Faction modules

Sooner or later new pilots hear about or see 'faction' modules: rare, powerful versions of standard modules. They can't be bought or sold through the normal market, and are therefore only traded via contracts.

This page attempts to explain the different kinds of faction module, and to make it easier to determine whether or not using them will be worth the ISK. It does not discuss faction ships or faction ammo.

Remember that University pilots may not fly ships with faction modules fitted when the wartime SOP are in effect.

What Faction Modules Are

Faction modules are modules that have some of their properties enhanced or modified. They may have:

• much lower powergrid and/or CPU fitting requirements than their normal T1/2 counterparts
• lower capacitor consumption than their normal T1/2 counterparts
• bigger bonuses for your ship benefits than their T1/2 counterparts

All faction modules are T1-based, which means that if you can fit the vanilla T1 module, then you can fit the faction part.

Remember that faction modules do not always make your ship perform better than it would with the T2 version of the same module. Some are simply 'better' for some players (usually underskilled but wealthy ones) because they don't require the skills that T2 modules do and/or they're easier to fit.

Confusingly, players casually refer to three slightly different categories of special module as 'faction': faction, deadspace and officer modules. It's hard to say which group is better, as it depends of the class of module, and some modules have faction and officer counterparts but don't have a deadspace version, for example. But as a rule of thumb officer and deadspace modules are better than 'normal' faction modules, and rarer too.

You can find a module's faction, deadspace and officer variants on its Variations tab.

Faction

Faction modules represent souped-up equipment produced by New Eden's various NPC factions for their soldiers' use, and therefore not normally available to the general public. Capsuleers can acquire them from the LP stores of NPC corporations, provided they have enough LP and ISK, and possibly some insignias from that faction's enemies to hand in too.

Thus the simplest (though not necessarily the quickest) way to get faction modules is to work for an agent in that faction and cash some LP in for the module you want.

As with the other categories of 'faction' modules, different faction versions of the same module will have different attributes, so, for example, the Caldari Navy BCS is easier to fit and gives you a higher damage bonus than the Republic Fleet BCS.

Only factions related to any given kind of module will produce it: you won't see a Caldari Navy Mega Pulse Laser as Caldari ships aren't designed for and have no bonuses for lasers. What you will see is a Caldari Navy Heavy Missile Launcher and a Dread Guristas Heavy Missile Launcher (the Empire faction and the Pirate faction), among others from another empire/faction and maybe another pirate faction too.

Determining which one is better in the faction category is tricky at best. The only way to be sure is to use EFT to try out fits. Remember that just because something's an expensive faction module doesn't always mean it's better than the standard T2 module for you -- its advantages may only be relevant to players who can't fit the T2 version, or have bad fitting skills.

Faction Prefixes

These are the prefixes you'll find on faction modules.

• Amarr Navy (Amarr)
• Ammatar Navy (Ammatar)
• Caldari Navy (Caldari)
• Dark Blood (Blood Raiders)
• Domination (Angel)
• Dread Guristas (Guristas)
• Gallente Navy (Gallente)
• Republic Fleet (Minmatar)
• Shadow Serpentis (Serpentis)
• True Sansha (Sansha)

Deadspace

Deadspace modules come from rare rat drops in low sec and nullsec complex and exploration sites. 'Rare' means rare: you can go through many exploration sites and never get a deadspace drop.

Classifying the deadspace modules and their quality is easier as there are just five main groups, and they are consistent in their quality across all modules. There are fewer deadspace modules than officer modules and faction modules, though.

Deadspace groups are divided into three smaller groups each, according to the size of the rat (and the module -- frigate-sized modules come from frigate-sized rats, and so on).

(table of rat types and sizes and names goes here: TODO)

All of these groups sort the quality of their modules with a letter following the name of the faction. So, for example:

Corpus-X > Corpus-A > Corpus-B > Corpus-C

Usually the 'X' variants are very similar to the best officer modules and their prices may be in the billions. Here you have stuff like the Pith-X specific shield hardeners which give you 64%(!) resist bonuses. But the "C" variants may be just like T2 stuff (or possibly worse), so compare them in-game and in EFT before splashing out.

Also, for the same module (10MN Afterburner, for example) sometimes one group's deadspace modules will be better than another's. You may find Corelum and Gistum B, C and A 10MN afterburners, but these are not the same. The Gistum-B 10MN Afterburner is better than a Corelum-B -- in fact it is better than a Corelum-A too! So, again, check in EFT before buying.

Officer

Officer modules only drop from officer spawns (named rats) which are incredibly rare and only spawn in some belts in some regions. They are named after the pirate officer from whose wreck they came. They are similar in quality to the better deadspace modules: the Pith-X Shield Boost Amplifier is identical to Estamel's Modified Shield Boost amplifier, and the lesser Pith-B is identical to Thon's Modified one.

There are a small number of named officers for each pirate faction, who can be ranked by how difficult they are to kill (and how correspondingly high their bounty is). Estamel is the toughest Guristas officer, and Kaikka is the worst, so Estamel's equipment is always the best of the Guristas officer modules and Kaikka's is always the worst.

The order for each pirate faction is like this:

• Angel: Tobias > Gotan > Hakim > Mizuro
• Guristas: Estamel > Vepas > Thon > Kaikka
• Blood Raiders: Draclira > Ahremen > Raysere > Tairei
• Sansha: Chelm > Vizan > Selynne > Brokara
• Serpentis: Cormack > Setele > Tuvan > Brynn

Faction Module Efficiency

So, when is it worth it to splurge on faction, deadspace or officer equipment? If you're a fabulously wealthy supercapital construction magnate, you could conceivably deadspace-fit T1 frigates for solo PvP. The rest of New Eden's pilots have to make some personal judgements about

• the relative expense (relative, that is, to the size of your wallet) of the equipment you're looking at
• the size of the benefit you get from it
• the purpose for which you're fitting your ship, and how likely you are to lose it

Faction equipment frequently gives you a fairly small improvement over T2 equipment for a hefty price increase. As (repeatedly) explained above, sometimes the improvement over T2 is in an area you're not interested in, and sometimes faction equipment can be worse than its T2 equivalent in some respects.

For example, compare the T2 webifier with the Shadow Serpentis faction version.

• the Shadow Serpentis web has 13km range and the T2 web has 10km -- a 30% increase
• the Shadow Serpentis module also requires less CPU
• but the T2 module has a more dramatic effect: it cuts the target's velocity by 60%, while the faction version only cuts it by 55%

At the time of writing the Shadow Serpentis webifier is roughly thirty-nine times more expensive than the T2 webifier. If you're fighting within web range the effect on the target's velocity will often be more important to you than your ability to web from a longer range than normal, and so the T2 will be more useful than the Shadow Serpentis webifier anyway.

If, however, you are fitting a Rapier T2 force recon ship you might prefer the Shadow Serpentis to the T2 webifier because

• the Rapier has massive bonuses to web range, which increase the difference between them: at Recon V, the faction web has 12km more range than the T2 web
• webbing things from long range is part of the Rapier's job in combat, so the range boost is more significant
• the Rapier is fast, agile and can use a covert ops cloak, so you can reasonably expect it to last you for a while (especially if you're an experienced pilot, which you should be if you're fitting force recons)

As this example shows, T2 ships with specialised roles and substantial bonuses can sometimes get lots of utility out of one or two faction modules which suit their particular combat purpose.

The last reason mentioned for putting a faction module on the Rapier -- that there is a (somewhat) lower chance of you losing the ship -- is also behind the widespread practice of faction-fitting long-term mission-running ships.

Because of the predictability of missions, a cautious and experienced mission-runner has a chance of never losing their mission-running ship. Players who are setting themselves up for long-term high-level mission-running as a source of income, frequ