How to find Incursions

How to find Incursions

For members of the EVE University Incursion Community there will always be a focus mail in the Incursions.E-UNI mailing list. The focus mails will have all the information you'll need. It will list the staging system, the relevant vanguard and picket systems. It also has additional information about general travel information and warnings. If you recently joined the mailing list and don't see a focus mail, just ask someone to forward you the latest focus mail.

Open up The Agency (shortcut is Alt + M or use the Neocom) and then click the fourth column "Specify" to select "Incursions". There you will see all current incursions that are active in EVE. This resets everytime you click on any of the other tabs in this window, so you'll need to do that the first time you open The Agency window as well as anytime you look at any of the other tabs. It will however persist if you don't change tabs.

You can also find the incursions by opening up your Star Map (shortcut is F10, then click "Colour by" second icon) and find "Incursions" under the "NPC Activity" header. The incursions will then show up on the map. Staging systems will show up in yellow and other systems in orange.

The first time you open The Agency, or if you click on any of the other tabs, you'll need to select "Incursions" under the fourth "Specify" tab.

The Agency will then tell you how many incursions there are and where.

Not as easy to use if you quickly want to see where the incursion is, but the starmap shows incursions too.

Wollari's DOTLAN

As of March 12th 2014 you can also get information about incursions from Wollari's DOTLAN.

You can quickly get an overview of active incursions on dotlan, with information similar to that of the journal.

There's also detailed information available for each constellation, such as when an incursion spawned, changed state, despawned etc.

Another useful feature is that the constellation map clearly indicates all the systems under incursion with a visual effect. This is quite useful when roaming in low and null security space, so you're not caught unawares.

MikeRoni's Shadowlauch

In March 2015 MikeRoni's Shadowlauch launched with even more specific information.

You can quickly get an overview of active incursions on shadowlauch, with some additional information not readily available on dotlan.

The most recent history of incursions.

Moving between Incursions

Incursions are nomadic in nature with a single focus lasting less than a week, often only for a few days, forcing the incursion community to constantly move in order to continue taking part of the content.

Given the profitability of suicide ganking and how hard it is to actually use the extra cargo of a freighter, it is usually much better to travel fit your battleship and fly it than to carry it around in a freighter, especially if you have a faction battleship or costly ships. Flying a ship yourself as opposed to hauling a ship inside another ship means the ship itself as well as the rigs lose their value, as they are destroyed if they suicide gank you. This drastically reduces the value of ganking you. Also remember that if you're carrying an expensive defensive module, fit it.

Since moving is the most dangerous part of incursioning, try to avoid moving your incursion ship as much as possible. For example, if you need to go elsewhere it is best if you leave your incursion ship in the system and simply use a dedicated travel ship (like shuttles, travelceptors etc) to fly back and forth. That way you only put a very cheap ship on the line, instead of your more expensive incursion ship.

In order to facilitate moving more than one ship at a time, you can either use the Orca, the Bowhead, or your racial freighter of choice.

The Orca excels at moving several smaller ships, like Logistics Cruisers and a Command Ship (or even strategic cruisers), while still having good maneuverability and an excellent buffer (see training up an Orca alt for more information). The Bowhead has an enormous ship maintenance bay able to move multiple battleships, but is slower and has a smaller cargo hold. Carrying multiple battleships, especially if they are obviously incursion ships, does increase the risk of getting attention from gankers. Freighters have a much larger hold but are much slower, has less tank and are limited to courier contracts if they are to move assembled ships. Being slower and bulkier they are also easier to catch and bump for suicide gankers.

Wartime logistics

We highly recommend unistas to train a valet alt to move their ships safely between incursions during war, so as not to serve your ship up on a silver plate for our war targets.

You should never move your ship to an incursion constellation alone when your corporation or alliance is at war. The only exception would be if you have a scout (alt or someone helping you) and you know how to travel-fit with stabs, microwarpdrive and cloak.

War targets relish catching slow and expensive ships fit for PvE. Even if there are no war targets logged on, they could be waiting offline with their main characters, while keeping an eye on you with their alts.

Use an alt to move your ship(s)

Not everyone will have alts to do this (or have the appropriate skills on their alt), but the fastest and safest way is always to fly the ship yourself on an alt. Just contract or hand over the ship to your alt, let them move it, then move yourself over in a fast and cheap frigate or interceptor/covert ops. See valet alt for a quick overview of the skills needed.

The main benefit of moving the ship by itself, is that the cost of the hull and the rigs become somewhat irrelevant. If you were to haul a pirate faction battleship in a freighter or the Bowhead, then the hull and rigs would be potential loot. But if you fly it, the ship and rigs would be destroyed and thus not potential loot for suicide gankers. Also remember that if you're bringing a deadspace hardener or other defensive modules with you, keep it fitted on your ship instead of moving it in your cargo hold where it does no good.

Travel fleets

If the last incursion you were in just disappeared and you all need to move, the simplest thing to do is to take the whole fleet, including everyone else who wants to come with you to the next constellation and move as a fleet. Strength in numbers.

Keep your incursion-fits, including logistics and work on your aligns and fleet warps on the way, keeping one fleet member a jump ahead acting as a scout (and possibly someone a jump behind as well to cover the rear). Unless the war targets amass in considerable numbers, they pose no threat to your fleet as long as you keep the fleet together, warping together, never leaving anyone behind. Only one person needs to have PvP-experience for this to work, the rest just have to keep their wits and follow orders.

Freighter services

There are several options to have your ship freighted to the new constellation. You have Red Frog, PushX as well as people within the community offering to haul ships with their alts. Depending on how fast the courier contract can be fulfilled this might be a less than desirable option, as you might lose valuable game time waiting for your ship to arrive.

The microwarpdrive and cloak trick

The microwarpdrive and cloak trick does not mean you should travel alone, you should still have someone scouting ahead for you to avoid gatecamps. The cloak is just to reduce the chance of getting caught, it doesn't ensure that you'll make it. A proper gatecamp will catch you, especially if you're in a battleship or something with a high signature.

Using a microwarpdrive and an improved cloaking device is an additional layer of safety you could use. See cloak trick or Seamus Donohue's video on how to do this.

Make sure you practice this in a less expensive ship, like a frigate, before you attempt to do this on a battleship. Getting the timing right is everything with this trick, if someone locks you up before you cloak up you'll be unable to cloak. Preventing you from cloaking usually gives them all the time in the world to catch up and point you, keeping you in place, which means you're dead.