Incursion fitting principles

Fitting principles

Incursion fleets rely on good resists and buffer supported by a logistics. There are simply too many enemies to be able to fit a strong enough local tank, not to mention that by sacrificing a small portion of your fleet to bring in logistics instead of more damage dealers, the rest of the damage dealers can fit more offensive modules and your fleet will perform better.

Once you have a good enough tank, the rest of your spare slots should be used to augment your damage potential. While there's such a thing as under-tanked, being over-tanked is not only wasteful in incursions but even dangerous if done at the cost of offense.

Omni damage

The Sansha incursion rats deal two types of damages, lasers (EM and thermal) and torpedoes (kinetic and explosive). As such, they hit across all four resist types and all incursion fits must reflect that. In general we use a rather erroneous term "70% resists across the board" when we tell people what their resists should be. It is important to know that there is more to it than that.

First of all, it's more of an average resist per type of damage so you can often compensate one resist for the other. The Basilisk for example can leave a reasonable hole in its EM resist thanks to their high thermal resist and still stand up to the damage inflicted by lasers. It also means that most ships can have a slightly lower kinetic resist as long as their explosive resist is equally higher, averaging a solid 70% resist-profile for the damage inflicted by torpedoes.

Second, smaller ships take less damage from torpedoes than larger ships, especially if they are also faster. As such, logistics and strategic cruisers can often get away with slightly lower resists for kinetic and explosive, whereas battleships (especially those with huge signatures) would be better off pushing their kinetic and explosive resists a little bit higher to compensate for taking more damage from torpedoes.

The reason we still use the erroneous "70% resists across the board" term is that if you have 70% resists in all categories, you're good and there's no risk of anyone getting it wrong thinking you can combine a low EM resist with a high explosive resist.

Applied DPS

One of the most important aspects to realize is that whatever dps (damage per second) your favourite third party fitting tool tells you that you have, or whatever the fitting window ingame tells you, is worth nothing if you cannot apply that damage. Hence the term "applied dps" as opposed to "paper dps" which is basically just your potential damage.

Your velocity, your target's velocity, approach vectors, your gun's signature resolution, your target's ship signature, locking speed, locking range, your weapon's optimal and falloff range and tracking all play a vital part in how much of your damage you'll be able to apply on your enemy. See Turret Damage for a more comprehensive introduction to the factors determining how much damage you'll end up doing when you undock and leave your bubble.

Practically this means that utility modules often make or break fleets.

Utility modules

First of all, when the term "utility slots" is used it means the slots you have left over once you've fitted your tank and your weapons. So if your ship has five midslots and four are needed for your tank, then the fifth slot is your one utility midslot. If you ship has eight highslots and seven turrets, you have one utility highslot.

Second, the term "utility modules" refer to modules you fit that doesn't directly give you a higher dps in your favourite third party fitting program or on your fitting screen ingame. Instead they act as force multipliers of sorts making up for weaknesses or capitalize on strengths for increased efficiency. There are also modules that has no impact on your offensive capabilities, but are invaluable when things go wrong.

You should always bring as many of these modules are you can fit, so that you can tailor your ship to the needs of the fleet based on your current fleet composition. For example, if you have two free utility midslots, bring two of each of the below listed utility midslot modules. Do the same for any of the utility highslot modules you can theoretically fit to your ship. Keep the modules in the staging system for quick refits.

The fits presented for Vanguards and Assaults will have a default selection of these modules to ensure we have a good base for most fleets. See Anatomy of Incursions for more information on how you can change these modules around for different tactics based on your fleet composition.

Slot	Icons	Name	Effect
		F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines Sensor Booster II	Scripted module to increase either your scan resolution or your targeting range, or both to a lesser degree .
		Federation Navy Stasis Webifier True Sansha Stasis Webifier	Stasis webifiers slow down the target, dramatically increasing the chance to land good hits and thus increase applied dps .
		Tracking Computer II Shadow Serpentis Tracking Computer	Tracking computers can be scripted for additional range or tracking, or both to a lesser degree .
		Target Painter II Republic Fleet Target Painter	Target painters increase the signature of the target, making it easier to lock and shoot .
		Tracking Link II Shadow Serpentis Tracking Link	Tracking links are like remote tracking computers, able to project increased range or tracking to a friendly player.
		Linked Sensor Network Remote Sensor Booster II	Remote sensor boosters projected the same kind of effect as sensor boosters, stronger but can only be used on others.
		Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter Large Shield Transporter II	Repairs the friendly target's shields. Having a few extra shield transporters for emergency is invaluable.
		Large 'Regard' Power Projector Large Energy Transfer Array II	Consumes cap in order to send it to a friendly target. Giving each other cap like this creates more cap than it consumes.
		Auto Targeting System I Auto Targeting System II	Increases the number of targets your ship can potentially lock, still limited by your own skills however.
		Drone Link Augmentor I Drone Link Augmentor II	Increases the your drone control range.

Recommended implants

There are plenty of implants that are useful for incursion runners. While one shouldn't run around with a head full of expensive implants during war, there are some rather cheap +3% implants you could use even while at war.

When the cost of your clone isn't an issue, there are +6% implant variants of these implants that greatly increase your efficiency.

Gunnery implants

There are several implants improving damage, rate of fire, tracking. Below are implants that help you regardless which ship you fly as they benefit all turret ships.

	Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Motion Prediction MR-703 (slot 7, +3% turret tracking speed)
	Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Gunnery RF-903 (slot 9, +3% rate of fire)

For Battleships and large guns, the next implant is split across each racial weapon system.

	Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Large Projectile Turret LP-1003 (slot 10, +3% to large projectile weapons)
	Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Large Energy Turret LE-1003 (slot 10, +3% to large energy weapons)
	Zainou 'Deadeye' Large Hybrid Turret LH-1003 (slot 10, +3% to large hybrid weapons)

For those flying strategic cruisers as their preferred ships, there's an implant for slot 8.

	Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Medium Projectile Turret MP-803 (slot 8, +3% to medium projectiles)
	Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Medium Energy Turret ME-803 (slot 8, +3% to medium energy weapons)

Genolution implants

For people without +4 or +5 attribute implants, the Genolution implants can be quite useful.

	Genolution Core Augmentation CA-1 (increases powergrid and capacitor)
	Genolution Core Augmentation CA-2 (increases CPU and capacitor)

Capacitor implants

For the less used slots 6 and 8 you haven't got much worthwhile to use in terms of increasing your damage. For those slots you could increase your capacitor if you're flying logistics or a ship with cap-hungry turrets.

	Inherent Implants 'Squire' Energy Systems Operation EO-603 (slot 6, decreases capacitor recharge)
	Inherent Implants 'Squire' Energy Management EM-803 (slot 8, increases capacitor capacity)

Mindlink implants

For the boosters, slot 10 is taken up by the mindlink implants.

	Siege Warfare Mindlink (slot 10, +50% bonus to siege command bonus)
	Skirmish Warfare Mindlink (slot 10, +50% bonus to skirmish command bonus)