank, 7 missile launchers to DPS from range), but anyone using missiles and/or drones is going to do pretty decently, so, for example, a Dominix should be able to handle themselves pretty easily too. If this is a tall order for you, grab a friend who can and make sure they warp in first (just "warp fleet" then cancel your own warp to send him there first). Only the first person to warp in will have their energy depleted.

Anyhow, to do it the easy way:

1. Warp in and ignore the energy neuts. Start moving away from the drone structures (at this point, nothing except towers should exist).

2. There will be a wave or two of timed drone spawns, they will be far away and slow, so kill them.

3. After the initial waves, you'll basically be following a pattern of attacking one of the structures (drone bunker or one of the towers), killing the wave of drones that spawn, and then attacking another structure. Zero to eight drones spawn with each structure as soon as you first fire upon it, nothing spawns on structure death. I always killed Drone Bunkers, then missile towers, then neut towers, then stasis towers (which never webified me, their range is terrible).

4. At some point a battleship appears, just leave this one for last. Killing it spawned another eight drones for me. For me, this was about the only thing that actually dealt damage to me -- the rest was killed when it was so far away they didn't even hurt me. And I could passively tank this one indefinitely.

Overall, the only trick to the mission is getting a ship (or a friend) who can do just fine with zero capacitor, because my cap was gone within fifty seconds (granted my capacity and recharge suck anyway; a ship with good cap may hold out longer). Warp-outs are impossible, you're playing with your ship as the stakes.

However, if you ignore the neut towers at first and clear things systematically, the enemy DPS is laughably small -- it's only if you put all the towers first and spawn 50+ drones on yourself will it hurt badly.

When I did it, I used 7 launchers with EM missiles for the initial waves, then swapped to 4 EM/3 Kinetic for towers -- I'd launch an EM volley which would take out the shields and also spawn the wave of drones, swap the EM launchers to drones and use the 3 kinetic to take out the armor/structure of the tower, then move to the next tower. When I went to the battleship and the final wave that follows the battleship's death, I went to all EM again.

Posted - 2008.03.25 12:10:00 - [82]

 

Completed this mission (and the other 6 in the story line) in a passive tech 1 drake at the weekend. This mission was fun and a good learning experience although by the end of the storyline I was getting a bit annoyed at the effort/payoff ratio - Drones really should have bounties!!!

Anyway my (improvised) approach was:

1. warp in - lose cap immediately - get in firing range of the towers as fast as possible and take out the energy vampire towers and then the webbers - while this is happening the drones will realy start to hit you hard. From memory there was probably one webbing tower left when i got out with zero shields and minor armour damage

2. warp out - remove all but 3 of your heaviy missle launchers - buy and train energy pulse weapons, buy and fit 2 medium EMP smartbombs

3. warp in - use remaining missles to take out any remaining towers and the bigger drones that stay at range) while the little drones swarm around you - zap them with the smartbombs until they are all dead

4. Kill remaining drones with the missles (you might want to warp out and remove the smartbombs and put missiles back on)

5. go get a salvager

Like I said - this was my approach - very much ad-libbed but seemed to work quite well.

Posted - 2008.04.02 13:29:00 - [84]

 

My character has less than 3 million skill points.

I fly a T1 Drake with T1 gear, T1 Missiles, and no rigs whatsoever.

While this mission is difficult it is do-able. My secret was that I researched it before I went in and found out that if you take out the energy neutralizers you'll trigger addional spawns.

Sometimes brains > brawn.

Posted - 2008.04.02 17:23:00 - [86]

 

I did it just fine in my Drake, mostly cause it's not an active tank.

I popped the scramblers, then the NOS towers, the rest was a cakewalk. It took about 30 mins to KILL the NOS towers, but it happened anyways.

Posted - 2008.04.03 12:47:00 - [88]

 

No I didn't read this entire thread. I wish to support the OP.

It is bad enough that EvE turned into a "Blob or be Blobbed" place, but now CCP have made the missions blob you worse than a gate camp.

I speak of LvL 4 Worlds Collide. Everything I read says in the 2nd room if you shoot only the 2 spies the 50 other ships will not aggro you and you can run for the gate.

Bull$#1t. I lost 2 'phoons in here as soon as I enter the 2nd room I'm aggro'd by everything, scrammed by 3, webbed by 3 and pounded on by everything in the room.

Even with 2 active rat specific hardeners of each of 2 damage types (4 all together) with resists of 81 and 82 and a lrg repper my ships went down faster than you did on prom night.

This game gets more and more borked as time goes on. They really ought to change the name from EvE online to blobs online.

Bring back the old days (about a year ago) when you could find solo roamers all over the place and get into some fun and challenging fights with others. Those days are gone now and it's about nothing other than Blob warfare. In PvP AND PvE. (Really it's BvB Blob vs. Blob and PvB Player vs. Blob)

Posted - 2008.04.04 00:45:00 - [90]

 

Missions being "hard" wouldn't be a problem if you had a fighting chance. This isn't so if you don't have a CNR or some other mega-overpowered tanking ship. A few or six baddies with very challenging stats would be fine. You can pew-pew long as you can and warp off if need to. Throw in 1 or 3 scrammers and webbers to make it more interesting, fine.

Tenty five to thirty ships or so all withing firing range soon as to exit the accel gate is a bit much. To figgin' much.

I started doing missions just for some sembilance (<--is that even a word?) of fun since getting blobbed 10 or more to my one trying PvP, for almost a goddamn year, just is not fun whatsoever. Missions were fine and fun until the stupid Worlds Collide came up in a lvl 4 and that was just like going thru a gate into a 20 ship bubble camp. You're dead and not a frickin' thing you can do about it.