Incursions

This is a page about Incursions in general. If you are looking to join or just get more information about the EVE University Incursion Community then follow that link, as we have additional roles that do not require any specific skills (which are perfect for new players) and we do things slightly different from public communities to accommodate new players and to account for the fact that we're sometimes at war.

What are incursions?

Incursions are automated events introduced with the Incursion expansion in which the NPC faction known as the Sansha's Nation, led by Sansha Kuvakei, invade space in an attempt to conquer it for themselves. Capsuleers must fight off Sansha's forces in order to return the contested space back into an area which can be more safely occupied.

High-end PvE fleet content

Incursions are high-end PvE fleet content, well above the challenge of regular Level 4 missions and more like Level 5s. The introduction of incursions to the game added an incentive for high-level, coordinated fleet content in highsec space. Incursion PvE combat is also a controlled environment in which players can practice fleet tactics and key fleet roles such as "logistics" (that is, repairing other ships).

Contrary to missions, which normally require active tanks, incursion fleets rely on buffer tanks with high damage resistances and supported by logistics ships. The NPC enemies in incursions use electronic warfare and capacitor warfare. They also use high speed and low signature radii to avoid damage. This forces incursion fleets to develop more complex tactics to win.

There are restrictions on fleet size in incursions, and so each member of the fleet matters. A lack of skill or an inefficiency cannot be compensated by simply adding more ships. As such, incursion combat is not ideal for the brand new player, but is more geared towards those who've spent at least a few months in the game and are able to fly battleships, logistics or other more advanced ships. Eve University incursion fleets do have some additional roles for low-SP characters, but other groups running incursions may not use these.

Profits

Incursions in highsec are a very profitable activity for any pilot based in a community that runs continuous fleets. A normal fleet running vanguard sites can make about 60 million ISK per hour running sites; more advanced fleets have the potential of making 100+ million ISK per hour. Some of the public communities who specialize in and exclusively run the larger headquarter sites can easily break 200+ million ISK per hour. Incursions also give you CONCORD loyalty points, which increases your income even more.

See Incursion sites for more details about payouts and about how these sites differ from each other. See Loyalty Points for more information on how to turn loyalty points into items to use or sell.

Nomadic in nature

Incursions are nomadic by nature, with focus areas lasting anywhere from a day up to over a week, forcing the incursion community to move near-constantly to continue taking part of the content. See Spawn mechanics of Incursions below for more information on the spawn mechanics, or How to find Incursions for more information on how to find and safely move between incursions.

Incursion communities

Since all joining the same corporation or alliance would leave pilots wide open for war declarations, incursion runners remain in their corporations and alliances and instead affiliate themselves with various communities. Most communities operate in the same way: They have a public channel that anyone can join with all the information a pilot might need being available in their channel's message of the day. Fits are usually available through mailing lists or some other repository.

EVE University maintains an active Incursion Community of current members, alumni and their alts. This community is one of the oldest Incursion communities in EVE Online and is one of the only communities to run despite frequent war declrations. This near constant state of war along with a primary focus on teaching has lead to slightly different operating procedures compared to other communities. We also have roles that do not require any specific skills, roles that other communities simply don't need or want. See the EVE University Incursion Community page for more information.

Examples of incursion communities include:

• Warp To Me Incursions (WTM). - Shield tank incursion community. In-game chat channel Warp To Me Incursions.
• The Ditanian Fleet (TDF). - Armour tank incursion community. In-game chat channel TDF-Official.
• New Galaxy Age (NGA). - Russian incursion community. In-game chat channel New Galaxy Age.

Lore

From the EVE Chronicle Uplifted: “ Then the wormhole let out a searing burst of white light, and they came through, bulbous metallic vessels covered in wicked, uneven spines. Hundreds poured from the shimmering portal, covering light years of distance in a single instant to cloud the skies above the helpless planet. Almost fishlike, darting in loose formation and changing direction simultaneously, they spread out in all directions. With synchronized releases of focused electromagnetic blasts, they smoothly wiped all defensive structures and communications satellites from orbit. For many people on the surface, the sudden glare of golden laser beams lancing across the night sky was the first sign that Sansha’s Nation had arrived. When it had secured the entire lower orbital altitude, the armada held position until a second wave of ships emerged from the wormhole. These new vessels were different, though, lacking the bulky warp drives that took up so much space in the combat vessels; instead, their cavernous cargo holds had a very specific purpose, housing rows and rows, layer upon layer of holding cells designed to store humanoid “passengers”. The ships dropped through the atmosphere unimpeded, by squadrons, a perfectly orchestrated meteor shower. ”

CCP has released both the Incursion trailer and the CDIA Files: Sansha Incursions videos concerning Sansha Kuvakei and Incursions. They also made a more cinematic version of Incursions, called Incursion - Cinema Cut.

Effects

This incursion information shows in all systems, letting you know there is an incursion going on. It also shows what kind of system it is, the current influence and whether the mothership has been sighted yet.

When Sansha's forces place a constellation under siege, the nebula gets a brownish hue making it obvious that something is different; beacons will appear in your overview; rats are replaced; and you suffer system wide penalties, which all make it harder to continue your usual business anywhere in the entire constellation.

You can read more about the actual sites and how many people it takes to run them on the Incursion sites page.

The image to the right is an example of what the information panel might look like. The panel will have different names pending on the style of incursion system. In addition to "Sansha Vanguard", there are also "Sansha Staging" and "Sansha Headquarters". Clicking on the "Incursion Profile" part takes you to the Journal and Loyalty Point Log.

Once the Sansha forces withdraw from the constellation or the mothership site is finished, the incursion is over; the information panel will then disappear, and things immediately return to normal.

Constellation Penalties

During an incursion there are constellation-wide penalties. The strength of the tank and weapon penalties are tied to both the level of activity and how much influence Sansha's forces have in the constellation. As players run sites, the Sansha's influence drops, and most of the penalties drop along with it until they are effectively cancelled at zero influence.

	System-wide cynosural field jammers are in effect. Cynosural field jamming has no impact in high security space, but can be quite damaging for a nullsec alliance if one of their logistics hubs is locked down. This penalty is absolute and always in effect even at zero influence, but does not stop you from lighting a covert cynosural field.
	Financial systems compromised. 50% reduction in CONCORD bounties. The 50% reduction in CONCORD bounties is always in full effect and doesn't scale with Sansha's influence.
	Vessel integrity compromised. Shield and armor resistances reduced. At full influence, a ship in a Vanguard system suffers a 10% penalty to resists. In Assaults the penalty is 25% and in Headquarter systems the penalty is a whopping 50% cut in resists. Due to the way resists work, this practically means that a ship with resist of 73% drops to 70% in Vanguard, 66% in Assaults and as low as 59% in Headquarter sites. You do take up to 10%, 25% or 50% more damage depending on the type of system you're in and the level of influence.
	Capsule interference detected. Turret, launcher, drone and smartbomb damage reduced. At full influence, player ships deal 10% less damage in Vanguards, 25% less damage in Assaults and as much as 50% less damage in Headquarter sites.

These penalties apply to everyone within an incursion constellation regardless of whether or not they are actively resisting Sansha's Nation.

Normal NPC spawns replaced

Whenever a constellation suffers an incursion, the normal "rats"--NPC enemies found at asteroid belts--and the rats that spawn in ice belts will be replaced by Sansha Incursion rats. These NPCs will be much stronger, tougher, and deadlier than your run-of-the-mill Sansha Mission rats and mining ships; weaker combat ships will stand no chance against them. The rats that spawn in ice belts tend to be larger cruiser- or even battlecruiser-sized ships.

All rats in missions and exploration sites rats will remain the same, but if you linger in a completed site or a cleared-out mission pocket for a long time, incursion rats will spawn there.

Due to the normal rat spawns being replaced and the constellation penalties added, certain activities are disincentivized. For example, it's very inefficient to run missions, because your income from bounties is cut in half. Mining is also unwise, as the belts are now haunted by powerful Sansha's rats, and all static belts are turned into Nation Industrial Proxy scout-sites. Exploration however, can often be done without much trouble; just don't linger too long in a finished site as, Sansha's rats will eventually spawn there too.

The Constellation layouts for Incursions page contains a list of all known Incursion Constellations and third-party pages such as dotlan and Shadowlauch show active incursions. Although incursions move at random, it is fairly easy to avoid them.

Gate camps in lowsec and nullsec

In low and null security space, incursion constellations have Sansha "gate camps". Groups of Sansha Incursion rats linger at gates in these systems, catching unaware pilots. It is easy to mistake these for normal rats and underestimate how tough they, and how much of a punch they pack. See the anatomy page for a list of warp disruptor-capable incursion rats, or the Sansha's Manual for more information about all of them.

Since Sansha rats are much tougher than normal rats and may prove difficult for lone ships or poorly equipped fleets to handle, inexperienced pilots should avoid incursion systems in low- and null-security space.

Spawning and duration

While it is impossible to predict exactly where a new incursion may occur, or exactly how long it'll last, there are several aspects of their spawn mechanics that are systematic and easy to predict.

Number of incursions and respawns

Note:

The Invasion patch on May 28th 2019 made some changes to incursion spawns. It was not properly documented, just mentioned on the Triglavian Incursions support page, which stated that changes were "lowering the amount of available Sansha Incursions". It now seems to be the case that that highsec incursions are limited to a single constellation, while low- and nullsec incursions remain the same.

There can be up to five incursions up at any given time, one in highsec, one in lowsec, and three in nullsec. When an incursion ends, a new one will spawn in the same type of security space as the one they are replacing. This means that whenever a highsec incursion is despawned, either by a Sansha withdrawal by players finishing the mothership site, a new highsec incursion will soon spawn somewhere else.

The delay between an incursion ending and a new one spawning is 12 to 36 hours according to CCP, but there have been reports of respawns delayed for longer.

Constellation layouts

While the incursions will spawn in a random constellation, the systems of a given constellation will always have the same type of sites. There is only one requirement for a constellation to be a potential incursions constellation: it must have at least 6 systems in the same broad category of security status (high, low, or null).Ssome systems are also excluded from the "incursion rotation": these tend to be major trade hubs and new player starter systems.

See constellation layouts for more information on which systems will have vanguard, assault or headquarter sites, to save the trouble of visiting the constellation first.

Phases of an incursion

Incursions can theoretically last close to eight days, but practically last less long. They go through three different stages; Established, Mobilized and Withdrawing.

Stage	Explanation
Incursion established (up to 5 days)	Whenever an incursion spawns, this will be the first stage. Sansha Kuvakei's forces are trying to take control of the systems. While reducing Sansha's influence seems to increase the chance of a this stage lasting longer, the exact mechanics are unknown. This can be as short as a day.
Incursion mobilized (2 full days)	The incursion has been in place for a bit, and Sansha Kuvakei's forces are either getting ready to finish off the incursion or they are losing ground and preparing to withdraw from the constellation. This phase always lasts 48 hours unless someone runs the mothership site prematurely.
Incursion withdrawing (1 full day)	The incursion is ending, either due to Sansha Kuvakei's forces finishing with the constellation, or because the incursion community managed to keep them at bay. If the mothership site is not completed within 24 hours, the incursion simply disappears (and no loyalty points are paid out).

Mothership sightings

The mothership site can occur as early as within the first established stage; all that is needed is that the influence falls to 0% and a single headquarters site is run. Once the mothership has been sighted, the incursion can be ended by destroying the mothership at any time. As such, there is no guaranteed longevity for incursions, other than the brief period before the mothership site is unlocked (which can be mere hours).

The mothership mechanic gives players some control over when incursions end. The different groups who run incursions don't always agree on what is the most desirable timing.