Vanguard Incursion Farming
Posted: 2012-01-20 Filed under: eveonline, screenshot, ships | Tags: basilisk, bhaalgorn, farming, incursion, machariel, nightmare, sansha, vanguard, vindicator 9 Comments
For an excellent guide on the methods for running Incursions, review Jester’s Introduction to Incursions Part 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Given that I have Logistics V, Caldari Cruiser V, Shield/Energy Emission Systems V, and Multitasking IV, I found my way into an Incursion fleet running a Basilisk for a Shield fleet. I had Monday off and took the time to grind out Vanguard sites for stupid amounts of ISK. Our average was a little low due to members changing ships, but we still managed to pull in 93 M/hour.
My impressions of Incursions sites is that they are very formulaic. As a Logistics pilot, here are the steps to complete a Vanguard site in 4-6 minutes if you have the proper fleet composition:
- Get on voice comms. This is so you can talk about how easy Vanguard sites are and how rich you are becoming every 4-6 minutes. In actuality, you will use voice comms to yell at Logistic pilots if they are not paying attention or if someone deviated from the prescribed kill order and triggered the next wave.
- Anchor warps in to the site first which is usually your FC.
- Everyone else warps in, lands.
- Orbit the Anchor at 5,000 and lock up all your friends.
- Watch to see who got aggression first and start repping them.
- Before the site is finished, the FC will post an align to the next site. Active align.
- Site ends and rats despawn, fleetwarp to the next one.
- Go to step 2 and repeat.
I do agree that a change should be made to the risk/reward of Vanguard sites. Different waves, site types, and perhaps lengthening the time it takes for Vanguard sites seem reasonable in order to increase the amount of effort for the ISK.
k162space 
How much LP did you get, and how much is that worth?
-Liang
I am not an active ‘cursion runner… but I have been very active on Krissada’s Forum post re the grieferbears shutting down the Hisec Incursion ISK faucet, on the basis of “Too much ISK for no risk”, which is, of course, crap as what they really want is to shut down hisec ‘cursions, leaving lo & null ‘cursions open (which make substantially more ISK, farmed or not) in the hope of getting some blingy PvE fitted ‘cursion ships/fleets down to lo/null for griefing good fun and their precious “tears”…
I am curious though… I live in a C2 WH, we make our ISK off of the Sleeper Loot & Salvage (no bounties or LP for us) and the Sleepers are (still?) supposed to be the toughest AI to fight against in ALL of EVE. C5 and C6 Sleepers basically require Capitols to be run safely, IE “safely”=with no or minimal ship losses (usually due to pilot error). I understand Incursions can be run with just serious Logi supported BS fleets for which the winning combo of ships and fits is now well established.
This lead, of course, to ‘farming’ the Incursions, IE not killing the ‘spawn ender’ to greatly increase the number of NPC’s killed and bounties collected increasing income. This is the same very well understood game mechanic (and not a “broken” one either) that players have used to farm belt rats since that first worked out years ago.
We make very good ISK in our hole and it is just a C2. But I can solo ANY site in there in a Drake, Meal or Phonon and do so AFS (away from screen on my left hand screen blogging and such)… My corp. is bored with C2 Sleepers and we are actively seeking a suitable C3 to move our game up to bring back the element of risk (to revitalize our game play) and increase our ISK income accordingly.
But…. you can’t “farm” sleepers. The Anomy spawn a set number and type of Sleepers with some small variations based on player ships used on grid against them, but each site ends of itself. You cannot leave one BS and wait a bit and get moar Sleepers spawning… if you wait long enough all that happened is the BS you dint kill, desmans and the site closes.
I am curious… is the ISK to risk ratio really inline with the rest of the game now that the mechanics of the ‘cursion AI are so well understood that farming them is now, “easy”?
Should they, due to their similarity to Sleepers, IE very tough large reward + a very tough AI, have a limited run like Sleeper sites do?
Or… was CCP giving hisec an ISK faucet to equal and balance nullsec’s undammable river of moon goo ISK?
Intresting point. As someone who has run sites C1 to C6, here’s how you farm sites:
1. Scan down your static.
2. if static=occupied, close static. Else, pick site at random and warp to.
3. Run the site down to the last battleship.
4. IF WH class= c5 OR c6 warpIn triageCarrier.
5. kill resulting additional battleships.
6. if staticSites==empty close static, goto 1. else pick site at random, warp to, goto 3.
Repeat until someone ganks you. The sleepers and incursion rats, as far as I can tell, follow the same AI. Admitted, sleepers have been mentioned to focus fire on someone once their tank starts breaking, but that’s a rumor. The way to deal with sleepers and incursions are to have enough reps to keep everyone alive whatever happens. The difference is that incursion ships are much, much shinier and have better modules than you or I would dream of having on any sensible WH fit.
So, do I think the isk/risk is in line? Absolutely not. You cannot organize a wormhole to the point there is zero risk or an equal amount of running a standard highsec incursion, ergo wormhole sites should be worth more than incursion sites.
My memory is a bit shaky, but I remember wormholing in a C4 RR tengu fleet made about 60-100 mil/hour. That’s about the same that you make running incursion fleets. So, in a straightforward fashion, anything smaller than a C5 wormhole is not worth it to run because you may as well get the same isk/hour with no risk.
I’m fairly certain that C5 and C6 sites make more than vanguards tho, so obviously the isk is perfectly balanced because more risk=more reward, right?
No, I’m just kidding. To run a C5 and C6 you need about ten people online at the time you want to run it.
That’s to run the site, mind. You should also have a scan ship or two on standby, a capital ship to warp in, a falcon or two watching any wormholes that are in the static.
And then there’s the preparation. You have to scan down the wormhole, make sure it has enough mass to get your fleet through both ways, get your fleet in, run sites, SALVAGE the sites and get back out without, again, getting ganked by a fleet. OR having a fleet rapecage your PoS. OR your FC accidentally get suicide ganked carrying your nanoribbons to jita, which has happened. Once.
So you basically risk a large tower, two capital ships and an expensively fit t3 fleet (how else will you fit through the static?) to make some amount more isk than incursions.
ALTERNATIVELY you could, before the incursion elimination, buy a logi ship (150 mil) and join a random incursion fleet. Make about 60 mil an hour, pay for your ship in the first three hours and again, all of this at no risk.
incursions can be fun, if its a busy area you can sometimes start contest sites and try to out dps the other fleet(s)
logi can be pretty boring but the isk is good, and you dont burn shit tonns of ammo.
a mach could burn 10-30 mill an hour in faction ammo,
a good fleet and you get 5 min break every 2 hours, and if you really have to go, you need to pee in a cup.
oh yeah also, sometimes you come across a site where a fail fleet died and you can loot there faction items if they dropped any, picked up some nice t2 salvage from time to time…
Thats some serious ISK farming payout there in Incursion.
lookup Slimey worm, Incursions arnt with out risks,
you can also contest sites,
Out dmg other fleets, thats fun too.
when it comes to the mom’s tho theres all kinds of crazy tactics..
because some ones liable to swipe the shineys at the end
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