I normally don't do too many things in EVE that involve firing a weapon since Odyssey changed exploration sites. Sure, mining is pretty hazardous with Angel Cartel ships visiting every 15 minutes, but that's just a type of mining that doesn't require mining lasers. I usually do courier missions or run items to market for sale. All that requires is left-clicking a gate on the overview, moving my mouse up to the jump panel on the radial menu, and release. At the end of the trip, providing that the tracking camera actually points to the station, I then click on the destination, move my mouse up to the dock panel, and dock. Rinse and repeat.
On my quest for the Tempest Fleet Issue 2-run BPC however, I'm running through COSMOS complexes trying to gain that all important faction standing. Those complexes are just a little more challenging than combat missions, mostly because the rats don't want to abandon the field and zerg you. Dirty blobbers! One of my COSMOS missions required going deep into a complex and even with two battlecruisers, by the time I got to the first gate I was out of cap boosters for my ASB-fit Cyclone. Time to warp off, restock, and reevaluate my tactics.
My normal tactic for going into a mission is to look at the overview and choose my targets based on distance. That was drawing too much aggro. So I decided to do something I'd never done in a mission/complex: ignore the overview except to use it as a guide to tell me the distance to the internal gate.
Now, despite what haters say, you can manually pilot a ship without needing an object to align to. So I set the Cyclone to keep 3km from the Hurricane and started maneuvering the small gang toward the gate, trying to skirt the ships I could see between me an my goal. I waited until the rats started shooting and then tracked the fire back to the ship. If the ship had a filled-in red circle, I just left-clicked on the rat, moved the mouse down to the target pane of the radial menu, and released. Once the target was acquired, click on the stacked heavy missile launcher icon on the ship control panel to launch missiles (for some reason the rats were avoiding the auto-cannon equipped Hurricane) and leave wrecks in my wake. Easy peasy.
I actually enjoyed fighting that way instead of just staring at the overview and gauging distances. My Minmatar standings are only 9.52 modified/9.41 unmodified right now so after completing the missions for the last 4 COSMOS agents I'll need to complete a boatload of storyline missions. I already dual box with two ships using different weapons systems to add some spice to missions. Maybe I just found another way to make the missions more entertaining.
