If you don't know about Incursions in EVE Online yet, now is the time to learn. Labeled the "ISK Faucet", Incursions are one of the most popular ways in high-sec making large amounts of ISK. Basically the Incursion is an "invasion" of Sansha randomly placed all over the universe, and when groups of players attack these head-on, they receive a fairly large amount of ISK for completing an encounter. As I explain this in more detail, I will also prepare you for training towards the ability to fly the required ships for these battles.
About Incursions
The Types of Incursions
There are several different encounters of an incursion, which you can see in the "Incursion" tab of your in-game Journal. The first is the Scout encounter, which is basically the incursion "teaser". This site gives you an idea of how incursions work by showing you how other sites may be seen, and how they are completed.
The Vanguard sites are the first level of encounters that groups run. These are usually run with at least 10 people, and pay around 10-15m each depending on how many people are in the group. Not only that, some groups are able to finish these sites in around 5 minutes per site, that's around 120m ISK and hour!
The next level of encounters are the Assault sites. In most incursion communities, running these are a waste of time. While they pay twice as much as vanguards, they require twice as many players as well. Unfortunately, they take almost as long as the next level of encounters, HQ sites. HQ sites are the sites you would probably do for most of your incursion career. These sites give 45m ISK a site, and can usually be done in about 10-15 minutes, depending on the group and the site.
After many HQ sites, the Mothership, or MOM will spawn. This is the spawn that controls that incursion and that incursion will despawn as soon as this encounter is completed. The MOM gives 90m ISK per player, and the time is not relevant since you only do it once. Usually Incursion communities will leave this site alone so they can continue to farm the Vanguard, and HQ sites. It's only when two communities clash heads that one decides to despawn the incursion. If you want to know more, Google "EVE Incursion Drama", but I'm not going to try to explain it.
An Introduction to Group Incursions
The incursions themselves may seem very intimidating as they require everyone to be alert, and constantly warping to a new site the second the last one finishes. After running a dozen or so, you will start to learn how the group works, and how to work with the group like a mindless drone (I won't lie, it gets very boring over time). Keep in mind there are several incursion groups, and when there is only one incursion in high-sec other groups will "contest" sites; in other words they come into the site you are running, and try to take it from you. Money is not split, and only given to people within the fleet that did the most damage in the site.
Eventually you'll learn to check the sites to make sure no one else is in, how each type of site works, when to pull your drones back so you can rush to the next one, how to beat other groups when they are "contesting" (trying to take the same site), and how to watch for freshly spawned sites. It's a lot to process now, but it will become very easy.
Site Payouts
Just to give you an idea of what you would make running different types of incursions. These numbers are based on ISN groups, and can be less with other incursion groups. I wanted to at least show you the most you could make.
Vanguards (VGs): +100m ISK/hour
Assaults: +125m ISK/hour
HQs: +200m ISK/hour
Incursion Fits and Skills
Group Fits
The one thing that keeps a lot of people from running incursions is the inability to fly the appropriate ship. Not only that, most groups will require you to have T2 weapons, and some require factions/deadspace modules. The reason behind this is that the more power your group has, the faster you can do the site, and the better chance you have to win a contested site. Groups like Incursion Shiny Network (ISN) have the highest requirements for incursion ships, and I love that they do that. By doing so you have a nice powerful group of ships that just tears through incursions. With that said, I'm going to show you their ship fits, and a basic skill plan to allow you to fly such a ship.
Planning Skills
First off you want to decide what you would want to fly. There are a few different ships you can use, Machariel, Nightmare, Basilisk, Scimitar, and Vindicator. If you are wanting to get into incursion fairly quickly, it's best to go with a Machariel (Minmatar/Gallente Pirate Battleship). The reason being is even though the training time for projectiles, lasers, and hybrids, are all around the same training time, the projectiles are not going to require all the capacitor and energy skills like the others. While you will need a few other basic T2 modules the main skills are going to be the T2 guns, weapon upgrades V, advanced weapon upgrades 4/V, and of course the ship skills combined is roughly 90 days worth of training with a new character. If you've been playing for awhile, a lot of these skills might already be covered, and finishing lasers or hybrids might be quicker as well. If you don't have specializations in a weapon, go ahead an switch to projectiles. You'll want the basic skills for the other weapons anyways, so it's not time wasted. If you do have specializations in lasers, or hybrids, you might as well finish that tree since that's going to be at least a week's worth of training taken off the total.
Attack Ship vs Logistics
The reason behind training an attack ship is all because of time, and I'm sure you don't want to wait longer than you have to. To train to fly a logistics ship (basilisk/scimitar) is way too much time for a new player. While the ship is significantly cheaper, the training time is almost doubled. You would have to train all of the capacitor skills, logistics to V, remote shield transporters to V, and a quite a few others. Not only does it take a long time, it takes time away from your initial training, putting you behind on other ships, drone skills, and core skills you would probably level otherwise. Overall, I would not recommend it to a new player. Most players leave logistics for much later in the game, or train on an alt to specifically become a "logi pilot".
Different Fits
To give you an idea on the different fits, here is a link to ISN's fits. You might find that other incursion groups will let you fly less, and I'm sure there is a new-player friendly group that doesn't make as much, but allows players to use T1 battleships, with Meta 4 guns; I know there use to be at one time. If you plan to run incursions on a regular basis getting the skills to fit the ISN fits would be beneficial overall, and allow you to be a much better incursion ratter.
Either way, incursions are not mandatory as there are lots of ways to make ISK. Incursions are a great way to make ISK easily, and can at least help you until you find your niche. I know I didn't cover all of the details of incursions in this article, but I simply wanted to let you know what they were, and how to prepare for them. I have met too many people that didn't know about them until the time they could have trained for it, and even a few veteran players that never knew the ISK making possibilities from them.
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