Misson Running gets interesting

I was running missions earlier this week to earn a bit of extra ISK. I was worried about getting poor again (a constant fear for me) and the nearest Incursion was 15 jumps out and in LowSec. The nearest HighSec Incursion was over 20 jumps. Far too much effort for the chance of being accepted into a fleet for only a few sites. So instead I refitted my Scorpion Navy Issue for L4's and headed out to Penirgman. I decided not to bother salvaging the missions, and instead simply go for the bounties. On my first mission I had a Ninja Salvager warp in on me.

Normally these guys piss me off, and it was a battleship heavy mission (Mining Misappropriation or something), so the salvage would be worth quite alot. However this time I couldn't care less about the salvage and turned all my wrecks blue so he could loot them too. Surprisingly the ninja sent me 5mil as a way of saying thanks and we started chatting.

I asked him about "Ninja Salvaging" and he said he'd only tried it a few times (including this one) and normally had decent results (in the range of around 5-8 mil per mission salvaged). I was intrigued, and after he'd cleared my wrecks and left the conversation, I did some extra research. While the ISK wouldn't really be worth it to me, it definitely sounded like a good way for new players to earn ISK without having the horror of grinding standings for Level 4's and with a far lower skill threshold. I dug deeper...

And hit a forum post complaining about "Ninja Looting". The poster essentially was complaining about the practice of scanning down misson runners and looting the wrecks. Obviously this turns the looter flashy red to the misson runner, allowing the missioner to fire at them, which this guy did. However this time instead of simply dying or running away, the ninja came back in a fully PvP fit battlecruiser and beat the living daylights out of the missioner. The ninja then made off with around 300mils worth of faction fittings, laughing all the way.

I was horrified and inspired at the same time. Recently my carebear side and my PvP side have been disagreeing alot, and this situation was no exception. My carebear side completely understood where this unlucky missioner was coming from, especially as my faction fittings on my SNI are worth over 300mil also. Having to replace that ship would be devastating for me. Don't fly what you can't afford to lose? I can afford to replace it, but my god I would be EVE poor afterwards.

However my PvP side wanted to start trying this immediately. 300mil in lootz, and carebear tears? Awesome. Plus if they shoot at a ninja looter, they've accepted the inherent risk in that, so losing his ship was a side effect of his idiocy. No mercy for the stupid people!

I researched more and found a good mission system to start trying this out. Surprisingly it wasn't too difficult... Oh wait :P

I then tried to find the main weaknesses of mission ships.
- Reliance on active tanks
- Total lack of warp scram/disruptor
- Ammo/Resistances will be chosen based on the mission being run.
- Will hopefully still have full rat aggro

So what?
- Active tanks are usually only "burst" tanks for PvE. Getting an active tank totally capstable gimps the rest of the fit and is barely needed, if ever (Note to self, write a post on why being cap-stable is seriously overated in PvE). This means that a couple of neuts will utterly screw up the tank of a missioner. Easy kills ftw.
- The lack of any tackle on the other guy's part is a huge advantage to the ninja. Start taking more DPS than you expected? Just warp off. He can't stop you.
- To maximise tank/DPS, missioners will fit to nullify the main portion of a rat's damage, and fit ammo (if applicable) to hit their resist hole. Amarr space is mainly Sansha/Blood Raiders, which means EM/Therm damage. So I should use those resistances in my tank and use kinetic/explosive ammo to hit the runner in his resist hole.

Luckily Hobgoblin IIs use Therm/Kin ammo and Warrior IIs use explosive rounds, no need to train for new drones. Neuts means any ship with utility highs is best, and it needs to be fast enough to catch them before they warp off. A ship that also is not well known as a PvP boat would be an advantage, as the missioner will feel more confident in winning, and therefore engaging anyway. However it needs decent DPS so the missioner doesn't have time to call for his corpmates, and it needs enough tank to survive against battleship size weapons. A battlecruiser sounds like a good idea at this point.

Time to start looking for fits. My next post will hopefully be the results of my messing with bears :)

Tl;dr Ninja looting sounds fun as hell