Skip to main content

My Incursion Experiment: Summery

I do not foresee myself abandoning my normal life in low security space to run incursions full time. I can see it as a productive way to spend some time, when I have that time available.

Time

So far, incursions have been a time sink. If someone was to join an incursion corporation or work their way into a fleet command position ad become well known there would be less to no down time. Waiting to be picked up by fleets is a somewhat more competitive process.

The various fleet types take different amounts of time to complete. If a player wants to only do headquarters fleets, they can take around 30 minutes to complete. If there is only one fleet running, you have once every thirty minutes to jump in and hopefully get selected. The other types of fleet are faster. For general group stuff there is no guaranties.

I can multitask while waiting for fleet. Once I am in fleet I am shut down to one account. That is because all of my toons live in low sec. Many people discussed their miners chewing away as ore as they ran their incursions. Good for them. I’d not want to tribox with an incursion, and two low sec accounts trying to run sites and not die. I’m not that good.

ISK

A lot of people drop into the various chatrooms and ask if the isk per hour is better. Some are okay with the numbers and others are not. A few said, “Back to level 4’s then” and bounced.

I’ve posted my isk figures. For two hours I broke the magical 100 mil ISK per hour barrier. It was glorious and exciting. I also knew that it was going to end rather soon. I can’t calculate that as every day. I’d love for the billion ISK for looking to hard at it to return but that’s not rational and is motivated by nothing more than pure personal greed. Thusly, bad idea.

Also, a few fleets fell apart. Then you have to wait for a new fleet again. I think the ISK is very good but except for a select group it is not magical. It is more entertaining than a level 4.

It can pay out at around 100mil isk per hour if everything is flowing and people are going, going, going.

LP: I got awarded 18000 LP when the incursion withdrew. That was from doing a handful of Vanguard sites. The LP came after the incursion was over.

Risk

I can see there being risk if people are not on the ball. The headquarter’s fleet commander thanked the logistic ships for keeping the entire thing nice and boring. This was not sarcasm. The logistic pilots I flew with were on the ball.

In the smaller fleets where everyone can be kept on watch list, many times people did not even have to broadcast before they were taken care of. However, there is constant warning to broadcast as soon as a person is targeted.

There is a lot of worry about accepting a wardecd pilot into fleet. The entire logistic chain will wind up with the war dec aggression. This was used in the past to kill logistic pilots which in turn caused the rest of the fleet to burn. Some fleets will run with just wardeced people. I offered up time with Eve Uni as a logistic pilot for their incursion fleets due to their war deced status.

There is a required number of logistic pilots to keep everything smooth. If one goes down or disconnects the situation can go from static boredom to a mess. The few people that eye rolled at logistics got back handed rather quickly by the rest of the fleet. The FC’s also said that if someone lied about their wardec to let them burn.

There are people who do things to try to get ships targeted or aggression passed on. Reminders are given when random ships show up not to get distracted and wind up pewpewing the wrong person.

Ships and Bling

I went in as a logistics pilot in a Scimitar. Chella has no gun skills to speak of. She is trained to logistics at level 5. I don’t even think her small hybrid turrets are beyond IV. I’ll correct that at some later point maybe in a year from now. My scimitar cost 184mil in rens. I then spent about 10mil in modules. I run cap stable and have my shield reps maxed.

I did no run any faction or deadspace modules on my ship aka ‘bling’ or ‘shiny shit’. I did not have problems getting picked up by fleets. I also run tracking link to help big ships shoot things better. It is something I am not used to using but I’m getting better with the scripts and such. As a decently fit, level 5 logistic pilot my character’s skills are where the value is over the ship I am flying.

The FC estimated the Headquarter’s fleets to be in the area of 50bil ISK on the field. Some of the faction fits I saw were crazy. The competition for pewpew is much more fierce. Time is isk. I was flying with shield fleets. Almost everything was battleships. Some tengu and some loki were also on the field but not many. It is about big DPS and the logistic ships to keep them up.

Bling seems to be very important to some. People were actively out earning the ISK to buy modules. Reinvestment of isk earned into the incursion ship was heavy. It can be a vicious cycle and absorb all of the incursion isk back into the ship. On the flip side this is where the expensive shiny goodies I find sell.

Entertainment

More fun than level 4 missions alone. I’ll take level 5’s and Complexes with my boys over it any day. But, I’ve always been an advocate of social flying. The level 4 ISK per hour battle has no interest to me. I know too many people who almost don’t want to fly their ships because of the endless level 4 grind in their future.

Community

One of the things that I read on the forums when incursions were first being nerfed was a battle between the incursion runners and the incursion haters. A lot of the battle was about ISK per hour. The incursion runners said that it was about the community and not the isk. The incursion haters said that if it was the community they would not mind a nerf.

The people who run the communities and regularly fleet command them are very good at what they are doing. They are focused on the people and a balanced fleet comp. They attempt to be fair when it comes to picking people for the fleet. People who attempted to get friends and corp members direct invites to fill holes were told no. They know what they are doing. They not only want to make isk and have a smooth fleet but make sure everyone is up to date. They monitor positions, announce the spawns, focus the pewpew, herd the stragglers, scold the over eager, inform the newbies and in general make the incursion a very pleasant experience.

The pickup fleets were more casual but still well run. Inviting friends and corpmates was not a bad idea because knowing people is safer. Due to the incursion griefers that have run rampant through the communities there is a lot of paranoia.

Some people did not want to risk their ships in any way. They stressed easy. They snapped about the logistics. They questioned the FC and they regularly announced the cost of their ship. There are people who brag about their associations with others in the game.

Playing with groups that were mostly composed of pure high sec players was interesting and sometimes frustrating. Proper information was shared many times. There always seemed to be one or two low sec or null sec people in the fleet. The detachment of the pure high sec player to the mechanics of low sec and null sec was unexpected.

There was a discussion about fleet discipline as well. Someone liked that more low and null sec PvP focused players had returned to the incursions because the fleets were running smoother due to fleet discipline. Not obeying the FC had not occurred to me. One person derped every single gate while he was in fleet.

Drama

There is some. Check the mission section on the forums to read about it if that type of thing matters. Some was interesting. Some made me scratch my head.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe one day!

 [15:32:10] Trig Vaulter > Sugar Kyle Nice bio - so carebear sweet - oh you have a 50m ISK bounty - so someday more grizzly  [15:32:38 ] Sugar Kyle > /emote raises an eyebrow to Trig  [15:32:40 ] Sugar Kyle > okay :)  [15:32:52 ] Sugar Kyle > maybe one day I will try PvP out When I logged in one of the first things I did was answer a question in Eve Uni Public Help. It was a random question that I knew the answer of. I have 'Sugar' as a keyword so it highlights green and catches my attention. This made me chuckle. Maybe I'll have to go and see what it is like to shoot a ship one day? I could not help but smile. Basi suggested that I put my Titan killmail in my bio and assert my badassery. I figure, naw. It was a roll of the dice that landed me that kill mail. It doesn't define me as a person. Bios are interesting. The idea of a biography is a way to personalize your account. You can learn a lot about a person by what they choose to put in their bio

Memoirs - Part Seven: The Taste of Scandal

Virtual Realities: Memoirs of an internet spaceship politician by Sugar Kyle CSM9, CSMX Viewers get some drama Is there any election that is scandal free? Virtual space politics are not excluded. Sometimes the scandals come from the people ruining. Sometimes they come from outside of that. “I can’t wait to enjoy the drama!” someone had said to me about the election. Those words would haunt me later as I fought not to be caught up and defined by the decisions another person had made. While I played the game and tried to convince people of my worthiness a dark drama was sweeping across the game. The CSM does not dictate game policy. CCP does that. It does not stop many from seeing the members as vocal representatives. It was a public post made by one member of the CSM that started a fire that would take years to go out. Eve Online is an interactive video game with few social rules. It is one of the games charmes. If you can trick another player into making a po

And back again

My very slow wormhole adventure continues almost as slowly as I am terminating my island in Animal Crossing.  My class 3 wormhole was not where I wanted to be. I was looking for a class 1 or 2 wormhole. I dropped my probes and with much less confusion scanned another wormhole. I remembered to dscan and collect my probes as I warped to the wormhole. I even remembered to drop a bookmark, wormholes being such good bookmark locations later. My wormhole told me it was a route into low sec. I tilted my head. How circular do our adventures go. Today might be the day to die and that too is okay. That mantra dances in the back of my head these days. Even if someone mocks me, what does that matter? Fattening someone's killboard is their issue not mine. So I jumped through and found myself in Efa in Khanid, tucked on the edge of high sec and null sec. What an interesting little system.  Several connections to high sec. A connection to null sec. This must be quite the traffic system.    I am f