Getting Started in Incursions

Running incursions is a great way to make ISK quickly if you have the proper skillset and capital to get a ship to start with. There are many incursion communities throughout the world and in various time zones, so you don’t have to worry about staying up late at night to catch a group in a different time zone. Personally, when I started running incursions, it was tough and I didn’t know what skills I had to train to meet the minimum requirements nor what ships I should use However, when I joined a group, that all changed. Joining a group will allow you to get started much more easily as people in them are very helpful. They will show you what guides and fittings you can use, along with the skills needed. There’s also a good chance they might be able to sell you an old incursion ship at a bargain price, getting you undocked and earning money.

What are incursions?

Incursions are automated PvE events that occur all over New Eden. In incursions, the Sansha Nation invade a whole region and you can fight them at specific incursion sites. The site types vary in the different systems of the region being invaded, and after enough are cleared, you can go to the mothership site and destroy the mothership, thereby ending the Incursion and netting yourself a large payout with some expensive drops to boot. Usually, the FCs in the incursion groups take the drop and auction it off to the players. Incursions are always done in fleets, while fleet size and payout depend on site difficulty. Generally, the more difficult the sites are, the more the payout is. ISK is paid out after the site is complete, and Concord LP is rewarded after the incursion ends.

There are four types of incursion sites, from lowest to highest payout: scout, vanguard, assault, and headquarters. The mothership site can be run after a certain amount of sites have been completed. The lower the security status of the systems that the incursion takes place in, the more payout there is per site. The harder sites also require more people to complete, but if there are more people on the site than are allowed for max payout, then there will be less payout per person. For example, if you are in a headquarter site, and there are 41 people at the site when it is completed (the max is 40 in highsec, the amount of people per site also varies by sec status) then the payout will be decreased for every extra person.

How do I start? And How Do Incursions Work?

To find what region incursions are in, go to your ‘Journal’ in the Neocom menu, then click the ‘Incursions’ tab. This will show you the region, the staging system, and the warzone control. The more warzone control, or influence in the region, the more the penalties won’t have effect. You can make the influence in the region go up by doing incursion sites. Some of the influence penalties are reduced damage, reduced resists, 50% decrease in CONCORD bounties (influence doesn’t affect this), and cynosural field jammers (even at 0% influence, which is the best influence).  Staging plays no significant role in incursions, it is simply where to go to get to the incursion region.

First you have to choose what type of ship you want to fly: DPS, sniper, or logistics. Fits vary by each group, and you will have to check the group’s website or channel for the fitting. Groups are usually either always armor or always shield fit. DPS and snipers will always be battleships, some sniper ships include Nightmares and Machariels, and a close range DPS ship is the Vindicator. Those ships will always be optimal battle ships, but some groups will allow you to use cheaper battleships such as the Hyperion and the Maelstrom. If you want fly logi, you will have to train up to logistics cruisers, and usually take a logi class with the group. Logistics ships vary for each group.

If you’re worried about losing your expensive ship, incursion groups often offer insurance, where you pay a corp or person that is in charge of the fleet or group, and you will get the amount of ISK that your ship cost back. You won’t get your insurance payback if your ship loss was your fault, as a result of not following FC instructions or leeroying the gate (jumping it early) for instance. Fleets will always have to follow a standard set of rules set by the group, such as the minimal amount of omni resistances. There will also be a person who you will have to anchor on (keep range at) and assign your drones to. You will also need either TS3 or Mumble to communicate in the fleet, even if you don’t have a mic, you still have to listen to FC commands.

When you want to join the incursion fleet, your will have to go to the website and copy and paste your fit there and join a waitlist, or x-up in the group channel with your fleet. Ask in the channel how you can join the fleet.

What do I do when there are no incursions going on?

Usually there will always be incursions going on, in all securities of space, but certain groups tend to stay in specific areas and don’t see long treks across highsec to to get to another incursion as worth their time. When there are no incursions, you can do other things such as mining or other ISK-making activities in highsec if you need to keep that constant flow of ISK coming in. Some just don’t play when there are no incursions going on.

When transporting your ship, you will need to fit tank, ideally hull tank. This is the most cost-effective way of countering gankers. Make sure you also avoid known ganking systems. Items that make you align faster are worthless, there are instalocking tackle ships that can scram you in less than a second. The best way to transport your ship is in a Bowhead. It has an EHP of 530k, compared to the ~100k of typical incursion ships. The most important rule of transporting your ship, is to NOT BE IN AUTOPILOT. Being in autopilot takes longer to reach your destination, and gives gankers more time to attack you after you warp to a gate.

Conclusion

Incursions can be a very lucrative career, but it will take a sizeable investment (a couple of hundred million ISK) to get started. When you start to get the hang of things, you can join more advanced fleets. You can find various incursion groups and their channels in the in game channel ‘Incursion Public’, this channel shows various groups with both shield and armor doctrines, along with the site type that they run and the region/language of that group. Incursions can get you over 100m ISK/hour, with a beginner fleet.

Here are some beginner fleets for each doctrine:

Shield:

https://forums.warptome.net/
http://testing.the-valhalla-project.co.uk/index.html

Armor:
The Ditanian Fleet; In-game Channel –  ‘The Ditanian Fleet’