Incursions
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What are Incursions?
Incursions are automated events 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 more safely occupied.
The following quote is from the EVE Chronicle Uplifted:
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High-end PvE fleet content
Incursions are high-end PvE fleet content, well above that of regular level four missions and have more in common with level five missions than anything else. The introduction of incursions to the game added some much needed incentive for fleet content in highsec. It also gave people a very controlled environment to train up their skills as a logistics pilot as well as giving people a feel for organized fleets outside of general PvP.
Contrary to missions, incursion fleets rely on buffers and resists supported by logistics ships in order to survive. The ships you face in incursions use electronic warfare, capacitor warfare as well as playing on speed and signature to their advantage. This forces incursion fleets to find ways around that in order to be successful.
Due to the restrictions to fleet size, each member of the fleet matters. You cannot compensate for lack of skill or efficiency by simply adding more ships. As such, incursions are not for the brand new players, but more geared towards those who've spent at least a few months in the game.
Effects of Incursions
When a constellation comes under the siege from Sansha's forces, the sirens sound in your Captain's Quarters to warn you, the nebulae gets a brownish hue making it obvious that something is different. Beacons appear in your overview, rats are replaced and you suffer system wide penalties which all makes it hard to continue your usual business in not just the system but the entire constellation.
Read more about the actual sites and how many people it takes to run them on the Incursion sites page, or continue reading if you're just interested in how this effects you being in, or just passing through, an incursion constellation.
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.
Once the Sansha forces withdraw from the constellation or the mothership site is finished, the incursion is over, the information panel disappears and things immediately go back to normal.
Constellation penalties
During an incursion there are constellation wide penalties:
- System-wide cynosural field jammers are in effect. [1]
- Financial systems compromised. 50% reduction in CONCORD bounties. [2]
- Vessel integrity compromised. Shield and armor resistances reduced. [3]
- Capsule interference detected. Turret, launcher, drone and smartbomb damage reduced. [4]
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 such the penalties are higher in high activity systems like headquarter system, than they are in low activity systems like the staging system.
As players run sites and Sansha's influence drops the penalties are reduced, to the point where they are effectively cancelled at zero influence. The cynosural field jamming and 50% penalty to bounties remain even at zero influence.
Native spawns are replaced
Whenever a constellation is under incursion, the normal belt rats will be replaced by Sansha Incursion rats. These NPCs will be much stronger, tougher, more deadly than your run of the mill Sansha Mission rats and mining ships and weaker combat ships stand no chance against them.
All the mission rats and exploration site rats will remain the same, but if you linger in a completed site or a cleared out pocket, eventually regular rats will spawn every once in a while and they too will be replaced by the Sansha Incursion rats.
Gate camps in low and null security space
In low and null security space the constellations under incursion will have Sansha "gate camps" for lack of a better word. There will be groups of Sansha Incursion rats at gates in these system, catching people unaware of the danger they pose. It is easy to mistake these for normal rats and underestimate how hard they are to kill and most importantly, how much of a punch they pack.
So if you're moving a small fleet or a fleet of small ships through a low- or nullsec incursion, don't dismiss the threat these NPCs pose.
How do I get in contact with the E-Uni incursion community?
We use the following EVE University services for communication:
- Mumble (voice comms, in one of the On-Demand Channels)
- Ingame chat channel incursions.e-uni.
- Ingame mailing list Incursions.E-UNI.
- The Incursions section on the forum.
If you think that Incursions might be something for you, see the Roles in Incursions page to familiarize yourself with the various roles you could fill in an incursion fleet and the Fitting for Incursions for a good overview of the skills needed. Then have a look at the fitting pages for Vanguards or Assaults, to make sure your ship is properly fitted for incursions.
We'd also appreciate it if you looked at the Incursions checklist page, because there are some preparations that you'll need to do and mechanics you'll need to be aware of.
Open community
Our Incursion Community is open to everyone who is a friend of EVE University [5]; Alumni, ex-unistas and alts are all more than welcome to come fly with us as long as you aren't at war and recognize that teaching comes first and that certain restrictions might be put in place, ensuring we conform with the EVE University Rules and the Wartime Standard Operating Procedures (WSOP). In order to accommodate for young unistas who cannot fly anything bigger than a battlecruiser, we also ask that non-unistas come with suitable ships, such as battleships or strategic cruisers [6].
Mutual respect
Historically we owe a lot to alumni and friends of the university. They were instrumental in building up the community we have today, bringing both much needed ships, high skills and lots of experiences to our fleets. Alumni in particular spent countless of hours helping us reach the point where we had several people capable of running incursions, improving the community and recruiting more people to come fly with us.
Those who fly with us respect the university and what we try to do, we in turn respect what they bring to our community. As such they've continued to be valuable members of the community.
Relations with the public communities
While we have no official relation with either of the public communities, EVE University's neutrality and long-term goals of teaching the next generation of EVE-players means that we avoid putting ourselves in situations where future relations might be compromised. As such, we do not run with public communities while at war [7].
This does not stop individual members of these communities to come fly with us, something that is often mutually beneficial. We've also had guest fleet commanders joining us for the more difficult headquarters or mothership sites.
Clarifications
- ^ Cynosural field jamming has very little effect 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.
- ^ The 50% reduction in CONCORD bounties are always in full effect and doesn't scale with the influence.
- ^ At full influence, a Vanguard system suffers a 10% penalty to resists. In Assaults the penalty is 25% and in Headquarter systems the penalty is as much as 50% penalty to your resists. Due to the way resists work, it practically means that a natural resist of 73% drops to 60% in Vanguard, 66% in Assaults and as low as 59% in Headquarter sites.
- ^ At full influence, you do 10% less damage in Vanguards, 25% less damage in Assaults and as much as 50% less damage in Headquarter sites.
- ^ Since we use the above mentioned services, you'll need to remain in good standing with the university to continue to have access to the forum, which in turn allows them to see the channel passwords, use Mumble etc.
- ^ Battleships and strategic cruisers are much more efficient and will be an addition to the fleet instead of a liability. It may seem harsh, but it is a matter of fleet security; Having too many battlecruisers doesn't just make things go slowly, speed is a direct measure of safety and less efficient fleets increase the risk of losses exponentially.
- ^ Unistas aren't allowed to fly with public incursion communities while at war to avoid causing trouble that may lead to diplomatic incidents or worse, barring future unistas from joining the community in question.