What is the easiest way to increase standing to R&D without tanking your standing with other faction?
I also noticed that Ammatar don’t have R&D agents in High Sec or Low Sec.
1 Like
Run Epic arcs that increase faction standing, this way you receive no penalty for increasing standings. Or just grind level 4 distributions with target corp and never accept storyline missions.
2 Likes
I think I ran distribution missions in a fast aligning/warping t2 hauler and just rejected the faction missions. It was super fast to grind standing this way.
Was a long time ago though. Maybe @DeMichael_Crimson can help as he is probably the best expert in all things missions.
2 Likes
Only the standing towards the agent itself matters. You can just run their daily missions, increase your standings and daily R6 point accumulation in the process and gain double the R&D points. Most of these missions are courier missions, which means you do not have to fight against any other Empire faction. Just ignore the storyline missions and you are fine.
4 Likes
Thanks for the mention but I’m no expert.
I also did Distribution missions to gain Corp standing and declined the Storyline missions. It was pretty quick for me due to starting with high Faction standings…
That will work but I wouldn’t call it easy since it’ll take some time to complete, basically turning it into a grind.
The easiest way to quickly gain Faction standing without tanking the other Factions is to buy Pirate Tags and complete Data Center missions for all 4 Factions.
Granted it’ll cost some ISK and require extensive travel time but it’s still the easiest and quickest way to gain the Faction standing. For the Corp standing just grind some level 3 Distribution missions and decline the Storyline offers.
Yeah, that’s a good way to work the R&D Agents after gaining access. Also if you have access to R&D Agents from each of the 4 main Factions, if needed could use their Storyline offers to help keep Faction standings more equal.
1 Like
only two standing matter for R&D :
- corp standing grants you access to the agent
- agent standing increases the amount of points you get per day
The first one can be increased by making missions for that corp, until you reach access to your agent. I did this with an alt who had standing access, sharing standing to 2 other toons. it required ±100 L3S missions to increase the standing of the 2 toons, so one toon alone could do it in 30 missions.
The second standing increases only when doing missions for that agent.
1 Like
Try a crane fitted for 9au/s , I did it for a while, and has enough cargo to run over 4 distribution missions
1 Like
To use a Level IV research agent, your effective personal standings must be 3.00 or higher toward that agent’s corporation, and you must have an effective personal standing of 5.00 or higher toward the agent, the agent’s faction, or the agent’s corporation, in order to use that agent’s services.
Note that attaining the required Corporate standing automatically fulfills the lower requirement. The extra requirement exists only to prevent those with high Faction standing from accessing top-level research agents without actually working for that corporation.
So, if you had perfect 10.0 standings with the agent’s faction and 0.0 standing with his/her corp, you couldn’t use that agent. However if you had 10.0 faction standing and 3.0 corporation standing, or if you just had 5.0 corp standing, then you could.
If you want to gain access to only one corporation’s agents it’s faster to grind corporation standing. But if you want to use multiple different corporations from the same faction or other factions it’s faster to grind faction standing to 5.00 and individual corporations to 3.00 standing.
1 Like
Whether doing security (combat) or distribution (hauling) missions, that’s one way to do it (avoid faction standing penalties, I mean)… another way is to just make sure you mission for multiple factions so you can heal the damage you do with storyline missions by doing some for the other side as well (if you want to do storylines for the rewards or the variation or whatever).
I do L4 security missions and some team/base burners as well mostly for Amarr but I used to mission for Gallente/SOE a lot, and I have missioned for Caldari some as well. I like to do some of the storyline offers, as long as they’re not anti-empire faction… but I haven’t missioned much for Minmatar. But I do the SOE Epic Arc once or twice a year (can do it 4 times a year if you’re really good with keeping track of the 90 day timer/scheduling) and buff my Minmatar standings back up. This keeps me positive with all 4 (training up the social skills helps as well).
I’ve been meaning to try R&D for years now and I have a corpmate and fleetmate who does them… thanks for reminding me, OP… I’ve certainly got enough L4 agents unlocked, I just need to find out which science skills to train and what I want to do and which corps/agents I want to do it with. 
1 Like
By the way, since we are on the subject of R&D farming, is it enough to only upgrade the standing toward one specific corp and take five level 4 agents in this corp, Carthum Conglomerate for instance, or should I prepare myself to have differents agents in differents corps?
1 Like
Guess that depends on the type of Datacores you want to collect.
If it doesn’t matter then yeah, just do Carthum Conglomerate, they have 5 different level 4 Research Agents all located in High Sec space.
1 Like
It also depends on how much you want to travel. Gensela, Hadonoo and Hilaban are 28 jumps roundtrips, plus possible courier mission travels, and you should stash plenty of Tritanium in their stations. If you added an Ishukone L4 R&D agent in the mix that is nearby to Hilaban (I’ve meant to do that but still haven’t started), you can improve your gains without adding too much more travel distance.
1 Like
does not work. If you do a storyline for faction A, and then for faction B opponent to A, you will overall LOSE standing.
considering each agent gives ±40M isk/YEAR, I advocate to wait for like 5 years before harvesting the rewards.
I thought it was a bit more than this, but yeah . . . I don’t think R&D datacore mining is a thing anymore. Training the skills. grinding the standing, etc. - it makes zero sense now.
Just buying the skillbooks is 40M to start plus 15M per datacore type.
about the cost, it depends.
all my toons have graviton V anyhow. The skill costs is the social skills for those who don’t run missions, and the research project management. Which is a fckn month of training. So, like 1B7 isk ATM.
Also the grinding of standing sucks.
1 Like
I dunno, man… my Amarr/Caldari/Gallente standings seem to stay up just fine from it… only my Minmatar standings drop, and as I said, I use the SOE Epic Arc boost to counter that a bit. Maybe it would be better for me to just stop doing all storylines, but… I do enjoy a few of the combat ones especially (Evolution, Patient Zero, Shipyard Theft), and… the mats for war prep for free random +4 implants is also nice to keep a stash up of those without having to constantly spend LP on them.
Just my anecdotal evidence that it can work, I don’t claim to have done the math or anything.
1 Like
Which means that what makes your standing “stay fine” is the epic soe.
Try to only do epic soe, and your standing will remain just as fine.
Also, it depends on the standing you need : this can be done for L3, but not for L4 ; and on the missions you accept (missions with the highest standing increase also have the highest standing decrease). Finally, it also depends on which factions you are working for. If you do amarr and minmatar, you will have higher standing decrease than if you do amarr and gallente : don’t work for opposed factions.
Yeah, that’s all I was saying. The SOE Epic Arc (for your lowest of 4 empire standings) pretty much cures all ills. If it isn’t curing it well enough, you’re probably not doing it every 90 days. I certainly wasn’t… I was in a wormhole for 20 months on and off and I didn’t keep track of the 90 day timer exactly or else I coulda done it 4 times a year. Instead I average 2 times a year with it.
Now that I’m out of WH space (mostly…), I will try to up that to an average of 3 times a year. I’mma comin’, Sister Alitura!
1 Like
remember you can do it with several alts, and share the reward for the last mission. Which shares the faction reward.
Yep, I run it with my 3 mains in asteros and they all pick Minmatar at the end as it’s everyone’s lowest… although one of them has Gallente as a 2nd lowest (my booster alt, who wasn’t around for all that 2013/2014 missioning I did when I was a newbro), might have to eventually trade off and do a Gallente turn-in for her (or else just get back over to Gal space for some storylines to counterbalance a bit).
I do miss Serp/Guri Worlds Collide now and then, done enough Sansha/Angel to last 3 lifetimes.