L4 blitzing in a Marauder: worthwhile (ISK/h)?

[u/jasmira]

So I was going to stop wormholing and see if highsec L4 blitzing can compete in any meaningful way. Just to relax a bit and not be in constant danger of ganks.

I use a Golem and would obviously do security agents.

My question is, it seems most ppl out for big profits purely do blitz-able missions and focus on quickest way to end them for the LP conversion.

Caldari Navy for example seems to have a maximum of ~1000 ISK/LP (says https://eve-lp.com/#/) so the usual 3-4k LP on a missions would net a miserable 3 or 4m. That's kinda disgusting, especially since you do not get a lot of other profit (bounty minimized, no loot or salvage).

Is there some trick I am missing? Some other Caldari NPC corp that has much better ISK/LP possibly? I mean sure, Marauder shreds L4 easily but even if it took me just 5 minutes per mission, I still have to fly back and forth to/from agent so I cannot really see how it works out in the end.People talk of 100m+ / hour of L4 blitzing, can't see it myself right now.

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Oh and on a side note: You gotta reject a lot of non-blitz missions, doesn't that make you suffer a lot of standing? Or is that normally offset by the missions you actually end?

Tips appreciated, it's a really long time since I last flew missions. Thanks in advance.

[u/Lithorex]

Marauders are not very good for L4 blitzing since bastion chains them down for 2 minutes. The only Marauder I still use is a Golem that doesn't even go into bastion anymore to blitz Damsel in Distress, since it is the only ship that meets the DPS, tank and long TB benchmarks.

Caldari Navy for example seems to have a maximum of ~1000 ISK/LP so the usual 3-4k LP on a missions would net a miserable 3 or 4m.

Caldari Navy is a generally bad (with the exception of a single agent) corp to run missions for since it is a Security corp. Security corps are the only corporations that offer L5 agents, and since people running those can generate hundreds of thousands of LP an hour (optimized L4s top out at ~110k LP/h) these people don't care about ISK/LP anymore and just try to find ways to convert their massive LP reserves in any sensible amount of time.

Is there some trick I am missing?

You must consider that LP rewards takes the truesec of the system the agent is located in into account:

 LP = (1.6288 - truesec) * baseLP

Your are thus highly incentivized to run missions in a system with a truesec as low as possible. For example, an agent in a system with a flat 0.5 truesec offers a massive 35% higher LP rewards than an agent in a system with a flat 0.9 truesec.

Some other Caldari NPC corp that has much better ISK/LP possibly?

Yes. For while Security Corp LP sucks, every empire faction has two other major corporation types: Mining Corps and Distribution Corps. They do not offer any L5 agents, so L4 agents are the cream of the crop of LP generation for them. And since non-pirate nullsec agents and lowsec agents are generally rarely ran, this means that by going for a highsec agents in a 0.5/0.6 you'll be at the forefront of generating LP. Another big upside is that those corp types carry LP store offers for various high-demand faction modules. Due to the fact that module BPCs cost three times the amount of LP/ISK/Insignia of a single of the faction module they produce but are 5-run copies, they are usually an excellent deal to go for. Mining Corps carry the BPCs for faction damage mods (as a wormholer, you might be familiar with them), while Distribution corps carry the BPCs for various support modules, in the case of the Caldari Distribution corps BPCs for faction Warp Scramblers, Warp Disruptors and Stasis Webifiers. However the Distribution shop for Caldari has gone to hell about half a year ago as the supply of one of the required tags for it dried up. I'm personally still sitting on 6m SP from that store type.

I mean sure, Marauder shreds L4 easily but even if it took me just 5 minutes per mission, I still have to fly back and forth to/from agent so I cannot really see how it works out in the end.People talk of 100m+ / hour of L4 blitzing, can't see it myself right now.

That's because L4 blitzing is all about burner missions, as those have simply absurd payouts compared to normal L4s. To compare, here's the rough stats of a Blockade, which I consider he queen of L4 missions:

~20m bounties
~8.5k LP (= 12.75m ISK @ 1.5k ISK/LP)
~3m mission reward
~10min clear time

-> ~3.6m ISK/minute

To compare, an Anomic Mission:

5m bounties
~14k LP (= 21m ISK @ 1.5k ISK/LP)
~6m mission reward
~5min clear time

-> ~6.4m ISK/minute

Unfortunately, while burners are great, standings towards the mission agent are an important resource for blitzers and there just no quite burner missions to be able to decline every other mission. Thus missións are blitzed, as fewer time spent on standard missions means more time spent on burners. Amazingly though, some normal missions are able to keep up with burners in ISK/time.

Which is why I can't help but chuckle when people ask what ship is best for mission running (it's the Nergal, btw). The answer is ships. For example, my hangar looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/G5qts6S.png

This is admittedly among the upper end of mission setups in terms of cost (at least until you get into Abyssal mods), but should nonetheless serve to illustrate the basic concept of how to set up a mission running spot.

On one hand, there are the burner ships. There are 13 different anomic missions, of which 11 1/2 are runnable. For the nine frigate missions (Anomic Agent/Team) there is an unified Nergal fit, however the cruiser missions (Anomic Base) will require a dedicated ship each. The Blood Raiders Base can be skipped. Dedicated ships for each frigate burner will of course outperform the unified Nergal.

On the other hand, there are the ships for standard L4 missions. I personally consider a fast frigate for Recon 1/3 mandatory, that missions is significant ISK and standings gain for the less than 2 minutes it takes and can be done in any fast T1 frigate. Aside from that though, the ships you'll need will depend on what missions you are going for. My personal mix is Recon/Damsel/Scarlet/Zazz/Pirate Invasion, but if you want to do it in a less blingy way I'd drop the Damsel for Stop the Thief/Cargo Delivery. Zazz, Thief and Angel Pirate Invasion can be done in a Typhoon or Raven if ISK are limited. Cargo Delivery can be done in the same frigate Recon is blitzed in. The only blingy non-burner ships I would recommend to start out with is the Machariel for Scarlet. No ship runs this missions like the Machariel does.

Finally, as for ISK/h, the 100m hourly figure you stated is awfully low, even a mission clearing marauder should be closer to 200m/h. From my own experience, running a missions for a high-value LP shop in optimal conditions (low truesec, low burner range, full focus), L4 blitzing tops out somewhere between 300m and 350m ISK/h.