A word of warning before you read on. This post is a total rant. So take it with a grain of salt. This post is about a bad experience with a burner mission, but there may be other burner missions out there that I might actually like. That said, let me continue with my rant.
The burner mission I tried was named Anomic Team, and it was located in Sibe. It consisted of 3 enemy frigates, 2 of which were supposedly logi for the 3rd, not that they were needed. I spent most of my evening setting up for this mission, and made 2 attempts at it. I never got a single shot off at any enemy. Both times, they were able to destroy or nearly destroy my frigate before I could lock a target and begin firing. It was that fast. Probably no more than 10 seconds per attempt, if that.
Let me go over what some of the problems were.
I can only guess that the only valid approach to this mission is long range kiting. I just don't see how any frigate can engage the opponents of the mission unless the opponents simply can't fire upon you.
I first attempted to use a tracking disruptor, but the opponents also had missiles (something the mission description didn't mention), so I'm not sure if it would have helped much. On the first attempt I had 2 warp core stabs equipped (the burners use scrams) just so I could test the waters and run for a refit if I didn't like how things were going. Of course, stabs mean I had very short targeting range. The opponents were initially about 40km away. I activated my ASB as soon as I started taking fire, but the time I was in targeting range I was already almost dead. I warped away with maybe 10% structure left.
The second attempt I knew I probably needed to keep some distance. I swapped out the stabs for something more combat oriented. I warped in, but to my displeasure, I found the opponents were sitting right on top of the warp in location. I immediately tried to gain some distance but was webbed and scrammed within a couple of seconds, and my ship was destroyed a few seconds after that.
Now, I'm not opposed to having to retry a difficult mission a few times to get it right. But this mission appeared to be intentionally set up to where trying again wasn't reasonably feasible. It was located a long 7 jumps from the mission hub and set in a system where no merchant activity takes place. Even trying to buy something simple like a microwarp drive required traveling 4 jumps. The one station in the system didn't even have repair ability. I literally spent the whole night on just 2 attempts of the mission. Hours of set up and refit for a combined action time of about 20 seconds.
I've heard the new burner missions are receiving good reviews, but I just don't understand why. Here are the ways I could see the missions having value:
- Was it fun? No, it wasn't. If I wanted to get my ass kicked, there are other much quicker ways of doing it.
- Did I profit from it? No.
- Did I learn from it? Not really. The battle was so quick, how much could I learn? I think I learned that the right approach for the mission is to stay the hell away from the opponent and fire from a distance. If that is wrong, then I didn't learn anything. If that is right, then it's no different than the best strategy for every other mission in the game; stay the hell away and fire from a distance.
- Can it hone my combat ability? This is where the mission really fails. If this mission had been set in a place where it would be easy to refit and retry multiple times, it could have been useful. But it appeared to be set up the exact opposite such that setting up for another go would require a huge time penalty.
I feel your pain. I tried Anomic mission back in August and assploaded as you described.
ReplyDeleteHowever, recently it's all I'm doing. It's quite pathetic actually how I got hooked on this thing. I still explode once in a while but short of PvP that's the only thing that can pump some adrenaline for me these days.
To clarify, Anomic are not quite "level 4". They were designed as mini level 5s for empire dwellers. Level 5 proper can not be completed solo. Anomic burner missions can but you need to be extremely specialized. There are very specific recipes for each mission if you search for them. I tried experimenting with my own and had really assploading experiences. For experimentation I would recommend getting a level 4 agent near Jita or Amarr or some other big hub so that you can be back in business in a few minutes.
Word of caution, blinging out ships is not a good strategy. I lost 2x 400m frigates recently to a single Cruor which on paper looked like an easy work with dual boxing setup. I didn't choose a proper orbit on one and while I was messing with it I forgot to turn on cap booster on the other, my rep turned off and my shiny dead space rep shut off. By the time I clicked both cap boost and armor had a cycle to complete I was dead. Second shiny frig struggled for another 30 seconds but died too.
Since there were so many expensive toys on those two I ran quickly to Amarr, got a recipe Wolf, returned to the place of my demise and killed that Cruor in 3 minutes. I was able to recover 300m worth of bling. I got cocky with my own dual box "universal setup" and as a result l made a mistake and died horribly.
Going to Anomics with a warp core stab is not a good idea. You have to be committed either through speed which requires low slots or damage mods if you shield tank.