OK, so I am behind the actions of my Alt - it's not his fault. Although this is not something that most people will admit, but I have had a bad run this week when it comes to losing ships. I know that everyone loses ships, but usually not in this sense.
Originally when I started my Alt I had him planned as a logistics character. I trained him up to fly a Crane and an Orca as quickly as I could. Once that was achieved I turn towards the Charon. Along the way I discovered Remote-Repping, so I then trained him down the path of a Basilisk as well as a Navy Dominix with good drone and almost elite armour-tanking skills.
With that all now conquered, what next?
Well, my Alt has absolutely no weapons skills (save the basic gunnery and missile skills he started with), and I thought this was a little embarrassing for the guy. So I turned him towards the field of pew-pew. As he pilots the Navy Domi and with other future plans of him becoming a Vulture pilot for the Command Link bonuses, I set him down the path of Hybrids. And after some mild training, I built him a Brutix and off he went.
I was impressed with the Brutix. It can tank well but the DPS was quite lousy with his current skills (even with the ships' Hybrid bonuses). The Hammerhead II drones were more-or-less his primary weapon. But it wasn't long before he fell victim to warp-scramblers and Battleships in a drone mission. A lot of the problem I have is that my main can tank any mission in his Nighthawk, so I no longer have to be careful about gunning down trigger-ships that call in more aggro. My Alt, I must remember, needs to be careful of this.
So I went back to EFT to see if I could improve the tank, but there wasn't a great deal I could do without buying Tech-II rigs or faction gear. I wasn't prepared to do that. Then I had a look at the Myrmidon. I could get a much better tank and be able to utilise it's Drone-bonuses well. So I went to my nearest trade-hub and started assembling.
In missions, the Myrmidon was able to tank a lot better. The Hybrid rails I had fitted were next to useless, but the drones were able to bring down most ships with ease. However, this ship quickly befell to the same fate as the Brutix. Scrammed and overwhelmed, she, too, popped.
I wouldn't say that my Alt is not ready to take on missions, it's just I need to concentrate more and remember that his tanking ability does not compare to Akinesis. I would return him to the Navy Domi, but Akinesis very rarely needs repping now, so it would be just a hulk of dead-metal floating next to him. To that end, I sat him a Noctis and let him go nuts on the wrecks.
However, the Brutix and Myrmidon are not the issue here. Although no one likes to lose a ship, I am relatively happy to look upon those losses as a learning curve. My real issue lies with the Noctis I lost. Or three of them to be precise.
Losing a Noctis in a mission could be put down to bad luck. How often does someone lose a Noctis in a mission? Losing two is being a bit ridiculous, as you should really have learnt any mistakes after the first one. But losing three is nothing other than stupidity. Or being impatient in my case.
At the moment I am grinding Level-4 missions to gain good standing with Research & Development agents, as I've started Tech-II production through invention at labs in our new Low-Sec POS. So acquiring free Data-Cores is a handy asset in this venture.
So to speed missions up to get faster standing (I'm not really looking to blitz here), I get Akinesis to take all the aggro prior to sending in my Alt with his Noctis before the room is even cleared. Except, in three cases, what I thought was the last wave of targets warping into the mission, in fact, wasn't. And a Noctis doesn't take very long to pop when they are at the mercy of several Battleships and Cruisers.
So my impatience has cost me a lot of precious ISK (and ISK is very precious at the moment). I am very sure that there are not many people out there who can say they are on their fourth Noctis in the space of a week. It certainly isn't anything to be proud of. I certainly will not be warping my Alt into a mission anymore until all the targets are dead wrecks.
Shame on me for only learning that the third time around.
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