Whats a good ship for level 3 missions and ratting ?
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Any battlecruiser should make quick work of lvl 3s… except for The Blockade. The Blockade will take time no matter what you’re flying.
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A Drake will nuke any L3 easily.
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thanks
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Battlecruiser ? LOL unwieldly and unnecessary except maybe Gnosis for new people that completely don’t have skills yet.
Vexor Navy Issue is a perfect L3 ship. Low cost and super effective.
I used to do L3s in a snipe fit all T1 Catalyst. Granted it took time to complete missions, but its perfectly doable. If I used a T1 destroyer now it’d be Algos, much easier but I didn’t know better back then.
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A Battlecruiser is actually a good recommendation for level 3 missions. Yeah players can run level 3 missions in a small hull class ship but I think that’s probably suited for more experienced players. I use to do level 3 security missions in a T1 Rifter Frigate and could complete missions within the bonus time, but like you said it took time to do that and since I wanted the option to loot and salvage wrecks, I jumped into a Battlecruiser.
Anyway, the general consensus for mission / ship type:
Level 1 = Frigate or Destroyer
Level 2 = Cruiser
Level 3 = Battlecruiser
Level 4 = Battleship
Level 5 = Carrier or Small Fleet with Logistics
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I guess at the moment where the hull of a VNI costs about 140 million compared to a 40-45 million Drake, the battlecruiser is the quite cheaper option.
Heavy Assault Cruisers can be also very effective at Level 3 missions but require the skills… and ISK.
I’ve done lvl3s on a beam maller, but with lacking skills, you might need a Battlecruiser if you’re new, yep.
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An active armor tanked afterburner fit Ishkur is really all you need for level 3 missions, if you’re in a bit of a rush a standard Vexor with sentry drones will also do the trick just fine. There really is no need for any bling at all to easily run level 3 missions in null sec, they are really quite easy.
Good advice here, but make sure you are also taking into account your skills.
A well-skilled cruiser may well work out better for you than a poorly skilled BC. Make sure to consider all your skills (weapons, tank, engineering, etc.) when deciding on what works for you. Just skilling into a ship may not end well if you don’t have the right support skills to properly fly it and use its mods effectively.
That said, I do agree that BCs are generally a good choice for L3s.
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I use passive tank arbitrator with tech 2 drones,gets the job done and you dont have to worry about that your ship would pop.
tech 2 shield extenders plus tech 2 power relays plus shield extender rigs.
any guns what u prefer,drones will do the most of the job done.
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For highsec I don’t think you can do much better than a rail ferox, Good DPS, great range, maybe a tad slow but the damage and range pretty easily make up for that. With high skills you can just buffer tank and blap everything before tank becomes a problem, at lower skills fitting a little more tank makes sense.
sure you can do them in a cruiser or even destroyer, but you won’t have as much damage and that makes the mission take longer. If you are trying to run missions in low/null then sure maybe you want a more disposable cruiser, hopefully you have a corp to get some better ideas from though.
if you have a bunch of sp/isk then I’d suggest the proteus or machariel, both can be fit for a ton of warp speed with good damage and range. Will do just about every mission from accept to turn in in 3-5 mins most of that time is spent warping as you have the dps to just blap whatever NPCs you need to and get out.
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From time to time you may come up against the occasional battleship so a battle cruiser would make sense imo.
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I wonder how much level 3 missions you would need to do to pay for that Proteus, or Machariel. ^^
It is always interesting to see the responses to such questions as “use, so and so, expensive and high skill hull”.
Yes, my dual rep Sacrilege can slash through Level 3 missions in fair order, but I’d not recommend it. It’s a 300m+ ISK ship with a large skill requirement and out of scope for any Alpha players reading this looking for information.
Level 3 missions.
Much in the same way you can do most Level 2 missions in a destroyer - though some will be slow grinds, warping out to repair and let the capacitor recharge - then you can run Level 3 in a Cruiser.
It will be slower, and good fitting and support skills are important to improve the damage you do, the range you can operate at, the defensive resilience you have and to reduce demand on the capacitor.
An easier option is to go for a Combat Battlecruiser - not the Attack Battlecruisers. Large weapons are tempting, but they carry light defences and big weapons have problems hitting small targets.
A standard Battlecruiser will cost about 40-50m ISK (four times the cost of a Cruiser) plus fittings.
You can easily be looking at an 80m ISK ship.
The Navy Battlecruisers can easily handle Level 3 missions, and many/most Level 4 missions with care. But they are a lot more expensive - hulld are three times the cost of a standard BC. So about 180m ISK including fittings. Still cheaper than a battleship.
Worth training the required Battlecruisers skill to level IV - bonuses count.
And a Battlecruisers are lot cheaper than a Strategic Cruiser or a Faction Battleship. I swear people recommend those just as “ego waving” exercises. That has to just about their insecurity - not their ability. You don’t need 'em unless you don’t really know what you are doing.
If you are a new player, relatively strapped for ISK, then be careful about putting all your money into one ship. It’s a real downer losing it and going to fly Level 2 missions because you’ve only got a destroyer until you’ve saved up money again.
And while I like Mining, I don’t do it to grind an income.
Which ship you fly depends on personal preferences (are you a brawler or prefer picking off ships at range?) and the skills you have. It’s worth training the appropriate T2 weapons that you intend to use - not for access to advanced ammunition, but because they do do generally more damage at better ranges.
T2 defences are also very useful - and not a long training time (compared to weapons).
The choice should be “what is quickest?” but “what do I enjoy flying?”
So, my preferences?
A Harbinger. A typical Amarrian aggressive lump of armour with six Heavy Pulse Laser IIs.
A Navy Harbinger. The same as above but with the Wrath of God behind it.
The Ferox. I was glad to see someone else mention it. Ugly, unloved, but an effective combat ship. A Railgun shield fit with drones to hit anything you can’t track on. Serves me well.
I’ve not flown a lot else - I am Amarrian focused.
But that’s my preferences, you’ll learn to love something different.
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I used to use my algos, but it took a while! A gila would eat level III’s in no time
well confessor does level 3s np
and even if people say lasers suck in pve it doesnt matter
they do enough raw dps in their own right
i even did a 5/10 in a confessor once it took a long time and people kept trying to catch me but i did it
i use beams and a deadspace repper tho
basically you just gotta use your sharpshooter mode for dps and then switch to defense if you need to rep
and be willing to warp out a few times but thats for 5/10
for level 3 mission you can chew them down np
well actually i would argue that a confessor is better for level 3s than a cbc
but i guess it depends on experience and how long youre willing to train
a cbc is much faster to train into but a well trained confessor can still pull as good numbers as a medium trained cbc
plus benefits of smaller size and faster warp speed
and the speed mode which makes it okay for grabbing items
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I’d guess around 10 hours worth. Fully min/maxed there’s more isk in lv3s than what most people think. Also if you want to grind standings bltizing lv3s is a pretty easy way to do it. The standings grind is probably the main group that would want to use high end ships for lv3 running.
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In general it’s true, but practically the things appear to be different.
Like not every of Frigate, Cruiser, BC, BS is good for a respective mission level and vice versa there are a range of special ships ready to perform different mission levels.
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At the risk.of rambling further:
The other consideration is the nature of your opponents. For example, if you are operating in areas where Blood Raiders are a common opponent, then an Omen is going to be more effective than a Moa or a Thorax. The damage done by Energy Turrets is all EM/Thermal which exploits the weaknesses of the Blood Raider ships. A hybrid weapon - such as the Moa or Thorax is bonused for - does about 60% kinetic damage (the rest is thermal), so is less effective against Blooders.
Projectile ammunition does allow you to pick (somewhat) your damage type. But you’re always slightly compromised compared to the target - the cost of flexibility. Missiles are a little more focused, but a different training path.
In general (it’ bad rule of thumb time folks!) the local faction ships are good against the local rats. Or they are in Amarr anyway…
Normally.
It’s a small thing, but can be the difference between killing an NPC frigate with a single volley or having to take two bites at each one of them.
Check the damage types and enemy weaknesses.
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