Basically the title, do you get a passive gain in the standings everyday or just when you complete the daily special missions they offer you?
You only get a standings increase for completing the missions. You do get passive RP every day - you can double the RP by doing the missions which are trivial - either provide some minerals or a simple courier mission.
I simply let the RP accumulate passively and harvest once a year. I gather from conversations with others that this is a fairly common practice. Not particularly engaging gameplay but I get thousands of essentially free datacores each year across all my characters and will accept them as long as CCP continues to hand them out!
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Can I use a courier contract to get someone else to do the mission for me, so all I need to do is turn it in?
I started a āmissionā with the Level I R&D agent in the Hek hub station. Iām getting like 1.6 RP daily. I do have access to Boundless Creation level IV missions, obvious question perhaps obvious answer but do I want to just skip right to the level IV R&D agent? Do the RP have a store like LP?
You can do level 1 and level 2 agents in Hek, there is a level 4 agent a few jumps away in Amo. Youāll need +5 standing and, I think, level 4 science skills to talk to him. Thatās about it for Boundless Creations in highsec. In both cases, the missions will frequently send you to lowsec.
One of my characters has Boundless agents in Hek and Amo - I used them to build standing for reduced brokerage fees there - the level 1 agent is 38.72 RP/day, level 2 agent is 75.93 RP/day and the level 4 agent is 94.12 RP/day.
I donāt think you can hand in a mission remotely but admit Iāve never tried. Hiring a courier for this would be ridiculously expensive - far cheaper to simply buy the datacores on the market.
There is no LP store for RP. You trade RP for datacores at a reduced price. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Datacore_farming
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Do you know if you can gain additional standing with an individual agent and then get more RP/day? Does it go up if like say, my Minmatar Starship Engineering skill went from I to IV? Iām gonna find out what happens in about 21 hours when I get Minmatar Startship Engineering to IV.
I got both Level IV Boundless R&D agents researching for me now - High Energy Physics @ 93.82/day.
My next goal is to grind up Core Complexion, Inc. standing - not sure which research Iāll pick yet, guess I will have to study the markets.
Edit: Worth noting that I do have Negotiation Vā¦ not sure if that had any affect on RP at all?
Edit, edit: You canāt talk to or buy datacores remotely. Unless there is a skill Iām missing and unaware of.
Howdy Rich:
So far, so good. You are on the right track. All of the following have an effect on your RP/day:
- Individual agent standing. This is modified with with Connections skill. Doing the missions boosts your standing with the agent daily, and your RP/day will go up slightly with each completed mission. Social V will help you get the maximum tick for each completed mission.
- Negotiation. Absolutely modifies the payout in RP/day.
- YOUR skill level. The higher you level (Minmatar Starship Engineering), the more RP. I have found that you will need to talk to the agent to get the skill-up to take. You might have to cancel research and re-start, but pretty sure just āstarting conversationā updates the RP/day.
Obviously, going straight to Level IVs is the best option, but for me, it has always been about geographical convenience. If you have 4 x Level 4 in Amarr, Caldari, and Gal space you wonāt run the missions. Just find the best combination of distance and level that works for you!
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Hey Miss Stardust,
Thank you. Iāve been working on the daily agent missions so far. My Level IV agent in Amo has just requested my assistance. Wonder what that will be like in cargo size and distance? Hopefully itās nothing too dangerous for my courier contractorsā¦ 
Excellent. I do have Social V!
I think I will train them to IV since V is such a long slog and Iād rather get back into my combat skills instead - thank you for confirming how to update the RP/day given. Have to admit I did a little bit of skill injector crack and nothing happened (at first) to my RP/day. Tried logging out and back in and nothing happened - it must have been after I did a daily mission or something more than just opening the conversation window with the agent. I think start/stopping research would be good too.
When I stop research, will it keep my Minmatar Starship Engineering RP be banked?
I live in Hek obviously so my plan is to try to figure out the optimal ISK/RP and close to Hek.
Unrelated - is there any point to grinding lower level individual agent standing? I just jumped right into Level IIIās with Core Complexion, Inc. Iāve been doing Level I missions for the Security Agent in Hekās trade hub station.
Rich:
If you are going to close business with the agent, MAKE SURE you cash out your RP. It is NOT stored in a bank.
As for the missionsā¦there are only two:
- Deliver a courier package of 0.1 m3 (shuttle works), usually one jump
- Deliver a set amount of tritanium. If you are going to keep an agent, keep a pile of trit in
the station. Level 1 is 300 units, Level 2 is 600 (?), Level 4 is 2700 units (?). Its always the
same amount. Youāll notice that people sell trit at a steep markup in R&D stations for this
exact reason. The delivery occurs at the same station, no travel.
EDIT: Grinding lower level agents is for your own convenience. There is nothing wrong
with mixing agent levels if it works for YOUR enjoyment. We are not talking about billions of ISK here, maybe a couple million. But what is your TIME worth?
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I farm datacores passively and use them for invention. My characters have their science and social skills at 5 (except Negotiation at level 4). Since I only visit my agents once a year, it really doesnāt matter where they are located. I took the time to grind standing for several of my research/invention characters. They each have 5 agents and they are each harvesting roughly 2000 datacores a year, not bad pay for an hourās work flying around in a speed fit Astero to collect them.
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Keep in mind that the Research program Management skill book is expensive, as are the science skills. It will take a long time before you see a net profit.
Good to know, thank you again!
Also good to know - I think I will do just that, leave a big pile of Tritanium. I was also thinking the packages must get bigger per level but Iāve been lucky so far to not have a confirmation on that yet or not from my Level II agent. Not a big deal at all to move a little tiny box every other day or so.
My thoughts exactly. My upfront cost has been some mission grinding, my skillqueue taking a bit of a deviation but I think to have something just passively gaining is too good to not do. I was worried that something so simple will probably get changed now that Iām doing it 
but it looks like the last real update it had / hint something could be coming was back in like 2012.
Is this the one that allows for one additional research agent per level? I made the big investment and yes it was a stinger ā¦ 
When CCP introduced the invention process, research agents were the sole source of datacores - datacore mining was a road to riches. They changed it so faction warfare loyalty point stores are now the primary source and some can be looted from exploration sites. The Dev Blog that introduced the Upwell Structures back in 2015 included this statement: āWe want those new structures to ultimately replace our existing Datacore systemā. That was over 5 years ago. I suspect itās still buried somewhere in the backlog but could be a long time before it becomes a top priority.
Today, research agents primarily make sense for industrial characters who need the science skills anyway. Even then, itās rarely worth the time to run the missions if it involves any travel.
The skills are pocket change - once you have Research Project Management at level 4 (roughly a week) it can earn you 200 million per year in passive income as long as you play the game. Pretty good ROI. While that sounds like a lot, I still buy most of my datacores so I look at it as the money I save rather than the money I earn!
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FInally! The grind is over and I have the level IV R&D agents I have access to all doing their thing.
There really isnāt much out there for passive income. So I am glad to have it setup.
Oh my lord!!!
Have come back to Eve after a 9 year break and this thread has suddenly reminded me that I had a number of research agents back in the day ā¦ I wonder if they kept working all this time for me ???
I canāt wait to go back and find out ā¦ if I can ever remember which ones there were !!!
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Post screenshot!!
Wow. 9 years? That will probably be about 1 billion isk!
So I checked this morning - sadly disappointed that I only had 4 or 5 agents and only one or 2 (I think) were level 4.
One of em did have about 280k points though - I have to go work out how that stacks up ā¦ I reckon at some point they stopped accumulating.
Iāll try to get a screenie tonight
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Whats the redemption rate for mech eng cores ?
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I buy and sell in Hek so for me itās about 120k a piece. Just kidding that was for the wrong thing, I had HIgh Energy Physics in mind, not Mechanical Engineering
Edit: getting you a better answer in a moment
Remember, you have to buy the cores from the research agent first, they arenāt free.
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