Security missions

Security missions missions that involve combat. Usualy these missions are given by security agents but mining and distribution agents can in certain cases, such as storyline missions and COSMOS missions, give missions that behave like security missions.

Structure of a security missions

When you receive an mission offer you will be given some basic info on the mission. On right side of the mission offer you can see the mission objective, enemy faction, possible ship restrictions, target system with warning on low sec space and rewards. It is important to at least look at the enemy faction as you are almost quaranteed to lose standings with this faction. On left half of the mission offer is the mission briefing, a lore fluff for your mission. This usually won't give you much details on the mission but sometimes there are hints such as "fit a fast ship, you will need to burn a long distance", "harder than usual combat" or "I will be updating your objectives on the fly".

In the mission offer you should pay special attention to the mission objective, enemy faction, possible low srcurity route warning and possible special ship restriction (says "This mission contains special ship restrictions").

Once you have accepted the mission you should prepare your ship. It is common to adjust your fit based on the mission. The usual adjustment is swapping resist modules to match the damage of the enemy faction. Sometimes it is also good idea to fit modules to counter incoming EWAR: Extra capacitor to coutner neuting or sensor booster+scripts to counter ECM and damping.

The mission itself is loceted in system given by the agent. In this system you will be able to see a warpable mission location in space, in right click menu and in top left corner of your screen.

The missions usually consist of simple things that you need to complete to reach the objective:

• If you encounter a locked acceleration gate kill every NPC ship in space to unlock it.
  • In few instances the gate requires a key to activate. Trying to activate the gate will say what is needed.
• If killing everything doesn't work take a look at the mission briefing and objective. Often you need to destroy a specific structure. The structures aren't visible in most overviews so you will need an overview that shows "large collidable structures".
• Mission often have various triggers. that cause new enemies to spawn. The most common trigger is to attack or kille certain ships. it is often important to avoid triggering triggers to often to not get overwhelmed.

The objective of a Security mission is usually to kill a ship or a set of ships located at the encounter, but it could also be to destroy a structure, to get close to a location and then escape, to pick up an object at the location (which may or may not be an ambush), or to fly from beacon-to-beacon. Be sure to read the mission description carefully. If you find that you cannot figure out what a mission is asking you to do, consider looking at a mission report for that particular mission.

Once you have completed the objective of the mission the mission icon will turn into a green checkmark. Note that if the mission required items to be retrieved you still need to grab them. You can then return to the agent and receive your reward.

Mission levels

Security missions go from level 1 all the way to level 5.

• Level 1 is where most new players start. Most, if not all, level 1 missions can be done in a basic frigate frigate, Only the most basic piloting skills are required.
• Level 2 mining missions can be done in a cruiser or in a destroyer piloted by a more skilled pilot. These missions generally expect that you are continually improving your piloting skills and learning how to fit out new ships.
• Level 3 missions require a battlecruiser. These missions go faster if you have trained for better ships and at least some Tech 2 fittings.
• Level 4 missions require a Battleship with full T2 tank fitted. These missions can be time-consuming, but they offer large rewards.
• Level 5 missions are designed for groups of players or capital ship and are exclusively located in Low Security space.

Loot and salvage

Security missions almost always involve killing rats. This creates the opportunities to loot and salvage wrecks.

The worthness of loot and salvage rises with mission leve. Generally missions with large number of battleships are the only ones worth looting and salvaging but there are exceptions.

If you plant to loot and/or salvage the mission you should consider investing in a mobile tractor unit (MTU). The MTU is a personal deployable structure that will tractor wrecks from 125 km range around it nd store all the loot. Drop an MTU when when you start killing and bookmark the location. Once the mission is completed you can return in a salvaging ship and warp to a nice cluster of wrecks.

Certain missions have very low chance of having a faction ship present. It is very much recommended that this ship is killed and looted as they can drop faction modules, implants or blueprint copies.

Farming a Mission for Loot

Farming a mission means to do the same mission over a few days by NOT completing the mission. Ie.,for Vengeance, you can kill everything except one rat in the last pocket and then redo the mission after downtime (all the rats will respawn) until the mission expires. This is very good for high value missions like Angel Extravaganza (AE), Blockade, Worlds Collide, Vengeance, or Cargo Delivery.

Example:

Say I usually play every day for an hour, and it takes me an hour to do Angel Extravaganza. Angel Extravaganza gives me 40 million ISK with bounties, loot, and salvage. To maximize my revenue, if I got AE, I would kill everything except Tiogo Kargaz. That way the mission would not complete and I could then repeat this after every downtime until the mission expires. This would give me 40 million ISK × 6 days = 240 million ISK

Now say I decided to kill Tiogo and complete the mission. On the next 6 days, I could get average missions that give ~20mil ISK. This way I would only get 20 million ISK x 6days = 120 million ISK

The downside is the repetitive monotony and if you want to play some more after you semi-complete the farm-mission. This can be somewhat mitigated if you have multiple agents. You can have an agent on standby for farming The Blockade and then keep doing missions with another agent.

Notes:

• To check the viability of farming a mission you can use mission reports to see if your mission has a 'completion trigger'.
• Say you have a pocket with wrecks that you want to loot and/or salvage, but there's a pirate you have to keep alive in it to farm. You would need someone to loot/salvage while you tank the rat (or vice versa). You could also try fitting salvagers and/or tractor beams on a tanky ship or just abandon the wrecks.
• A similar technique can be used to repeatedly mine ore from asteroids found in missions. See Mission Mining for details.