Missions & Complexes

Great thread OP

I will be using it when I get back into incursioning

Done

Here, to make it easier for you incursion FC's out there

Incursion Constellations Layout Builder

Also, feel free to add The Incursion Guild (TIG) (invite only, Marauders) to list of trustworthy shield communities :)

Elitist;
Beaty Swollocks; Sometimes the veterans can seem like elitists, and sometimes they just are elitists. This is a common effect of doing something for so long and having so much experience at it that every time they see someone do something wrong the jump on it like a hyena with fresh meat. The Veterans have good days and bad, a lot of the elitist attitude has a direct correlation to the type of day they are having.

Missiles;
It is a bit sad that a weapon system that requires so many skill points is so useless at a form of PVE, but it just works out that the delayed damage of missiles has dire consequences in a contest, and like the aforementioned hyena's if they smell blood they won't stop eating till the other fleet is dead.

Armor vs. Shield;
You don't need the armor skills unless you have a predilection to flying with the armor group, shield groups are a dime a dozen these days and many of them are excellent at making ISK and keeping members safe (Well as safe as they can).

Skilling turrets;
And finally, the change in the skill tree for large turrets was just recently changed from a 70+ day queue to 40'ish' days, but if your plans are to hop in a turret boat and do Incursions then check with some of the groups listed in the OP and see if they will let you do a ride along in a meta 4 gunboat, or even your missile boat, to make sure this is the right choice for you before making a dedicated change in the blind.

Edit; One last thing, Incursions should be here for awhile still, regardless of the occasional Nerf High sec posts I haven't seen anything that points to CCP making a change that would remove Incursions in the near future.

nightmare, vindicator, machariel. Choose one. :)

you could also use a basilisk to play the logi.

the reason i said NMis cos i already have caldari bs 5 so just amarr bs and large guns req, where as the others require gal//minm bs

With your low skills I would suggest going to TVP's webpage (Link is in the OP) look through their fits and see how far you are from their Maelstrom fit. Be aware at peak times the FC is going to pick players with higher end skills and ships to protect their income, but if you can get into a minimum fit maelstrom and join their channel you can put some feelers out to see if they would take you on with the what you can fly.

Afterthought; As an FC I consider 1000dps minimum per ship to be a standard when picking members for a fleet, but I fly with a ISN and we only take pirate faction BS's and T2 weapons. TVP is much bigger and can usually accommodate a few low skill pilots while the pilots train to get better.

Having flown with non-shiny, and shiny fleets, I will tell you that an alert, shiny fleet, that is on the ball will beat any non shiny fleet. The issue is that you do not always have everyone alert and on the ball, so some fleets that really shouldn't in raw value or shiny factor will win. Also, lately even VGs have had low enough numbers of fleets to make contests the exception rather than the rule, with maybe 1 in the average hour during the week and 2 in an hour during the weekend.

Getting in is a bit more tricky. Currently, TVP and WTM (the "training" HQ channels) are swamped during the weekend, and most of the week. ISN and DKY are pirate and logi 5 only, so they have a high bar to anyone not already so equipped and trained. TDF is armor, and variable in hull and fit needed based on which FC and doctrine that FC is flying. U0R and Road-Kill are probably the easiest to get into that I have flown with and thus can recommend, and complement each other well on time zon

Depends on the channel really, I have seen 2 month old chars in BS in TDF and it works out ok(ofc nobody expect max dps from them). What you should have are the tanking skills at least to 4, so you can use T2 mods and shield management to 4(for buffer), armor compensation skills if you fly armor, gunnery skills to 4(tracking, rof, damage, optimal, falloff) and sufficient support skills to handle your ship(that means get some cap skills to not cap out all the time if you need to move your hull with a mwd, if necessary add a extra cap mod to compensate in the beginning and some navigation skills to move it around in a fluid manner).

Your list is missing:

drone skills(get 5 T2 lights, at least 40km drone control range and drone navigation to 4 so your drones don't fall behind)
navigation 4
high speed manoeuvring 4
acceleration control 4
warp drive operation 3, better 4
evasive manoeuvring 3, better 4

Keep your support skills balanced with the dps skills, getting T2 guns while being halve a pocket behind all the time and spamming the need cap button 3 times as often as a NM in a mealstorm(I seen it, and it is annoying in a cap Basi) is not useful at all. You should first be able to comfortable fly in your ship with a mwd, tank and fit it sufficient before your work on reaching high dps, what are the requirement for some more advanced fleets.



Well for HQ you might accept that you can't win them all, it often comes down to the FC background work how good this works out, if everything fails you might swap incursions(because there is only one HQ system per Inc). VGs and contesting comes down a lot to the ability's of the FC, you can take a non shiny fleet and fly in the same system as ISN, if you get your timing right(starting the site at a time where the other fleet is still busy for at least 1-2 minutes) or focus on stuff they are not optimized for(contesting you there isn't in her interest, since they want this sites removed as fast as possible etc.) or simply switch systems often. It is a bit like a game of chess, where the better gang got the first move but you can play to if you adopt to her play style a bit.



There can be to many logis or to many dps at times, then again there are times where FCs search for logis for 30 minutes or even longer, the best solution is to have both hulls with you if you can fly them. Just join one or more of the major channels, look at her fitting mailing lists or what is posted and move your logi there and wait for FC requests/x up in the channel, shouldn't take long to get into fleets.

Road-Kill sometimes takes people that are that new and will likely take you when the engineering skills finish.
U0R will likely take you once the engineering skills complete.
Do not know anywhere else that I have flown with.