EVE: Havoc Patch Notes: Pirate Activites

EVE Online's Havoc expansion, set to launch on 14 November 2023, is the game's third full expansion since the return of the content format in November 2022. The patch notes are fairly extensive. I find reading lengthy patch notes rather boring, so I also like to go to other sources for information. The format worked so well for the Viridian expansion I thought I'd try for Havoc as well. This post, the third in the series, will cover the pirate activities found within pirate insurgencies.

In the run-up to the expansion, I didn't see details of what players would actually do in the warzones. Back in October CCP provided a high level description.

Systems within a Pirate Insurgency can be affected by capsuleer activity to convey a level of corruption and/or suppression. The more criminal activity the pirates engage in, the more the crime level increases, and that will determine the corruption level of any given system within an Insurgency. Conversely, those aligned with empire militia can partake in law enforcement activities which, if successful, can increase the level of suppression within a system. The overall progress of an Insurgency, including the stage of corruption and/or suppression of the individual solar systems within, will be made visible in the Insurgencies UI in-game.  

PIRATE ACTIVITIES

Insurgencies will feature the following gameplay content:

• Corporate Outpost Raid: This site is very similar to existing FW gameplay capture sites. Pirate players can capture the outpost by remaining in the capture point when Mordu Legion NPCs protecting the site have been destroyed, while anti-pirates can do the same by destroying pirate NPCs.
  
  
• The Corporate Outpost Raid comes in a variety of sizes with different ship size restrictions. All Pirate/T2 ships of that size can enter them, similar to existing ADV FW complexes.

The EVE University Wiki provided the following types of factional warfare sites. At this time, we don't know the names of the pirate insurgency sites.

We don't know how similar FW sites are to Insurgency sites

ADV is short for "Advanced". With factional warfare sites, the word indicates the site allows T2 and Pirate Faction ships, and T3 ships in some circumstances. SoCT and Triglavian ships are limited to these complexes. While possibly not applicable to insurgency sites, useful information when wandering through the warzone.

• Mining Ambush: In this site, a friendly ORE Rorqual has been tackled by pirates. As a pirate, fight off the Mordu Mercenaries that arrive to protect it, and eventually, the Rorqual will give in and pay a handsome ransom to your pirate allies, and they will pass along the spoils in the form of LP and system corruption. If you prefer blood instead of LP, you can destroy the Rorqual for a bit of loot and system corruption.
  
  Anti-Pirate players can choose to help the Rorqual by destroying the pirate ransomer NPCs until the Rorqual will eventually be able to warp off and leave, providing a LP reward to the anti-pirates and additional suppression to the system. This is an open site where any ships can enter, although a fleet of well fit cruisers should be able to handle the site. The Mining Ambush has a shared payout of up to 10 pilots before the rewards are diminished.

While we do not know the details about the scaling of payouts, the Mining Ambush sites seem similar in size to Vanguard incursion sites. In those sites, the maximum number of pilots involved before payouts cease is 15. At this time, we don't know if bringing too many players to a Mining Ambush site will cancel all payouts.

Pirate Laundering Centers & Counter-Insurgency Outposts: Once systems reach corruption and suppression thresholds, roaming NPCs which warp around the solar system will appear. Sometimes rare named NPCs will be present and those can be killed for valuable items which can be turned in at Pirate Laundering centers found in the FOB system for pirate factions, while Anti-Pirate players can destroy rare named pirate NPCs and hand in their items to Counter-Insurgency outposts located in their war HQ systems. War HQ systems for the respective militias are Mehatoor (Amarr), Onnamon (Caldari), Intaki (Gallente), Amo (Minmatar). Turning in these items will grant you reward crates.