Faction warfare: Difference between revisions

Factional warfare mission are missions that take you deep into enemy low-sec territory (6-12 jumps), where you have to do a regular missions, though the difficulty is easier than a regular as these mission are more an incentive to PvP. The difficulty is about one lvl easier than normal empire missions, so a factional warfare lvl3 missions is like a difficult lvl2 normal empire agent mission.

There are only kill missions directing you to kill either NPCs ship(s) or a certain structure and there are no storyline missions after 16 missions have been completed. Just as in factional warfare deadspace plexes MWDs can be used during these mission.  

The major difference between normal and factional warfare missions is that the beacon you fly to will be visible just like plex beacons in the overview, so that everybody (again including neutrals) can see where somebody is doing a factional warfare mission and warp to you to fight you. Due to the decreased difficulty of the factional warfare missions (as the main purpose is to fight other players and not NPCs) the pay out of factional warfare missions in terms of ISK is slightly lower than normal missions and the NPCs, as they are faction Navy ships don't give bounties. They loot they drop is mainly consistent of Navy tags though the occasional module is there as well.  

The original point of these missions is more or less putting a big sign on your pod telling everybody, please gank me and being an incentive to roam around in low sec.

Just as with plexes the factional warfare missions are gated with acceleration gates, limiting the ship size passing through it. The ship restrictions are just the same as for plexes.

With all missions being kill mission a lot of these are partially blitzable, depending on the incoming damage and your tank. The structures and NPC mission targets though are setup in a way to provide a challenge but not being overly dangerous as their incentive is to keep you for a certain time in low-sec to provide a change for a PvP encounter.

In general all missions are soloable but will take a lot more time and effort as normal empire faction with an increased risk of a player encounter. Al mission up to lvl3 can be done to a fair extend that they are worth doing it solo for the LP reward to get the new and unique faction navy items. Lvl4 missions will be taking a lot more time and thus increase the risk making it a close draw to a empire lvl4 mission.

 

The mission NPCs though still use the "old" AI thus only aggroing the first ship close to them, allowing a fleet to speed tank the NPCs while the rest of the gang kills the objective. Another important difference to empire missions is that you can decline factional warfare missions from your agent as often as you want (since [http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=191 |Patch notes for Apocrypha 1.5, released 20 August 2009]). This allows you to skip missions till you get a few mission in one agent.

 

The average LP payout for FW mission was:

 

 

=== Tactics ===

 

As mentioned before, in a group of players one can speed tank the NPCs while the others go for the main objective. Also skipping through missions allows the whole group to pile all missions in one or just a few close to each other systems. Depending on the fleet composition, it's also worth doing all missions from all agents as lvl1 missions can be done by the smaller ships, while the bigger go for the higher lvl missions.

 

 

Watch out for neutrals as they can enter these mission just like opposing militia members.

 

 

The deeper you fly into enemy systems can be "safer" depending on how the different militias operate. A militia being strong in the offensive might roam your militias systems more often then their own, reducing the likelyhood of an engagement when operating deep behind enemy lines. This is naturally good if you want to focus on mission objectives, though less good if you are looking for PvP.