Incursion fitting principles

Fitting principles

Incursion fleets rely on good resists and buffer supported by a logistics. There are simply too many enemies to be able to fit a strong enough local tank, not to mention that by sacrificing a small portion of your fleet to bring in logistics instead of more damage dealers, the rest of the damage dealers can fit more offensive modules and your fleet will perform better.

Once you have a good enough tank, the rest of your spare slots should be used to augment your damage potential. While there's such a thing as under-tanked, being over-tanked is not only wasteful in incursions but even dangerous if done at the cost of offense.

See Preparing for Incursions for more information about what skills are needed.

Omni damage

The Sansha incursion rats deal two types of damages, lasers (EM and thermal) and torpedoes (kinetic and explosive). As such, they hit across all four resist types and all incursion fits must reflect that. In general we use a rather erroneous term "70% resists across the board" when we tell people what their resists should be. It is important to know that there is more to it than that.

First of all, it's more of an average resist per type of damage so you can often compensate one resist for the other. The Basilisk for example can leave a reasonable hole in its EM resist thanks to their high thermal resist and still stand up to the damage inflicted by lasers. It also means that most ships can have a slightly lower kinetic resist as long as their explosive resist is equally higher, averaging a solid 70% resist-profile for the damage inflicted by torpedoes.

Second, smaller ships take less damage from torpedoes than larger ships, especially if they are also faster. As such, logistics and strategic cruisers can often get away with slightly lower resists for kinetic and explosive, whereas battleships (especially those with huge signatures) would be better off pushing their kinetic and explosive resists a little bit higher to compensate for taking more damage from torpedoes.

The reason we still use the erroneous "70% resists across the board" term is that if you have 70% resists in all categories, you're good and there's no risk of anyone getting it wrong thinking you can combine a low EM resist with a high explosive resist.

Standard setup

Below is a standard setup for your tank in our fleets. These fits are probably considered overtanked by many public communities and they are in fact overtanked for the most part. There are several reasons for it, mainly it is for safety, to give us a larger buffer and more leeway to save ships if things go wrong. We are not as concerned about pushing for efficiency above safety.

We also recommend fits that are flexible in terms of being able to do vanguards, assaults and even headquarter sites with the same ship. So some seemingly superfluous rigs are there to enable the ships to just swap out a few midslots and go from vanguards to headquarter sites.

Slots	Regular ships	Navy / Fleet Issue	Advanced
	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II EM Ward Amplifier II	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Freed up mid slot	Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invuln ... Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Freed up mid slot
	Damage Control II	Damage Control II	Freed up low slot
	Core Defense Field Extender I Core Defense Field Extender I Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Core Defense Field Extender I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Core Defense Field Extender II Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II Freed up rig slot
Resists	69,5%70%72,8%77,4%	65,2%70,0%72,8%77,4%	65,8%64,9%73,7%78,1%
	72,8%74,5%76,9%80,8%	69,2%74,5%76,9%80,8%	71,8%71,8%78,9%82,4%
Reason	This fit is intentionally overtanked. It's supposed to be a fit you can run even before you get all your support skills to V, before you've maxed out skills like Shield Management and gotten a decent buffer on your ship.	Navy and Fleet Issue ships have much higher base stats than regular ships, so they rarely need the extender rigs to boost their shield hp buffer. Some will still have one, for more flexibility when doing Assaults or Headquarter sites. This variant could be adopted to normal ships as well, unless they have very low base hit points.	The upgrade to a deadspace hardener means you can free up a valuable midslot. The tech two anti-EM rig is there to bring the EM up to par, whilst the tech two extender rig is merely there because you're using the rig anyway (and blowing up your signature) so making it a tech two rig is simply to give the most out of it.
Price	Cheap	Affordable	Costly

Interchangeable fits

As mentioned above, our fits are mostly interchangeable so that we can shift focus from vanguards to assaults or higher by changing a few modules. So here are the major differences in what you need added to your fits as you move up the site sizes.

Slots	Assaults	Headquarters	Motherships
	Large Shield Extender II	Large Shield Extender II EM Ward Amplifier II Experimental 100MN Afterburner I	Large Shield Extender II Large Shield Extender II EM Ward Amplifier II Experimental 100MN Afterburner I
	Damage Control II	Damage Control II	Damage Control II
Reason	The significantly higher alpha in assault sites warrants adding a shield extender to your ship. Most ships simply swap out one of their webs for the large shield extender.	For headquarter sites the need to move is greater, as well as the need to mitigate damage, which is why most headquarter sites requires you to fit an afterburner as well. The EM Ward Amplifier is used since it remains in effect even if you get completely neuted out.	For mothership sites the need to move about is less, but the need to move in order to mitigate damage is still there. The neuting threat also remains. The increased alpha from the mothership's bombers warrants adding a second shield extender if you got room for it, but the afterburner is more important.

Applied DPS

One of the most important aspects to realize is that whatever dps (damage per second) your favourite third party fitting tool tells you that you have, or whatever the fitting window ingame tells you, is worth nothing if you cannot apply that damage. Hence the term "applied dps" as opposed to "paper dps" which is basically just your potential damage.

Your velocity, your target's velocity, approach vectors, your gun's signature resolution, your target's ship signature, locking speed, locking range, your weapon's optimal and falloff range and tracking all play a vital part in how much of your damage you'll be able to apply on your enemy. See Turret Damage for a more comprehensive introduction to the factors determining how much damage you'll end up doing when you undock and leave your bubble.

Practically this means that utility modules often make or break fleets.

Utility modules

First of all, when the term "utility slots" is used it means the slots you have left over once you've fitted your tank and your weapons. So if your ship has five midslots and four are needed for your tank, then the fifth slot is your one utility midslot. If you ship has eight highslots and seven turrets, you have one utility highslot.

Second, the term "utility modules" refer to modules you fit that doesn't directly give you a higher dps in your favourite third party fitting program or on your fitting screen ingame. Instead they act as force multipliers of sorts making up for weaknesses or capitalize on strengths for increased efficiency. There are also modules that has no impact on your offensive capabilities, but are invaluable when things go wrong.

You should always bring as many of these modules are you can fit, so that you can tailor your ship to the needs of the fleet based on your current fleet composition. For example, if you have two free utility midslots, bring two of each of the below listed utility midslot modules. Do the same for any of the utility highslot modules you can theoretically fit to your ship. Keep the modules in the staging system for quick refits.

The fits presented for Vanguards and Assaults will have a default selection of these modules to ensure we have a good base for most fleets. See Anatomy of Incursions for more information on how you can change these modules around for different tactics based on your fleet composition.

Slot	Icons	Name	Effect
		F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines Sensor Booster II	Scripted module to increase either your scan resolution or your targeting range, or both to a lesser degree .
		Federation Navy Stasis Webifier True Sansha Stasis Webifier	Stasis webifiers slow down the target, dramatically increasing the chance to land good hits and thus increase applied dps .
		Tracking Computer II Shadow Serpentis Tracking Computer	Tracking computers can be scripted for additional range or tracking, or both to a lesser degree .
		Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron Republic Fleet Target Painter	Target painters increase the signature of the target, making it easier to lock and shoot .
		Tracking Link II Shadow Serpentis Tracking Link	Tracking links are like remote tracking computers, able to project increased range or tracking to a friendly player.
		F-23 Reciprocal Sensor Cluster Link Remote Sensor Booster II	Remote sensor boosters projected the same kind of effect as sensor boosters, stronger but can only be used on others.
		Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter Large Shield Transporter II	Repairs the friendly target's shields. Having a few extra shield transporters for emergency is invaluable.
		Large 'Regard' Power Projector Large Energy Transfer Array II	Consumes cap in order to send it to a friendly target. Giving each other cap like this creates more cap than it consumes.
		Auto Targeting System I Auto Targeting System II	Increases the number of targets your ship can potentially lock, still limited by your own skills however.
		Drone Link Augmentor I Drone Link Augmentor II	Increases the your drone control range.

Recommended implants

There are plenty of implants that are useful for incursion runners. While one shouldn't run around with a head full of expensive implants during war, there are some rather cheap +3% implants you could use even while at war.

When the cost of your clone isn't an issue, there are +6% implant variants of these implants that greatly increase your efficiency.

Gunnery implants

There are several implants improving damage, rate of fire, tracking. Below are implants that help you regardless which ship you fly as they benefit all turret ships.

Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Motion Prediction MR-703 (slot 7, +3% turret tracking speed)

Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Gunnery RF-903 (slot 9, +3% rate of fire)

Inherent Implants 'Gunslinger' Surgical Strike SS-903 (slot 9, +3% turret damage)

For Battleships and large guns, the next implant is split across each racial weapon system.

Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Large Projectile Turret LP-1003 (slot 10, +3% to large projectile weapons)

Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Large Energy Turret LE-1003 (slot 10, +3% to large energy weapons)

Zainou 'Deadeye' Large Hybrid Turret LH-1003 (slot 10, +3% to large hybrid weapons)

For those flying strategic cruisers as their preferred ships, there's an implant for slot 8.

Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Medium Projectile Turret MP-803 (slot 8, +3% to medium projectiles)

Inherent Implants 'Lancer' Medium Energy Turret ME-803 (slot 8, +3% to medium energy weapons)

Genolution implants

For people without +4 or +5 attribute implants, the Genolution implants can be quite useful.

Genolution Core Augmentation CA-1 (increases powergrid and capacitor)

Genolution Core Augmentation CA-2 (increases CPU and capacitor)

Capacitor implants

For the less used slots 6 and 8 you haven't got much worthwhile to use in terms of increasing your damage. For those slots you could increase your capacitor if you're flying logistics or a ship with cap-hungry turrets.

Inherent Implants 'Squire' Energy Systems Operation EO-603 (slot 6, decreases capacitor recharge)

Inherent Implants 'Squire' Energy Management EM-803 (slot 8, increases capacitor capacity)

Projectile based ships

These ships have no need for capacitor implants in slot 6 and 8, so you could look for other options. Perhaps the most common ones would be the engineering implant to free up more powergrid for artillery or microwarpdrives for the larger sites and locking range.

For slot 6 you got quite a few options of implants:

Inherent Implants 'Squire' Engineering EG-603 (slot 6, increases your powergrid)

Zainou 'Gypsy' Electronics EE-603 (slot 6, increases your CPU)

Eifyr and Co. 'Rogue' Acceleration Control AC-603 (slot 6, increases your AB/MWD speed increase)

For slot 8 there's very few implants that help with incursions:

Zainou 'Gypsy' Long Range Targeting LT-803 (slot 8, increases locking range)

Mindlink implants

For the boosters, slot 10 is taken up by the mindlink implants.

Republic Fleet Warfare Mindlink (slot 10, +15% shield hp, +15% agility and +25% bonus to siege/skirmish command bonus)

Imperial Navy Warfare Mindlink (slot 10, +15% armour hp, +15% targeting range and +25% bonus to armour/information command bonus)