I’ve bought injectors, Omega time for two accounts, and about 5 days in I’ve managed to get both characters knee deep in negative standings with minmatar and Gallente.
I thought I found a solution with a Gallente agent next door. “I’ll just run some missions for him”
Well I’ve since learned that while I gain standing for that particular gallente corporation, the only repair to my negative gallente standing will come every 16 missions…and those gains will be very small.
Additionally, I’ve learned (too late) about “derived standings” So those important “storyline” missions that I thought were good, are also contributing to my negative faction standings with the opposing factions.
I’m at a crossroads here. I don’t know what to do. I was having a lot of fun progressing through the missions. Yesterday acting on advice from the Rookie Help channel I took nearly a full point standing loss with my mission agent by refusing a mission before the 4 hour timer had passed. Then I got another mission that involved yet more killing of Gallente. Frustrated, I figured I’d give missions a break and do something different. I scanned a simple combat sight in my .9 system that had something to do with “drone assembly” all that had was 4 or 5 very weak mobs that offered 4k isk bounty each…and were quickly dispatched. I saw a “smuggler hide out” and figured I’d give that a try (and I was quickly dispatched…ouch).
So that leaves me with two questions:
What if I just said “screw it” and let my negative faction rating get worse. What does the future hold for a pilot in New Eden who will get hunted down and killed in Minmatar/Gallente space? Will I become undesirable to player corps…unhirable? Will I get shot / killed traveling to and from Jita?
My second Question:
what is the purpose of this kind of faction mechanic in a pve setting. I’m Genuinely interested in what motivated CCP to incorporate this system. Do they want me to stop doing missions? (This is not a rhetorical question)
EVE has a lot of ‘hostile space’ and ‘friendly space’, which one is which can be very different per character. And that creates a living universe where not every part is the same for every player, based on your choices. Players are spread out and are trading with eachother to obtain goods from other parts of space.
My experience with missions is limited, as I haven’t done any missions since the tutorial (enough other parts of the game that keep me busy!), but in my case a small part of null sec - where my alliance lives - is relatively friendly, while most of the universe is hostile space for me. Including high sec, because my alliance pretty much always has some active war declarations from certain high sec groups.
Luckily it is not a big problem if other parts of the universe are hostile, there are ways to deal with that:
bring the right ship if you go to such an area (fast aligning and/or cloaky works well)
use a second character (for example I use a character that can fly a lot of hauling ships and is war-declaration-immune to do my high sec shopping)
or just avoid the area for now
There are many groups, NPC and player groups alike and you can join up with player groups or work for certain NPC groups. Either might change in how you will see the hostile and safe zones in the universe.
Some people run missions for the NPC pirate factions and have certain (diamond I think) NPC pirate ships help them in fights! The NPC Empires won’t like it though.
You won’t be able to effectively do stuff in Min/Gal highsec. Lowsec is safe from faction navy, as is nullsec. (Do watch for players though, we bite.) Unless your corp is operating frequently in empire highsec, that won’t be an issue. Generally the faction navies can be avoided relatively easily as well if you do need to fly thought highsec, just don’t linger.
It’s sort of a risk/reward thing. It gives you a choice to make. Do you only take missions against pirate factions to stay in the good graces of all empires? That’s an option but you might have a harder time finding work. Maybe you’d rather throw your lot in with one side. You’ll never be wanting for jobs, but you’ll be wanted by the other empires. Or you can join up with the pirates and piss off all the empires, but reap the greatest rewards.
Check out this link for ways how to repair your standing.
Second, I wouldn’t sweat running storyline missions the derived standing hits are small. The big thing is to avoid missions that ask you to kill ships of opposing factions. Of course, this missions also drop tags. And since a lot of players avoid them, these tags tend to be worth more. Thus, some guys run those missions because they’re more profitable, and living with the standings hit.
What’s the best route to take? Meh. I say there’s better money to be made elsewhere that doesn’t come with borking your faction standings.
Exploited Sensitivities against caldari is one I run quite often. -0.018% standings for even 15-20 mil worth of tags only.
Standing hit from storyline missions is always lower than gain. So if you decide to switch mission hubs from time to time. In long run you will be only gaining standings
Back in the day I would run level 4 missions. You can do them without standing hits. As posted above, what you need to avoid is the missions that have you kill faction ships.
This is an excellent resource for finding out before you accept the mission if you want it or not.
There used to places that had several mission agents in close proximity that made it easy to switch to a different agent when you needed to decline a mission to avoid the four hour thing.
Also make sure you train the social skill “diplomacy” it reduces effective negative standings with NPC organizations.
Train your social skills, they help long way with negative standings.
If i remember they start to hunt you when you have -5 with empire. Then You are “kill on sight” anywhere in that faction’s space. NPC Navies will spawn and attack you. Note that, unlike Concord, Navy ships will not warp disrupt or scram you.
-2 Agents of that faction will no longer speak to you regardless of corp or agent standing. Except for L1 agents, these will continue to be available.
Once per 3 months you can do Sisters Of Eve Epic arc which will get a good standings boost of your choosing. Its a long but really easy and you get like 0.7 standing without skills or boosters. Last time i did it got ovet 1.0 standings with my skills and a +20% booster.
