Cant sleep, so, I'm ranting about Guristas base burner, a lvl 4 mission. CCP, welcome to take note and change it..

So quite some time ago I became obsessed with lvl 4 missions. It's truly unhealthy, and the lengths to which I will go to min-max the income from them knows almost no bounds. The knowledge i have to do so in high and low sec, may not be fully known outside of my noggin. I know things. Weird things, about missions.

I'm the nerd that developed some of the burner fits that most of the people are using out there, whether they know it or not. I'm even mentioned in a few streamers videos on YT for developing them, but more often than not I made the fit and took no credit.

One mission I've never been able to add to the cycle of 'profitable to run in the blitz cycle' is the Guristas base burner, and first I will address the issues with it

CCP, take notes here if you want to get people to run this a little more.

The Dragonfly's in the mission orbit at around 8.5k, at 1200ms, they have a sig radius of 15m, and tank like fucking crazy (100+dps/sec). The mantis orbits at a speed of 900ms, at 18-18.5km, with a sig radius of 25.

I should point out why this mission is so motherfucking hard, is because in-game, a dragonfly has a sig radius of 110m. A Mantis has one of 110 as well. ALSO--a mantis will orbit, in-game, at 4-6km, and NOT 18km (outside web range, fucking CCP). The ones in the mission are 15 m and 25m, smaller than warrior drones, and tank like cruisers.

***IF CCP changed the sig radius of these things to reflect the player ones*** (or even HALF--55m), ***and the mantis orbit range was brought INSIDE 14km***, this mission would actually be ran like the other burner missions. ***That's the only changes it honestly needs.***

Anywho, no one, for a very long time, could figure out how to run this shitting thing. There was a video online of someone going balls-out in a vigilant, and that was about it. Even that was 20+ minutes. That said, the other base missions can be done in 5-7.

I developed an astonishing, at the time, phantasm to run this mission, and i averaged about 15 minutes in it once i really got the hang of it. This started to become the 'meta' fit for it for the people that wanted to run this stupid busted ass piece of shit mission.

I hated how slow it was.

My obsession began. For years now I have strived to find and break this mission to sub-10 minutes, no matter what cost.

The list of ships i have that can run this fucking thing: Phantasm Vigilant Huginn Jackdaw Hurricane fleet Curse (yeah, you read that right) Stork (the fuck, right?) Cerberus Eagle Ikitursa Munin Cynabal Vagabond WTF ever the trig BC is. Probably missing a few.

For completion times there are 4 standouts, Vigilant (fastest), phantasm, jackdaw, and huginn.

The jackdaw always has people curious. The fit is over a billion, i THINK it requires a geno clone set (what i run for missions). It's got a curious tank. You hold defense mode for the fighter wave, until the first one's down, and then can switch to sharp shooter. You can stay there through the bomber wave. Catching the bombers is a BITCH, you're slower (even with deadspace AB), so you HAVE to heat a web to have any hope if getting them. You'll have a metric ton of heat damage, even with the ships bonus to reduce it, to get this thing done. It's second or third best in completion times. I think i've got it down to 12 minutes once, but usually sit around 17.

Phantasm: See hateless videos on YT. I use an abyssal prop and webs on mine now, and approach the things rather than try to keep transversal like he did in that video. Shortest run time is 13 minutes (think it was like 12:58)... that's just the time from accel gate to last thing dead, not warp times or station to station time (hateless times his from station to station).

Huginn there is good, super easy. Tanks well--tanks better with a JUST RIGHT abyssal shield booster, but it's not absolutely mandatory. It's dual web, dual painters. Run time without abyssal webs hovers around 20-22 minutes, and run time with abyssal webs hovers around 15-18 minutes, if the abyssals are 64%+. Abyssal gyros make little difference.

The fastest is one of several variations of the Vigilant. The first, is armor tanked, and either dual web, or fed-navy web and tracking comp (i like that combo better). Run time pretty solidly around 12 minutes. Pushing HARD with heat, you can get it to just above 10 minutes.

A second option is the same fit with abyssal webs. 65%+ ... shit starts to get insane at this level. You're going to start pushing compete times to 10 minutes reliably. You're going to freak out about the heat in the webs because you're killing bomber waves too fast to shut the heat off fully.

You can get 65.5%+17km webs (god damn, yes, i paid for this shit), and use RAILS in this mission--and push complete times to just under 10 minute averages.

And the final thing i did, is the abyssal webs, abyssal mag stabs, abyssal armor rep (your tank is STRESSED the FK out in this fit--did i mention that? You tank 300 less DPS than you need, you stay alive only by virtue of how much heat you can put into the guns for the first fighter to die). It's stupid. The cost is truly astonishing stupid. You can easily afford capitals with what's invested in a fit like this. I got the mission run time to 8.5 minutes.

But, it's still not worth it. It's STILL the slowest burner mission to run--even with north of 5b invested (between clone, abyssal mods, and fit/ship).

So--CCP, can we get that fix?

Before i go insane and spend another 100+ hours in PYFA trying to break into a 'new' fit for this shit?

Like the shield fit i have that ends up with 90% heat on the tank, that one time did the mission in 8:05... No, we're not talking about the price i paid for the super, ultra specific abyssal rolled shied booster that this fit takes to make happen.

I had to develop a low-sec mission running system to distract myself from this obsession with Guristas base burner. Halp. Just ... make it a little easier. I feel it calling to me... telling me... there MUST have been a 'perfect' ship CCP had in mind when they made this mission, that i just have somehow missed. It's a delusion. There isnt one. It's just a bad mission, lol