Blitzing

Blitzing missions is an alternative way of doing missions that can be highly profitable - you do not completely clear the room(s) and kill every rat. Instead, you enter the mission, kill only the ships that absolutely need to get killed for mission completion, and then leave instantly to turn the mission in.

If you fly this way, most of the money that comes from missions does not come from loot/salvage/bounties, but from the LP.

Principles

While "conventional" mission running relies on mainly loot/salvage/bounties with mission rewards (LP+ISK) added on top, blitzing goes mainly for the LP that are awarded for mission completion. Those LP need to be "cashed in" in the loyalty stores, requiring purchasing and selling of items from those stores.

Mission handling

Picking the right missions

"Blitzing missions" is solely about combat missions ("security missions"). Not all missions can be blitzed. When missioning, you should continuously reject missions that are unblitzable, waiting for missions such as the Minmatar version of "Worlds Collide", "Blockade", "Recon" or "Pirate Invasion" that can be completed quickly within minutes for a high LP reward.

A blitzable mission per definition is a mission that doesn't require you to kill all (or even most) of the AI enemies - it rather focuses on either reaching a location, picking up an item from a container or kill a few key enemies for mission completion.

You would need to do some reading at mission reports to see if a mission is blitzable, but one will eventually "know" what missions can be blitzed.

Generally, doing only L4 missions is the way to get the best effect, although lower level missions can be "blitzed" as well for fast standings gain. Additionally the increased payout from lower security status and more valuable pirate LP makes null security L3 mission blitzing a profitable activity.

Standing requirements and management

As indicated above, picking only blitzable missions requires you to decline offers for, non-blitzable missions.

Unfortunately declining missions more often than once every four hours will have a negative impact on agent, corporation and faction standings.

You can reject multiple missions in a row if you have good faction standings. You can get a lot of faction standings by completing storyline missions, and faction standing drops rather slowly when rejecting missions. As long as you keep your Faction standings above 5.0 (rather easy to do) and your corp standings above -2.0 (don't reject too many missions in a row), your agent will keep talking to you and you can keep declining, only waiting for blitzable missions.

Before you have faction standings, you will not be able to reject as many missions continuously. To build it up, keep doing all your missions normally and do the storyline missions that you get every now and then.

To elaborate the math behind the standings losses and how one can keep declining missions:

Declining a mission more than once every four hours, three things happen:

a) your faction standings take an almost insignificant hit, b) your corporation standings take a sizable hit c) your agent standings take a sizable hit

Your level 4 agent will talk to you if your agent, corporation, or faction standings are above 5.0 *and* if your agent, corporation and faction standings don't drop below -2.0. Skills that may help you stay above these numbers include (criminal) connections, diplomacy and social

With high faction standings and because of the minimal faction hit for declining a mission, this means it is possible to cherry pick just the quick blitzable missions as long as your corporation standings don't drop below -2.0.

For example, declining Smash the Supplier costs:

• -0.0112% faction hit
• -3.06% corporation hit
• -6.12% agent hit

Completing the Patient Zero storyline mission got as a result:

• 9.0% faction increase

In overly simplistic terms, 9.0% / .0112% = ~800 declined missions. That means I could decline hundreds of missions and make up for the faction standings hit with a single storyline mission. Even the "worse" storyline missions would easily compensate for quite a few declined mission offers.

LP cashing in

Because most of the money comes from the mission rewarded Loyalty Points (LP), you need to do some research before you start missioning for just any random corp. You need to find a corp (and an item they offer) with a high isk/LP rate, then find the agent in the lowest possible sec space (still hisec of course).

This will require some research for you - finding a good ISK/hr rate requires looking up various items in the reward store and comparing how much you can sell them for to their LP cost, always factoring in the other items/ISK you need to pay in order to obtain an item from the LP store.

"Good" items can be pretty situational or temporary only, an average value of 1k ISK/LP will result in income similar to what you get from "regular" missioning, but will not make Blitzing a superior choice (ISK/hr wise).

Ships for blitzing

While you can blitz missions in any all-around mission runner ship, you will have much better results with ships specifically chosen and fitted for blitzing.

When you're blitzing the time actually fighting is relatively short and travel time makes up for a significant part of your time. This makes the Machariel with its warp speed bonus an especially popular choice for blitzing (in level 4 missions). You also usually fit hyperspatial rigs if you use a battleship (this includes the Machariel).

You also usually reduce your tank in favor of more DPS and application. This means you will struggle in missions which have a lot of incoming DPS, the solution is to not run those missions.

There is also the option to use several ships. It's common to have at least a fast frigate for Cargo Delivery and Recon (have a bit of tank on the frigate for the third part of recon). You also need dedicated ships for burner missions. Besides that most people stick to only one blitzing ship. The most popular choice is the already mentioned Machariel but a Barghest with rapid heavies is also popular. Marauders are very strong in specific missions such as Pirate Invasion which is always in the agent's system and requires a decent bit of damage to deal. But in general they fall short of the other options as their bastion module not only pins them down but causes a weapon timer. In nullsec you might want to use a strategic cruiser fitted to be nullified, cloaky, and hard to scan due to sensor boosters with ECCM scripts. The Tengu is especially well suited for this.

For level 5 missions blitzing, carriers are commonly used for ungated missions. Long range cruise missile platforms such as the Barghest are also common for some gated missions in which they work as well as ungated missions if you don't have access to a carrier.

Example

This video shows a pilot blitzing a L4 mission ("Pirate Invasion") in a Machariel.

His rather rough numbers for ISK/hr:

• Time taken for the mission: about 7 minutes.
• LP gained from mission: about 5k.
• At 2k isk/LP, that is 10m isk in 7 minutes.
• That is almost 100m isk in an hour, with mission rewards and bounties.

See also

• Missions (CORE class)
• Everything you wanted to know about Blitzing (A guide for Blitzing)