Faction warfare
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Factional warfare was introduced in June 2008 as part of the Empyrean Age Expansion. The intent was to ease the step from the Player vs Environment (PvE) game play to Player vs Player (PvP) gameplay. It moves the EVE storyline into a factional war which had been alluded to during storyline missions and in-game news.
It introduced militias for the 4 main empire factions and created two wars and alliances: Caldari vs Gallente and Amarr vs Minamatar with Caldari and Amarr allied against Gallente and Minmatar. The sovereignty of certain Low Sec systems became contested and they can be captured by completing objectives called complexes (plexes) which provide victory points allowing a system’s occupancy to change. Completing Faction Agent Missions and capturing plexes provides capsuleers with increased faction standings, rank and loyalty points.
At a glance, Factional Warfare provides:
- A stepping stone from PVE to PVP
- A militia community to participate in, fleet up with and meet new people / corps.
- Plexes of varying sizes to allow newer players to restrict opponent ship size. Want to fight only frigate vs frigate? Find a novice plex.
- Defensive plexes that provide very low skilled players with the opportunity to participate and earn Loyalty points.
- Faction mission agents that provide LP rewards along with a higher potential for PVP.
- A reason to enter low security space, take risks and get rewards.
- War targets in high sec due to the constant state of war-dec.
Introduction
Factional warfare introduced with the Empyrean Age Expansion 2008 was introduced by CCP to Eve to ease on the step from the PvE game play to the PvP gameplay. Storyline-wise it moves the game into the inter-factional war that had been hinted at in several storyline missions and in game news items.
FW puts the player into an "alliance" that is constantly war-dec'ed with two other "alliances" called militias. Each militia is holding occupancy over certain low sec regions between the two empires which the players fight for control vs the opposing militia. The central mechanism around FW is gaining occupancy by conquering factional warfare dungeons commonly called plexes. These plexes focus factional warfare participants into mostly frigate and cruiser size ships due to their restrictions on their entry acceleration gate.
Since these militias are tied to the four high sec NPC empires, the opposing NPC empires will take measures if you enter their empire space, sending/spawning Navy NPCs to shoot opposing militia members in 1.0 to 0.5 to protect their high-sec space, dividing high-sec into safer and unsafer high-sec while still being part of an empire war dec.
Getting in
There are two ways to join factional warfare. You can either join the NPC militia corporations as a solo player:
- The 24th Imperial Crusade (Amarr)
- The State Protectorate (Caldari)
- The Federal Defense Union (Gallente)
- The Tribal Liberation Force (Minmatar)
or you can join a militia with your whole corporation. Corporations are moved into a FW faction after the next downtime, either instantaneously or, if they're leaving a player alliance, after 24 hours.
To join the militia of your choice you need in both cases standing of 0.0 with the empire of that faction (social skills are not taken into account). You can get this by doing regular missions for corporations of that empire. For corporations the corporation standing needs to be above the 0.0 with that appropriate empire, the individuals standing is not taken into account (at least not directly).
Two main standings are used in Factional Warfare:
- Faction standings for joining requirements and NPC aggression.
- FW Militia standings for ranks (detailed later)
A detailed process is described at the eve online guide [1] .
Factional Warfare requirements
Apart from the 0.0 standing with the appropriate faction, there are no further in game requirements, apart from not being on a trial account.
Skill-wise you should be able to fly a frigate with a MWD, scram/disruptor and web. This correlates with having the Tackling level I certificate and the Navigation level II certificate.
- Understand the different overview settings
- A fleet movement class will be very useful
- Understand how to operate the onboard scanner (Apocrypha changes not taken into account yet)
- Understand how to use the star map is also not a must but can be an advantage
- Understand the directional scanner
Apart from that I suggest being partially self sufficient ISK wise and being able to lose several frigates and cruisers including their fittings.
What should I do before I joined a militia?
Before you join a militia make sure you don't have assets you need and are to dangerous or to expensive to be moved in the opposing empire faction space.
Further check your overview settings and adapt them. Personally I have a separate tab with opposing militia members just as normal war dec's with a flashy background on overview. I also have neutrals on overview to identify “out of corp” spies in rookie ships.
You also want to prepare a few ships before hand to quickly jump into a new one, for Minmatar FW Amamake is a common rally ground so a base near or in this low-sec system can be handy. For other militias I suggest looking at the FW Map pack from Ombey's Eve 2D Maps [2].
Having Teamspeak, Ventrilo and Eve Voice ready for usage will help as well. In the Minmatar militia Eve Voice is commonly used by all corporations, though the corporations have usually an internal TS or Ventrilo server. From hearsay, I heard that the Amarr militia has been using a more or less Amarr militia public Ventrilo server to handle militia fleets.
I personally prefer Eve Voice as it is available for everybody and you don't need to setup an additional program. Identifying who is talking is also a little easier.
Consequences of being in a militia
The consequences of being in a militia:
- You are now in an empire war with all it consequences.
- You now will be attacked by other NPC faction navy spawns if you enter the opposing factions space. These will have different strengths depending on the security rating of the system and they will use neuts/nos, EW and web. They will however not scram/disrupt you, so if no player intervenes, you will be able to run away.
- If you entered the NPC militia you will have that NPC militia as corp channel and have access to a militia channel, resembling an alliance channel. The NPC corp channel is not used that much; the militia channel is usually full with people looking for fleets, advice, fleetmembers and/or intel which is semi reliable.
Just as in Eve Uni fleets, don't give out fleet locations in militia chat but feel free to rely intel. Also some FW corps have spies in the opposing militia channels and sometimes even in fleets.
You can now find plexes in low sec and conquer these to gain victory points for your faction. You will also be able to fight for control of the control bunker who defines the occupancy of a system. Gaining victory points will also result in increase of personal faction standing and with increasing standing you will gain ranks within the militia, shown on your decoration tab.
The LPs you gain with your militia will also allow you to buy unique items only offered through the militia LP shop and buying faction navy ships at a fixed discount compared to non militia members.
Standing Impact
- Main article: Factional Warfare Standings
Some pilots may be concerned that joining Factional Warfare will result in irreparable damage to some of their faction standings, leaving them excluded from some empire space for the rest of their eve career. This isn't necessarily the case, as pilots can participate in Factional Warfare without ruining their standings, if they don't want to.
In summary, you don't actually lose faction standing for killing other pvp pilots (you do lose standing with the enemy's faction militia corporation, but that has little impact on gameplay).
You'll only lose enemy faction standing for killing faction NPC's in plexes, or by getting 'promoted' by your own (npc) faction warfare corporation, which will happen as a result of completing plexes or missions. You don't have to complete plexes to get the pvp you desire (but you can still enter plexes to use their tactical benefits). You don't need to do missions.
- See Factional Warfare Standings for a more detailed look at standings impacts
- See Gaining faction standings fast for a look at repairing standings
- See Faction Standings for a more general look at the topic.
Now I'm in what can and should I do?
Factional warfare is apart from restricting your access to two of the major NPC empires and dumping you into a high sec war expanding your gameplay with two features, factional warfare mission and plexing. Both accumulate victory points which at a certain (only internally tracked) point make the control bunker of a system vulnerable. At this point the offensive faction can attack this bunker and turn the occupancy from the opposing ones into their owns.
Taken from the official guide:
There are different system states appearing in the "Occupancy" line on the top-left corner of the screen depending on the attacker/defender general strength status:
- Un-contested: natural state of a system occupancy and thus not directly shown. The system is currently not actively fought over by different factions.
- Contested: FW Dungeons have been claimed by the offenders. Defenders may take it down to "un-contested" by winning FW Dungeons back.
- Vulnerable: the attacking force won enough FW Dungeons to put the Control Bunker to vulnerable for attack.
- Lost: the system has been successfully captured by the attacking faction. As such, the Occupancy will switch to the new faction after the next Downtime. Existing FW Dungeons no longer affect the power scale and new ones won’t spawn until then.
To change these states each side has to gain victory points by either doing factional warfare complexes aka. Plexes or by doing factional warfare missions.
Plexing
Plexes are the major feature CCP introduced with factional warfare. These plexes spawn in the low-sec regions between the four major empires and divide the two wars into two war zones, one between the Amarr and Minmatar and one between the Gallente and the Caldari. These factional warfare low sec parts are displayed on the Dotlan EveMaps (under Special Maps).
These plexes are anomalies that can be scanned down by militia members of both sides with the normal onboard scanner around each planet within a system. If you warp to the plex the acceleration gate beacon will become visible for everybody in the system (you can cancel the warp but it will still become visible to everybody) and everybody can pass the acceleration gate if they fly a ship within the gates restrictions.
Originally there was a bug that would always drop you at 0 on the acceleration gate, no matter which distanced you selected, but this was later fixed by CCP.
Plexes come in four sizes, the larger the plex, the more victory points received:
| Type | Countdown | Radius | Allowed ships | NPC Spawn |
| Novice | 10 minutes | 30km radius | industrials, T1/Faction frigates (no Noobships) | Frigate NPC |
| Small | 15 min | 30km radius | All frigates and destroyers | Destroyer NPC |
| Medium | 20 min | 30km radius | all previous + cruisers and battlecruisers (no T3 cruisers) | Cruiser NPC |
| Large | 30 min | 30km radius | Unrestricted | Battlecruiser NPC |
All plexes are defended by NPCs of the faction that is currently holding the occupancy of the system. The difficulty ranges depending on the size and they respawn after a while.
The Button
Each Plex has a so called "button", which will have a timer according to the size. If you are within the 30 km radius, the timer will count down. Once the counter reaches zero, you have captured that plex.
Locating a Plex
Open up your scanner window and make sure you select to view cosmic anomalies. Plexes will show up as anomalies in the shipboard scanner. Plexes are not visible to players outside of the militias until a militia member attempts to warp to the beacon. At that point everyone in the system can see the beacon on their overview.
Rewards for offensive plexing:
| Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 | Tier 5 | |
| Novice | 5000 LP | 10000 LP | 17500 LP | 25000 LP | 32500 LP |
| Small | 8750 LP | 17500 LP | 30625 LP | 43750 LP | 56875 LP |
| Medium | 12500 LP | 25000 LP | 43750 LP | 62500 LP | 81250 LP |
| Large | 15000 LP | 30000 LP | 52500 LP | 75000 LP | 97500 LP |
Note: No rewards are gain for offensive plexing in vulnerable or lost systems.
Inferno 1.3.2 added loyalty points for defending plexes. LP rewards for defensive plexing are given at a reduced and variable rate:
- LP Gain = Base value of plex * (Contested percentage of the system/100) * 0.75
This means that the higher the contested percentage of the system, the higher the LP reward given, up to a maximum of 75% of the base reward value.
Tactics for plexing
As every FC runs his fleet differently I just go over a few common tactics and approaches to finish plexes offensively or defensively.
First, do not open the plex immediately, as plex beacons only visible in space for everybody after somebody warps to it. Some FCs want to control which and how many plexes are open to hide them and do them one by one, while others open them all at once to do them all at once.
In the past, people would “speed tank” plexes and not destroy the NPC guarding the plex. As of late 2013, the NPC must be destroyed to offensively capture a plex.
You can use the size restrictions of the gate to your advantage. You can either wait inside (drop a can at your warp-in point from the acceleration gate) or gank people who warp to the beacon. Further sitting at the acceleration gate you can see what ship types and how many are in the plex by using the d-scan.
Defensive plexing can be done against higher number of opponents if you stay close to the beacon and hide between your faction navy NPCs.
The internal plex spawning mechanism keeps track of the total plexes within a constellation (see also the FW maps) and due to a down time (DT) mechanism the likelihood of plexes spawn after DT is a bit higher. Enforcing focus to a certain constellation will thus result in a slightly higher efficiency in accumulation enough victory points to make a control bunker vulnerable.
Factional warfare missions
Factional warfare missions take you deep into enemy low-sec territory (6-12 jumps) where you must complete a regular mission. The difficulty of the missions are about one level easier than normal empire missions. For example, a factional warfare L3 mission is similar to one of the harder L2 missions given by normal empire agents.
All missions are encounter missions and you kill either NPCs ship(s) or a certain structure. There are no storyline missions after 16 missions have been completed. Just as in factional warfare deadspace plexes, MWDs can be used in the mission pockets.
The major difference between normal and factional warfare missions is that the beacon you fly to will be visible to everyone in the overview, just like plex beacons. Anyone in the system, 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. There are no bounties for the NPCs since they are faction Navy ships. The loot they drop is mainly Navy tags, although the occasional module might be there as well.
The original point of these missions is more or less putting a big sign on your location telling everyone, please gank me I'm doing a mission, thus encouraging PvP. This provides an incentive to roam around in low sec and surprise missioners in mid-mission.
CCP overhauled the Factional warfare missions as well as the loyalty points shop. The overhaul included a higher reward in Loyalty points per factional warfare mission as well as some unique items only obtainable from the militia corp loyalty point shop. These items include new faction navy items as well a few unique new faction ships. In addition to adding these new rewards all stuff bought from a militia comes with a LP discount. This discount goes up to 60% resulting in paying only 250k LP for a faction navy battleship rather than 650LP points.
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 chance for a PvP encounter.
In general all missions can be completed solo, but it will take a lot more time and effort than a normal empire faction with the increased risk of a PvP encounter. All missions up to lvl3 can be done solo and are generally worth doing for the LP reward and the opportunity to buy unique faction navy items, compared to empire missions. From a risk vs reward perspective, Lvl4 missions take much more time, increasing the risk of PvP and making it a close draw to an 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 Apocrypha 1.5, released 20 August 2009). This allows you to skip missions till you get a few missions in one area.
The average LP payout for FW mission was:
- Lvl1: about 200 LP
- Lvl2: up to 800 LP
- Lvl3: up to 1100 LP
- Lvl4: close to 9000 LP
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 collect several missions into one or two systems in the close proximity. Depending on the fleet composition, it's also worth doing all missions from all agents as L1 missions can be done by the smaller ships, while the bigger ships can go for the higher level missions.
Local is your intel! With each mission pocket being gated and size restricted, you can estimate what ships you might encounter and watch for them as they approach on short ranged d-scan. Your mission beacon is visible system wide, so they will know where you will be. If you are looking for PvP you can use this to your advantage as well.
Watch out for neutrals as they can enter these mission just like opposing militia members.
Repeating missions in one system or constellation allows the militia to gather victory points and make the system "contested" and later vulnerable.
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 likelihood 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.
DUST 514 connectivity - Orbital Strike
| Region | Const | System |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Maseend | Ana |
| Tash-Murkon | Ajah | Marthia |
| Kador | Trigentia | Kothe |
| The Forge | Otsabaira | Soshin |
| The Citadel | Nagaslaiken | Saikanen |
| Lonetrek | Kainokai | Autama |
| Sinq Laison | Algintal | Jolia |
| Placid | Beyt | Adacyne |
| Everyshore | Osnins | Halle |
| Metropolis | Stadakorn | Egbonbet |
| Heimatar | Urtfer | Javrendei |
| Derelik | Kalangin | Kasrasi |
| Essence | Thoulde | Mesokel |
| Domain | Chardu | Etav |
| Domain | Hoosa | Gosalav |
| Domain | Kekah | Charra |
| Domain | Kehina | Sahdil |
| Tash-Murkon | Anidaza | Paye |
| Tash-Murkon | Rifenda | Iro |
| Tash-Murkon | Mimishia | Mimen |
| Derelik | Orshed | Tidacha |
| Devoid | Ryra | Dihra |
| The Forge | Orpana | Mastakomon |
| The Forge | Etsala | Vouskiaho |
| The Forge | Okkelen | Vahunomi |
| The Forge | Ihatalo | Purjola |
| The Citadel | Ieyama | Usi |
| The Citadel | Imurukka | Inoue |
| The Citadel | Otawasa | Oshaima |
| Lonetrek | Mito | Vuorrassi |
| Lonetrek | Pietanen | Atai |
| Sinq Laison | Wyllequet | Croleur |
| Sinq Laison | Spaen | Ney |
| Sinq Laison | Lolbrerie | Dodenvale |
| Sinq Laison | Jonenor | Estene |
| Everyshore | Giatole | Uphene |
| Everyshore | Elalan | Odixie |
| Everyshore | Chasnaye | Torvi |
| Essence | Eustron | Ommare |
| Metropolis | Argeir | Klaevik |
| Metropolis | Rollera | Eldjaerin |
| Metropolis | Brazinget | Geffur |
| Metropolis | Panorad | Dantbeinn |
| Metropolis | Tiat | Amo |
| Metropolis | Jonar | Freatlidur |
| Heimatar | Osta | Sist |
| Heimatar | Wiedadur | Rokofur |
| Heimatar | Akimamur | Offugen |
- Main article: Dust 514: Orbital Bombardment
In December 2013, CCP announced changes to Orbital Strike that impacted Factional Warfare. DUST players no longer earn orbital strikes through accumulating war points. EVE capsuleers control the strikes. Pilots fit their ship with one of the orbital strike weapon charges, Tactical Laser S, Tactical Hybrid S or Tactical EMP S. They warp to planetary districts where DUST fights are occurring, then wait 3 minutes near the beacon while their ship obtains a lock on the ground target. During this time, the district satellite beacon appears on everyone's overview providing another opportunity for PvP to occur.
Since there is now more risk in performing an orbital strike, CCP added a variable LP reward starting at 3,000 LP at tier 1 and increasing based on tier. The reward is divided amongst up to 10 fellow militia members connected to the district during the strike. A killmail is also generated for the capsuleer's efforts if there are ground casualties.
Communications is set to improve and allow better comms between EVE and Dust players. When an EVE pilot connects to a district, they are added to the DUST team text chat for their militia and can join in voice comms as well.
- See Devblog - Orbital Strike changes coming December 10th for more information.
More stuff?
Battlefield intelligence page
The battlefield intelligence page lists a few statistics about your militia, your corporation and your character. The items it list are number of pilots on each militia, including people in corporations, kills during the last day, week and total – no idea what total this is though. It also lists for the same timeframe victory points and last but not least currently occupied systems.
It also lists, which systems are close, where fights have occurred (dangerous systems) and which have been recently contested and/or changed hand, though again I'm not sure about this.
In overall, apart from the news to the sidebar, which are usually role play in nature with some hints toward certain objectives I hardly use it. More interesting and informational is the star map.
The Star Map
For factional warfare the star map has a few additional statistics, showing
- defensive systems: where a militia holds occupancy, but the opposing faction has contested the system
- offensive systems: where a militia has contested the current occupancy of the opposing faction
- occupancy: which systems belong to which militia
- kill statistics FW ships of the last 24hours and the last hour
For the first three options you can either choose “My Militia” or directly one of the four militias. “My militia” naturally is the same as choosing your militia directly from the four.
Pirating while in Factional Warfare
Pirating in factional warfare is a very controversy topic, ranging from “I don't care”, till “I'll shoot pirates even when they are in my fleet”.
The Drama-Lama is strong in this topic and militia corporations even had internal war-dec's against each other with the related forum wars e.g. on the Minmatar militia forum.
The current more or less Minmatar militia standing is against pirating, as it is counter-productive as it drains resources from plexing and most FW corporations have a semi-ingame goal focusing on holding and gaining occupancy.
They are not “anti pirate” on the other hand either, so commonly nobody will shoot a flash/low security standing militia member, though some flashy's in fleet had their occasional accident due to overeager fleet members not knowing the difference.
Rewards
Loyalty Points
In July 2009, with the concept that War is a full time job, CCP introduced the factional warfare LP shop. Members of the militia have a fixed discount on the faction ships in the LP store. CCP also offered additional faction navy items, which are only attainable from the factional warfare LP shop.
CCP also started providing LP rewards for destroying enemy ships. Originally the rewards were based on the rank and type of ship the enemy was flying. This formula changed in May 2012 in a Factional Warfare overhaul to:
[Given LP] = ([Market value of target ship] - [Max. Insurance market value] + [Fitted mods, rigs and subsystem market value] + [Transported items market value]) / 10000
The LP value will be evenly divided for each gang member in grid range of the kill, no matter which ship they may be flying. Also, LPs will only be given for killing your militia direct opponents, not allies to them (as a Federation pilot, you will not receive LPs for destroying an Amarr pilot ship for example).
- For more details please see the dev-blog [4].
With the Dominion expansion CCP is overhauled the existing faction navy ships and added tier one navy ships, again only attainable from the factional warfare LP shops.
However, plexing was never intended to be lucrative, so there are no bounties for NPCs and apart from militia tags, no salvage. FW Missions do reward with LP and ISK, but compared to normal mission, the payout is much smaller and the risk of having to operate in low-sec is much higher.
Looting Navy Tags can be semi-lucrative as the tags tend to float around the value of an NPC bounties. Higher tier tags can be quite valuable.
Ranks
Ranks are the only visible reward you receive for participating in FW and are tied to your standing with the FW militia. Sadly, they are little more than window dressing and don't impact game play substantially.
Leaving factional warfare
Willingly leaving factional warfare from the NPC militia corps, is done just like leaving a normal corporation. If you leave a factional warfare your gained ranks will not be visible any more from the character page. You will not lose your ranks, so when you return you will start with your old rank, unless damaged your FW militia standing by joining the opposing militia.
You can also be forced to leave factional warfare, when you joined the NPC militia, when due your actions your standing drops with the appropriate faction below the required minimum.
From the official guide:
- Player:
- Willingly:
- If part of a FW militia, a player has to click the “retire” button in the sign-up FW page to leave it. The process happens instantly.
- If part of an enlisted player FW corporation, the individual will have to leave the corporation though normal means to retire. If you have roles, the process will take 24 hours, otherwise it will be instant.
- Automatically:
- If an individual’s raw faction standings drops below 0.0, the player receives a notification mail to raise them back at the next downtime. If they are not recovered during the downtime after that (thus, two downtimes after the standing drop), the player will be instantly kicked out of the FW militia.
- If part of an enlisted player corporation, individual faction standings do not apply for the check. Corporation faction standings are used instead, see below.
- Willingly:
- Corporation:
- Willingly:
- The CEO/Director has to press the “retire corporation” button from the FW page. The change is done during the next downtime. Before then, any Director or CEO can cancel this action by pressing the “cancel retirement” option.
- Automatically:
- If a corporation’s raw faction standings drops below 0.0, mail notification is sent to the corporation mailbox at the next downtime. If the standings are not recovered after the second downtime (two downtimes after the standing drop), the corporation is instantly expelled.
- Willingly:
Player Experiences
Here are just a few stories from other player(s) about Factional Warfare.
From Juan Rayo, Gallente Militia Member via a player corporation(2009):
I log in at any time and take a look at militia chat. People are X'ing up for something. Intel channel says the Caldari are moving a fleet down the pipe, 30 strong, lots of Battleships and some EW boats, so I could go join the fight. In another channel, plexers are trying to decontest a system that the Caldari have been fighting bitterly for, slowly driving us out. .
They are more organized plexers than most of us, and have been slowly, but surely, conquering Gallente territory. Plexing would raise my standings, and help us defend the systems, so I could head that way. Corp chat is already heating up with people calling for support or looking to go kill, explore a WH or do a mission. A quick look at my wallet tells me I could also use some missioning to pad it a bit, faction warfare is an ISK sink after all.
The great thing about it is, ALL this options are open to me the very moment I log in. Faction warfare offers a lot of things to do, and unless your corp is fairly strict, a great amount of liberty to do those things.
FAQ
Do you need to run complexes?
Complexes can be useful tactically, as the acceleration gates restrict certain class ships entering them. This can enable you to get some slightly fairer PvP action.
You don't need to complete the complex to achieve this. If others in your group wanted to complete the complex you could warp out just before it captured to avoid gaining standing.
Do you need to shoot NPCs in complexes?
In defensive complexes, the NPCs are your own faction - don't shoot them!!!
In offensive complexes, the NPCs are from your opposition factions. With the recent changes, you need to shoot them in order to complete the plex, so be prepared to do so.
Do you need to run missions?
No, not at all.
So I could take part in FW without hurting my faction standings in any way?
Yes. As long as you never complete complexes, shoot faction NPCs or do FW missions. You don't actually lose faction standing for killing other pvp pilots, you only lose enemy faction war corporation standing.
You'll only lose enemy faction standing for killing faction NPC's in plexes, or by getting 'promoted' by your own (npc) faction warfare corporation, which will happen as a result of completing plexes or missions. You don't have to complete plexes to get the pvp you desire (but can still go in them to use their tactical benefits). You don't need to do missions.
Can I run missions for the Amarr to offset any losses I do make?
Of course. There are no Amarr level 4 "kill" agents in Metropolis or Heimatar, although there are level 4 agents working for other divisions, and you could mission in other areas.
Can I still do normal missions in empire or go mining?
Yes, you can do still missions in empire, but keep in mind that if you do missions in the opposing factions empire the faction NPC navy will also spawn and attack you.
Your access to other corporations even from the opposing faction is thus limited due to the movement restrictions due to these NPC Navy spawns. If you can keep up your standing with the other factions corporations you could join the Minmatar militia and still do missions for the Caldari empire, provided these agents are in Minmatar or Gallente space.
Suicide ganks into the opposing faction have been popular and happen from time to time, also the lone wanderer or fast interceptor is looking for unaware militia members afk-ing in their own space, but I haven't heard from somebody bothering to bring a neutral scanner just to find militia members in high sec.
Mining in common asteroid belts can be dangerous with the imminent danger that a suicide fleet shows up and there have been the occasional kills during the first few weeks of afk miners in high sec so you might want to refrain from doing that. On the other hand – and don't tell the Amarr – I do mine from time to time in Heimatar in a Hulk and so far have been only tagged once by a crow, who couldn't get passed by my shields and ran away when I unleashed my drones.
Risk assessment: with all those people, who do I trust?
Being thrown into an NPC militia , you end up with a whole bunch of people, and this still being Eve the questions arises can I trust these people?
The answer as in all of EvE is no, trust nobody. Although the spying, backstabbing in the Minmatar-Amarr war is fairly low and the numbers of really bad or even traitorous FC is very low, each war is different. You could even say depending on what time you play the war within on conflict is fought differently as RL player TZ come and go.
A personal experience from the Gallente-Caldari war from our well known intelligence officer, Patric Reigns:
As a member of the the Caldari militia it became apparent that many of the pirate groups were allied/supporting the Gallente militia in Black Rise. The risks of initiating combat against pirate targets who in many cases kept their sec status neutral, with the subsequent sec status hit and engagement of gate guns, kept the militia on the back foot. Corporations operating from high-sec would also declare war on individual corps in a militia. This would allow them to isolate and engage individual members of your fleet who belonged to those corporations without being flagged to the rest of the fleet. Intervening would also incur a sec-status penalty; Almost complete absence of command & control structures in militias.
Within the Amarr-Minmatar war the CVA have been a long time supporter of the Amarr NPC militia as well of some of the player corporations. Since alliances can't join militias their support was mostly more logistically and I personally encountered them almost never in the factional warfare zones fighting. Though they recently retracted their official support (ingame news), this doesn't mean that there are no out-of-militia supporters in the Amarr-Minmatar war. Personally I already encountered an NPC noob scout in an noob ship as FC following my gang everywhere dragging an Amarr militia gang with him.
There also have been some known spies in the Minmatar militia, who have been identified, which you will notice and learn from just watching the militia chat and being active. Keeping good and bad militia members and FC in your personal adressbook can help keeping track of these people.
As Patric also stated there is no functional command structure within these militias - although some corporation have gathered around some regulations - there is no ingame way to enforce any of these regulations, e.g. killboard loss posting is requested but can not be enforced, there is no shared standing or derived standing and individual player corporations within a militia can be war dec'ed by player corporations within their own militia as well as from corporations outside the militia, resulting in no way to support allied player corporations in the militia from within the alliance apart from re'deccing the aggressing player corporation with your own corporation.
See also
Links
- Credits to the official factional warfare guide
- and the Minmatar militia academy forum, a dead link as of Dec 2013.
- GamerChick's January 2013 Guide to Factional Warfare
