I’ve been gone for 5 years after Ichoriya flipped from Hi sec to Null sec, stranding all my stuff with no path to Hi sec. I don’t know what filaments are or how to use them, but I have a plan to return. Support offered to move one of my ships, and I assume anything I can fit into its cargo hold to Hi sec. I’ll move my Level 4 mission ship, a Machariel, put cargo bay extenders in the lows, and a Huge cargo container in the cargo hold, and pack it full of T2 Modules, faction and plex modules, implants, skill books, and anything else I can fit. That will leave large Shield Extenders, Plates, and 20 or 30 ships there. I’ll try to sell all my ammo and T1 modules, and ships locally, but I have 12 or 13 T2 ships I want to move. I’ll package them and put them with my Shield extenders, Plates, and anything I don’t want to sell locally into a contract with PushX or Red Frog, and let them ship them. They probably know how to use filaments. I was researching where I want to move to, and when I left, the majority of my play-time was clearing level 4’s by myself in my zen space, listening to music. So I started looking at places where I had high standing with lvl 4 security agents, preferably Caldari Navy or Sisters of Eve. AI has a lot to say about Eve, and it gave me several possibilities. Eitu was one I picked out, but it’s surrounded, cut off from Hi sec, and after my Ichoriya experience, I was leery of that. Otherwise, it was the quiet system I was looking for. The other places I found were either too busy or the agents had missions against factions I have good standing with. I was thinking about a Sisters of Eve agent a few jumps from jita but AI says its a very busy lvl 4 hub with a very large crowd of gankers that scan down mission runners and pop them either for their modules or maybe just a kill mail. That wasn’t the only system with the ganker problem, so I was wondering if lvl 4 mission running is still a play style, or have hi sec pirates more or less ended it. As AI explained it they scan your ship and do a calculation of loss or profit if they have to bring 10 catalysts, which is what AI calculated as the number of ships required to break my tank before Concord would arrive. Is it as bad as AI makes it out to be?
I still run lvl 4 missions on a regular basis.
But you need to get well away from Jita, Jita is a deathtrap so just stay away, if you really need to be near a trade hub look around Dodixie, or around Amarr space.
Use the map to find quieter systems offering lvl 3 and 4 missions and see how many pilot deaths there’s been in the last 24/48 hours. How many podded etc and you’ll find somewhere quiet enough to let you fly in peace.
This exactly, find a quiet one if possible less than 10 jump from jita
you can pay people to move your stuff out of pochven. as for people doing hisec missions? the USIA, premiere standings agency, we’re still running full time.
Yeah, no problem doing LVL4s - mark known ganker corps -10 and be aligned and ready to leave when they show up in system. Also, d-scan is your friend. On top of gankers you also have the occasional suspect baiter, simply ignore them if you aren’t comfortable taking the fight.
Pretty much all 3 of the Highsec SOE L4 agent systems have a presence like that. Lanngishi is perhaps the worst followed by Osmon. Apanake does have some gankers from time to time but its usually not outright noticeable on the map (when searching by “ships destroyed last hour”. There are other factions with HS L4s that are less bothered, but of course move away from trade hubs.
Also when traveling in your Mach, do be careful and make sure to not move the ship loaded with faction gear (have red frog move that or something, or do it yourself in a fast well tanked quick aligning frigate), and to judiciously tank it for the journey (though also a few agility mods) and don’t autopilot.
Don’t fly blingy mission boats and gankers won’t generally bother you.
If you mind your own business, most gankers ignore you if you’re only using T2 modules. Gankers want to make money off your wreck, and already have a chance of the good stuff being destroyed. If your wreck won’t ever have a chance of paying for the ships it took to destroy it, most gankers will move to the next target. After that, you just have to keep your safety green, double check you’re not looting yellow wrecks or cans, and be ready to scoop the MTU at a moment’s notice.
Kind of sucks I can’t use bling on a mission boat, I sure ain’t using it for PvP. Kind of makes it useless.
You can use it, you just have to realize that it makes you much larger of a target than not using it.
Personally, I’ll put C-Types or faction on my mission boats if they’re cheap, like resist modules, but I avoid A- and X-Types like they’re radioactive, at least in Highsec. If I leave highsec, I fit whatever I want because everyone’s after me regardless of if I use it or not.
Any Marauder with a mix of Meta4 and T2 modules can run L4 missions very efficiently and offer ~30 million ISK in loot for any ganking crew, but require at least 10 times that (after considering tag-costs) to bring it down. I fly all my L4s and HS epic arcs in such a dirt-cheap Marauder and was never targeted at all. I used to fly max-blinged Ships for L4s, but thats simply not nessessary if you know how to do them quickly.
The other way is to build yourself a Cruise/Sentry Rattlesnake, passive recharge tank. That thing has an ungodly amount of eHP which makes a gank pretty costly.
In both cases you can get your performance boost from a highly-blinged clone, which you can protect by using a brick-tanked AssaultFrig + Assault Damage Control from any gank attempts.
A Marauder is more active but faster, the Rattle allows absolutely chilled semi-afk running.
IDK man, I’ve always found myself wondering what it is that people are even blinging their mission ships for. Tank, especially.
I can sort of wrap my head around splashing some cash on DPS for a faster clear (although with marauders, if it doesn’t get you on the other side of a bastion cycle it scarcely matters, I think), but I see these dead mission fits on Zkill blinged to the gills and it’s doing absolutely nothing for them.
In contrast, putting a fed navy stasis web on a PvP fit is almost always worth the 60 mil.
I.live in metropolis, minmatar space, 21 jumps from jita, 11 to dodixie and 9 to hek.
Nice quiet place, keep the doors unlocked, window open in the evenings…. And there’s plenty of mission systems.
Yeah its overkill but if you could drive a Ford escort or a cadillac which would you rather drive? I drive a machariel and I like a Pith X type Shield booster and Gith C Type Shield Boost amplifier, it can rep over 800 EHP /sec in my fit but I never even need to consider my tank aside from pulsing the Booster ocassionally, add to that 7 republic fleet 1400 mm Artys, a republic Fleet 100MN afterburner and it starts looking a lot like a pinata to gankers. I like to speed tank rooms so they are always pursuing and have minimal transversal, most frigates and cruisers are one shots, I’m not about the blitzing approach I creep along looting and salvaging everything, no isk left behind. Now I’m in Pyfa taking all my prize modules out making it cheap, functional and not a good deal for gankers but I worked hard back in the day blinging my cadillac out. All my isk I made in game. Never bought any.
Same here, if I killed it I’m salvaging it because there’s a lot of isk to be had.
Plus anything below around 75k isk in worth gets trashed into minerals for my industry.
I came up with this as a fit that’s too cheap to pop for the fleet you would need to break it before Concord arrives in 0.9 or 0.8 space. Kept my shield booster and afterburner, down graded my Artys and shield boost amplifier. Let the 30 gankers argue over who gets them if they even drop. Total cost 1.2 billion
[Machariel]
Salvager I
1200mm Artillery Cannon II
1200mm Artillery Cannon II
1200mm Artillery Cannon II
1200mm Artillery Cannon II
1200mm Artillery Cannon II
1200mm Artillery Cannon II
1200mm Artillery Cannon II
EM Shield Hardener II
Thermal Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Copasetic Compact Shield Boost Amplifier
Pith X-Type Large Shield Booster
Republic Fleet 100MN Afterburner
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Large Core Defense Operational Solidifier I
Large Projectile Burst Aerator I
Large EM Shield Reinforcer I
Warrior II x5
For the hull price of that Mach you could do a T3 blitzer nicely fitted.
Do yourself a big favor and completely move to Amarr space, Caldari space is cancer trash
id recommend Shuria and run for the Ministry of War
I hate it to break it to you, but not all gangkers scan the ships before they attack. I was ganked in my T2 fitted Golem a few weeks ago, and the whole fit had a cost around 50m ISK, the gankers lost money by ganking me (my wreck dropped 20m). So you can never be sure if you’ll be ganked or not. Btw, I had a 5 years long break as well, I came back to the game around 10 months ago, and the ganking situation is much worse now than it was 6 years ago. But tons of people still do level 4 missions (including me). I personally learned to use battleships with T2 fit only.
Then you’re in the wrong area of space.
I’ve been ganked once in over 13 years, it’s not worse, it’s down to where you are. and the routes you take.
Every time I see someone say something to this effect I ask if they could share some data supporting the assertion and if they respond at all, it’s just something to the effect of, “Sorry only personal anecdotes here.”