The “Social” skills, if trained to 4, will give you a serious boost to standings, esp. when you start, allowing the unlock of level 2 agents after doing only about 5 missions for level 1 agents. The skills also increase mission rewards by 20% (total), which is not bad. Otherwise, you have to do missions for various agents within the NPC corp until your standings with the corp increase past certain thresholds (3.0, 5.0), to unlock the next higher level agents in that corp.
People usually do missions for the following reasons:
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They like combat missions.
In this case, security-oriented NPC corporations like Caldari Navy or Caldari Police Force, Federation Navy, etc., are popular because they have plenty of agents in the Security division within the corp, so progression up the ranks is easy and can be limited to high-sec space. Also, the Loyalty Point stores for these corps. offer various “Navy Issue” ships that are quite popular, and thus worth quite a bit of money if traded on the market. -
They want the standings.
Having standings with an NPC corp. or empire offers benefits such as reduced tax rates on the market (if you’re trading within the corp’s station), and access to its “Locator Agents” if any, who can help you find where other players are in-game. It just so happens
that the Jita trade hub is in a station that belongs to Caldari Navy, the Dodixie trade hub is in a Federation Navy station, and so on. A fraction of a percent reduction in tax is a big deal when you’re trading expensive stuff like PLEX’es or expensive ships or modules.
In any case, a “career” can be made out of running missions, and if you focus your activities, there are several benefits.