Combat sites
- This article discusses combat sites found in known space. For combat sites found in wormholes, see Wormhole sites.
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In EVE Online, combat sites are one of the two major types of player-versus-environment (PvE) combat activities that players have access to, the other being security missions. Unlike the latter, where the player agrees to travel to a pre-arranged location to destroy a set amount of ships for a fixed reward both in ISK and loyalty points, combat sites are found throughout the entire galaxy. Although the type and amount of enemy ships located in a particular combat site is pre-defined, the rewards the player may get from completing them are based in chance: most sites have a percetage-based chance to spawn a uniquely-named enemy ship, which in turn has it's own chance to drop deadspace or faction modules, as well as unique blueprints.
The enemies present in combat sites belong to either one of the four major pirate factions in New Eden: the Serpentis Corporation, Angel Cartel, Blood Raiders and the Guristas Pirates. Unlike missions, combat sites do not feature enemy ships from any of the four empires, as well as enemies from the Mordus' Angels pirate faction, which only appear in the Besieged Covert Research Facility. All enemy ships within a combat site have a bounty that is paid to the player who kills them. Usually, bigger ships (such as Battleships) or uniquely-named ships (such as those belonging to pirate leaders or complex overseers) will have a higher bounty, and thus will be harder to destroy. If the player is part of a fleet, then the bounty is divided between fleet members.
Combat sites are found via exploration (using the probe scanner) and can be divided into four categories: combat anomalies, cosmic signatures, expeditions and drug sites. Combat anomalies do not need to be scanned, and are visible in the same way as Ice belts and Ore sites. They encompass the entry-level set of combat sites most new players will encounter when playing EVE Online for the first time, and their difficulty ranges from easy to medium. Combat sites that appear as cosmic signatures have to be scanned, and thus are potentially harder to find. They are divided into Unrated Complexes and DED-Rated Complexes and are usually more challenging to complete than combat anomalies, but yield higher rewards and have better odds at dropping unique modules and blueprints.
Expeditions (or escalations) are unique chains of combat sites that have a small chance to be triggered when a player completes an Unrated Complex. Most of them consist of four parts, each taking place several systems away from the previous encounter. Drug sites, better known as Chemical Labs, are a mixed type of combat site, requiring both combat and hacking skills to be completed. A fifth type of combat site, known as COSMOS, can be found in several constellations across New Eden. They reward items required in COSMOS missions, materials for storyline modules, faction modules and rare items.
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Combat anomalies
Combat sites that are found as cosmic anomalies do not need any scanning equipment to locate. They are all ungated deadspace pockets with multiple waves of rats. They have low chance to spawn an commander rat that can drop faction items. They also have low chance to escalate into a DED rated complex.
Combat site anomalies are ranked by difficulty into 10 classes, and follow a naming scheme of (faction) (anomaly). Generally, the higher the difficulty of the site, the higher the rewards for completing it. Each faction's sites will only appear in regions where their rats are normally found (with the exception of Rogue Drone sites, which can appear anywhere). For example, the Heimatar region has Angel Cartel rats, and therefore only Angel Cartel and Rogue Drone combat sites will be found there. For a list of which pirate factions can be found in which regions, see dotlan.
The rank of the anomaly depends on the security status of the system you are searching in. Within high-sec (security status 1.0 to 0.5) the lowest third (in terms of difficulty/value) will be found. Low-sec (security status of 0.4 to 0.1) contains the mid third of them and the highest third will be found within nullsec. The anomaly names are identical for all factions with the exception of Rogue Drone sites, which also differ slightly in which classes of space they are found in.
Hideaway, Den, Rally Point and Hub sites also have more difficult variants (featuring elite rats) in addition to the basic version, sub-divided into 3 more categories:
- (Faction) Hidden (anomaly) - easiest, but still harder than the basic version
- (Faction) Forsaken (anomaly) - middle
- (Faction) Forlorn (anomaly) - hardest
Besieged Covert Research Facilities
Besieged Guristas Covert Research Facility is an unique cosmic anomaly that is found in all low sec regions. The site has two waves of Mordu's Legion cruiser and battleship rats. They use missiles and will use different damage types to test your resistances to find the weakest one, in addition to tackling you with webs and points. Notable loot, some of it coming from the destructible structures (Guristas Research and Trade Hubs and/or Thukker Labs) which may be found in these sites, includes higher-end implants and ship skin BPCs, as well as some special module BPCs.
Faction warfare
- Main article: Faction warfare complexes
In faction warfare space the faction warfare complexes show up as combat anomalies. Once someone warps to the shite it will also show up as warpable beacon in overview.
Cosmic signatures
Combat sites that appear as cosmic signatures must be scanned down with probes to get a warpin. These combat sites can be further divided to two groups: unrated and DED rated. The differences between the two are minor.
Unrated complexes
Unrated complexes have a good chance to contain an commander spawn that can drop faction items. They can also escalate into an expedition.
The sites contain multiple deadspace rooms separated by acceleration gates. The acceleration gates separating rooms are usually locked and a trigger must be triggered or a key used to proceed. The sites also have triggers for additional defender waves and escalations. The size of ship allowed in Unrated Complexes does not follow a predictable pattern, each site, even of the same size but from a different faction, can have a different ship size limit. For details and ship size limits see the page of individual site.
DED rated complexes
DED complexes are a type of cosmic signature that have been rated on a scale of 1/10 to 10/10 by CONCORD's Directive Enforcement Department. Lower-rated sites contain weaker enemies, but are also limited in the size of ship which may enter them. DED rated complexes are found with probe scanner or escalated from a combat anomaly. There are no 9/10 DED Rated Complexes, however some consider the (faction) Fleet Staging Point to be their equivalent.
The structure of DED rated complexes is very similar to unrated complexes. Gated deadspace pockets enemies and rats to kill.
The difference is that DED rated complexes do not contain additional spawns; more rats do not spawn during site running. Many DED rated complexes also contain locked gates that require a specific trigger to open. This makes blizing possible as not all rats need to die. The sites also always contains one or more structure or overseer that can drop faction items or deadspace modules. Some DED complexes contain additional targets that have low chance to drop a faction module.
Unlike unrated complexes, DED rated complexes do not normally escalate. DED rated complexes that were gained as an escalation from an anomaly are an exception, as they can re-escalate into same site.
DED Rated Complexes each have a difficulty rating associated with them on a ranking scale from 1/10 to 10/10. The rating can help to give a direct indication of the difficulty of the site, as well as the maximum size of ship that can be taken through the complexes acceleration gate. In general the ship hull class that can enter the site goes up by one as the rating goes up by one, until you reach 5/10.
| Rating | Maximum Ship Size Allowed |
|---|---|
| 1/10 | Frigate |
| 2/10 | Destroyer |
| 3/10 | Cruiser (Not including T3) |
| 4/10 | Battlecruiser (Not T3 Cruiser) |
| 5+/10 | Battleship |
Expeditions
Expeditions (also known as escalations) cannot be found by scanning, instead they escalate from unrated complexes. When a trigger of an Unrated Complex is destroyed, there is a relatively small chance that a pop up window will open explaining that details of the location of another enemy site have been found. The site's information is then added to the journal in the expeditions tab.
When the site listed in the journal is finished, there is a chance that it will escalate further, leading to yet another site. Most expeditions have up to 4 parts.
The expedition locations can be in any security space. Usually the first three are in same security space as the site that escalated and fourth is usually in lower security space but this varies.
Chemical Labs
Chemical Labs are found with probe scanning. Even though the probe scanning window categorizes them as gas sites they are actually combat sites. In order to get access to the rewards the site needs to be cleared of hostiles and the containers in site need to be hacked with data analyzer.
The production facilities spawn in null security space only. Rest of the sites spawn in low security space only.
Details of these sites are not well documented. They all most likely contain two waves of enemies and containers that need to be hacked with data analyzer. The sites are restricted to specific regions. The regions in which each site spawns are not known. The regions listed here may not be the only region containing that site.
COSMOS sites
- Main article: COSMOS
Certain constellations contain COSMOS combat sites. These are connected to COSMOS missions but can be run at any time. These sites appear as static complexes with warpable beacons in space, located by using the star map and coloring the map by "DED deadspace reports", or as scannable combat signatures. Not all static DED sites are combat sites, some of them are landmarks or epic mission agent locations.
These complexes are all static and they never move. Even the ones that can be probed are always in same spot.
The static COSMOS sites respawn periodically (some only at downtime). They reward items required in COSMOS missions, materials for storyline modules, faction modules and rare items.[1]
Gated COSMOS sites follow same ship size restrictions as scannable DED rated sites. Ungated COSMOS sites have no restrictions.
COSMOS sites can be found in COSMOS constellations Ani (Minmatar COSMOS), Araz (Amarr COSMOS), Okkelen (Caldari COSMOS), Algintal (Gallente COSMOS), Pegasus (Fountain), Assilot (Cloud Ring), I-3ODK (Feythabolis), 760-9C (Wicked Creek), OK-FEM (Delve), 9HXQ-G (Catch), 09-4XW (Tenal) and E-8CSQ (Vale of the Silent). See COSMOS for full list of known COSMOS sites.
See also
References
- ^ Rakogh Citadel in 3GD6-8 drops Pashan’s Turret Handling Mindlink http://gamingwithdaopa.ellatha.com/eveonline/pashans-turret-mindlink-drops/
