Some quick missions, minus one ship

My new plan to run missions quickly to gain faction standing more efficiently, ignoring bounties, loot and salvage, starts off well. I pop in to New Eden and pick up my first mission of the evening from my agent, the Repair Station. There isn't a better mission for my new work ethic. I leave dock and warp to deadspace where I find the repair station sitting unguarded in space. I target and destroy the auxiliary power generators first, leaving the station alone, as these generators help the repair station regenerate more quickly if they are intact. I leave the station alone because the first hit on it causes pirates and gun placements to appear to protect the station, as well as the station launching waves of repair drones to repair itself and anything else allied to it that has been damaged.

My tactic works as expected. Without the auxiliary generators the repair station is much easier to destroy, and no ships appear until I start attacking the station itself. With the speed I destroy the repair station the pirates and mercenaries are only just coming in to range, but despite the promise of bounties, loot and salvage that await should I engage them the mission completion is triggered solely on the repair station's destruction. I warp back to the agent's station before a single target locks on to me, leaving them to sift through the debris of the repair station. One mission completed in about five minutes and I'm ready to pick up the next.

The next couple of missions involve actively engaging hostile forces in order either to complete the mission directly or to unlock acceleration gates in the deadspace complexes. With the enemy ships being destroyed and leaving wrecks tantalisingly close to my ship the temptation gets too strong and I end up locking on to and salvaging from a few wrecks whilst finishing off the destruction of the rest of the ships in the area. Of course, by the time I am a few battles in to the evening's piloting I am telling myself that it won't take long just to grab the last two wrecks and that I would be foolish not to see if there are any of the lucrative armour plates or melted capacitor consoles to be salvaged. My efficient mission running has dropped a notch, but I'm still running fast through the missions.

By the time my agent asks me to deal with a Pirate Intrusion I am almost grabbing each wreck as my missiles blow up the ships, justifying the tactic as being even more efficient because I am completing missions just as quickly yet also getting loot and salvage, as long as I balance my locked targets between active threats and wrecks. It's not such a bad plan, really, but I must amend a previous assertion I made. I pointed out that flying level one missions in EVE Online, with a few million more skill points in my head than when I started, is as much of a challenge and threat as running my World of Warcraft Death Knight, Gnomesblight, through the Deadmines.

I think it it more apt to state that running level one missions at the moment is as challenging as running Gnomesblight through Uldaman: it's straightforward and unchallenging if I am paying attention. I feel I need to make this adjustment because of two events that occurred. The first was when Gnomesblight bit off a bit more than she could chew and was overwhelmed by irritating troggs in Uldaman and killed. This was mostly down to not paying enough attention, caused by being overconfident in my invulnerability against lesser foes. Having played with 70th level characters for a while it can be easy to forget that I am only on a 60th level character and that those ten levels can make a significant difference. It is easier to forget when confronting mobs that are still conning grey by a couple of decades, but there don't need to be quite so many for them to become overwhelming when only 60th level compared to being 70th level.

In much the same way, my overconfidence at surviving level one missions in EVE Online ended up causing the loss of my Crucifier frigate. It happened quite quickly and whilst I was trying to salvage. I broke off the salvage attempt and tried to recover my position but I couldn't even warp out in time. It was my pod that eventually got away. I would point out that I was flying uninsured as well, but it was only a frigate and the default payout covered the basic cost, but not the modules and insurance, for its replacement. I even bought and fitted a new ship quickly enough to recover a few modules and salvage from the Crucifier, as well as completing the mission to get the bonus reward.

My overconfidence was tested because of various reasons. I am still not entirely experienced enough to run an armour tank, being used to shield tanks instead, and could probably use more skill training in that area as well. I was also being cocky in trying to salvage whilst under fire from two or three ships at once, rather than keeping my speed up both to mitigate some of the damage and to maintain a suitable distance to negate some weapons fire entirely. I essentially made myself a huge sitting duck and was penalised for my arrogance. It is good to be reminded occasionally of one's vulnerability, though.

I don't replace the Crucifier with another frigate of the same type. To help complete the mission quickly and to feel more comfortable I buy and fit a Kestrel, a Caldari frigate. To be honest, it is perhaps a mystery why I bought myself the Amarr Crucifier when I had moved to Minmatar space, but that was simply because I wasn't paying enough attention in the first place. The Kestrel is much more familiar, being a missile boat with a strong shield that I augment with some extra modules. It doesn't take long to fit the Kestrel and I am soon back in deadspace wiping out the last of the pirates and scooping up the remains of my Crucifier. It is my final mission of the evening as well.

It is a good session that has seen me complete about twice as many missions as I would have normally, had I been salvaging everything, although I probably could have fitted another mission in had I not lost a ship. It is all good, though, leaving me with an even more renewed interesting in continue my adventures as well as giving me aspirations for skill training and experience gains. Onwards and upwards!

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: crucifier, deadspace, eve online, gnomesblight, kestrel, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, uldaman, world of warcraft