Ship progression in Incursions
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Planning ahead
Unless you are already heavily invested into a certain race or weapon system, it might be a good idea to think of which logistics ship, strategic cruiser or pirate faction battleship you'll want in the end, rather than what your first incursion ship should be.
Depending on the race, training for strategic cruisers will make quite some progress towards being able to fly logistics as well, or the other way around if your goal is to fly logistcs. That said, most strategic cruisers pale in comparison to the pirate faction battleships who remain the epitome of incursion boats.
Synergy
You should also consider secondary value of whatever you train, perhaps you can find an end-of-the-line ship that not only furthers your goals for incursions but other goals as well given the skills you'll end up training for it. If you already know that you like smaller ships, or have plans for diving into a wormhole in the future, it would make much more sense training into a strategic cruiser than a pirate faction battleship.
So take some time to consider which racial ship line, what racial weapons would benefit you doing missions, exploration, PvP or whatever else you'd like to do in EVE.
Starter ships
The starter ships are pretty skill intensive, requiring you to have at least a couple of months worth training to get the minimum skills to effectively fly them.
Recommended battleships
See minimum damage dealer skills for more information about the skills needed as well as the vanguard and assault fitting pages for the actual fits.
These ships are also perfect to use as low ISK-risk ships during war. While we always use pickets and take precautions, there's absolutely no shame in simply not wanting to risk it during wartime. With pickets and other precautions you can be reasonably safe, but here's always a risk and if you're not comfortable with that or lack the necessary titles to fly the more fancy ships, just replace the meta guns with tech two guns on your trusty old tech one battleship and fly that, leaving your expensive toys docked safely in the station.
Logistics
See minimum logistics skills for more information about the skills needed as well as the vanguard and assault fitting pages for the actual fits.
While it may seem unfair to bundle logistics with tech one battleships in the starter section, the fact remains that these are the starter fits for the logistics role. It's a much more skill intensive role and there's no real progression in terms of new hulls to fly as a logistics pilot, instead improvement is based on better skills and more fitting options.
Optionally, these fleet and Navy Issue ships can sometimes be an alternative starter ship for incursions, albeit a costly one. They have stronger base values than their tech one counterparts which often make them slightly more efficient for incursions, or opens up for a new racial ship line to be useful, like in the case for Amarr navy ships.
One thing to keep in mind however, is the price of these ships. The navy battleships are nowhere near as good as the pirate faction battleships and you might be better off skipping this ship in favour of saving up for the pirate one. But if you have one or intend to re-sell it later, it could be a nice stepping stone between tech one battleships and the pirate faction battleships.
Moving on to high-end ships
Once your skills improve and your wallet fills up, you might want to consider upgrading to a better hull for incursions. When to take this step, or even if, is highly personal and depends on a lot of things; if you play a lot or just a little, if incursions is your main ISK-making activity, how many suitable skills your character has, how easy the ship is to move to name a few.
Some go for one of the advanced hulls right away to capitalize on the fact that regardless of your skills, some of these ships are simply that much better due to their innate hull statistics and bonuses. Others start picking off skills from the honing your skills list before moving on up, finding skills that benefit them in whatever else they do in EVE.
Either way, the further training section on the wiki has some good guidelines as to what to train in preparation.
Command Ships
Very few Command Ships have the range and utility needed to make them good for incursions in general, suffering the same problems as most ships with medium weaponry. But for the most part they can be fitted quite nicely for vanguards and in some cases even for assaults.
While better than standard battleships for vanguards, they are nowhere near as good as pirate faction battleships and usually suffer in terms of utility slots and small drone bays. That said, they could serve as a nice option for people who either have no interest in battleships or for those who already trained and flies Command Ships for other purposes, outside incursions. Just remember that while we'll gladly take Command Ships in our fleets, public communities may be a bit more restrictive.
Since the hull bonuses for these ships are so strong, so much efficiency tied up into the two ship skills, it's recommended that you have at least Command Ships IV trained (preferably V) if you plan on flying these. Low skilled pilots perform very poorly in these ships.
Strategic cruisers
Being cruiser hulls some strategic cruisers suffer from the same ailments as other ships with medium weaponry, but can often compensate by using long range weapons since the loss of pure tracking is often offset by the lower signature of medium weapons. They are also perfect for the Nation Consolidation Network assault sites, where the fleet splits up and parts of the fleet go through a gate only allowing cruiser-sized hulls.
While strategic cruisers cannot match the prowess of the pirate faction battleships, they perform above that of regular battleships. So if you like smaller, agile ships, strategic cruisers might be the answer you're looking for. Keep in mind that most public communities settle for one or two strategic cruisers, mostly a Loki for the long webs. As such it's less of an appealing option to fly strategic cruisers outside our community.
Since the subsystem bonuses for these ships are directly tied into their effectiveness, it's recommended that you have all the subsystem skills at IV (the propulsion subsystem skill might be excused) as well as tech two weapons. Furthermore it's recommended to take the offensive subsystem to V as well, since it has several bonuses tied into it improving your offensive capabilities. Low skilled pilots perform very poorly in these ships.
Races | Ship | Description |
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The Legion combines powerful short range capabilities with instant-swapping long range capabilities due to how crystals work. Ideal ship if you prefer smaller, more agile ships to the bulkier battleships. | ||
The Loki combines multiple long webs with extreme tracking which makes it very useful. The long webs are particularly useful in assaults, but requires the fleet to have good range projection to be useful. | ||
The Proteus doesn't stand out quite as much as the Legion and Loki, but it's still a solid choice for people who like small ships. Due to range issues it's forced to use railguns. | ||
The Tengu is not something you'd normally train into for incursions, but it can still be useful if you have good skills already and it's fitted properly with railguns. While missiles could work, railgun-fits are simply better. |
Pirate faction battleships
These ships are good ships all around, regardless of which type of site you do. Their slot layout is good, plenty of midslots, their ship bonuses are often purely offensive, making them ideal for incursions where tanking bonuses are highly overrated.
Remember that while these ships benefit from having really good skills, the hulls themselves are just that much better and as such a considerable upgrade regardless of your skills as a pilot. So while there are many reasons why one shouldn't fly these costly pirate battleships for incursions, lack of skillpoints is rarely one of them. If you have decent enough skills to run incursions, you'll simply be that more effective flying one of these.