Recon, Level 2

On 2 of 3, flew at locked gate in shuttle, triggered ambush at 9k from gate. Warped out. Objective completed.

completed 3 of 3 in a Thorax with a Y-5A Hydrocarbon I Afterburner

Shooting at the Mining Corporation Headquarters causes the hostiles to appear and you get instant agro. Now you don't have to approach the accelartion gate

Completed 3/3 on Crusader (2 overdrives / 2 nanofibers / 2 aux thrusters rigs / AB / Small SB) in 25 seconds. Only two waves caught - first gives 20% damage to shield, second drops shield to 70%.

Completed 3/3 with a Slasher, nothing but a 1MN Afterburner, and a Small Shield Booster I, and the damage never touched the hull. With my current skills, shield 270, armor 291, and I top out at 1060 m/s but I finished with room to spare, mind your cap and don't let it run out.

Completed 3/3 in Atron with Damage Control I, 1MN Afterburner I, and Small Capacitor Battery I. Remember to disable AB as you get within 5 km of gate or you may overshoot it. Burned up several Slashers and Condors trying this earlier. Atron ran out of cap without the battery.

Station took about 1600 Heavy missiles and dropped crap. 3xT1 items.

For part 3 if you need speed use a Vigil with 3 overdrives on the low slots, as it can achieve more speed than the Slasher. It can do 2101m/s with a Gistii B-Type 1mn Afterburner and proper skills at "All level 5".

Wow. Completed 3/3
Minimum requirements:
1. Catalyst; pure armor tanking
2. NO gunnery whatsoever
3. Fitting: mid slots: cap recharger 1, Y-S8 Hydrocarbon Afterbuners 1
Low slots: Electrostatic Heat Diffusion Plating, Dual SheatHed Reactive Plating 1, Small armor repairer.

As soon as you warp into the cloud, first activate AB, then approach acceleration gate.
Meanwhile, when shield is about to collapse, active small armor repairer.
At appr. 17 km activate acc. gate, cap will be empty about this time.
4th wave will hit you, but then you'll already be warping out. Shield 100% damage, Armor about 50% damage, no structure damage.
Just made it.

Recon ( 3 of 3 ) Completed easily in a Caracal with Shield Power Relay, Damage Control, 10MN Afterburner, Invulnerability Field and 3x Large Shield Extenders. Complete Fitting was T1.

Vahan's comment is no longer correct. Firing at the station in 2 of 3 will get you tons of aggro, but will not complete the objective. Essentially it'll just make the mission much harder. Be patient and fly out to the gate.

I used an armor-tanked Rupture with no buffer and an AB II (590 m/s), i.e. a relatively slow boat. Went straight out to the gate in 2: almost no damage at all (> 80% shields). Was slow off the mark in 3 and forgot to switch on my DC II for two thirds of the way. Didn't even get into armor all the same, ended up with about 35% shields. Easy.

3/3 done in stripped down vexor, 2 x eanm, DCU, med repper, 100MN afterburner. gets up to nearly 1km/s, turn it off at 10km and coast to the gate. Never went below 40% shield

3/3 Easily done in a cruiser (Caracal) with 3 large/1 medium shield extenders and a 10mn AB. Only moving at 400m/s I arrived at gate with 75% shield left. Apparently overkill for an easy walk in the park... only burned through about 2k worth of shield getting there.

The waves of damage are NOT timed.

Attempted to do this in a Crusader, 1900 m/s with an AB, shields stripped within 5 seconds, and 10 sec later about 25km from the gate, the final wave triggered instapopping me.

Shuttle works for 2 0f 3, never broke the shield before warp out.

on 3 of 3 used my clean-up catalyst with overdrive injectors and AB. 1 med shield boost I kept the shields pumping, the waves never cracked the shield tank.

Completed part 2 with executioner, T2 1mn ab, 2 odj.
Completed part 3 with T2 1mn ab, SAR II, N-type reflective membrane, n-type thermic hardener, dcu II and cap power relay. armor resists: 73 em, 74 therm, 69kin, 83 exp. 60% on hull.

2/3 Completed with shuttle
3/3 Done in Caracal with 2x Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Injection 1x Photon Scattering Field I, 10mn afterburner I, Medium Clarity Ward Booster and 1x Damage Control I

I made it to the gate with 80% shield left, never having to activate the booster.

2/3 very easy in the thorax.

3/3 Just manage thru with 30% hull damage. Did use my armor rep 1 all the way...

Did 2/3 in a shuttle like so many others and took my rifter that I use for level 2s for 3/3 and did some speed fitting on it:
Meds: 10mn Afterburner t2 (That's right, cruiser size baby!), 2x small shield extender t2
Lows: Overdrive Injectoer t2, 2x Micro Auxiliary Power Core
Worked like a charm and with my skills this baby runs over 2100 m/s

did 3/3 in an ishkur with AB II, overdrive II, Damage Control II, SAR II, meta 3 medium shield extender, warped out with 75% shields left

did 3/3 in a Comet with ABII (1151 m/s) no DCU, just faction lows, but it never got through my shield, finished with 35% left. Did all 3 in same ship with same fit, easy.

2/3: Shuttle works. Warp out when you see red crosses.

3/3: Catalyst with fast setup works. 2x overdrive injector, 10MN Afterburner. 1x medium shield booster. I touched the booster three times, and the shield held.

did 3/3 in a Rifter with about 30% shield left:

Micro Auxiliary Power Core I, 2x Overdrive Injector System I, Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners, 2x Small Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I

Towers drop T1 munitions, Headquarters drop 3 items - 'Limos' Rocket Launcher, Cap Booster 150 x10 and (Faction Ammo) Federation Navy Uranium Charge S x1000

On Recon (3 of 3), the schedule of actual damage done to my Dominix was as follows. I was armor tanked, but only shields took damage unless otherwise noted. My Dominix was afterburning at 284 m/s. Time is measured in seconds since the first wave hit; the first wave will hit as you come out of warp.

0 seconds - 117 damage
5 seconds - 161 damage
25 seconds - 219 damage
44 seconds - 258 damage
65 seconds - 315 damage
95 seconds - 335 damage
115 seconds - 406 damage
135 seconds - 464 damage
155 seconds - 522 damage
175 seconds - 900 damage
204 seconds - 3200 damage (shields were taken out completely by this wave. Armor damage was minimal, but I was armor hardened.)

I tried to study my combat log, but the individual damage entries were not consistent with omnidamage waves hitting a standard Tech 1 0%/20%/40%/50% resistance shield.

I have deleted one of my previous comments because I made an erroneous statement about the gas cloud damage having an explosion velocity.

I got this mission a few more times, so I took the opportunity to do some testing using shield hardeners. I brought my Dominix into Recon (3 of 3) three times, each time with a shield extender and a different hardener, and recorded the damage reported in the log. I then compared the logs and calculated the pre-resist damage.

Strangely enough, the damage wave at 5 seconds was not observed by my Dominix. But, when I used the result to fly an Atron through the next time I got the mission, the 5-second wave WAS observed. It's possible that only fast ships will see the 5-second wave.

I now believe the schedule of damage to be as follows. For each wave, the number of seconds since the first damage wave is listed followed by the four damage types in order of EM, Thermal, Kinetic, Explosive.

0 seconds - 50, 30, 30, 50
5 seconds - 70, 40, 40, 70 (finicky; you may or may not get hit by this)
25 seconds - 90, 60, 60, 90
45 seconds - 80, 100, 80, 100
65 seconds - 120, 120, 90, 90
95 seconds - 130, 100, 100, 130
115 seconds - 140, 140, 140, 140
135 seconds - 160, 160, 160, 160
155 seconds - 180, 180, 180, 180
175 seconds - 200, 400, 300, 400
205 seconds - 1100, 1200, 900, 1200

Total cumulative pre-resist damage (if you stay the entire duration) is:
2320 ElectroMagnetic, 2530 Thermal, 2080 Kinetic, 2610 Explosive

Any ship with more than 9,540 effective hitpoints SHOULD survive the full duration. More effective hitpoints is better, obviously; sending in a ship with 9541 effective hitpoints without self-repair capabilities would be very unwise. But 9,540 effective hitpoints is the benchmark by which you can judge whether or not your ship can eat the full damage and come out intact.

As you can see, it's almost (but not quite) omnidamage, so omnitanking would be a good idea if you have the slots for it. If you absolutely must prioritize resistances, cover your explosive first; Tech 1 shieldtanking ships will naturally have this covered. The second resistance to cover is EM if you intend to jump the acceleration gate within 2.5 minutes, thermal otherwise; Tech 1 armortanking ships will naturally have this covered.

Recon 1/3: Completed in a Amarr Shuttle, go to acceleration gate and activate.
Recon 2/3: Completed in a Amarr Shuttle, go to acceleration gate, at 9000m hostiles show up, warp home.
Recon 3/3 Completed in a Amarr Destroyer (Coercer) with only 1 10MN afterburner, 3 Overdrive Injectors I and 1 Small Armor Repairer. No sweat at all...had just begun taking armor damage when I reached the acceleration gate. Peaked at 1300m/s.

2/3: The comment by VahanKoloyan that you can shoot at the headquarters and complete the mission is incorrect. Shooting at the headquarters does cause the mercs to spawn but it does not cause the mission to complete, you still have to get to the gate.

(3/3) Moa (Cruiser 4) ... AB II, IVU II, 2x L-SE II, DCU I ... Shields at 7328/8193 on exiting.

Just had an interesting experience with this mission, need someone else to confirm:
Wanted to try it in an untanked condor for the lulz, warped in, got first wave of damage (50% shield left) bookmarked acceleration gate, warped back to station and then tried warping directly to the gate.
Didn't work of course but worth a try I thought... until I got damage directly after warping in, instapopping me.
This means that the damage waves increase and trigger even when you are not in the pocket. Switched to a Drake, approached acceleration gate without propulsion mods, TOOK NO DAMAGE whatsoever.
So, warping in once and out again, waiting for damage to pass, and then warping in again should do the deal with any ship, needs confirmation though...

Had the mission again, same symptoms, warped in, got 1st damage wave, warped out, waited a few minutes, warped in again, no damage at all while approaching acceleration gate!

Did not test the warping out theory. The third part was easily completed in condor with AB, Small SB, and Overdrive injector, all of which were T2. Finished with 75% armor remaining.

With 395m/s speed you will be able to avoid the final wave damage.
I suggest going atleast 420m/s+ for easy clear.

Confirming what Kasobaan said, just jump in, out, and back again then mosey on over.