Smash the Supplier, Level 4

If you blow up the tower, the shipyards will explode, too.

i'm running a dual LAR II domi (specifically, 2 kin 2 therm T2 hardeners, 1 DCII, 2 LARII, and 1 aux nano pump/2 CCC), and i'm here to tell you: the BS spawns at the end are a BITCH. i've gotten all the cruisers and frigs down, as well as one (count em, one!) BS down, and the rest of them, especially those judgements, are kicking my ass up and down the block. i'm sure it's soloable, but either do it verrrry carefully, or bring a buddy in a logistics.

used a nighthawk to blitz this, passive tank ( 3-SPR2, 2-PDU2, 3 Large Extenders, EM amp 2, Invuln 2, 2-Core Defense Shield Purger 1s ) Warped in, targeted the control tower, started orbiting at my max range(79km) and opened fire. Worked well, killed a few of the frigates that got close with drones.

OMG this mish sucks!!! you have to run like hell and keep them at 60-65K to hit and tank damage. Did it in a Hyp with t2 hardeners 2xkin 2xtherm 1xEM and a Khanid repper. Judgements hit you for 1200+unresist kinetic dmg. The spawn rate is insane - no way to tank it all unless running like hell. Then, takes so friggin long you will prob lose most your wrecks which is where the money is since it is faction - no tags or salvage = BS mission - turn this down if you get it not worth it to run solo
-- PhreakinOut (2008-09-22 21:12:20)

Did the Blitz in a Golem fitted for active boost. Only got down to 95% shield without boosting. Started by moving away (no AB) from Control tower and then opened fire on the it. 4 of the scramble/web frigs got nearby which I took out with drones. Structure popped 9 sets of missiles after 1st reload (note: Missile skills maxed and Gurista cruise launchers, 2 BCUs). Very easy.
Note that the structure's shield. armour and structure all took about the same length of time. To my recollection at least.

Did the same again (in the Golem), flew away from control tower without enabling AB. This time flew in real quick (mission in same system as agent) and only half the spawn was there. The second half did not agro until I deployed my drones.
Took 149 (possibly up to 152) missiles to blow up the control tower, @ 986.4 damage per shot = 146 000-150 000 HP.
When the structure blew up I was at approx 104km away and at 91% shield, no shield recharged, 2 mission specific active hardeners. Easy Blitz for missiles.

done in a dominix with t2 ogres and t1 wardens. tanks run with x2 aux nano pumps, x1 therm, x1 kin, x1 em and adaptive energized membrane (all amarr navy) and dual LAR II.

indeed, the DPS is to be feared, the highest i've seen so far. if you have luck you can agro just the cruisers and frigs, kill them and then agro the battleships. i needed to warp out 5 times to test if this works, and it does, just seems that the cruisers you must agro are random.
NEVER stop moving, the DPS is just too high to one ship, even at 60km.
when there was just 15 BS my tank resisted all the damage, so you better try and kill the light and medium ships (which are, really easy to kill) with sentrys or sniping at a good distance

industrials drop nothing

the tags were:
amarr navy mayor insignia I x5
amarr navy colonel insignia I x5
amarr navy general insignia I x12
amarr navy general insignia II x7
amarr navy captain insignia I x5
amarr navy midshipman insignia III x5
amarr navy sergeant insignia III x5
amarr navy sergeant mayor insignia I x6
plus 3 or 4 a ninja salvager made steal

a total of 12.600.000 ISK in tags, 8.500.000 in salvage, a 15M arbalest heavy missile launcher, and regular mods worth like 5-6M together
took like 3 hours to win like 40M
let's say it wasn't a total loss of time but i do not recommend completing all the mission unless you got a good marauder or some really nice tank and DPS to kill everything fast

i hope this helps someone, good luck on this really hard mission!

I've done it twice and both times, no matter how quickly I get there, always end up with full-on complement of rats. I run it solo, in a Maelstrom,and always need one or two warp outs to survive. The description talks about 'heavy kinetic damage', but this is not my experience - it's all EM/therm. Don't bother tanking for kin...

Best way to survive in a solo BS is to keep distance as much as possible - above 65km or so and the rat BS's will miss most of the time. Otherwise do it in something fast...

completed this mish using 2 x toons for combat.

1 x raven
1 x mael

Used mael as main tank but raven got aggro too.
had to align to a stargate and hit full speed. bs came after me so had to fight these off. Then once done warpped out to go back and finish off crusiers/frigates

Note: tank was fine until ultra's kicked in, but still manged to stay in but got to around 1/4 shield at times.

oh 4got to mention i only seemed to get trackin disrupted and tbh this was no real problem

RetmasTasrem: you do know that you're using the wrong hardeners, right?
Primary damage type is EM, secondary Therm, some ships (see ship list) do kin damage with their missiles (but much less than the em/therm).

this one is a easy one for a domi with t2 sentries like allll other missions...
just do the following if you use t2 sentries.. ship is not important...
warp to mission area... do not move just release your t2 curators and start shooting the npc's... the only thing you care about is your drones... they will get huge dps after 10-15 secs... just scoop the damaged one in and release another one till its shield repairs inside your drone bay... let bs's at the end just clear the small ones... as I said, the most important thing are your drones...
this mission takes like 40-50 mins because I counted at least 19 bs's..
and its also good for looting and salvaging since all wrecks stay together within 17 km...
I had 32 armor plates and 23 melted cap. consoles from this mission...
again : take care your drones for this and you will be fine...

Took two warp ins to complete. Must of did the order wrong cause I had the whole room aggro at some point.

The first was Primary Domi w/ 1x LARII and 4X Hardners II, with 2x Support Domis each with 2x RLARIIs. Halfway though aggro got split between the Primary and the Support, the Support couldn't stay. Warped out.

Second Warp: Primary, 2xLARIIs and 5xArmor Hardners. Primary couldn't tank the room itself. The support Domis kept it up with 2x LARIIs on the primary each. The mission took about 1-1.5Hours to complete and another 0.5Hours to salvage.

Sold everything looted/salvage which was 34M in ISK + mission rewards.

always managed solo with Maelstrom with no warpouts. As noted multiple times above the imperial templar BS are the trouble makers. between them they probably do as much dps as the rest of the spawn. at 50km imperial templar dps drops off rapidly so this is all about the kite.
Kaikka's modified large shield booster, dg boost amp, invuln II, em active II, Therm active II, perma running. (last mid either ab for periodic kite-assist or second invulnII/boost ampII)

If things do get too much and you are forced to warpout, the rats reset position (most return to the shipyard, some seem to hang out round the warpin), on re-rentry to room there is no auto-aggro

Tried and failed with ishtar (passive shield, all spr II lows, lse IIx4 and em active II, 3x purger rigs) similar tank issues to mael where dps is un-managable within 50-60km of the BS block. However 5x ogre IIs alone cannot break a Imperial Templar Judgement even with interfacing V and racial drone IV.

ok i got this one done by smashing them apart

You dont get aggro even after you warp back in so you ca pull them apart

The bs mass is still a tough one to crack but it can be done.

I've solo'd this dozens of times in my Domi, and frankly, it's not that hard. Warp in, spin about away from the blob, get aggro with my single little gun, and putt putt away, orbiting the tower at 200km doing the usual 115 m/s. Let loose the 5 Ogre II's and have a nap. Pop the tower at the end, grab a Cat and salvage up the yummies. No, it's not the fastest way, but it works every single time and I never worry about losing the ship. Personally, I think it's way too easy considering..........

******How to solo blitz this with ZERO TANK*******

You will need:
-Sentry drones (tech 1 work, tech 2 just kill faster)
-Large guns (don't actually need, but it makes it go way faster)
-one drone link augmenter, or an Ishtar

How to do it:
1) Go 64 km away from the control tower
2) Launch sentry drones and have them engage
3) After your sentries attack twice, start firing your guns
4) KEY STEP: As soon as everything attacks one of your drones, scoop it and DO NOT RE-DEPLOY IT.
5) Watch everything drop aggression and return to the tower. Nothing will re-aggress as long as you do nothing except wait for the tower to die.

note; if your guns need to reload, I would not fire at the tower again as it might aggro the ships. Just wait for your sentry drones to kill it.

Using these steps you can beat this in under 15 minutes with out taking a single point of damage and move on to a mission that is not as annoying as hell.

I got this mission a day before and day after my T2 railgun training was done, so I cleared the room with T1 and then T2 setups. Much easier with some large Spike shot from 168KM - it's like shooting stationary chickens.

Did this in a fast, deadspace tanked navy mega with 425mm prototypes and faction AM ammo. 100% kills in 42 mins. Was one slightly hairy moment when I got myself bracketed and armour dropped to 28%, but overall easy peasy.

Also done in the same ship fitted with blasters. Took at least an hour longer for the kills and wrecks becasue I could only manage one kill b4 I had to run and let my armour regenerate.

I have done this in two different ships. #1 was a Hyperion, 2 large t2 reps, 2 t2 EM/thermal hardeners. about 1.3k dps tank in eft. used 2 425mm rails and 6 350mm rails. Had to keep moving in a big circle to avoid taking too much damage, managed to kill it all before any wrecks disappeared. #2 was an Abaddon, 8 mega pulse's, 2 t2 large reps, 2 em/thermal hardenrs, cap relay II. Same thing but killed quicker. Also note that on a third try with the Abaddon, I brought an exequror who brought my tank up to 1.78k dps. they were slowly grinding my hp away until I killed a few, and I was orbiting the gate beacon. This gives you an idea of the amount of dps that the entire spawn gives once fulled materialized and firing. For a quick finish I recommend single rep with 2 em/therm hardeners and fill rest of slots with damage mods and having a cruiser rep you. Also note that the Kinetic damage in this mission is NOT that heavy, but will build up as more fire upon you. Use this page and view dps, not dph. http://eveinfo.com/npcshipssearch/imperial

Get raven
Add sensor booster
warp in and align to something away from the baddies
shoot tower
warp out when its dead
(though obviously Im repeating what others have said.)

Completed in a Maelstrom with 3 x Gyro IIs, pds, DCUII, X-large shield booster and amplifier, Em and therm hardeners, cap booster and AB, used 8x 1400 scouts and Rep Fleet Proton. Perma ran the AB and orbited the NPC BSs at 75kms and popped them one by one, didn't have to boost shields onec. Took a while but very easy if you keep them at range, but make your sure you do, because the dps becomes enormous the closers you get fro 65kms inwards.

The frigate spawns do not aggro you along with the rest, so you can leave them until the end.

Did this using LeonCado's technique. Worked fine - took around 10 min with T1 wardens.

Couple of comments
(1) The frigs still aggroed me for some reason - pop them with rails, keep the sentries on the tower
(2) Be careful when the tower goes. I was at 55km and my sentries must have shifted target to a BS. Within the few seconds it took to scoop sentries, align and warp my hardened Megathron went from 100% everything to 50% armour. I was lucky to get out. Shoot from 64km like the man says.
(3) If you started further out you could probably kite the swarm after the tower pops and take down some of the BS's. From the comments above taking down the whole swarm might take a while ... but once you hand the mission in the nasties leave. So bookmark a wreck and when you get bored of kiting, hand the mission in and come back to salvage whatever you managed to kill. I only got the frig wrecks; it was still worth a mill or so.

Blitzed this in a Kronos. Use faction antimatter with 2x tracking computer (optimal range scipted), and an afterburner to maintain 55-60km range and transversal. You should be able to kill the control tower in a single clip.

Lost my Tempest on this one, just now... had it fitted with 2x Therm, 2x Kin, DC II... gone in about 10 seconds...

Done in a Megathron, 2x CCC, 1x Auxiliary Nano Pump, AB II, 2x Cap Rechargers, 1x Cap Power Relay, 1x LAR II, 1x Armor EM/Thermic Hardener II, 1 Damage Control II, 2 Magnetic Field Stabilizer II, 7x 425mm Railguns, Faction ammo and Amarr Drones (Infiltrator and Acolyte + Drone Link Augmentor), with a 12M SP pilot.

After warp in, with AB running moved away from the control tower and once at 80km from pirates, started killing Frigates and Cruisers (lots of ships weren't spawned once i warped) using Federal Navy Iridium charges and moving in a zig-zag (which helps avoid 80-90% of incoming fire and to also keeps from getting to far from the tower, which makes the pirates reset and starting to head back). Frigates will pop with one salvo, Cruisers take 2-3. Once done, picked one Battleship, then back to kill new Cruisers that spawned. After that, one BS at a time, trying to keep it under 65km (drone control range) using Federal Navy Thorium charges (about 14-18 salvos to kill each), always zig-zagging to avoid fire/getting to far away, managing cap by turning off AB and using LAR only when necessary. Took about 1 hour to finish all BSes (was about 230km away from the tower). Finally, warped out and in to finish the remaining Frigates and Industrials that didn't aggro.

As stated before, damage can be nasty and risky to loose your ship is very high. Good thing is you can "speed-tank" most of it, just avoid moving in straight line, so that pirates won't reset due to distance from the tower.

Tower took about 60 salvos of Federal Navy Antimatter to be destroyed.

2.2M isk of rewards, 2000m3 of loot (no meta 4 though), Armor Plates/Circuit Boards/Melted Capacitors (6-8M isk at current prices, ~50m salvage time), Amarr Tags: 7x Captain I, 5x Colonel I, 14x General I, 10x General II, 4x Major I, 4x Midshipman I, 5x Midshipman III, 6x Sergeant III, 6x Sergeant Major (16M isk in tags).

Overall a harder than usual mission (personally the hardest i run so far) if you are trying to clean the room. It's a fun and challenging mission, but the isk/hour versus risks don't match.

Better to blitz it or just skip, unless you feel confident about your ship and pilot skills.

The snipe using sentries method works great, especially if you are blitzing.

Method (as posted above by LeonCado):
1) Move your ship to a point at optimal range for your sentries (Wardens work well, but any of them will do fine, even Gardes)
2) Align your ship to a warp destination (not really needed if you do this right)
3) Target the control tower
4) Deploy the drones (none of the ships will have attempted to lock you)
5) Give the drones the fire command
6) When (not if) one of your drones is targeted, return it to your drone bay. They will take it down fast, so you will need to react fairly quickly
7) LEAVE that sentry in the drone bay. They will not attack the other drones. I haven't tried bringing an extra drone and putting it out, but I doubt they would attack it either. HOWEVER if you redeploy the drone they attacked, they will attack it again.

do NOT use a target painter. They WILL attack your ship if you do, even if the drone they attacked is in your drone bay. DON'T let them destroy the drone - if they do, they will target another. By removing the drone they attacked from the field, you are "hiding" the aggressor they are keying on. This actually falls under the category of an exploit, so you can expect it to be changed when the devs have time to consider it.

DO. NOT. EVER. TAKE. THIS. MISSION.
DO. NOT. EVER. TAKE. THIS. MISSION.
DO. NOT. EVER. TAKE. THIS. MISSION.

8 million skill points in combat and I couldn't tank -OR- destroy the last 8 battleships. I had to call in a corpmate. Spent 6 hours trying to solo.

DO. NOT. EVER. TAKE. THIS. MISSION.
DO. NOT. EVER. TAKE. THIS. MISSION.
DO. NOT. EVER. TAKE. THIS. MISSION.

Recommened Damage should be EM first then Thermal, EM risistance is about 10% less than Thermal.

An addition for the sentry-blitz: do not do it afk, because your ship finally gets aggro as soon as the tower explodes

I LOVE getting this mission because the salvage is so good. I get 15-25 MCCs and lots of armor plates (sorry, I don't track those as closely) per run. MCCs and armor plates are worth a lot, especially after you build rigs out of them. But keep in mind that you lose faction standing with Amarr for every Amarr ship you kill, so playing this mission will make Amarr HATE you. I cannot autopilot through Amarr space anymore; the local cops shoot at me at every gate, lol.

Getting back to this mission, here is how I do it. I use a Navy Megathron, but you can manage it in a standard issue Megathron too; it just takes longer. In general I use faction modules where I can, but T2 works ok, just makes timing and range a bit more critical. I use Gallente hardeners 1X EM, 2X Therm, 1X Kin. Also in low are Ammatar armor reper, t2 dmg cntrl, and 2x t2 mag stab. MIGHT be able to get away with dropping kin hardener and adding another mag stab, but haven't tried it yet.

Ship has 3x CCC rigs. In mid I use 2x t2 cap rechargers, Republic Fleet AB, and t2 tracking computer with optimal range script. In high I used 7x prototype 425mm rail guns and drone link augmentor. I'll be moving to T2 or faction guns soon. My drones skills are well developed so keeping my drones in the fight is important even though the Mega doesn't get any drone bonuses.

Warp in and start flying away from the control tower slowly, say 20 m/s. Fire at frigate shipyard until destroyed. Fire at cruiser shipyard until destroyed. If you start taking damage too fast then speed up, but the slower you go the faster the shipyards will go down.

Now go to maximum speed and kick in AB until you are 55-65 km away from closest BS. Note that you do NOT destroy the BS shipyard; you want all the BS to spawn because they have the most armor plates and MCCs. Cruisers and frigs are barely worth salvaging so we want them minimized. Also we don't want any scrammers coming out of the frigate shipyard so we blow it first.

You can now deploy drones but be careful while the BS shipyard is still spawning because they will target your drones. Try to only put drones on ships that are closest to your ship and recall any drone that starts taking damage FAST. Blast away at the NPCs until they're all gone, being careful to balance your range against your tank. Keeping the elite BS at least 65 km away is important, and 70 km is better.

When ur done grab your salvager and rake in the booty! Sell the modules, use the tags to buy stuff in LP stores (which you can either use or sell at a profit), and build rigs out of MCCs and armor plates (and the misc other junk that has to be mixed with them). Sell the rigs for a nice profit. I actually accumulate this stuff for a while then go on a building/selling spree, but that's just me.

DO NOT complete the mission. DO NOT blow up the control tower. Come back tomorrow and do it again! The mission completely resets after down-time. Ships DO NOT begin to spawn until you warp into the dead space. Do this once per day until you have less than a day left to complete the mission. On that day play as normal to maximize the number of BS wrecks to salvage, then blow the control tower. After salvaging, turn the mission in to your agent.

You can play this 9 or 10 times before turning it in. You will get about 200 MCCs out of the deal. Manufacture CCCs out of them and sell them. And don't autopilot through Amarr space!

Forgot to mention that I use standard antimatter ammo. Faction stuff is too expensive to waste on missions, lol.

got the mission again. took advantage of the no-aggro-on-warpin to use a T2-fitted sniperrokh. Using antimatter, I opened fire at about 50 kilometers range. I was able to take down about 1 BS or 4-5 cruisers before having to warp out...

I had 26,000 Shield HP with 70% thermal/EM resist. took forever, but got it done.

I should have heeded my comment above...

just out of curiosity, does anyone have an estimation of the total unresisted DPS in this room? less than a dozen of those amarr battleships chew through 25000+shield HP @70% relevent resists in about a minute. it's gotta be insanely high.

Did it in passive CNR in under 5 minutes. Warped in, aligned to station, shot the tower w faction EM cruise missiles, used drones to take out frigs. When the tower popped (mission finished) I had 50% shields left.

I generally do this one of two ways. The first is if I am running this with a fleet (I take a bunch of newer corpmates on L4 missions fleets, so they can run L4's even thought they don't have the ship/skills to do them on their own.) To do that, I generally accept the mission, wait 20 minutes, then warp in. All of the ships should be spawned by that time, so I can conveniently gather them up and start mincing them. When I run with a fleet, I generally have a support ship (Either my alt or one of my corpmates, depending on if he is online.) So I can pretty much stand and tank everything, as my rep and the 2-3 RR's from the support ship will keep me alive.

When I am doing this solo, I generally hop into my Machariel, which I have conveniently fitted with a Gist X-Type AB, some would say specifically for this mission. I burn out to 70km and start raining hell down upon the ships as they start my direction. I generally start with frigates and then cruisers. I sit stationary to shoot the small ships, as even the slightest movement throws my transversal off against the frigates. I have a Black Eagle Drone Link, which really helps my drones, since I have 71km drone range (I do not have Electronic Warfare Drone skill...) and 71km is the base targeting range of my ship. Once the ships close enough distance to really start hitting hard, I generally aim at a different spot and burn off at 600m/s and set up a new position to shoot them from. All in all, the mission takes 30-40 minutes when running solo, and significantly less when running with a support ship and some extra damage.

For tank, I generally run this mission with 2x thermal, 1x EM, and 1x kinetic T2 hardener. I have a solid base of EM resist to start with, so I find that I generally only need the one EM. I also use a DCUII, because I never fly anything without one, if you ever get one of those "Oh crap" moments, the 60% hull resists will see you through. Or at least give you enough time to take as many of those buggers with you as possible!

I warped out twice before refitting with a 100mn afterburner and kiting in a dual-repped drone Domi... With my fit, I can permarun either one repper or the AB, but not both... so for this to work, you have to be faster than 200m/s and kite before they get within 45km of you. I haven't had to turn on the repper yet, since they barely hit, but salvaging will be a pain since i have a daisy-chain of wrecks stretching over 300km atm.

Also, you can aggro the frigates alone, but aggroing the cruisers (at least, the ones i aggroed) will also aggro all the BS's.

Somebody was asking about total unresisted DPS. Out of curiousity, I loaded up an NPC database. Had to guess at the qtys on the split groups listed here, so made them as uniform as possible.

Total DPS: 8,075.42hp/s (EM: 1,724.82hp/s, Expl: 0hp/s, Kin: 3,600hp/s, Therm: 2,750.60hp/s)

Percentages: 8,075.42hp/s (EM: 21.36%, Expl: 0%, Kin: 44.58%, Therm: 34.06%)

Can you say... toasty?

Re posts by LeonCado and SereBren, this method still works. However i was aggressed by all the frigates. No problem of course and using warden 1's the tower took about 15mins.

This mission is very easy with the right tactics. I did it with a sniper-fitted Abaddon with an afterburner and no tank.

Just warp in and immediately turn around and hit the afterburner until you're at a good range from the group. Take out the frigates on approach, then just hit the cruisers and battleships with high damage ammo at about 60km.

Went down to about 74% armour but had no problems shrugging off most of the damage at about 60-100km from the battleships, using multifrequencies with T2 tachyons at about 50km optimal range.

I find this mission quite easy in a fast Frigate/BS combo. I fly in with a Frigate and gain aggro whilst my fleet mate hurls abuse at the rats with their BS.
As with running any mission in a Frigate - keep transversial up or you go splat.

Mission is easy-to-medium in a Tengu or Nighthawk that orbits at range, and just blasts away with Fury Thunderbolts.

For Tengu, you have it much easier. Stay at 76km (try using Industrials to orbit) and just blast away. The only real concern with an active tanked one using this tactic is the Judgements, but you'll be able to rep up before they can ever break you.

Used 100MN AB Tengu. Orbited tower at 100km, going about 1,300m/s with the AB on. Nothing was able to track me and nothing got into range, so I didn't get hit a single time.

I ordered ships in the site by 'Name' so I would see when webbing / scramming frigates spawned and quickly switch target to them, before returning to the tower.

**Control Tower has zero resists, so hit it with your highest damage type, e.g. Kinetic for the Tengu, Nighthawk or Drake**

Blitzing is challenging, even in a Marauder. I finally managed to control the agro enough to survive in my Kronos by orbiting the control tower at 103km with repper going flat out, and a large Cap Booster keeping me alive. Loadout is as follows:

[Kronos, Smash the Supplier Blitz]
Corpus X-Type Armor Thermic Hardener
Corpus X-Type Armor Kinetic Hardener
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Core C-Type Large Armor Repairer

100MN Afterburner II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
Optical Tracking Computer I
Shadow Serpentis Tracking Computer

Federation Navy 425mm Railgun, Lead Charge L
Federation Navy 425mm Railgun, Lead Charge L
Federation Navy 425mm Railgun, Lead Charge L
Federation Navy 425mm Railgun, Lead Charge L

Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Large Hybrid Collision Accelerator I

after I killed the frigates and cruisers, I warped out then back in. I launched light drones (I'm in a Domi). BS's barely scratched drones, and I fired away with guns, drones took aggro from 20+BS's

Very easy blitz in a T2-fit Raven with cruise missiles, afterburner, and a sensor booster with targeting range script. Orbit the Control Tower at 120 km, use drones to take care of any frigs that come close to you. By the time you are done with the tower, most of the battleships will still be too far away to hit you.

Easy to blitz in a Tengu. Just snipe the tower and kill any frigs that get close

Killing everything except the transports yielded 20.321 mil worth of tags. Grand total of 37 million for the mission. Keep in mind that meta4 guns, damage controls and remote reps can drop, adding a significant amount to total loot.

-2.4% for killing the tower, -0.078% for killing everything else except the transports.

From what I can tell, if your going to take the mission, might as well kill all the combat ships and loot + salvage. -2.4% standing hit for the tower is quite hefty, might as well get paid for it.

Just did this one for the first time, Fleet 'pest, 6 1400mm IIs, 1 LAR II, 2 thermic and one EM hardener (T2), and an AB. First tried orbiting the tower, worked for a while but then they got too close for my comfort. I then did it the old-fashioned way - keep them at range and grind them down. At some 65 km you indeed don't catch much damage and the BS are not too tough. Took me quite some time but I blew them all into next week without any further risk. If you know what you're doing it's not that difficult.

Completed in a faction frigate (Dramiel) in 1 hour 51 mins.

I had to warp out two times to pick up replacement drones, lesson learned; wait until all the spawns have arrived or keep very close watch for the new spawns.

Orbit tower at 20km and use drones take down the frigates, then in close at 500m for the cruisers and battleships, keep the speed up :)

I got NOS'd a few times but the AB kept running, just flipping the shield booster back on as needed.

I did not blitz this, and was stating to wish I had while waiting for the tower to drop, it took 12 mins so was not too bad.

Combat log available on request - Evemail Visionthing

A basic Golem with a Cruise/AB (for range) fit finished it very easily. Past 50k they couldn't pew enough to break even my passive recharge.

An ab/torp golem with Javs should eat them alive and take little damage. I'd suggest a heavy EM/TH tank with 1 painter & AB, then refit with no AB & 3 painters for cruisers. Not a very drone-friendly mission.

Drake Veteran Pilots:

Kill the frigate Shipyward first and fly away.
Kill the cruiser shipyward next (may have to slow down a bit or angle out to keep it in range)... some cruisers will spawn.
Use your drones to kill remaining frigates while you chew up the cruisers.
Kite the BS's with Scourge Fury Heavy IIs (I know they are expensive, but you will make more money with time saved).

Fly safe!

Did this in a Tengu with pith X-type large shield booster, and mostly scourge furies. Had to warp out a couple times to get more ammo and switch one of my two invulns for an em hardener. The BS's are a BITCH, especially the Templar Judgements. In order, I'd go for the Judgements, then the Ultaras/Martyrs, then whatever after that. Totally worth it though.

The mission technically has special ship restrictions (you can see those restrictions, nowadays, without accepting the mission), but compared to normal ship restrictions, the only types it prohibits are:

Black Ops
Capital Industrial Ship
Prototype Exploration Ship

Somehow, I suspect most people wouldn't want to use a Widow, Orca, or Zephyr to run this mission, anyway. :P

Killed everything in 42 minutes in my CNR. Didn't have an afterburner so I crawled out passed 90 km before firing my first shot and ran at full speed away from the pack as I picked them off. After the last one dropped I warped out and back in to get close enough to the tower and the 3 industrials to complete the mission. Salvage and loot (mostly tags) netted over 46 million ISK.

Completed in Maelstrom. Not a difficult mission as long as you stay out of range as everyone says. Judgements pack a punch. 50-60KM worked for me once I eliminated everything but the battleships (all 19 or so of them). My optimal range with ammo loaded was about 30KM so took longer to kill them...Barrage Ammo could be helpful but either way, not overly difficult.

Best payout mission I've done to date...61 MIL total in Bounties, Loot & Salvage

It's worth noting that despite the reported DPS types above (EM: 21.36%, Expl: 0%, Kin: 44.58%, Therm: 34.06%) if you fit your tank for EM/Therm only you're far better off than trying to fit for omni or EM/Kin/Therm. In terms of hitting DPS the kin is only an issue if you get too close.

Just about any fit that can apply DPS at >60km should be fine to do this. My AC Mach has optimal+falloff at 67km and did just fine. If you get much closer than 60km though, the DPS starts rising steeply.

The reinforcement waves seem to be roughly 2-3 frigates, 3-4 cruisers and 3-4 BS per tick. Ticks seem to be roughly every minutes. It got a bit too hairy to work out what arrived when though.

The only downside to this mission is that there's a LOT of them to plough through if you can't lay down a fair amount of DPS at range. It took less than an hour for a full clear and salvage though.

I think it's worth mentioning that there is no proximity aggro after warp-out/in.
I did this by drone sniping in a domi (quite low skilled), and warping out around 200km when they started resetting and targeting my drones. On warp-in they were all around the station again and I had a nice line of wrecks to loot/salvage while sniping them again.
Took a long time(hours), but I didn't get any wrecks despawn and didn't have to go back for loot/salvage.

Also, NEVER get below 60km range with the rats or you are screwed, unless you got the super tank available in EVE

Did it 2 times in 2 toons
The ships that do the MASSIVE damage are:
All Martyrs
All Judgements
All Ultaras

Once you take those out, then you are ok to work on the rest
Note that you WILL need to take out frigs & cruisers, BCs due to neut,TDs

I did the 2 times in a sniping apoc, and a maelstrom, both times I had to warp 4 or 5 times due to the massive damage I got from the above mentioned ships

A Hard level 4 mission be careful...

Solo'd in a decent spec'ed Ishtar (with gardes II), very high damage so need to kite a bit and keep aggro using target painter. Killing everything took about 45 min... Had to warp out and in once or twice. Good pay for the time it took (just over and hour including salvaging)

After reading all the comments here, I decided to tackle this mission with a pure sniper fit Megathron.
Highs:
425mm Prototype Gauss Gun x7 + Federation Navy Thorium or Fed Navy Antimatter

Mids:
Large Micro Jump Drive
Tracking Computer II + Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II + Optimal Range Script
F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines + Targeting Range Script

Lows:
DC II
Reactive Armor Hardener
Federation Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Large Ancillary Armor Repairer + Nanite paste
Magnetic Stabilizer II
Magnetic Stabilizer II
Magnetic Stabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II

Rigs:
Large Anti-Explosive Pump I
Large Ancillary Current Router I
Large Hybrid Locus Coordinator

Hobgoblin II x5
Hammerhead II x5

With the above fit and my current skills (most at 4, a few at 5), the thorium has an optimal of about 90km with another 50 of fall off. This matches up reasonably well with my max targeting range of 128km. I have a somewhat laughable 3 slot tank, it's true. But my thought was, if I'm so far away I never get hit, why do I need a tank?

When I landed in the missions, a number of rats had already spawned, and more were spawning more or less constantly. I turned away from them and hit the MJD. This put me about 150km from the nearest target. So, I turned and slow boated back to just inside my target range of 128km. Then, I targeted and blapped a frigate. This agroed everything and the entire mass started after me. I was pleasantly surprised to see that even at that distance, frigates usually dropped with one shot. However, there were a lot of frigates and they were closing the distance pretty fast. So, I turned and slow boated away. An AB or MWD would have been nice, but I don't have the cap or slots for that since I elected to prioritize damage projection in this fit.

So, I just continued my slow boat away from the blob targetting and taking out whatever got closest. I switched to Fed Antimatter when anything got inside about 60km. The frigates and cruisers were closing distance, the battleships less so (even though they were a lot faster than me).

But anyhow, an interesting thing happened once I got about 300km off the beacon... The rats stopped chasing. They just stopped, and indeed, all the yellow boxes dropped. They couldn't even target me it seemed. so, I came to a stop and started picking them off. I did have an oh shit moment when I got disconnected just AFTER I set an approach course for the few remaining battleships. I wanted to get close enough to use FN Antimatter instead of Thorium. Anyhow, when I reconnected, I had actually been warped out automatically and then warped back into the mission at the beacon. I think this happened because the rats had stopped targetting me. Anyhow, the rats were not where they were before the DC. They had been transported back to their initial spawn locations about 50km from where I landed. They automatically agroed, and for the first time, I got a taste of the damage they could deal... and there were only 3 of them left! By the time the MJD finally fired, shields were gone and I about a third into my armor. Anyhow, I just repeated my initial strategy... I turned and slow boated back inside targetting range and slowly took them out.

That left only the control tower. For that, I docked up and refitted with blasters so I could get the freakin mission over with... Came back with a Noctis after that and spent about 40 min cleaning up the wrecks strewn in a line 300km long.

So, I did it just for the challenge and to say I'd done it. I won't do the mission again. With looting/salvaging, it took me over 3 hours to do the mission this way. Loot and salvage were only 36M, got about 2 million in rewards and 5200 LP. But I also burned through about 3M ISK in ammo. The LP more than offsets the ammo, so figure about 40M for 3 hours. Overall, not a fun mission... just tedious.

Oh, lastly, damage was all EM and Therm (my Reactive AH shifted all its resistance into those).

Just did it for the first time in a T2 pulse fit Navy Apoc. I orbited the control tower at 70km, and started shooting down battleships that aggroed me. All of the frigates and cruisers ignored me. Once I was done with the battleships, I started approaching the tower and taking out all the other ships.
Never got below 90% armor, and I don't have insane skills, implants or fancy mods. I did end up using Scorch almost all of the time, so tachyons might have been a better choice.
In the end, got 50M worth of tags and salvage in 35 min for the mission and 5 min for the salvaging, and only lost 0.07 standings. Would love to do it again.

Same system. Jumped in. Went out to 120km. Sniped the Control Tower down with less than one set of Cruise Missiles. ZERO damage at that range. Warped Home. 5-10mins. 11mil in reward. No faction standing loss. onto the next mission.

how u get 11m in reward??? this is only 3m
I have killed all ships crap loot and salvage.
25m loot 5m salvage. waste of my time.