Unknown - Jovian Historical Codex"May you live in interesting times."
There are several new and distinct patterns of tactics emerging from all sides since the Incursion commenced.
- as well as the incursion sites themselves, the Drifters are maintaining their previous tactic of 'benign station camping' where they ignore 'independents' and wait for the Navy to arrive.
When the Navy shows up in an invariably larger fleet, they are summarily wiped out by the Drifters who experience minimal losses if any. Large clouds of wreckage are left behind, which become prime looting targets.
That loot seems to be comprised mostly of smartbombs, Navy-spec frequency crystals and energy turrets. Mostly 'Large' stuff. When looting and salvaging that wreckage, the Drifters will just sit there and let you do it, right under their noses.
[NB: I witnessed at least one example of anomalous behaviour where an engagement ended by seemingly being called off on both sides with combatants still on the field. So for a moment, we had 'dogs and cats living together' see below]
- the favoured capsuleer response to these skirmishes is to launch a Mobile Tractor Unit to hoover everything up. I assume that the key target among this wreckage is not necessarily the Navy stuff, but the exotic, mysterious and highly coveted Antikythera Element that is to be found in Drifter wreckage.
- this in turn is causing capsuleers to either engage looters on sight (caveat: this is still in deep lowsec so that may only be coincidence) or to attack the MTU itself, as I witnessed last night.
So it's potentially not about defeating an enemy that, let's face it, few of us have any real chance against, but it's about scavenging around in the mess left behind for personal profit.
Summary: the Navy may have overestimated the level of capsuleer interest in their war with the Drifter Faction. At least they have down here in the remote border regions of Khanid.
[UPDATE: 28/08/117 - according to the Crossing Zebras channel, intelligence reports indicate the strong likelihood that the Drifters' incursions - wherever they occur - will persist and spread until they are prevented from spreading no more by either us or the Navy. In other words, the semi-passive policy exhibited by capsuleers and described above will not work in the long term and could conceivably result in the Drifters spreading across the whole of New Eden with a degree of impunity. My guess is that the proliferation won't stop until it starts to affect the large 'null blocs', because at the moment, it doesn't]
