Details of EVE's upcoming Incursion expansion revealed
It's an ordinary day in EVE Online, with pilots going about their daily business of trading, blowing each other up and battling the pirate forces of New Eden. Everything is quiet -- perhaps a little too quiet. All of a sudden, alarms go off in the space stations as warning comes in of an incoming Sansha incursion. We've known for some time that the Incursion expansion would include dungeon-like military incursions by ruthless pirate faction Sansha's Nation. Until now, however, details on exactly how those encounters would take place have been kept secret. In a new EVE devblog, CCP Ytterbium has now revealed exactly what we can expect from the Incursion expansion's signature feature.
The Sansha incursions will begin with wormholes opening into every system in the target constellation. Sansha forces will form blockades at the stargates, replace the local NPCs in asteroid belts and begin to set up a series of military outposts. Sansha's Nation brings a frightening new technology to each incursion, capable of causing a number of debilitating effects on every pilot in the system. Ship resistances and damage output of all ships will drop, making it difficult to run missions or explore while the incursion is in progress. Similarly, cynosural fields will be blocked to prevent any capital ships entering the system.
Skip past the cut for a run-down of how we'll tackle the Sansha invasions coming with the Incursion expansion.
Recognising the importance of getting capsuleers to fight the Sansha forces, CONCORD's reward scheme changes in systems under Sansha occupation. Normal bounties from ships encountered in exploration sites or missions will be reduced by 50%, but large rewards will be given out to pilots who join forces to tackle the Sansha military outposts. Rather than putting bounties on individual Sansha ships, CONCORD payouts will be based on a fleet's actual participation in the battle. To qualify for rewards, a pilot must be in the most effective fleet tackling the site in question, must be flying a combat ship and must have contributed to the battle objectives.
Getting involved
The incursions will occur throughout high security space, low security space and nullsec, so pilots from all corners of EVE can get involved. For those wondering if their small corporation can get in on this impressive group PvE, the answer is most certainly yes. Three different sizes of Sansha outpost will spawn in invasion zones, with the smallest designed for 5-10 players. Larger sites designed for 10-20 players and 20-40 players will provide targets for larger groups and an incentive for small groups to merge their fleets and fight alongside each other. To ensure massive fleets don't streamroll all the sites, the rewards will be scaled based on the number of pilots involved in tackling an incursion. Use too many or too few pilots and you won't get much of an ISK reward.
When all the Sansha outposts have been neutralised in an area, a Sansha supercarrier boss appears and players must destroy it to end the invasion. Repelling an invasion will earn all pilots involved special CONCORD loyalty points, which are used to buy improved capital ship modules and rare implants. These are sure to fetch a huge price on the open market, making the rewards for fighting incursions definitely worth the effort. As an added bonus, the final boss in each incursion will also drop rare blueprints for Sansha ships. In low security space, there will even be a chance for the blueprint of the Sansha supercarrier itself to drop. The Incursion expansion will be launching within the next month or so, having been slated for this winter.
