How to figure out PvE threat

[Scylax]

I have been playing a couple of months with a few hundred hours of play. I am starting to get into engineering hoping it will help me do a wider range of missions and PvE encounters. I can't quite tell how to assess the actual threat of a mission or point of interest against my actual chance of completing. I am combat rank novice, trade rank entrepreneur and explorer rank ranger. When I go to a missions nd it says it "exceeds your rank of novice" are they saying "we will scale the ships we send against you such that you will die" or just that they "think" it might be harder because I don't have enough ship kills yet to indicate I are not horrible?

As an example: I have slowly been working on the engineer unlocking and my alliance chieftain has a ton of work still to be done. Here is the current loadout: https://s.orbis.zone/bwrW

Example: So I take a mission that looked fun and easy: Rare artwork salvage for expansion effort. Payout is 1.3m and I need to salvage 5 items. I find the location, drop into site and bam, 5 ships attack me. I thought this would be a fun dogfight and so I engaged them but my shields were down fast and I was smoking in about 5 seconds. I barely got out alive. I have tried going back in a few times but every time they overwhelm me. I have the same thing happen with assassination missions, salvage missions, etc.

So the text of the mission had a recommended rank of Elite which (exceeded my current rank of (Ranger), which is my explorer rank, not my combat rank. And does not seem related to my ship capability, only my experience.

So some quick questions:

1. How do I pick missions I can actually do? Do I always follow their recommendations?

2. When they send 3+ ships against you it doesn't seem to matter if I twist and turn and dodge and stay on one of their tails. They manage to apply a lot of hits to my shield and bring it down pretty quickly. Then they all fire missiles and my armor takes hit after hit. Now once I get deep plating and on my armor it will help, but should I gauge an "unwinnable" situation whenever they strip my shields immediately and I am losing 10 percent hull a second?

3. When I get my chieftain fully engineered I will have much better shields and armor: https://s.orbis.zone/auw_ Will I be able to take a mission like this or does "elite" mean I need a fully engineered Imperial Cutter?

Thanks!

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

One can do any mission available, the suggestion of particular rank is just that, a suggestion. Basically it's only there to advise a noob on the possible difficulty and make them aware of the fact that it may be too much for them to handle. Today, rep is so easy to aquire one can make elite as an explorer in a day or two. But are are they really an elite compared to one that didn't utilize any exploits to get the rank faster.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Mission rank determines the strength of NPC ships and AI level. Harmless means you will be fighting very stupid NPCs in weak ships, elite means they will be pretty darn skilled and fly engineered combat ships.

 

[Factabulous]

Example: So I take a mission that looked fun and easy: Rare artwork salvage for expansion effort. Payout is 1.3m and I need to salvage 5 items. I find the location, drop into site and bam, 5 ships attack me. I thought this would be a fun dogfight and so I engaged them but my shields were down fast and I was smoking in about 5 seconds. I barely got out alive. I have tried going back in a few times but every time they overwhelm me. I have the same thing happen with assassination missions, salvage missions, etc.

Any mission that doesn't explicitly state that you need to kill the opposition is easier to do if you work out how to not fight them. Salvage is better done by being fast. When you get better at combat then you can choose to take out the opposition as well, but no need to do that now.

Probably better not to take on assassinations until you have googled a bit on combat. Unless you keep to appropriately ranked targets.

 

[CMDR Jago Kain]

When it comes to salvage missions collector limpets are your friend. As Factabulous says, you don't need to win a 5 vs 1 dogfight, you only need to collect the items and escape.

You don't even need to collect them all from one instance. You can grab one or two, flee, and repeat until you have enough.

 

[goemon]

as it has not been mentioned before:
- there is also, in mission descritpion, a red warning text: "enemies migth be send against you."
-and,for salvage missions and similar,once you are approaching the missions USS: look out for its threat level. threat 0 is safe. threat 4 usually means aboves scenario - in that case prepare for a) grab and run b) full pips to shields.

or don't do missions. none mission npc scale to your combat rank. mission npc scale to mission rank.