I’m actually running t3 mission in drake with the following fit:
[Drake, *Bruschetta]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Damage Control II
Power Diagnostic System II
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Heavy Missile Launcher II
Auto Targeting System I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Hobgoblin II x5
Caldari Navy Mjolnir Heavy Missile x240
I got 92k ehp and 300 dps, this fitting is fine to run t3 missions fast.
Now I unlocked the t4 mission… could I run it in a drake or is better to move into some battleship like raven?
it is worth even if I can’t fit t2 cruiser and I should user t1 launcher, or is better to continue in t3 mission until I got all the skill needed to operate t2 cruiser?
In case of raven with weapon t1 there are some fitting for entry levels?
How many L3 mission you can run in 30-40 minutes? Becuse this is time you will spend per one L4 mission in really good T1 fit and nice piloting skills. Just calculate if this will give you more isk than blitzing L3’s
a few threads on the raven, one’s about the CNR but it’s pretty much the same thing as the raven with a extra launchers.
and mac-gregor has a very good point, if you can quickly chain lv3s it can be better than slowly running lv4s. If you try to make the jump too early you lose income, can lose ships, and that can lead to frustration. Sometimes it’s important to take your time, make some of money, and train up those support skills. But there’s a point where even if you lose efficiency it’s good to step up to freshen things up and it takes some time to learn the lv4 pool, and as you learn the pool income goes up. I’d suggest at least 500 dps, and preferably more, looks like all lv4 skills will get there, not exactly sure where the alpha limitations are but should be pretty close, adding some implants on top should be a nice boost too.
And on your drake I think you can get away with dropping the PDU for another BCU, probably lose an extender for a guidance computer or painter. get a bit more damage and application for lv3s. I wouldn’t recommend you use it for lv4s, it can do them, but the damage is pretty low, and they will take a long time.
Drake is great starter for Caldari L3 missions, but unfortunately not so much for T4s. Its doable, but you are far, far better going for a Gila or Tengu, or Battleship. Drake in T4s lacks the firepower while having not enough tank. It has less HP / resits then Battleships do, but suffers from inflated sig thus making it too easy to hit and too slow to achieve high transversal like the cruisers can.
If you are new player, I would recommend going for Gila and Scorpion Navy issue. Gila takes a relatively long time to skill up, cause you need 2 cruiser skills for it + good drone skills for it to be effective, and of course navigation skills for sig/transversal tanking. Tengu is actually quite a bit faster, but for some odd reason it always costs me a ton of cash for ammo, maybe just my playstyle, but I end up using a ton more ammo on it then any other ship.
The Navy Scorp is purely a Caldari Battleship that comes with a very nice built in shield resist bonus, lots of shield HP as well as a ton of slots and its a T1 hull. So that is a very new player friendly ship. I recommend training at least all tank to lvl 4, Micro Jump drive to level 4 and cruise missles at least to level 4 with it before you start on L4s. Take it out for a test on a few level 3 missions.
There is of course Raven and Navy Raven, but they lack the tank a bit for a newbie and require some maneuvering to be fully effective.
would recommend tengu or gila
it will run level 4s quite nicely and teach you better piloting skills than jumping into a raven which is basically a floating brick and very difficult to learn good piloting skills with
with a cruiser you will get better understanding of good piloting skills which you can later apply to large ships
but without that understanding of piloting skills the large ships are just floating bricks and not very good for learning mechanics with
actually if im really honest
just train a mach
usually these threads about what ship to fly for missions
it comes down to one simple answer
train a mach and use that
Machariel is a great ship for PVE as well as said above. But you have to train double battleship skills for it + artys which you have none of if you started caldari and it takes a huge bigger chunk of time then cruisers + isn’t as flexible as cruisers. So huge training time + it can get really expensive, so not very newb friendly.
Cruisers are much better because of their flexibility. For example if you train up for Tengu, you can do explo, cloaky, all sorts of stuff, not just L4. Then you can take the same skills and add gallente cruiser + drones and you are set for Gila, so its a far more optimal training path while giving you far more choices in meanwhile. The subsystem skills train up really quick but you lose 1 rank of 1 if you get blown up in it.
No matter what you choose, I recommend the following:
Get all your capacitor skills to at least level 4, if not max
Then shield skills
Then Navigation skills such as Afterburner and MWD and MJD and their cap cost reductions.
Train for Rapid Light Missles, Heavy Assault Missles and Cruise Missles, then Rapid Heavy Missles.
Train for T2 drones, even if you end up not flying gallente or drone boats and using only light / mid drones.
Hopefully you’ll be able to get the most of the caldari skills you already have with this.
i disagree
to fly a tengu good you need the same core skills to fly any ship
all you need to fly mach is min bs 4 and gal bs 4
then for guns you only need large prjectiles 4
you dont need t2 guns on a mach t1 guns are still good because t2 ammo isnt good on t2 projectiles anyway
you only get a dps buff by training those skills with higher fitting requirements
the rest of the skills are basically the same
shields navigation fiting targetting etc
for the sake of training a good cruiser you can fit and fly a mach the same as any cruiser
and it almost flies like a cruiser too
with good velocity align and signature
you just need good gun skills
and personal piloting skills
to compensate for those large weapons
but you have plenty of mids and lows to help with tracking issues
but to be sensible
i would recommend you get your core skills down first and cruisers are the best way to do that
dont rush into a mach with bad skills
train a good cruiser first
im in a raven myself and alpha clone, but im seeing a lot of fits/reviews/suggestions that the rattlesnake with 1 gecko grinds thru missions faster than a raven or CNRaven
one remark i am often seeing is that its not worth flying on a alpha clone since u wont get the full benefit of both race skills or something along those lines
rattlesnake is pretty much a raven with a drone bonus so it should probably go faster than a raven/cnr, but I don’t really like the combo as missile and heavy drones are both delayed damage. I think it does a little better with sentry drones. But at the same time I don’t think it competes well with the mach. the warp speed bonus on the mach is just too good to give up imo, that and it’s super fast in mission so it can easily MWD to wherever it needs to go. Rattler is good for alphas as it can use t2 rhml and the gecko, and can take a beating. I don’t really know how it compares to sentry drones and/or cruise