My aim is to do faction warfare as a self-sustaining activity. That means paying for all my faction warfare activity through almost entirely faction warfare activity.

My first step was to find a new home base to act as a staging point. The criteria I had for this was:

• In high-sec, outside of the warzone, so I would never lose access
• As close to the warzone as possible
• A station or system that had manufacturing, reprocessing, research, and clone bay available.
• A high-sec path to a trade hub.

I chose Kuomi for this. It has all the facilities and a short path to Amarr for trading. I set this as my home base and then

Next I was going to need some ships. I planned on using solely T1 hulls and modules to start out. I saw two main options:

• Buy hulls and modules in Amarr and transport them to my staging point
• Buy blueprints and produce the fits at my staging point

Either way, I knew a hauler was going to be important. Whether it be to haul the ship hulls with modules or to haul the minerals I need. I got a Bestower, and brought down a few very cheap frigates with fittings. The full fits with hull cost about 1 million ISK. I brought a few of these down to get started.

Starting with just a cheap T1 fit frigate, how would I create a sustainable and even profitable cycle? First step would be to be able to replace ships. The cheapest fits would be a T1 frigate with T1 modules. I can either build them myself or buy them, so I'll need a little bit of ISK or some minerals. To bootstrap everything, I could either do level 1 FW missions or rat the asteroid belts. This would give me some ISK and modules. I can use the ISK to buy the blueprints I need or the fit directly. The modules would be good for fitting or reprocessing to get minerals for production. I could also do some mining in a Venture. It wouldn't take much considering how cheap frigates and small modules are to produce. Once I have a pipeline to replace T1 frigates if I hit rock bottom, then I can start doing FW and earning LP.

Even in a cheap 1 million ISK frigate I was able to capture Scout complexes in enemy frontline systems. This yielded lots of loyalty points but was challenging because there were a lot of enemies that would either destroy me or chase me off.

I found a better way to earn LP with a flimsy ship is to find a system that my faction owned off on the quiet side of the warzone that was around 50% or more contested and do defensive complexes. You can do a large complex in a frigate since you don't have to kill any NPCs. As long as nobody comes in and chases you off, you can earn lots of loyatly points this way without any combat. Just doing a couple of these

The rearguard systems seem to be good places to rat. They tend to be quieter systems and people don't seem to pay much attention to the belts. Ratting can be done in a cheap T1 frig at low risk. The bounty modifier is usually high, around 200%, the rats drop a lot of modules for fitting or reprocessing.

• To earn ISK
• To collect modules for fitting ships
• To collect modules for reprocessing to get minerals
• For dogtags like True Sansha Silver Tag used for LP store items

I tried a level 1 mission and was able to complete it in my cheap 1 mil T1 frigate.

I noticed a few things:

• The missions have you jump several systems away. Generally more than normal security agents.
• Once you warp to a mission, it creates a beacon on the overview that everyone can see and warp to. This can make it very difficult and dangerous to complete.
• Every NPC killed drops a tag, which an be sold to NPC buy orders.
• NPCs drop standard modules at a typical rate of other missions.
• The ISK and LP for doing the missions is not any greater than normal missions.

Overall, I did not find them to be that fun or lucrative but maybe that changes as you move up to higher level missions.

Some ideas

• From modules looted doing FW missions or ratting in the belts
• Buy minerals from the market
• Mining with a Venture

Some ideas

• Sell the ship blueprints purchased with LP
• Sell the ship hulls made with the blueprints purchased with LP
• Sell implants, drones, ammo, or cap boosters purchased with LP
• Sell the insignias looted from FW missions
• Ratting belts

All of these required some initial ISK investment to begin with, except for selling the insignias directly or ratting belts. Once I have a bank of ISK, I could afford to buy the ship blueprints and minerals to sell them for profit. NPCs have standing buy orders for the insignias. For example, the Republic Fleet Midshipman Insignia I are bought for 4,500 ISK at Amarr Navy stations and Republic Fleet Midshipman Insignia II go for 8,000 ISK

• Fleet up! Whenever you can find a fleet to join, join. You will learn a lot and generally have more fun. There isn't always a fleet around though so I spend a lot of time solo.
• Start your own fleet. Invite another person and do some plexing and chat it up to make new friends.
• Read this amazing guide to solo frigate and destroyer faction warfare called the yearbook. It's updated yearly and this is the 2024 guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ziv0a6UHa8vuRd1TIpC-wsnbmHHp2EPs/view - The 2025 version is in beta as of this writing and available at https://www.patreon.com/posts/yearbook-2025-128920171