EVE: Equinox Patch Notes - Factional Warfare and Insurgency Balance

EVE Online's Equinox expansion, set to launch on 11 June 2024, is the game's fourth full expansion since the return of the content format in November 2022. The patch notes are fairly extensive and dense. I find reading lengthy patch notes rather boring, so I also like to go to other sources for information. For both the Viridian and Havoc expansions I wrote a series of posts based on the patch notes with other information added to hopefully make absorbing all the information less painful. This eighth post in the series for Equinox will cover the balance changes for factional warfare and insurgencies.

I've documented since the Uprising expansion in November 2022 the increase in player ships dying in low sec to levels not seen in years. But apparently when insurgencies were introduced in in Havoc expansion, the level of destruction did not increase as planned.

Player-owned ship losses in low sec since 2010

• The FOB Spawning rules have been adjusted so that the FOBs are far more likely to be placed in Command Operation Systems, Adjacent to Frontlines, rather than in the rearguard solar systems of winning factions.
  
  
• The Aim of this change is to try and promote more fighting and less farming in the backlines by having the chosen location of the FOB be in a location where current factional warfare militias are duking it out, it’ll also make the FOB solar system more relevant to current militia group campaigns and concentrate the PVP opportunities in factional warfare lowsec.

The developers also added two changes to try to improve combat between the factional warfare contestants.

• Small NVY-1 complexes are no longer “Static” guaranteed respawns in Rearguard, Command Operations and Frontline solar systems and will now roam instead. In their place Medium ADV-1 complexes will now be static and there will always be 1 guaranteed assuming it hasn’t been completed recently.
  
  
• The aim here is to promote a little more diversity and help make bigger ship types be more relevant to factional warfare system control over time. It also makes it a bit easier to de-contest rearguard solarsystems.
  
  
• FW Battlefield NPCs will now spawn more slowly between waves and will now orbit the capture points much closer than before.
  
  
• Our intention here is to make killing the NPCs the optimal path for progress on the capture points, rather than keeping a single battlecruiser NPC alive outside of the capture point.

In addition to the gameplay changes, the developers are adding addition items to those participating in insurgencies.

• Added a new faction command mindlink which gives a bonus to Information and Skirmish command bursts - Guri Malakim Command Mindlink. It is available in the Commando Guri and Malakim Zealot LP stores, which are located in Zarzakh or the insurgency FOBs. Cost is identical to other faction command mindlinks : 100,000 LP, 100,000,000 ISK and 1x Skirmish Command Mindlink, 1x Information Command Mindlink.
  
  
• Added new faction and officer variants for the Signature Radius Suppression modules. Blueprints for these modules are exclusively obtained as rare drops from the pirate laundering center reward crates.
  
  
• Domination Signature Radius Suppressor
• Dread Guristas Signature Radius Suppressor
• Zohar’s Modified Signature Radius Suppressor
• Hakuzosu’s Modified Signature Radius Suppressor