increasingly in incursion we are seeing VA's see the team and beam out
the team a man down then completes the mission

these VA's should be subject to a leaver penalty (say 2 hours)
its usually the same people doing it

Remember the lowbies WIN after you leave

^THAT

....and/or the remaining team members should be rewarded at a greater rate for thier efforts.

^ and THAT

It is a sad thing, that some people who have reached Level 50 (VA's) tend to think that anyone not a VA is unworthy of their time... the forums are full of differing arguments for what is generally referred to as Leavers and leaver penalties...

I completely agree there needs to be a leaver penalty.. my recommendation is beyond the time penalty, they should also receive a Fleet Mark penalty in cases of leaving Fleet Mark generating missions, and dilithium for leaving those missions (STF's).

Please know that not all VA's do this...

No not all


So far it seems to be about 6 specific people (two of them from the same fleet)

No. Don't expect us to carry you because you keep rolling new characters instead of playing one of your many VA's Sollvax. You need level 50 to have any chance of getting a decent score (I consider 40+ in incursion during FM event decent) Without level 50 you don't have enough skill points in stealth or in survivabilty skills if you aren't a tac to be useful, and I wouldn't want to risk getting locked out and not having earned enough Fleet marks for my time.

Level your alts doing pvp, mirror events and epsiodes. I am leveling a new character and would not even think of trolling in a fleet event with it. I'll wait until it gets level 50 first, its easy enough anyway.

I have learned this from experience, all to often a Fleet event fails in the case of Fleet Alert, or we just get such a horrible score in the others that it was a waste of time but still get locked out for 30 min. Sorry but Fleet mark event is only 2 hours and getting a 30 min lockout without having earned a decent amount of FM to show for it is unacceptable.

Don't blame people for beaming/warping out, blame the devs for not putting lowbies in their own instance.

So, your solution to potentially having your valuable time wasted by a Captain or Commander in an Incursion (and I say a Captain, because you rarely get more than one), is to beam out and waste the time of four other people? What if you requeue, and get 4 VAs who are as thick as pig**** and your time is wasted anyway?

I really don't understand how anyone can have an entitlement mentality about frankly any aspect of a team they get from a public queue, be it rank, language, use of chat, ability, build, whatever.

Exactly!! If you have that kind of Entitlement mentality then form a premade and then you don't have a problem. If you Que in a public one then you get what you get, and you should be penalized for abandoning them.

Starbase defence would NEVER run if it was VA only (not EVER)
Blockade should not be attempted below captain (unless you fly a Flight deck cruiser armed with EXTREME combat pets)
Alert (space) is ok with most ranks and can usually score well (and a 40 is impossible)

Back to Incursion
the highest scores I have seen (including some 40's) were all in instances where
1 no one stealthed , popped drones or security escorts or otherwise messed about in phase 1
2 no one went "sniper mode" in phase 2
3 No one went comms dark and mavericked
4 people understood the concept of "left and right"
5 no one logged out, beamed out or leeched (which incidentally I have NEVER seen from anyone below the rank of VA)

My LOW level guys average 30 marks on a good run (no one logs out) and 25 on a bad one (someone leaves)

Now i do have some solutions

these are all suggestions

1 replace door security with the Tactical officers of the players who accept (or at least some of them)

2 Close the Bloody DOOR to the turbo lift so cowardly types can't hide in there (and they do)

3 Scaled Incursions
Standard (as it is now)
Low Risk (scaled to CAPTAIN ) enemies not to include borg , undine or other extreme versions
VA ONLY (Scaled to VA , gated) enemies to ONLY include Borg , Undine , Breen , Tholian and Q
and "Ultra" Scaled to VA gated to full maco only Deathmatch rules (you die you don't respawn)

4 Serious leecher penalty (someone stands and does NOTHING in any phase he pays a heavy penalty)

5 Even more serious leaver penalty (death by firing squad?? )

6 Close the blast doors on phase 3 until EVERYONE is standing

7 Automatically despawn all Drones and Escorts in phase 1 as they spawn

8 auto enable TEAM and LOCAL chat channels for everyone during mission no disable no hiding it

9 scale down the numbers of Enemies in phase two if someone leaves

10 (and perhaps the silliest) if someone leaves put in that flashing yellow text that appears EVERYWHERE when someone gets a new ship "(persons name) has Deserted his comrades in battle"

1 - TBH since most of the time PUGs people don't know squat about step 2 strategies and are a weight for the team : letting them die and/or deal with guards while you go on your own with stealth is the best way to ensure the 4 saboters will be killed.
When i PUG this mission that's how i usually save the score to 30ish marks.

2 - Sniping is completely illogical if you can't 1 shot an ennemy heavily guarded.

3 - See 1.

4 - People, actually reading chat ? C'mon after 300+ CSE/ISE including many many PUGs i can assure you this is an urban legend, alot don't even have chat window up !

5 - True, those doing that are b****s. There should be a timer + counter before actually leaving group after a beam out, to give time to people still in group to report/blacklist beamers/leechers and increment the counter so they can't creat private matchs and are set as low piority on queues.

Conclusion : solution to avoid troubles is the same than STFs, creat private room and play with players you know and play well with.

And concerning the other debate : no, high end gear is NOT important for this mission, the *only* important thing here is knowledge. Sadly it is only obtained by people willing to get it and learn/listen who are as common as gold nuggets.