NPC Standings and Story Line Missions

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
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Hello there. I am currently working on faction standing raising with storyline missions and have several questions.

I’ve been working on improving Thukker Tribe faction standings. I of course know that Thukkers have negative standings with most factions except Minmatar republic.
I was running Lv.4 missions on assumption that Lv.4 missions brings the Lv.1 storyline missions which difficulty is equivalent to Lv.4 and with more standing gains than what comes from the Lv.1 mission piles.
Considering the past experience with the pile of Lv.1 missions and storyline missions came from them, the assumption was right though, the standings gains varies, ranging from +0.5 to +1.5.
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And actually some of those storyline missions gave me pretty much easy task alike : data delivery ( 1.0m^2 ) etc, meanwhile the other tasks me to kill pile of battleships.

Question 1. Does the pile of Lv.4 missions give me storyline missions for better standing gain rewards rather than Lv.1 missions ?
Question 2. Are there anything I can do to receive storyline missions with better standing gains selectively ?

And as I have been running Thukker missions, an Ammatar standings getting a worse. It’s -1.98 at raw and 0.41 under the skill modification. I am planning to take Amarr or Ammatar storylines to repair Amatarr standing. For example, If I run Ammtars, Thuker standings gets worse again and need to run their missions either. Meanwhile Gallente and Caldari standings decreases as well, need to be repaired too. Run Caldari, Gallente complaints, Run Gallente and Amarr standings get lowered. Run Amarr and Thukker is at rage again… etc
If I were to raise one of the 4 major powers, it would be more simple alike running seesaw game. But to deal with Thukker, is that possible to raise all the standings at the end ?

Question 3. Is is possible to raise Thukker and all 4 major powers standings together ultimately ? If possible, what’s the best path to seesaw ?

Lastly, like most mission runners, I’ve run all 4 major powers Epic Arcs for every 3 months. On the road of Gallente Epic, I am required to kill syndicate ships and necessarily their standings lost. The Syndicate standings are at -3.1 in raw and -0.48 in modified.
If I understand correctly, Syndicates are originally refugees of gallente exiles and were not pirates like guristas or angels. So considering my lore position having loyalty to the state, they should not be treated like guristas, right ? Or do they have to get considered as a rogue group ? ( AFAIK I can get the syndicate standings as a reward of gallente epic arc selectively, right ? )

Question 4. Is it worth to have positive standings with The Syndicate from the lore and other ingame practical perspective ?

Additional question.
The Security Connections tells that " Improves loyalty point gain by 10% per level when working for agents in the Security corporation division. "
What does the word " agents in the Security corporation division " specify ? Is this skill effective against any security mission agents, or any agents in the " security corp " like, Spacelane Patrol ?

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Paging @DeMichael_Crimson for all your standings questions. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I can answer you last question about the skill:
It applies to agents working for the security division. In other words, the agent is a security agent. (seen in agent info - or in the agent browser/finder thing)

The skill is Not related to corporations. The skill gives a boost based on the agent type only.

Because ‘security’ corps can have courier agents. And likewise shipping/mining corporations can have security agents.

For example the Quafe company makes drinks… but they have security agents too. Makes you wonder what secrets they protect about the ingredients for their drinks! Hehe.

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For gaining standings through Storyline missions, it’s better to actually run level 3 missions due to the fact that they can be completed more quickly compared to level 4 missions, thus giving you more Storyline offers.

No, there’s only a small pool of Storyline missions and those missions are generally considered to be randomly offered.

However, years ago I did entertain the idea that the type of Storyline mission being offered may be related to the Agents Division or possibly the Agents Corporation. Course since Storyline missions are only offered after completing 16 regular missions, I never bothered to look into that.

Researching that theory opens up other possibilities to consider and investigate, like maybe the type of Storyline mission being offered is based on the type of the 16th mission completed, such as if the 16th mission was Mining or Courier, then a Security Storyline mission would be offered. Course on the flip side if the 16th mission was Security, then a Courier or Trade Storyline mission would be offered.

There’s just way too many variations to research and document in order to actually predict and or influence what type of Storyline mission will be offered.

Off hand I should just say no, but that’s not entirely true. It could be done but will require a lot of work. Main thing to remember is for access to high level agents above level 1, you only need to maintain Faction above -2.00 standing, as long as you have the required amount of Corporation standing.

In my first couple years of playing this game, I ran missions with Thukker Tribe for LP’s to get Thukker Shield Extenders. At the time those were hot selling high priced items on the market. I actually gained very high Faction standing with Thukker Tribe and noticed I was also incurring bad negative standings with all the other Factions (Back then Thukker Tribe had negative standings with all Factions, including Minmatar).

Some of those Factions were getting very close to -5.00 standing. (Players with -5.00 or lower Faction standing are chased and attacked by Faction NPC’s within their High Sec systems). Since I wanted to safely travel through all High Security systems for access to all Trade markets, I spent three months researching and compiling various tidbits of information on how to gain Faction standings which lead me to create, test and post ‘The Plan’.

In my opinion there’s no practical reason to have high positive Faction standings with The Syndicate, Thukker and or any of the Pirate Factions since they don’t control any High Security Systems. Like I said earlier, all that’s needed for access to high level Agents is to maintain Faction above -2.00 standing as long as you have the required amount of Corporation standing.

FYI - The Syndicate has positive standings with Angel Cartel and Serpentis Pirates which basically qualifies them as a Pirate Faction. However technically speaking, Concord has neutral standings with The Syndicate, The Society and Thukker Tribe, possibly due to secret payoffs.

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It is a tough one to find a good answer indeed.

A few things I know from experience that might help your research:
It is not based on the last mission you did.
It is also not based on the type of agent you did the normal missions for.

Normal agents have attributes that CCP has not published to the players. Some of the attributes have an effect on mission selection. For example, some agents routinely give a higher percentage of certain types of missions compared to other agents who are exactly the same type.

From when I used to do storyline missions log ago I would say it seems random, similar to normal missions. With some hidden agent attributes giving a higher percentage chance for a certain type of storyline mission.

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Yeah, I’m not doing any research on that. As I said in my original reply, there’s a small pool of Storyline missions which are randomly offered. Those theories I posted were just examples of the many different aspects needing to be checked and documented in order to hopefully predict and or influence what type of Storyline mission will be offered.

I agree there’s some sort of hidden attribute / mechanic for Agent mission offers. The only reason those theories came to mind is from my experience whenever I started missioning for a new Security Agent, I’d get offered both Anti-Faction and Anti-Pirate / Rogue Drone encounter missions. As I gained positive Agent standings, that Agent would offer more of the mission types that I had previously accepted and completed. Eventually the Agent would only offer Anti-Pirate / Rogue Drone encounter missions since I always declined all Anti-Faction encounter missions.

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Thank you for the answer.
That part now makes sense. Well, the quafe company contains some of dark secrets like quafe+ …

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Thank you for the response.
So integrating your answers for Q1. and Q2. generally level of missions running doesn’t have impacts on the ( internal ) level of the storyline missions to be requested, thereby having level 3 missions blitzing makes more standings raise per time. Is that conclusion correct ?

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typically, they choose the storylines by the agent closest to where the last mission was done IIRC. As long as you are running for the same faction/level you’ll get a storyline. And if you have not accepted that storyline, then it moves further out to the next one available.

IE, you cannot do 13 level 3’s and 3 level 4’s and get a storyline.

For every 16 missions of the same level and faction (but not necessarily the same corporation) that you complete, you will get a new Storyline Mission offer from the nearest Storyline agent of the same faction. This will always be the Storyline Agent closest to the regular agent who gave you your 16th mission (in terms of number of jumps) with two exceptions:

  • If the closest Storyline Agent has already made you an offer that you haven’t accepted or declined, then it will be the second-closest Storyline Agent that you get the offer from.
  • If the agent who gave you the 16th regular mission that you completed was in High Security, then the Storyline offer will always come from a Storyline Agent in High Security.
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Completing 16 level 1 missions for a level 1 Storyline gives a very small amount of standing gain, even with max social skills. Sure it’s very fast but it’s also very monotonous and the amount of standing gain is negligible unless you have a large amount of negative standing, then the gain from a level 1 storyline will be very noticeable.

Check out this wiki page on standing calculations

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/NPC_standings#Gaining_and_losing_standings

Basically it depends on what your Faction standing is, if it’s currently negative then low level amount of standing gain will have a large noticeable effect. If your Faction standing is already positive then a low amount of standing gain won’t be noticeable and will seem like a waste of time due to taking much longer to see a difference.

There’s a lot of different Faction Standing Agents listed in ‘The Plan’ I linked earlier. Personally I wouldn’t waste time running missions for Storyline offers unless it was absolutely necessary. Now if that’s the only option left, then I’d run level 3 courier missions for storyline offers until I got enough Faction standing increase to access the Faction standing Agents listed in ‘The Plan’…

Anyway, good luck and may you have much success.

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I believe I correctly understand that point.
But thanks anyway.

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Probably you are right. Originally I had less than -5 standings towards Thukker Tribes and started this journey to repair theirs while maintaining the rest empires standings too.
Those entangled standing modifications led me to get bogged down in the mire.
I tired some of amarr storylines to repair amatarr standings, thereby losing ORE standings now. Jeez. If only The interbus had their storyline missions this could have been more easy.
Anyway thanks for the help. Please pray for me not to be kicked out from any of those empires.

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‘The Plan’ will help. I worked it and now have positive standings with all Empire Factions, only the Pirate Factions are negative…

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