Factional Warfare

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Factional Warfare (FW) brings war to New Eden by open conflict between the four main empires of EVE. FW is designed to introduce PvP to both new and old players as well as to offer a new play option for veteran PvPers. Players participating in FW will engage in open conflict with enemies of their chosen empire. Participating in FW grants the player

• Access to new missions
• The ability to earn ranks within their chosen militia and increase their standings with that militia's empire
• The ability to obtain faction ships
• The ability to fight over star systems to win system sovereignty for their faction
• General good times shooting stuff.

Joining Factional Warfare

To participate in factional warfare, players may enlist in a faction's militia on an individual basis, a corporation's ceo can enlist their corporation, or the head of an Alliance can enlist their entire alliance.

Note: enlisting in Faction Warfare has an "As Below, So Above" effect; an individual may not enlist in in Faction Warfare if their player-owned corporation does not, nor can a corporation join a faction if the player-run alliance of which they are a member has not. In short, if any part of a larger organization wishes to join Faction Warfare, all of that organization must join, or none of that organization can join.

See How To Join Factional Warfare for more information about how to enlist in factional warfare.

Battlefield Intelligence

Once a character, corporation, or alliance joins a faction, the faction warfare sign-up page is replaced by the Battlefield Intelligence page, which displays various Faction Warfare statistics. The numbers may be filtered on a militia, corporation, alliance, or personal level by selecting one of the tabs.

Effects of Joining Factional Warfare

Summary

Each entity - a player member of a FW Militia, an enlisted player corporation, or an enlisted Alliance - receives particular abilities and attributes. These abilities and attributes last until the entity retires from or is removed from Factional Warfare. This section details what those abilities are and their restrictions.

Effects

• Players in FW corporations can shoot any other player belonging to an enemy FW entity, no matter if it is a Militia or player-made corporation.

• On top of the regular agent missions, players in FW corporations can take missions from agents in their assigned faction's Militia Corp, as long as standings requirements are met.

• Players in FW-flagged corps contribute toward player counts for dungeon objectives and, if enlisted with the attacking faction, can lock the Control Bunker (please refer to the Control Bunker section for more information).

• Players in FW corporations may receive role-play and military mails sent from their faction entity.
• Players in FW corporations are attacked by enemy Navy NPCs when entering high-security space belonging to either of their enemy factions.

• Players in FW corporations have access to their faction's "FW Alliance channel".
• Players in FW-flagged corps receive their faction's "alliance" EVEmail.

Player Aggression in Factional Warfare

Summary

All corporations in a particular empire's faction are permanently at war with that empire's enemies. This means that FW players may be attacked anywhere by their faction opponents. The exact difference between player corporations and FW Militias are explained below.

FW Militias

• FW Militias may not enter war with player corporations or alliances.
• Shooting your own FW militia member/container/wreck will result in a security status hit, CONCORD aggression-flagging in high-security space, and a standing hit with your own faction.
• Corporation settings may not be changed and are set to default.
• Having container contents stolen triggers a flag to its sole owner for 15 minutes only.

Enlisted player corporations

• Can participate in player alliance/corporation wars, whether it is declared by a corporation in the same, allied or opposing faction.
• Shooting your own corporation member will result in no penalties.
• Having container contents stolen triggers a flag to the whole corporation for 15 minutes.

Empire Navy Forces

As a reminder, there are four different types of NPC security forces in high-security space, triggered by different conditions:

• CONCORD, arrives when a player commits an act of criminal aggression that results in a Global Criminal Flag.

This is the result of a player engaging another player or player assets without having rights to do so.

• Empire police, intervene when a player with too low security status jumps into high-security space. The exact numbers are:
  • -2 and lower: police attacks the player in 1.0 systems.
  • -2.5 and lower: police attacks the player in 0.9 systems.
  • -3 and lower: police attacks the player in 0.8 systems.
  • -3.5 and lower: police attacks the player in 0.7 systems.
  • -4 and lower: police attacks the player in 0.6 systems.
  • -4.5 and lower: police attacks the player everywhere in high-security space.
• Empire customs, take action when contraband is found in a player's cargo hold.
• Empire navies/militaries, react if a player with the FW flag or -5 and less faction standings jumps into an enemy high-security system.

Empire Navies and police are considerably more challenging with the FW expansion: they can and will easily destroy any unprepared player ship venturing into their area of jurisdiction.

As such, players are strongly advised to remain extremely vigilant to their plotted route when they are part of a Factional Warfare corporation. Even if the destination may not be located in an opposing faction space, always be sure to check the route itself does not pass through enemy territory.

Factional Warfare Missions

The expansion introduces the factional warfare agent who gives kill missions only to FW players. FW missions will require players to fly through enemy combat zones in order to achieve their objectives. The missions themselves are easier than their regular counter parts. Once warped to, the mission beacon is broadcast in space and on the overview, allowing any player to enter the mission area. Microwarpdrives are allowed in FW Missions, but cynosural fields are not.

FW missions are exclusively kill missions and there are no storyline missions after the first 16 missions are completed.

FW missions may only be given by a FW militia corporation to enlisted players. Characters not part of such a corporation will not be able to receive a FW mission regardless of his or her standings.

Apart from the above, FW missions work in the same way than their normal counterparts; players receive standing increase, LPs and ISK for completing FW missions.

Combat Zones

With the war raging, various battle fronts have opened between the opposing empires. These areas, all located in low-security constellations between major empire space, are named combat zones. The main point of Factional Warfare is to bring players in your enemy combat zone to either complete missions or achieve territory control (implying FW Dungeons and Control Bunkers), both with a heavy focus on PvP.

There is two main theaters of combat for the two main conflicts. These sit in lowsec space between the Caldari and Gallente and the lowsec space between the Amarr and Minmatar. One front starts in central Metropolis, down through the Amamake area of Heimatar, and extends through into The Bleak Lands and Devoid. The other front starts in Black Rise and parts of The Citadel and stretches across into eastern Placid and the northern lowsec areas around Old Man Star. These are the systems that are up for grabs, as it were.

Factional Warfare Dungeons

The Factional Warfare Dungeons can be found only in combat zones. Conquering these dungeons is required to take system occupancy and is the primary focus of Factional Warfare. For information on how to find and capture these dungeons see Factional Warfare Dungeons.

Control Bunkers

Summary

The Control Bunker is the key to unlock the system occupancy and switch it to your faction. In its natural state it remains completely invulnerable to attack and cannot be locked by anyone. However, if an attacking faction manages to capture enough FW Dungeons, the Control Bunker will enter a vulnerable state where it may be locked by any character belonging to the attacking FW faction.

A Gallente control bunker on the overview.

Bunkers On The Overview

The screenshot above shows the Control Bunker icon in the Overview. Unlike FW Dungeons, Control Bunkers are not in exploration complexes but are static structures.

Conquering A Control Bunker

When vulnerable, the Control Bunker may be attacked and conquered. Conquering it is as simple as dealing structure damage. After a control bunker receives structure damage the attacking faction will gain Occupancy control during the next downtime. Any remaining FW Dungeons will grant no progress toward capture and no more FW Dungeons will spawn until the system Occupancy switches.

When the Occupancy occupancy has changed, FW Dungeons belonging to the new faction occupying the system will spawn and the whole process starts again.

Occupancy and Territory Control

Summary

The main objective for a particular faction remains to conquer enemy systems while defending its own. To meet this goal, a new variable, Occupancy, is used to determine which faction currently military owns a particular system.

Changing Occupancy

Changing the occupancy of a system involves the following steps:

1. Capturing enough FW dungeons that the bunker becomes vulnerable.
2. Once vulnerable, capturing the Control Bunker located in the system.

Attacking/Defending factions

Each system that is located in a combat zone is fought over by two opposing factions. The faction owning Occupancy is the defender, while the one trying to gain it is the attacker. "Allied" factions cannot claim the system by themselves but may help the attacking/defending faction in their task.

System Occupancy states

Screenshot showing Occupancy information. This system is currently contested.

There are different system states appearing in the Occupancy line on the top-left corner of the screen depending on the attacker/defender general strength status:

• Un-contested: natural state of a system occupancy and thus not directly shown. The system is currently not actively fought over by different factions.
• Contested: FW Dungeons have been claimed by the offenders. Defenders may return it to un-contested by winning FW Dungeons back.
• Vulnerable: the attacking force won enough FW Dungeons to put the Control Bunker to vulnerable for attack.
• Lost: the system has been successfully captured by the attacking faction. As such, the Occupancy will switch to the new faction after the next Downtime. Existing FW Dungeons no longer affect the power scale and new ones won’t spawn until then.

Ranks

Players enlisted in Factional Warfare may receive ranks depending on the empire they are working for. For a full list of available ranks, please refer to one of the following militia pages:

• Amarr: 24th Imperial Crusade
• Caldari: State Protectorate
• Gallente: Federal Defence Union
• Minmatar: Tribal Liberation Force

Related Information

Faction Warfare Resources

This wiki page contains info on FW killboards and resources related to FW like guides and tutorials.

Empyrean age and all that - combat!

This is the original dev blog regarding the combat zones in Faction Warfare.