Has anyone done this before? Have any tips?
I have another account that I use for exploration and other things, but getting bored of that and thought it would be fun to dualbox level 4s. What would work best? Do I train the 2nd one to be logi and then the first one can drop most of the tank and go even more pew pew? Or should the 2nd one be in a BC for the command bursts and more DPS? Or just bring another BS with the 2nd one and just simply kind of double everything as the first one?
Would love to hear what others have tried and what worked out best
I remember doing duo missions with a friend to help with standings. If I remember correctly The NPCs get tankier with more people on grid? or in a fleet? I know the NPCs do get stronger. A marauder will chew through missions in the end.
Hm, a Noctis? I don’t salvage now. Don’t even loot. I thought it was better to just blitz missions for LP? I’m getting around 2k isk/lp. That was actually last time when I played in 2012… or was it 2008… Marauders didn’t exist back then. Is it still better to blitz? I guess with this MTU thing it’s not that much of a waste of time to loot and salvage. What do you think?
I haven’t considered Marauders yet. At the moment I missions in Amarr space with an Apoc for most things, and switch to Mach when I get the odd Angels mission. The Marauders seem pretty pricy. I was actually planning on substituting the Apoc for a Nightmare. I wouldn’t be able to afford to do both so I’ll need to think about it.
I know rats get harder on belts with more people, but I don’t think that happens in missions. At least I don’t remember that being the case before.
My 2nd pilot can go up to BC size for now. I was just wondering what ends up being better. Dropping tank on my BS so it can go all pew pew, and then the 2nd pilot can do logi for the tank.
Or 2nd pilot brings the biggest pew pew it can. In my case it would be medium beams in a BC.
I have a feeling that BS + BC would probably end up being more damage output overall than a no-tank, all-gank BS + logi cruiser.
There “can” be a lot of isk from salvage with the bonus from that ship. I fit it with a cloak and ecm burst (?) for wh’s, haven’t flown it in a while. And if you reprocess some item’s, you get back minerals that you can’t mine in highsec anymore.
Adding any droneboat to the main ship and just assign the drones + giving some remote-cap always works out. In return, the main ship fields a remote-repair-module to transfer shield/armor back to the second ship if needed. You can start cheap with an RR-Ishkur/Worm and later upgrade to Gila/Ishtar or even Rattlesnake if you really want.
What also works out is to drop some tank on the main ship for additional damage/application mods and just add a capstable Deacon/Kirin to the party. Can of course also be a capstable Logi (Guardian, Basilisk…) or RR-T3.
Both solutions are absolutely chilled since you basically only need to manage the main character once you have set-up the assistance and enjoy the additional firepower.
They do not get stronger or tankier in any way. In fact they will get weaker, because the NPCs will do a poor job at splitting their attention between the capsuleer ships on grid, resulting in them inflicting less total damage then they would if they were confronting only one capsuleer ship.
In nullsec, you can frequently see moon miners undocking a corvette and leaving it unmanned somewhere on grid with the rocks. The reason they do so is that the NPC rats that spawn in the moon belt will burn to the miners, then, when they arrive there, decide to engage the corvette instead and burn away from the miners, of cause after having aggressed and pulled drone aggro. When they are about to reach the corvette, they’ll re-decide to go for the miners again, burn back to the miners, and when they’re close enough to the miners they go to the corvette again. And then the circle repeats until they mining barge’s drones have killed them all w/o the barges needing any tank at all.
Marauders finish some of the lvl4 missions, namely those with a lot of battleships and little other rats in them, faster then competing other ships, due to the raw DPS they provide. In terms of damage application, a burning Battleship can outrun a golem’s heavy missile application, any cruiser will outrun even precision heavies, for this reason the single-boxed marauder would web, grapple and paint it’s targets. That works just fine, but the more alts you bring, the more micro-ing you will have to do. Marauders tend to not be capacitor stable tanking, too, usually compensated by cap boosters or ancillary tanking modules that are manually cycled every now and then. No problem, again, if it’s one toon to take care of, but the more you bring, the more micro-ing you will have with the tank.
Eventually you grabbed into your wallet and fitted a number of expensive modules that would allow you to have a decent tank without running out of capacitor. But those modules will eventually drop to suicide gankers, which makes marauders shining attractions for suiciders.
Instead, if you’re into Battleships, I’d recommend to use T1 battleships. Two BS outdamage one marauder, and together, fitted, have half the price of a single marauder without fit. Classically, a T1 battleship would have been inferior to a T2 cruiser in terms of tanking capabilities, but a recent update increased buffer module ehp bonuses for battleships, which is especially important if you intend to passive shield tank.
If you’re not into BS, just go Cerbs if you want to interact, or Ishtars if you don’t. Both come at 150-200M isk including their fits these days, together deal around a marauder in DPS but move and travel way faster. If those get ganked, or suddenly, for some reason, sound the audible armor tank low alert on the account that isn’t currently on focus, those ships can have a panic button called Assault Damage Control that will give them near-invulnerability for a few seconds, often enough to make the align.
This might, in theory, be true. You might get even better results with a Belicose/Huginn + Raven or something like that, as the Beli/Huginn shredd all the small and slippery stuff or paint it big and web it slow for the Raven to process them… But in most cases, having harmonic movement speeds among your toons will make manouvering alot easier as you just put your “alts” on “hold distance” to your “main” and manouver your main while the others tag along. BS move a lot slower then BC, even Nano Typhoons move considerably slower then bufferbloated Drakes, so they’d get separated, or the BC moves considerably slower then it’s designed to in terms of sig/speed tanking.
Explicit logi suffers the problem that the rats might go for the logi ship, and the logi ship itself is usually not so greatly tanked. You also have the problem that T1 ships have poor resists, and you want high resists, because that turns the remote repair unit more efficient. A shield based ship would add shield hardeners for that job, but two multispectrums is two webs less, and BS apply poorly to unwebbed small ships, while the logi applies almost nothing at all. With an armor tanked BS, you keep your utility slots available but two multispectrum membranes means two less damage amplifiers/applicators, i.e. less deeeeps/application… while the logi ship, again, doesn’t provide reasonable dps, either.
Just platinum insure it and fraught the insurance
In wormholes, the dangerous things are bombers, T3C and dictors. The dictor, usually rigged for warp speed, appears on dscan around 2-3 seconds before the bubble opens, so most likely you won’t hit the cloak fast enough for it not to see you on grid (assuming it doesn’t crash straight into you when it comes out of warp). If it saw you on grid, it will try to bump-to-decloak you, and the bubble will keep you right there even if the ecm burst is used successfully.
A bomber can lock a noctis in less then 2 seconds, and uses long range warp disruption. As it locked the noctis before it could react, it won’t be able to cloak, and the noctis can’t ecm burst the bomber either, because it’s out of burst range.
A T3C has poor lock speed, but will workaround that limitation by approaching you cloaked, up until it’s 2000m to you and therefore gets decloaked by you. At that point, you can’t cloak any more, either, because the now decloaked t3c is too close to the noctis, and it’ll crash into the noctis, messing up it’s align. The T3C will then engage it’s propulsion module and keep bumping the noctis until the cruiser finished locking, and then the noctis evaporates in around 10 seconds. If you target break the t3c, it will just keep bumping you until it locked again.
Now, of cause, there’s poor players who can’t bump, and poor fits such as dictors w/o weapons nor scram nor prop mod (50mn noctis would burn out of the bubble and then warp), but the primary reason not to put a cloak on a noctis is that the cloak reduces your lock speed, and that makes you wait even longer for the noctis to finish it’s job. Warp Core Stabs … too… you die before you finished aligning anyways (to a bomber or t3c) while a dictor has it’s bubble, and the WCS messes up your already not-so-great sensors.
I’d clean whatever ratting anoms I wanted to crab in, bookmark each spot, and only enter the WH with the noctis once I’m done ratting.
Cloak and WCS might be a thing for k-space though, where the local chat tells you it’s time to hide, and gatecamp quality is often poor enough for none of the campers knowing how to bump a miner.
In fact you make more “isk” by reprocessing loot from EoM and Mercenary lvl3/4 missions then from solo-mining in a barge for the same amount of time… with the difference that the mission also pays you cash-on-the-hand via CONCORD bounties, mission turnin bounties, standings, and LP
If you want salvage or loot, that’s the way to go. People in highsec don’t attack noctis because doing so gets them CONCORDed, and Noctis will rarely carry more then 2 suicide blasterboats worth of loot out of a lvl4 DED (as a rule of thumb, 100m^3 loot is 1M isk), but some “pro-pvpers” will “practice structure bashing” by F1-monkeying Mobile Tractors. MTUs are also forgotten to be scooped or bookmarked, Noctis won’t be left behind in space for sure.
Myrmidon has a large buffer, is a droneboat, is easy to skill into and can spider tank, too. Running a Myrmidon needs less skill then running an Ishkur/Worm… player skill, not capsuleer SKILL, that is.
Worms and Ishkurs are good for Burner Missions though. Like all the other Assault Frigates. Running some of the frigate burners in a Worm may need a super-blingy fit, but if you have two toons, it’s a very different story.
For single frigate burners, fit one for maximal tank and webs and lure the burner away from the warp in beacon. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have powergrid left for guns or launchers, just max tank and web. Once the burner’s off the beacon and you have multiple webs on it, bring in your alt in a DPS frigate.
Frigate team burners can be solo-ed with a kitsune but it takes ages. How about you ECM the boss frigate and it’s logi, and then jump your alt with maxxed deeeps on it?
Assault Frigs can duo any lvl4 combat mission. Some missions might take some time but it’ll be very safe though, the rats barely even hit, you can outrun all but the caldari spider drone thingy which approach at zero transversal, so […]. AF are cheap and slippery, so they make a lot of effort for little gain to a suicide swarm… not to mention a missioning AF might have the same panic button HACs have
Id be happy to pvp 2 t1 BS in my golem that can repair 2-4k HP/cycle depending on my mood lol
Look… all I know is marauders are a solid end game in missions. I know it takes alot of SP/ISK to get into but yah… The QOL is so much better in a marauder. I hate to sound inconsiderate, but murders are built for missions. I always suggest new guys to aim for marauders if they want to do missions often.
I run missions very often. I have never ever been ganked doing missions. Finding the right area in HS is key along with time in EVE and keeping an eye on local. I also run incursions often carrying my kronos through the trade pipes riddled with gankers. Been scanned sometimes but no attempt on my life when I was in my kronos. Anyways that’s my experience. I can’t speak for everyone. Don’t let gankers scare you into flying cheap fits.
This is not true? If it, is it’s very situational.
Golems use precision heavys!?! I use torps and often one-shot destroyers and 4 shot BS XD? I am starting to question how you fit ships…
I can’t deny this yes marauders are more ISK but bring so much more benefits for the ISK. QOL tanking, better cap, more DPS.
Why would you want to passive shield tank a BS? even T1 BS can sustain good active tank.
I have tried that once. Was not funny. Most NPCs in L4 Missions die faster than you can relock new targets. And that on two clients parallel. No thanks, thats not enjoyable, thats working hard for your ISK. Two Marauders are complete overkill, not even counted that you can blitz most L4 Missions where a second ship does not even increase the payout because most of the time is travel time.
I would recommend a Marauder Duo for WH sites, that seriously speeds up your progress and profits. But not for L4.
A Paladin can get close to 3000dps. The other Marauders do way less then that. Taking the fits proposed in
The proposed Golem has more or less 1750dps on whatever it shoots, the Paladin will be around 2200-2700 and the Kronos has so little range it’ll end up loading Null ammo whenever it fights anything other then Serpentis… but even when fighting Serpentis it’ll be switching to Null every now and then.
A Golem can flip ammo to inflict whatever damage type renders it most efficient on the rats it’s shooting, but a Kronos and Paladin are locked, which in many instances will halve their effective damage.
I know so many Armageddon and Scorpion folks that would take that challenge
That’s true. The T2 stuff is generally so much more usable compared to its’ T1 parts.
Less popular Highsecs are quite safe I’d assume, and the 1.0/0.9/0.8 sec space allows for little error while ganking, too (Isenarios Pocket, Illuin Pocket, …). In lowsec, a marauder attracts people like almost nothing else does
Kitchensink Ravens with Rage Torpedoes inflict 1250-ish dps. The Golem might outdo the twin Raven’s larger DPS in an end-to-end engagement nevertheless, as the Golem is unlikely to have to make use of it’s MJD to escape incoming damage, basically catapulting the Raven out of it’s own engagement range, too
I wouldn’t use Rapid Heavies at all. Especially for not for ratting. I wouldn’t use it for PVP either, because the only real situation to use those is ESS combat, and Marauders are just too expensive for that
Huh? A HM/HAM Caracal has around 50hp/s passive shield repair (100-200ehp/s depending on rats) with kitchensink items, and that isn’t much less then the repair provided by a large armor repair or large shield booster (around 70hp/s). The large repair/boost module single-handedly drags any BS into cap instability, though. Given the BS is considerably larger and slower then a cruiser, it’ll also need considerably more HP repair, so for the armor ship it’s a second module and for the shield it’s going to x-large. Both can be fit, but the fit will be dominated by capacitor stability modules, which means poor damage, poor application, and poor utility.
Or am I missing something?
Well, my experience comes from shield ships since we are talking lv 4’s here. I remember ages ago a simple XLSB would do the trick on my RNI. Little to no burning required. So All that cap is dedicated to shield boosting. I would dedicate rigs to more application or damage not passive tank. If we consider turreted ships off of my head, it’s the same principle. Stand still, shoot NPCs as they come to you, drones eat the frigates if they get close. Minimum Tank maximum DPS. Rigs ideally should be used for application or a DPS rig. Mid slots for also application on shielded ships. Why? Because once the person gets confrontable with the amount of DPS they are facing in lv 4’s You can lower tank and add application in the case of shielded ships.
One maybe 2 multi specs needed minimum, usually an XLSB shield booster and a prop mod is minimum. anything else is up to you to fill with application/engineering. The thing with PVE shield tank is your ENTIRE capacitor is your shield reserve. All you need to do is simply pulse the XLSB once or twice as damage comes in. You’re not going to be burning with your MWD for a while. Long as your resistances are high it will make the XLSB more efficient. Shielded ships are more often cited for armor ships because they are naturally faster, they can provide adequate tank (don’t want to over tank in missions), have more DPS than armor ships, AND can still have application modules in rigs or mid slots. Marauders do this insanely better vs T1 as you have mentioned.
Shield tanking your goal is to deflect damage with high enough resistances your XLSB aids in replenishing the shield. Fueled by your entire capacitor in missions the goal is to use the repair module the least number of times. If you’re going cap dry in a shielded ship you likely are using too small of a booster or not running enough resists. More resists the less repair needed. It’s usually why you don’t see fits with cap injectors. But instead, cap battery (only need 1 almost always) to give the ship more cap to convert into shields or the rig to reduce cap needed per XLSB cycle) Heck if you want to really save on cap go abyssal it. Filaments are pretty cheap! -20,-50 cap can really go a long way combined with skills.
ARMOR tanking is absorbing incoming damage. Armor tanks with low slots. And armor tanks are naturally slower (if that matters at all) armor tank your massive repair points per cycle and extreme resists keep it alive. (Why would we want massive tank if the goal in lv 4’s is to be minimum tank and maximum DPS/application combined?) But trade raw DPS opting for more application. It’s why we see more shielded ships turreted or missiles in missions because they have enough application to get the job done combined with the increased DPS shield tank ships provide.
This analysis is all based on the person doing Lv 4’s solo in a BS. Assuming HS and assuming a calm Gank free day. (Most of the time it is even in populated areas don’t need to go to Kanid Kingdom or some desolate region in mimaintar space to be free of gankers). Putting fits to this makes the discussion easier as I can explain better what I mean but that takes ages to do right, and I don’t simply have 2-3 hrs I often spend time fitting new ships for a goal.
If you are interested in progressing to lvl 5’s after 4’s, I see there is a lot of neuting pressure and I mean something on the lines of -40 to -100 cap per second, so If you want to move in that direction I would suggest 2 bs’s that can link to each other sending cap and remote repairs, so something with more utility high’s.
This will also be great for Wormhole’s so works for all 3. And day tripping into worm holes is possible from anywhere.
Bs’s Faction and Marauder both are great since lots of utlity high’s.
You could also do dual command ship, with 4 link’s if you want that faster align time.
Even faster align time dual hac’s or Dual T3’s could be interesting.
I wanted to do dual Eos once with 4 link’s running with cap transfers and remote rep never got to try it.
Dual Eos will prob be amazing for clear speed and afkness.
For me L4 missions was learning how to deal with enemy Neuts, Scrams, Webs and WDs. Lost a good ship while climbing that curve. Had one BS snipe and the other brawl. The sniping ship can takeout pesky frigates at range. On high loot/salvage missions I’d drop MTUs and come back with a Noctis. Moved up to using a Marauder (Kronos) and Rattlesnake. Or a Golem / Rattlesnake tandem.
A Naga snipes real well you might use that as a stepping stone to dual BSs.
Now I’m working on running the L4s burner style.
Way back in the day, when I was learning how to do lvl 4 missions, I used 2 t1 battleships. Both had large armor reps on their utility high slots so they could help repair each other if things were going south.
Now I just use a vargur, with my alt on a noctics to scoop up the loot afterwards.
For cheap years ago I used to use 2 RR cap stable Domi’s. I think they had 3 remote repairs and 2 energy transfers and just sat there fed each orher cap and armor, tanked and blapped everything with sentry’s. One just assigned drones to the other and the main one had a painter for point /click sentry drone blapping.
Was good as your sentry’s could sometimes just tank them room as well with your domi’s repping them.
[fake edit]
Actually here I found the fit.
[Dominix, Simulated Dominix Fitting]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Damage Control II
True Sansha Kinetic Energized Membrane
True Sansha Explosive Energized Membrane
Imperial Navy Multispectrum Energized Membrane
100MN Afterburner II
Cap Recharger II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Cap Recharger II
Phased Scoped Target Painter
Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II
Large Remote Repair Augmentor I
Large Remote Repair Augmentor I
Large Egress Port Maximizer I
Warrior II x10
Valkyrie II x5
Berserker II x5
Bouncer II x5
Tracking Speed Script x1
Optimal Range Script x1
Only change was the second one had a 2nd omni directional instead of the painter. Obviously change the resistances for whatever rats you were fighting. With decent cap skills for the ET’s and RR’s it was stable. Not advised if your connection was naff though as if one d/cs the other wouldn’t get any reps Just kill the warp scram frigs first and can just warp off.
