The imicus is a tech one Gallente frigate that has the best drone capabilities of any single tech one frigate in EVE Online. Because drones are so great for running missions, and the skills required are so minimal, the imicus is the best mission runner for players that are just starting out in EVE Online. This guide gives advice on how to fly and fit the imicus, with a special emphasis on advice for newer pilots.

Why Fly The Imicus?

The imicus has 15 Mbit/sec drone bandwidth. This means that it can field three light combat drones at once. Drones are great at running rampant through hordes of frigate-sized enemies, even with the bare minimum of skills trained. No other tech one frigate can field three light drones at once.

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style="font-style: italic;">The Imicus is the best entry-level mission-runner ship in EVE Online.

Allow me to emphasize the beauty of drones a bit: once you have launched drones and they are fighting enemies, they will continue to attack all of the enemy ships that are aggressing against your vessel. At least, the ones in range. They will continue fighting even if you are jammed with electronic warfare. Additionally, they do not usually take fire once the enemy ships have already begun shooting at you, meaning that you hardly need to pay attention to them once they are out and fighting. For most level 1 combat missions, anyway.

The imicus is especially good for running the tutorial agents that are located in the "school systems" where new players begin their EVE Online experience. These agents offer ten-part missions designed to teach the basics of life in EVE, and give much more lucrative rewards than the missions normally offered to new players. These reward include critical (yet expensive) skills, and some interesting ships. Definitely worth doing, and definitely easiest in an imicus.

High Slot Modules (Drones and Tractor Beam)

• x1 Small Tractor Beam I
• x1 Drone Link Augmentor I

The tractor beam is to help you hoover up mission-critical loot even faster than you already can, and the drone link augmentor is to give you a little bit more leeway with drone control range. Often, a mission will dump you just outside of drone control range. The extra bit provided by the augmentor ameliorates that quite a bit.

The neat thing about the imicus is that, because the drones do most of the work, these modules are both optional. You could skip them, no problem, and not be too sad. Indeed, for a lot of the tutorial missions you need to fit things like mining modules or civilian salvagers in your high slots, so the drones thing is pretty handy by comparison.

Medium Slot Modules (Shield Tank and Speed)

• x1 Afterburner I
• x1 Civilian Shield Booster I

The afterburner is essential. Even before you can use a normal afterburner, you should probably look for and use a "Civilian Afterburner I" module. The speed boost is essential for getting things done within a reasonable period of time.

The shield booster is not essential, since you will mostly be moving too quickly for enemies to keep you within range. When using other weaponry, like turrets, you need to keep your ship pretty darn close to your targets. But drones frees you up from all that, allowing you to stay out of range while your drones do the fighting for you while you remain kilometers away.

For missions where you need to swap out a mid-slot module for some specialized tool like a "Civilian Codebreaker" or whatever, ditch the shield. It is needed only rarely, for most combat missions.

Low Slot Modules (Power and Speed)

• x2 Overdrive Injector System I

Your low slot modules are also pretty expendable. I like having the extra speed from the overdrives. Though things should fit all right with even very low skills, swapping one or both of these out for a "Reactor Control Unit I" or "Co-Processor II" module for extra power grid or CPU is easily done.

Drones

• x3 Hornet I

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style="font-style: italic;">Because the Imicus' drones do all the work, it has a lot of leeway when it comes to fittings.

Though you will want to vary your drone type depending on what kind of enemies you are fighting, the kinetic damage done by hornets is generally applicable for most missions.

Rigs

I do not recommend rigging your imicus, as a new player is likely to have more limited funds and also is at risk for repeated ship loss, even with a really solid ship fitting. If you must rig, shield damage hardeners (like a "Small Anti-EM Field Reinforcer") is not a bad idea.

Skills Needed

For a bare-bones imicus pilot, you will need some basic ship, fitting, and drone skills. I like the imicus for low-skill missions so much that I have cross-trained characters of other races so that they could use them.

• For the imicus hull: Gallente Frigate III.
• For the drones: Drones III, Scout Drone Operation II, and Combat Drone Operation II.
• For the suggested modules: Navigation I, Afterburner I, Engineering II, Energy Grid Upgrades II, Science I, Mechanic I, and Hull Upgrades I.

Let me stress again that these are the barest of skills needed, designed to minimize the skillpoints needed while maximizing your ability to run level 1 missions.

Strategizing The Imicus

Orbit something with your afterburner on, launch your drones, tell them to attack something, and voila, you are doing it right. If you take damage, run your shield booster. For missions where you are taking a particularly large amount of damage, send your drones to attack, then zoom away out of range from your enemies as your drones continue to plink away. As long as you do not go beyond 200km or so, your enemies will continue to futilely chase you, as your drones plink away despite your distance. Note that you cannot tell drones what to do from that far away, but that once assigned to attack, they will continue to do so unless you warp off or get hundreds of kilometers away.

As you get into larger ships (and level 2 missions) consider the Vexor cruiser (or perhaps the Arbitrator if you like Amarr more) as your next step up. From there you can move on the Myrmidon battlecruiser and, eventually, Dominix battleship, as the ultimate drone-using mission-running ship. Hey, it beats missiles.