Faction warfare strategy and tactics

Note: this is a draft page on Factional Warfare strategy and tactics

Factional Warfare strategy and tactics

In Factional Warfare you can fight for one of the four empires against its enemies for control over areas of low-sec. This page gives tips on how to make the most of the PvE and PvP opportunities in Factional Warfare (FW); for a more detailled look at the FW mechanics see Factional Warfare.

Before joining

Skills

Before joining Factionalal Warfare, you should at be able to fly a frigate with the "holy trinity" of midslot PvP modules (a microwarpdrive, a scram or warp disruptor, and a web). This will allow you to start looking for and getting into fights.

A good knowledge of the #overview and some FW-specific settings, as well as some practice with the directional scanner (D-Scan) is also helpful. FW provides plenty of PvP opportunities for both solo players and fleets; if you want to try flying in fleets, then it may be worth refreshing your memory of basic fleet operations (see The Rookie's Guide To Fleet Ops or attend the classes Fleets 101 and Fleets 102).

Ships, items and ISK

While it's possible to make a decent income from FW, it's recommended that you stock up on a few ships (including fittings, ammunition), and have enough ISK (or other ways of making ISK) to cover your losses while you get your bearings. Also, it's a lot less frustrating to just jump into a new ship and keep flying if you lose a fight (rather than have to go back to a trade hub and first buy and then fit a new one). Start by bringing smaller ships (frigates and destroyers), and decide later if you want to start flying larger ships.

Keep in mind that, once you join FW, about half of empire space (including two of the four trade hubs) will be very difficult to get to; this means that you won't be able to run missions or trade in the "enemy" half of empire space, and that any ships or items you have stored in enemy empire stations will be hard to get to. Therefore, move all the ships and modules you think you want to use out of enemy empire space. Additionally, in the medium term, it may be worth having a trading or hauling alt to keep your FW character supplied.

Choosing a militia

Which militia (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente or Minmatar) you choose is very much up to you. Some players choose it purely on role-playing grounds, while others look at the current state of each war zone (such each faction's tier or how active the enemy militia is) and try to maximise their profit, PvP opportunities, or fun - although keep in mind that Factional Warfare is highly dynamic, and while a faction may control most of their war zone one month, the picture could look very different the next.

Additionally, there is no limitation on which race' ships you can fly - you could fight for the Minmatar while flying a ship built by their hated enemies, the Amarr. Deciding which parts of empire space you would like to continue accessing can also be a factor - so don't enlist with the Gallente if you want to continue going to Jita (which is a Caldari system)!

Once you have chosen a militia to fight for, move yourself and your ships to a staging system. You can ask in #militia chat what the common staging systems for your militia are, or, to start off, you can pick a high-sec system on your faction's border with the war zone (this keeps you reasonably safe from enemy militia, while still being only a jump or two away from the war zone). It may be helpful to pick a station owned by your militia's NPC corporation (e.g. State Protectorate if fighting for the Caldari), as this gives you easy access to your militia's #LP store and agent(s) for running #missions.

Navigation

When starting out, it's very helpful to familiarize yourself with the layout of each war zone:

• main entrances from high-sec
• chokepoints and dead-end clusters of star systems
• currently contested and active systems

Both the in-game star map and out-of-game maps (such as Dotlan and Ombeve) are very helpful in this regard. Expecially Dotlan and the in-game star map can give you up-to-date information on what system is currently held by which faction, and where a lot of traffic and fighting is taking place (filter by "number of jumps" and "number of ships destroyed"). Additionally, your militia's #chat channel can be a useful source of intel.

Factional Warfare takes place in low-sec, so there will be the occasional gatecamp on well-travelled routes (although fast frigates should be able to escape these, as there are no bubbles in low-sec). Also, roaming gangs of ships are a fairly common sight. The Uni's Preparing for Low Sec class (or its Low-Sec Campus) may be helpful to new pilots who would like a more detailled introduction to the specifics of flying in low-sec.

The directional scanner is an invaluable tool to either scout for threats ahead of you (eg use it to scan a stargate before approaching it to see if there are ships camping it) or to look for PvP targets.

Plexing

Capturing complexes ("plexes") as a solo player is a straightforward affair - enter the plex, kill the defending NPC (if plexing in an enemy-held system), and then stay inside the plex' capture radius until the timer has counted down to 0. The NPCs do little damage (so as not to interfere too much in any PvP combat which might occur in the plex) and use no electronic warfare, but have fairly rapid HP regeneration, so you're unlikely to be able to kill them in ships much smaller than them (so a solo pilot in a frigate should be able to kill the destroyer NPC in a small complex, but will likely have trouble against the cruiser NPC in a medium complex.

As the rewards you gain from capturing a plex are split between all the friendly pilots in the plex (yet the timer does not count down any faster), there is little incentive to capture plexes in groups (except when you want to deter attacks in very active star systems). This mechanism of reward sharing can be used in a somewhat shady tactic called "plex sniping": a pilot will warp to a plex that's currently being captured by a friendly pilot. They will note how much time is left on the timer, then leave the plex, only to return a few seconds before the timer finishes counting down. This way, they get half the reward with almost none of the effort (but since they also deprive the pilot who has spent all the time in the plex of half of their reward, they are unlikely to make friends!).

All plexes show up on the system scanner; plexes which have been warped to (even if the warp was cancelled immediately) show up on the Overview. Naturally, the assumption is that if a plex appears on the overview, then a pilot will be in the process of capturing it. You can use this to your advantage, by either masking your trail (opening a large number of plexes in a star system before capturing one) or by hunting for targets which you have spotted in the Local channel in opened plexes.

PvP tactics in complexes

D-Scan and knowledge of the layout and mechanics of complexes can make a big difference when fighting in and around complexes.

All but the largest complexes have acceleration gates (which only let certain classes of ships pass). The most obvious advantage is that you can use a complex' size to pick what kind of ships you want to fight: if you're inside a novice-sized complex, you will only be fighting T1 and faction frigates (and will not have to go up against, say, destroyers or cruisers).

The distance from the complex to its gate is always the same (about 1 million km), and so you can use D-Scan to watch for enemies coming into your complex, or to look for targets inside complexes.

• When defending a complex, set your D-Scan range to about 1.5 million km with a 360° angle, and scan every few seconds. Any ship which wants to enter your complex first has to drop out of warp at the acceleration gate, at which point you will spot it on your D-Scan, giving you a few seconds' warning to either prepare for a fight or flee. Additionally, since cloaked ships cannot use acceleration gates while remaining cloaked, you will be able to spot these as well.
• When looking for targets, you can use D-Scan with a narrow angle to scan the immediate surroundings of a complex' beacon (visible on the Overview) to see what ships are inside the complex. Note that you'll also pick up ships sitting at the complex' acceleration gate with this method.

After activating the acceleration gate, all ships entering the complex will land at its beacon. If you're defending a complex you can use this to your advantage - if you're flying a brawling ship (which fights best when close to the enemy), you can sit right on the beacon and blast incoming ships before they have a chance to pull out of your range. Conversely, kiting or sniping ships will want to stay far away from the beacon to hit incoming enemies with long-range fire.

Missions

see FW missions page

Attacking the infrastructure hub

Time to destroy an i-Hub.

Attacking a system's infrastructure hub ("i-Hub") is the final stage in capturing a star system for your faction. However, this is not something a solo player can do - the i-Hub has 25 million hit points (HP), and you need to do at least 1700 dps (damage per second) to break through its shield recharge rate.

As illustrated by the graph on the right, a fleet will need to do about 4000 dps to destroy the i-Hub in under two hours (keeping in mind that's two hours of non-stop bombardment), 7500 dps to do it in an hour, and 14,000 dps to do it in half an hour. To make these numbers more concrete, a stealth bomber does about 300-400 dps, and a battleship (or a tier 3 battlecruiser) does about 600-800 dps. Therefore, you would need over twenty stealth bombers (or ten battleships) firing non-stop for an hour to destroy an i-Hub.

Keep in mind that while your fleet is busy destroying the i-Hub, you also have to prevent enemy militia pilots from not only attacking your fleet, but also from capturing complexes in the system (as if they capture enough complexes to bring the system from "vulnerable" to "contested", any damage you have done to the i-Hub is reset). Medium-sized corporations will usually swarm it with stealth bombers, while larger corporations can afford to send in a fleet of battleships (supported by smaller vessels, as battleships on their own are very vulnerable). Some corporations will attack i-Hubs with dreadnoughts - while this is the quickest way to destroy them (a deadnought in siege mode can do about 5000 dps), it requires a large supporting fleet to protect the valuable capital ships (not to mention the resources to even field multiple dreadnoughts!).

Therefore, as destroying i-Hubs requires a non-trivial amount of resources and organisations, star systems will often be left "vulnerable" until a large force can be mustered, which will then usually destroy a number of i-Hubs in the course of a few hours.

Making money

Even though blowing up enemy player's ships and running missions rewards you will small amounts of ISK, the bulk of the income from Factional Warfare comes from earning loyalty points (LP) with your militia corporation, using it to buy items from the corporation's LP store, and then selling those items for ISK.

Earning loyalty points

Your main sources of loyalty points are capturing complexes, killing enemy player ships, and running missions. Your current faction tier heavily influences how much LP you receive from these activities (the higher the tier, the more LP you get for the same activity).

Keep in mind that FW was primarily designed to be an enabler for PvP, therefore, unlike (for instance) high-sec mission running, you will probably lose a number of ships while flying in FW space. Therefore, it is a good idea to have a reasonable number of ships ready to go at your "home" base, so that if you do get blown up, you can quickly jump into a new ship and continue making LP and having fun.

While you do get LP for killing enemy ships, there isn't much to say about making money from this other than "kill ships and don't die". Making money from missions is covered in Factional Warfare missions.

Complexes

Capturing complexes ("plexes") in friendly-held systems (so-called "defensive plexing") is a good entry point for low-skilled pilots who want to pad their wallet a little. While it doesn't pay a lot (try to find a highly-contested system, as the more a system is contested, the better this pays), it can be done with a very cheap ship, provided you keep a close eye on the Local chat channel and your D-Scanner for incoming enemy ships. Some players even go so far as to do it in weaponless ships (often Ventures) filled with warp core stabilizers, who run at the first sign of trouble - although this will get boring very quickly.

Capturing plexes in enemy-held systems ("offensive plexing") pays better than defensive plexing, but needs a modicum of combat prowess (at the very least to destroy the defending NPC without losing too much time). At high faction tiers this can be a good income source for experienced beginners. For example, a decently-fit combat frigate can tackle small plexes, which, at (say) faction tier 3, pay 30k LP each. You can probably run about three of these per hour, earning you about 90 million ISK worth of LP per hour. Additionally, you can fight enemy players who come into your plex - although keep in mind that since you're essentially passive, it will be up to the enemy whether to enter your plex, and they will only do so if they think they have a better-than-even chance of beating you.

In general, if you're only capturing complexes for the rewards, it will soon get very dull (as you're basically orbiting a structure and refreshing your D-Scan every few seconds). Therefore, it's up to you to find the right balance between PvP excitement and LP income. You can use maps (look at the number of jumps and the number of ships killed) to find systems or areas with the right level of activity - not so hot that you get swatted from space by a blob of enemy ships every few minutes, but not so quiet that you get bored.

Converting loyalty points (into cold hard cash)

maximising profit (donating LP, LP rewards scale with tier, cashing out)

Upgrade systems or not

system upgrades rarely worth it for the benefits, definitely worth it for the militia tier

Militias and fleets

communication within militias (chat channels) spies and intel

For Minmatar FW Amamake is a common rally ground, so a base near or in this low-sec system can be handy. For other militias, I suggest looking at the FW Map pack from Ombey's Eve 2D Maps [2].

Having Teamspeak, Ventrilo and Eve Voice ready for usage will help as well. In the Minmatar militia, Eve Voice is commonly used by all corporations, though the corporations usually have an internal TS or Ventrilo server. From hearsay, I heard that the Amarr militia has been using a more or less Amarr militia public Ventrilo server to handle militia fleets. I personally prefer Eve Voice as it is available for everybody and you don't need to setup an additional program. Identifying who is talking is also a little easier.

Overview settings

overview settings

Further, check your overview settings and adapt them. Personally, I have a separate tab with opposing militia members just as normal war dec's with a flashy background on overview. I also have neutrals on overview to identify “out of corp” spies in rookie ships.

Neutrals in FW space

neutral = pirate? (both as a target and a threat)

Travelling through enemy high-sec

travelling through enemy high-sec

what activities are most suitable to high and low tiers

FAQ

Do you need to run complexes?

Complexes can be useful tactically, as the acceleration gates restrict certain class ships entering them. This can enable you to get some slightly fairer PvP action.

You don't need to complete the complex to achieve this. If others in your group wanted to complete the complex you could warp out just before it captured to avoid gaining standing.

Do you need to shoot NPCs in complexes?

In defensive complexes, the NPCs are your own faction - don't shoot them!!!

In offensive complexes, the NPCs are from your opposition factions. With the recent changes, you need to shoot them in order to complete the plex, so be prepared to do so.

Do you need to run missions?

No, not at all.

So I could take part in FW without hurting my faction standings in any way?

Yes. As long as you never complete complexes, shoot faction NPCs or do FW missions. You don't actually lose faction standing for killing other pvp pilots, you only lose enemy faction war corporation standing.

You'll only lose enemy faction standing for killing faction NPC's in plexes, or by getting 'promoted' by your own (npc) faction warfare corporation, which will happen as a result of completing plexes or missions. You don't have to complete plexes to get the pvp you desire (but can still go in them to use their tactical benefits). You don't need to do missions.

Can I run missions for the opposing faction to offset any standings losses I do make?

Of course, but agents might not be in your area. For example, there are no Amarr level 4 "kill" agents in Metropolis or Heimatar, although there are level 4 agents working for other divisions, and you could mission in other areas.

Can I still do normal missions in empire or go mining?

Yes, you can do still missions in empire, but keep in mind that if you do missions in the opposing factions empire the faction NPC navy will also spawn and attack you.

Your access to other corporations even from the opposing faction is thus limited due to the movement restrictions due to these NPC Navy spawns. If you can keep up your standing with the other factions corporations you could join the Minmatar militia and still do missions for the Caldari empire, provided these agents are in Minmatar or Gallente space.

Suicide ganks into the opposing faction have been popular and happen from time to time, also the lone wanderer or fast interceptor is looking for unaware militia members afk-ing in their own space, but I haven't heard from somebody bothering to bring a neutral scanner just to find militia members in high sec.

Mining in common asteroid belts can be dangerous with the imminent danger that a suicide fleet shows up and there have been the occasional kills during the first few weeks of afk miners in high sec so you might want to refrain from doing that. On the other hand – and don't tell the Amarr – I do mine from time to time in Heimatar in a Hulk and so far have been only tagged once by a crow, who couldn't get passed by my shields and ran away when I unleashed my drones.

Risk assessment: with all those people, who do I trust?

Being thrown into an NPC militia , you end up with a whole bunch of people, and this still being Eve the questions arises can I trust these people?

The answer as in all of EvE is no, trust nobody. Although the spying, backstabbing in the Minmatar-Amarr war is fairly low and the numbers of really bad or even traitorous FC is very low, each war is different. You could even say depending on what time you play the war within on conflict is fought differently as RL player TZ come and go.

A personal experience from the Gallente-Caldari war from our well known intelligence officer, Patric Reigns:

As a member of the the Caldari militia it became apparent that many of the pirate groups were allied/supporting the Gallente militia in Black Rise. The risks of initiating combat against pirate targets who in many cases kept their sec status neutral, with the subsequent sec status hit and engagement of gate guns, kept the militia on the back foot. Corporations operating from high-sec would also declare war on individual corps in a militia. This would allow them to isolate and engage individual members of your fleet who belonged to those corporations without being flagged to the rest of the fleet. Intervening would also incur a sec-status penalty; Almost complete absence of command & control structures in militias.

Within the Amarr-Minmatar war the CVA have been a long time supporter of the Amarr NPC militia as well of some of the player corporations. Since alliances can't join militias their support was mostly more logistically and I personally encountered them almost never in the factional warfare zones fighting. Though they recently retracted their official support (ingame news), this doesn't mean that there are no out-of-militia supporters in the Amarr-Minmatar war. Personally I already encountered an NPC noob scout in an noob ship as FC following my gang everywhere dragging an Amarr militia gang with him.

There also have been some known spies in the Minmatar militia, who have been identified, which you will notice and learn from just watching the militia chat and being active. Keeping good and bad militia members and FC in your personal address book can help keeping track of these people.

As Patric also stated there is no functional command structure within these militias - although some corporation have gathered around some regulations - there is no ingame way to enforce any of these regulations, e.g. killboard loss posting is requested but can not be enforced, there is no shared standing or derived standing and individual player corporations within a militia can be war dec'ed by player corporations within their own militia as well as from corporations outside the militia, resulting in no way to support allied player corporations in the militia from within the alliance apart from re'deccing the aggressing player corporation with your own corporation.