Missions & Complexes

So a small group of friends and I are looking at incursions as a source of income. There are 9 of us (with some people dual boxing if we can't get 10), and we would schedule it for something like Saturday mornings when we all know we could be on. We figured vanguards would be our best bet so we can still play together and not have to deal with the...well, drama that seems to inhabit some of the incursion community.

So the questions:

1) Are vanguards still decent isk/hr? We tend to be very tight knit and coordinated and will run with "shiny" fits.

2) What fleet composition should we be looking at? I have seen some people run battleships (which we can do), but we were thinking of zealots/legions, guardians and armor links:

1x Armor links (offgrid)
2x Guardians (5 reps, 1 transfer)
8x Legions/Zealots (some duders aren't quite to a legion yet).

We were thinking the sig tank of the legions/zealots would be better, as well as their smaller guns having better damage application (albeit less dps) than a battleship.

3) Implants; I was pondering investing in LG slaves to add some extra buffer for the logi to work with. But we started talking about zealots/legions and I was thinking that a HG Halo set might be better to further reduce the sig (alongside being much cheaper). I guess, in terms of survivability, which would be better: LG Slaves or HG Halos? The rest of the implants would be standard 3% or 5% hardwirings.

4) Learning curve; most of us have only been F1 monkeys in incursion fleets, we don't really know strategies behind them or how they work. We primarily run missions for income and venture into FW warzones for pvp. Is learning vanguards difficult to do, and are they difficult to complete?

5) Availability; are there enough vanguards out there to be able to constantly move from one to the next without interruption?

Thanks for the great response.

As for the fleet composition...would you recommend Faction battleships (Navy armageddons/Vindicators) over a mix of Zealots and Legions? We can do that too, but it will just require a bit more planning on who does what and some more training. Mixing target painters with Vindi webs might give us good damage application.

And when you talk about range, will scorch reach out to the spawn? The fast crystal swtiching would seem to be ok for changing to whatever is in range.

BS for OTAs, where most of the ehp is in BS rats. Keep in mind that you still need to fit at least 4 faction dmg mods for your armor BS in order to contest OTAs with shiny shield fleets (they always fit 4). BS get hit hard by torps. Prioritize exp and kin resists (from torps), you can let em and heat (from lasers) drop a bit in order to fit the 4 dmg mods.

Pure Legion fleet for NCOs, and NMCs if you're out of NCOs. Fitting for NCO contest is a lot less strict. Shiny shield BS fleets have zero chance to contest a pure Legion fleet in NCOs even if the Legions are poorly fit. Cruisers take no dmg from torps, and Amar t2/t3s already have high exp resist, it's much easier to tank.

Most fleets are a mix of BS and legions. You can do all 3 vg sites, and possibly lose all 3 to contests.

Scorch will reach. 48km optimal for medium scorch on legions, 65km optimal for BS. Spawn will be within that range for all vgs. Crystal swap is usually unnecessary, as rats should die before they're in multi range, unless you move fleet to spawn.

In a well fit fleet, long Bhaalgorn webs work better than short Vindi/Kronos/Paladin webs, as rats die before getting in range. Avoid webber Lokis, they don't have the projection and dps, and contribute only webs, which is not worth it.

Two fleets land on a site at the same time, both go in and do the site cutting the time it takes in half (Not usually true, but fun for dramatic effect). The fleet that does the most damage gets paid and the other fleet gets nothing. It called contesting. :)