User:Cassiel Seraphim/Sandbox3

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 offence.

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

Omni damage and resists

The Sansha incursion rats deal damage in two ways, lasers (EM and thermal) and torpedoes (kinetic and explosive). As such, they hit across all four resist types. While you can sometimes compensate for a low kinetic resist by having a higher explosive resist, or get away with lower resists due to having a small signature and high speed, generally you don't have the luxury of having resist holes in incursions.

Just as they do damage across the board, the Sansha incursion rats have omni tanks as well. The only notable exception is the Lirsautton Parichaya, it's a little weaker against thermal damage and stronger against explosive damage. So contrary to missions where Amarr and Gallente weapons are somewhat limited due to their set damage types, these weapons are not hampered by resists in incursions.

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 or the gunnery guide for a more comprehensive introduction to the factors determining how much damage you'll end up doing when you undock and leave your theoretical bubble.

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

Utility modules

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.

Utility medium slots	Utility high slots	Utility drones
Sensor Booster II Federation Navy Stasis Webifier Tracking Computer II Phased Weapon Navigation Array ...	Large S95a Remote Shield Booster Large 'Regard' Capacitor Transmitters Auto Targeting System I Drone Link Augmentor I	Heavy Shield Maintenance Bot I Medium Shield Maintenance Bot I Light Shield Maintenance Bot I Light Armor Maintenance Bot I

For vanguards we make sure we have at least one sensor booster and one web. If we have room for more midslots we primarily go for a second web first before looking into other modules. For assaults and up, once you've ensured that you have the locking range needed (potentially requires you to use a sensor booster) and fitted any required propulsion modules. For utility highslots, pick the most important one. So a capacitor transmitter if you run with Basilisks or need a cap chain and a remote shield booster if you run with Scimitars or have no need for a cap chain. Should you have the luxury of having more than one utility highslot, just bring both. If you have no use for either or lack the powergrid to fit them you could use an auto targeter for more locks, drone link augmentor for longer drone control range etc.

When in doubt, just follow the recommended fits on the Vanguard and Assault fitting pages. See Anatomy of Incursions for more information on how you can change these modules around for different tactics based on your fleet composition.

Drones

Drones can be a tremendous asset, if you pick the right ones and use them intelligently. The sum of all the drones in fleet can easily amount to the equivalent of adding an extra pilot or two on grid, so it's not something to treat lightly. See utilizing drones for more information on how to make the most of drones.

When selecting drones you need to factor in how to get the best mix of microwarpdrive and orbital speeds, tracking and optimal range for the type of fleet and sites you run. Amarr drones generally provide the best mix for most situations except for headquarter sites. Below are the drones we recommend within our community.

Recommended drones/site	Light drones	Medium drones	Heavy drones	Sentry drones
Vanguard sites	Acolyte II	Not recommended	Not recommended	Garde II
Assault sites	Acolyte II	Infiltrator II	Not recommended	Curator II
Headquarter sites	Hobgoblin II	Hammerhead II	Ogre II	Not recommended

Rigging choice

"It’s all relative, you might say."

It's very easy to dismiss the importance of the rig selection when buying a new ship. While it's usually not something a new pilot needs to worry about when getting any of the minimum fits posted on the wiki, it's extremely important for people looking to get a new ship as it heavily influences your options in terms of flexibility and utility slots (which is everything in incursions). Don't spend too much ISK on a temporary setup, either go for a cheap "good enough" setup while you're saving up for your ideal setup, or just wait until you can afford the whole setup you want in the end.

Electromagnetic or thermal rig

In general the electromagnetic rig will free up more midslots, but tends to require fancier deadspace modules to compensate for the overall lower resists. The thermal rig gives you a stronger and more flexible tank without having to rely on the high-end deadspace modules, at the cost of not being able to free up as many midslots.

Defence or offence

Going for offence means that you're limited to a single tech one resist rig in combination to your burst or collision rig, due to the high calibration cost of the tech two damage rigs. Choosing a more defensive setup will allow you to fit a tech two resist rig as well as making full use of the other two rigs. The offensive rigs are usually much cheaper than the defensive ones, but since the offensive setup usually has to up the quality of their deadspace modules to get a comparable resist profile, they're often forced to use higher tiered deadspace mods.

Flexibility vs efficiency vs cost

Given the different needs for tank and utility modules between the different type of sites, most incursion communities go for the most efficient rig setup for the kind of sites they are running. A community running vanguards exclusively often have different setups than those who run headquarters only. Communities that push for high-end fits with expensive deadspace modules usually have different rig selections too, since those stronger modules opens up for a few more options.

Going for the most efficient setup is of course always going to be the strongest way to do it, but sometimes you have to be practical. In our case, within our community, we factor in flexibility and cost a lot more. We want our members to be able to use the same ship for any type of site without having to resort to spending billions on faction and deadspace modules. That doesn't stop people who want to from doing it, but it does mean that some of our recommended fits will differ quite a lot from that of public communities.

Determining a proper tank

There are a few easy ways to determine whether a tank is ok or not. Below are some key aspects that help when you're testing your ship in your favourite third-party fitting tool or if you've taken on the role of waitlist manager and need to quickly gauge whether the fit someone x up with is ok or not.

Resist holes

A lot of ships share a standard resist profile, so they share the same resist holes and have the same issues and weaknesses. Understanding what innate weaknesses a ship has is key to knowing how to best raise it to the desired high average resists mentioned above.

Below is a list of different resist profiles for various ship classes as well as a few specific ships with deviating profiles. The last column lists the obvious weaknesses of the class/hull, which will help you determine how to best achieve the desired resist profile. Plugging a hole is usually a simple matter of adding a resist rig or a combination of a rig and a shield amplifier, then up the resists in general by using one or two invulnerability fields.

Ship	Base resist profile	Comments
Regular/faction battleships	0%20%40%50%	An EM hole and a weak thermal resist.
Resist bonused battleships	20%36%52%60%	Weak EM and thermal resists, but no resist holes.
Scimitar	75%60%40%50%	No resist holes.
Basilisk	0%80%70%50%	An EM hole.

Effective shield hit points

You can judge your tank by many means, but for Incursions the best way to measure your tank is to look at effective shield hit points (ESHP), as opposed to damage per second repaired (DPS-tank) or the generic effective hit points (EHP). This is because a lot of ships have significant armour and hull hit points, so the effective hit points value can be quite misleading on a battleship with a damage control for example, as the EHP-value skyrockets compared to a ship without a damage control fitted, but very little of it applies to the actual ESHP. You also need to factor in things like speed and signature, because a smaller ship that is orbiting will be a lot harder to hit than a large, stationary ship. So don't casually compare a ship's effective shield hit points against another without taking that into your consideration.

Shield hit points and resists

While the above mentioned effective shield hit points is a good measure, it is not always practical to use on the fly. For one it doesn't really tell you if the ship has any glaring resist holes, so for practical reasons we tend to speak in more general terms -- Shield hit points and resists. It's much easier to just ask the pilot "How many raw shield hit points do you have?" and "What are your resists if you undock and turn on all your modules?". It's very easy for people to check this ingame and it tells us enough to judge whether or not the fit is ok.

Guidelines

Below are some rough guidelines for what a proper tank might be for a battleship (there isn't much variation to speak of for logistics). Since we focus mainly on low skilled, kitchen sink setups we're going with a relatively high recommended level for our community. The values below are of raw shield hit points and paired average resists (EM/thermal and kinetic/explosive), values before boosts for easy comparison.

	Vanguards (33k+ effective shield hit points) 70% resists and at least 10,000 raw shield hit points.
	Assaults (40k+ effective shield hit points) 70% resists and at least 12,000 raw shield hit points.
	Headquarters (52k+ effective shield hit points + 100k effective hit points in total) 73% resists and at least 14,000 raw shield hit points.

Naturally lower shield hit points is doable if you adjust your resists accordingly. In vanguards and assaults it's also possible to drop a little lower in really good fleets. Just remember that resists are far more important than raw shield hit points, as higher resists has the secondary benefit of increasing the efficiency of remote repairs. Below is a graph illustrating how damage changes with scaling resists.

Resists		Actual damage taken
61% resists		30% more damage (39% reduction)
64% resists		20% more damage (36% reduction)
67% resists		10% more damage (33% reduction)
70% resists		Baseline damage (30% reduction)
73% resists		10% less damage (27% reduction)
76% resists		20% less damage (24% reduction)
79% resists		30% less damage (21% reduction)

Stacking penalties and offgrid boosts

A ship with fewer modules or rigs stacking will also benefit more from boosts, thus not suffering quite as much as they might initially seem to. This of course means they also have more to lose if boosts go down, which is worth noting.

Further down this page you'll see examples of this with the advanced setups, if you pay attention to the normal resist profiles vs the resist profile with offgrid boosts. The EM-rig setup for vanguards for example has a deceptively low EM/thermal resist, averaging around 62% instead of the recommended 70%. This would suggest nearly +30% more damage taken from turret damage, as your resists are almost 9% lower (see the graph above). But due to less stacking penalties that setup ends up having roughly 69% average EM/thermal resists after boosts which is fairly close to the 72% of our recommended fits and will eventually only take +10% more damage from turrets, while taking torpedoes just fine.

Battleship setups

Below are some examples of tank setups for battleships, both the setups we use for our minimum fits as well as some advanced ones for high-end ships.

In order to highlight the transition of each type of fit from vanguards to headquarters, each setup will not only show the vanguard fit in question, but also how it works if you take off some tank as well as what's needed to make that setup work for assaults and headquarters.

Minimum setup

This is the minimum skill setup that we use within our community. It is designed to cheap and flexible enough to be useful in a variety of different sites. For assaults and headquarters, we often use a Large Shield Extender II to ensure that everyone has enough buffer, even with the minimum skills we require.

This assumes our minimum skills so the EM resist can be up to 2% higher with EM Shield Compensation V instead of III.

Slots	Vanguard (less tank)	Vanguard	Assault	Headquarter
	Freed up mid slot Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II EM Ward Amplifier II	Freed up mid slot Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II EM Ward Amplifier II	Large Shield Extender II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II EM Ward Amplifier II	Large Shield Extender II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Pithum C-Type EM Ward Amplifier
	Freed up low slot	Damage Control II	Damage Control II	Damage Control II
	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
	65,2%65,7%69,0%74,1%	69,5%70,0%72,8%77,4%	69,5%70,0%72,8%77,4%	71,9%72,1%72,8%77,4%
	67,7%68,2%73,5%77,9%	71,7%72,2%76,8%80,7%	71,7%72,2%76,8%80,7%	73,9%74,2%76,8%80,7%

Resist bonused ships

Ships like the Rokh with resist bonuses can fit slightly different due to their higher base resistances.

This assumes our minimum skills so the various resist can be up to 3% higher with Caldari Battleship V instead of III and in the case of the headquarter fit with the EM amplifier, additional EM resist can be gained by training EM Shield Compensation V.

Slots	Vanguard (less tank)	Vanguard	Assault	Headquarter
	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Freed up mid slot	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Freed up mid slot	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Freed up mid slot	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II EM Ward Amplifier II
	Freed up low slot	Damage Control II	Damage Control II	Damage Control II
	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
	62,3%69,8%72,7%77,2%	67,0%73,6%76,1%80,1%	67,0%73,6%76,1%80,1%	75,4%73,6%76,1%80,1%
	65,0%72,0%76,7%80,6%	69,4%75,5%79,6%83,0%	69,4%75,5%79,6%83,0%	76,1%75,5%79,6%83,0%

Navy & Fleet Issue ships with four midslots

Ships like the Apocalypse Navy Issue and the Megathron Navy Issue with only four midslots aren't recommended for incursions, mostly due to their lack of midslots but also due to being armour based and suffering from fairly low shield hit points (and in the case of the apocalypse serious capacitor issues) which just compounds the issues of these ships. Within certain limits they can still do reasonably well in vanguards and assaults, but they are unable to do headquarter sites both from an efficiency point of view as well as due to their weak tank.

Navy and Fleet Issue ships have higher rig calibration points than other ships (400 points instead of the regular 350 points).

Slots	Vanguard (less tank)	Vanguard	Assault (less tank)
	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Freed up mid slot	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Freed up mid slot	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Large Shield Extender II
	Freed up low slot	Damage Control II	Damage Control II
	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II
	60,2%65,7%69,0%74,1%	65,2%70,0%72,8%77,4%	65,2%70,0%72,8%77,4%
	63,1%68,2%73,5%77,9%	67,7%72,2%76,8%80,7%	67,7%72,2%76,8%80,7%

Advanced fits

While there are several ways to fit high-end ships for incursions, here are some frequently used variants.

Calibration

Due to the limit of calibration points, there are several combinations available. Here are some common ones.

Slots	Offensive	Defensive	Warp speed
	Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I Large Hybrid Burst Aerator II	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II Spare rig slot Spare rig slot	Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II Spare rig slot
SUM	350/350 (0 points left)	75/350 (275 points left)	150/350 (200 points left)

Filling up the spare rig slots is a matter of figuring out what rig benefits you the most, based on the type of fleet compositions you run, what kind of ship you fly and if a rig can in some way help you free up a low- or midslot. If you need more range use a Locus Coordinator II rig (150 points), if you need more shield hit points use a Core Defense Field Extender II rig (75 points) and if you need more cap use either a Capacitor Control Circuit II rig (150 points) or a Discharge Elutriation II rig (150 points).

Just remember that any offensive rig you fit on your ship needs to be tech two, otherwise it'll end up at the end of stacking penalties and that will render it completely useless.

Thermal rig

The thermal rig setup is primarily a more defensive setup, used for even resists with the ability to really push the resists up. The downside of this setup is that you're forced to use two midslots and cannot drop down to one midslot for vanguards. Depending on what other rigs you use, you'll have enough calibration points to upgrade to a tech two anti-thermal rig further increasing your tank.

This assumes our minimum skills so the EM resist can be up to 2% higher with EM Shield Compensation V instead of III.

Slots	Vanguard	Assault	Headquarter	Headquarter (alternative)
	Freed up mid slot Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invuln ... Pithum C-Type EM Ward Amplifier	Freed up mid slot Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invuln ... Pithum C-Type EM Ward Amplifier	Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invuln ... Pithum C-Type EM Ward Amplifier	Freed up mid slot Pithum A-Type Adaptive Invuln ... Pithum A-Type EM Ward Amplifier
	Freed up low slot	Damage Control II	Damage Control II	Damage Control II
	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
	66,0%66,9%64,4%70,3%	70,3%69,3%68,8%74,0%	75,4%74,5%77,0%80,8%	75,0%72,5%72,1%76,8%
	71,0%71,8%72,4%77,0%	74,7%73,8%75,8%79,9%	77,2%76,4%80,4%83,6%	78,7%76,6%78,4%82,0%

Electromagnetic rig

The EM rig setup is primarily used to free up as many slots are possible, but requires you to spend considerably more ISK on deadspace hardeners and will still have considerably lower resists for vanguards.

Slots	Vanguard (much less tank)	Vanguard (less tank)	Assault	Headquarter
	Freed up mid slot Freed up mid slot Pithum B-Type Adaptive Invuln ...	Freed up mid slot Freed up mid slot Pithum B-Type Adaptive Invuln ...	Freed up mid slot Adaptive Invulnerability Field II Pithum B-Type Adaptive Invuln ...	Freed up mid slot Pithum B-Type Adaptive Invuln ... Pithum B-Type Adaptive Invuln ...
	Freed up low slot	Damage Control II	Damage Control II	Damage Control II
	Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I	Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
	58,4%55,0%66,3%71,9%	63,6%60,6%70,5%75,4%	69,8%70,9%78,2%81,8%	74,7%75,6%81,7%84,7%
	64,6%65,1%73,8%78,2%	69,0%69,5%77,1%80,9%	72,1%75,2%81,4%84,5%	76,6%79,2%84,4%87,0%

Strategic cruisers and command ships

While a lot of communities avoid strategic cruisers and command ships due to the fact that their damage output cannot match that of pirate faction battleships, we still allow them as they can easily match the efficiency of tech one battleships. As such, we welcome properly fit strategic cruisers and command ships in our community, as they are good enough for our purposes and we don't benefit from alienating people who prefer to fly smaller ships.

Just be sure to inform people that if they have plans to fly with public communities, they will most likely need to train into a proper battleship.

Different resist profiles

One of the biggest differences fitting strategic cruisers and command ships compared to battleships is that they have a different resist profile. They are also much smaller in signature, especially the strategic cruisers, so won't need the same raw buffer of shield hit points either. As such, the solution could range from anything between a thermal and EM hardener for the Legion to a mere anti-EM rig on the Tengu or an invulnerability field for the Sleipnir.

Ship	Base resist profile	Comments
Astarte / Proteus	0%60%85%50%	An EM hole.
Legion	0%20%70%87,5%	An EM hole and weak thermal resists.
Loki	80%60%52%60%	No resist holes.
Sleipnir	75%60%40%50%	No resist holes.
Tengu	20%84%76%60%	Weak EM resists.
Vulture	0%80%70%50%	An EM hole.