Missioning: Actually fun??

So before I went pvp, I was a small time missioner. I hate grinding factions, I hate doing missions. Well, after my massive losses (especially when I was moving all my stuff, more on that later) I was forced into resuming my awesome level 1 missions.

When did I lose a nice chunk of my stuff? Well, that would be one very bad day for me, both in RL and in game. It was about 2 or 3pm EST, so w/e that is in EVE time. Before prime time basically. Being that it didnt seem busy, I did not bother checking my maps for ship/pod losses along my route. Big mistake, because had I done that, I would have seen the gate camp waiting for me. In my bestower, with a few ships, equipment and all of my blueprints. Yay for another 100 million or so isk loss! Yeah, not happy about that, but it was my mistake for not gathering intel and scouting it out. So what, it still pissed me off and I called names and let the tears flow for a minute while warping my pod to the next gate and continueing my journey to my new home.

So, to find a new home, I needed to find what I wanted. I wanted a level 4 agent, but am only able to use level 1; which means I need a system that has both level 1 and level 4. I dont want low sec or null sec missions (Even though Blood Raiders are the cool kids pirate), so I needed a deep high sec, close-to-dead-end system. I also dont want distribution because I hate making a lot of jumps and usually fall asleep in the process of warping. Also, not going to do mining missions, so I need a security faction. For Amarr space, I chose Ministry of Internal Order, just sounds cool to me. I also do not want to mess up my Caldari faction and minimize the amount of Minimatar factions I destroy. Dont care about Gallente, those worthless bastards. Anyhow, with my very demanding demands in a system, I found one out in Ahkragan. Level 1 missioning to get 5.0 status with the Ministry and I will be able to get missions from the level 4 guy.

Awesome, I thought. Now, being level 1 missions, and being that Ill be doing them for awhile, I dont want to just plow through them mindlessly. If I wanted shit handed to me, I wouldnt be playing EVE, even though my skills allow that option if I wanted. So I am doing these in my awesome Punisher. For about 10 missions in a row, looking in my journal at the mission details, I would see red text stating that a cruiser would be more of an acceptable ship for it. Well, I wanted a challenge, so I ignored it. Yeah...About that....

My Punisher did amazing. My shields got molested like always, and I wasnt able to tank the amount of incoming damage from all these ships, but as they dropped, my armor went up slowly. Only issue I was having is that my cap wasnt stable, forcing me to pulse my repper. Similar issues as in pvp I thought. And in that, I figured out why missions are there: Training for pvp. All the targets to kill, while still trying to stay alive. This now became fun for me.

When before I did missions, I came in with my Harbinger. Killing was easy, mindless. Boring. With my frigate, it was actually fun because I did not want to leave the fight nor did I want to lose my ship. I only did a few missions, but my standings with the Ministry of Internal Order is now 2.11 with Connections 3. Good deal, only 2.9 to go.

Well, I came to a mission that I just could not do due to the amount of ships and their size (cruisers) I was facing. I dont want to go to cruiser or battlecruiser class ships though, so I went with Assault Ships. At the reccomendation of others, I went with the Retribution. With a 515 setup for slots, I dont think Id use this ship for pvp, but in missioning, its pretty good. I fit an AB to the mid, a nos in the 5th slot, 4 guns, and a thermic armor hardner to plug that hole. These ships were using a mix of scorch lasers and missiles, which really bother me, because I can get explosive resist to 92%ish or boost my EM to 80% or boost thermic from 50ish% to 75%. I decided, obviously to plug the thermic hole. Worked out well imo, with more rounded resists.

So now with my ship and a plan in action, I am missioning now to raise my standings with this faction, hopefully earn a few isk and LP in the process and get back to pvp once I do this.

Also, as an aside, do you think salvaging level 1 missions are worthwhile or to not bother?? Im using a Retribution, so my cargo hold is only about 135 m3, meaning I cant hold a ton of the bigger stuff. Due to the CQ, I am unable to run more than one client when docked; the game just says screw you and crashes, so I wont be using a salvager alt.