Hi, I’m playing PvE and I have already finished tutorials and “Sisters of eve epic arc”, so I started to do Security Agents missions, actually level 2,and I will continue till I’ll finish training my skills and have a cruiser.
My goal is to maximize standings, so I can make ISK faster and buy augmentations to speed skill training, but without affecting negatively standings with other empires, because I want to remain free to fly everywhere without being attacked by police faction.
So the problem is: is it possible to understand which agents will give me pirates missions? If I do only pirate missions I will maximize standings with corporation and faction, without negatively affecting my standing with the other empires.
distance from low-sec (4-5 jumps will prevent missions happening there).
To avoid losing standings with the other empires:
only do regular missions (they give corp. standings), decline “storyline/special” missions (they change empire standings)
decline missions that send you to kill Navy NPC’s from other empires.
When the mission is offered to you by the agent, somewhere in the middle of the text you should see the mission objectives (whom you have to kill), and the specified enemies will have ICONS to the left of their name, indicating what faction or empire they belong to. So you can tell from just reading the mission description. You can also look up the full spoiler details of the mission on EVEsurvival.
You can refuse one mission per agent per every 4 hours. This is why it’s nice if there are multiple agents at the station, because you can switch to the second agent while you wait your 4 hours to pass for the first.
@Memphis_Baas has given solid advice here that is spot on.
The only other things that I would add in choosing an agent is to also take a look at the agent’s corporation’s Loyalty Point store. Different stores have different items that you can work towards, so that may have some bearing on what agent (and corp) you choose to do missions for.
I also second the recommendation to have multiple agents that you can run missions for. Right now, doing L2s you can do them for essentially anybody. But when you get to doing L3s and L4s it’s a good idea to have multiple agents (probably from different corps) nearby that you can run missions for if you “faction out” on a given agent (i.e. get offered more than one mission against a faction within 4 hours).
Hi Memphis, I know those things already.
I ask myself if it’s possible to determine wat kind of missions agents will give me, BEFORE to contact them, so I can choose which agent contact.
To say, agents from military organizations are more prone to give missions against other empires, instead commercial ones give pirate missions? I want to know if there’s something like this to determine what kind of agents to choose.
My experience is that you get the same missions randomly on the same level from regular corporations belonging to the same faction. The “ethos” of that corp (the fantasy description) doesn’t have any effect on the ratio of pirate and navy enemy missions. It is random. So you get amarr or caldari enemy missions from any kind of regular minmatar corporations (such as Brutor Tribe, Republic Justice Department, Thukker Mix, Six Kin etc. etc.) no matter what is in their description.
The only missions where you have to permanently face enemy empire ships are factional warfare missions, but that is a different story. So run regular missions and decline the ones with navy enemy missions when they randomly appear and storyline missions to keep your opposing faction standings high if that is what you aim for.
Missions are random, from the total pool of missions, as far as we can tell.
It used to be that the pirates would match the empire (Guristas for Caldari missions) and the “enemy navy” would also match the empire (Gallente Navy targets for Caldari missions), but CCP randomized the pirates and the navies a few years ago. So at this point in time you’ll get mercenaries and rogue drones (unaffiliated), pirates (any of them), and “spies” “saboteurs” etc. that may be neutral or affiliated with any of the other empires.
In my experience you don’t have to refuse too often. The spies and saboteurs aren’t given very often.
Ok, and what about distribution agents? They too influence faction standings? Maybe I could do distribution missions in the 4 hours after I refuse a security mission that negatively impact on standings with other empires, at incrementing loialty points to access augmentations without impact on faction standings, isn’t it?
I mean you can but meh. it’s just not worth it. you have to go pretty low to get shot at and if you are really worried about it you can alternate between empires to balance your standings. Plus with buffer faction standings you can decline missions inside the 4 hour window and not really need to worry about it.
if you just want implants you are probably better off just buying them from the market, Lv5 farmers, FW farmers, storyline missions all put a lot of implants on the market that make standard mission running a rather poor way to get implants.
there’s a few sub pools of missions, one for the faction, one for the local region, and one that’s generic. The faction pool is mainly the one that determines who shows up in the empire kill missions pretty generic amarr + caldari vs gallente + minmatar. Local region pretty much just chooses which version of the mission you get. In amarr/caldari space the assault is vs guristas, where in minmatarr/gallente space it’s vs serpentis, and most regions have their own version of the blockade. then there are the generic missions like the ones vs drones, mercs, EoM and the like.
mission completions should only affect agent/corp standing. As there are no ships killed there are no standings losses like in combat missions. but courier missions are super boring and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.
Hello and welcome to Eve and it’s PvE mission content.
First when you say standings you should be more specific. Is it Agent, Corporation, Faction or a combination of those 3. Maximizing standings and ISK generation without negatively affecting standings with other Empire Factions is a tricky goal to complete.
Since your thread title and OP is more about getting ISK, I’ll presume the standing pertains to Agent and Corporation. As a mission runner one of the most important things is the Social skill group. While there’s other skills available in this skill group, I think training up these specific skills will help a lot.
Social = 5% bonus per level to NPC Agent, Corporation and Faction standing increase.
Connections = 4% bonus per level to effective standing from friendly NPC Corporations and Factions.
Negotiation = 5% additional pay bonus per level for completing Agent missions.
Along with those skills are the Agent Division Connection skills for gaining Loyalty Points to purchase items from LP stores.
Security Connections = 10% bonus per level for agents in Security division.
And if the need arises this skill will help lower any negative standings incurred while running missions.
Diplomacy = 4% bonus per level to effective standing with hostile Agents.
So in order to remain neutral to all the other Empire Factions without needlessly grinding a bunch of missions, best to decline all Storyline offers along with missions offered against other Empire Factions. Basically only accept regular encounter missions against Pirate Factions.
Now about which Agent Corporation to pick depends largely on your location. Since you’re Minmatar I suggest Brutor Tribe. There’s a lot of Agents available for Brutor Tribe in and near Rens system which is a major trade hub. Plus the trade station in Rens belongs to Brutor Tribe. Having good standing with Brutor Tribe will help lower reprocessing and market fees in all Brutor Tribe stations.
As for raising Faction standings without adversely affecting the other Empire Factions, the only way to do that is by running the Epic Arc missions. You’ve already completed the Sisters Of Eve level 1 Epic Arc and picked one of the four main Empire Factions to complete it. Epic Arcs can be completed every 90 days for Faction standing increase so I suggest doing that when it’s available. Later on when your skills, experience and standings are higher, you can then run the level 4 Empire Epic Arcs.
Just a bit of Lore / game info: The Interbus is the only NPC Corporation in Eve that doesn’t offer any Anti-Empire encounter missions since it’s actually jointly owned by all. The Interbus doesn’t have any Storyline Agents and also doesn’t have an LP store. Basically it’s like a Capsuleer Retirement Home, allowing Capsuleers to continue mission running without affecting Faction standings.
Anyway, that’s about it, hope you have good luck and much success.
Ok, but the same implant costs lot more on the market than with loyalty points. For example Ocular Filter Basic costs 5millions 250k with 5250 loyalty points, instead it costs 9millions 500k in Dodixie. Is there any other places where to find this stuff at the same price as the loyalty points store?
yes, it is possible but takes quite a bit of doing. I will give you some pointers here. When I 1st strated playing this game X years ago, on my 1st character I figured I’d repeat the missions to get frigates and some extra cash so I have ships / modules to spare to try out PvP, but I had no clue how factions work. Imagine my surprise when on my very 1st trip to the biggest market hub in the game (Jita), I got blown up by Caldari Navy. Other then the tutorials. This has been improved since then, you’ll still lose standings but will no longer get blown up like I did back then.
Anyways, onto the faction standings.
While docked at a station, open your character window, and then Interactions Button, then Standings Tab. Here, you can select different factions, corporations, etc. and see what your actual standings are. This is a very important thing, just select different factions / corporations and check it out.
So the following are my recommendations about how to initially raise the standings, note that these are my recommendations, other peoples will vary.
Train Social and Negotiation up to level 4, you can leave the other ones wherever you like as it suits you. Do not train these to level 5 as you will end up needing it for that extra boost later on when your standings take a serious dip either from PvP or PvE, so save a bit of it.
Train Caldari Industrial to 3 or 4 for teh Badger. Trust me, this will help you a lot. Buy a Badger and fit it with 1 warp speed rig, 1 cargo expand rig, 1 alignment time rig. Put Inertia stabilizers in all lower slots, but keep a couple cargo expanders in your ship to switch as needed. The remaining slots are up to whatever you feel like. This will be your “supplemental” ship, not the main. It helps.
Open the Agency and select security agents for one of the factions, best start with your weakest one, and then within that faction, select the corporation that owns its major trade hub. Basically, you want Caldari Navy for Jita, Federation navy for Dodixie, Emperor Family for Amarr and whatever it is for Hek market. Start with the weakest one, look for its security agents, you will often have to start at level 1 missions, luckily, they are very quick and require least faction standing to go higher.
Get a combat frigate or destroyer, package it, put the frigate / destroyer in your badger along with all its modules, weapons, ammo, etc. Your rigs will be destroyed each time you repackage a ship, but its no big deal really, you will more then make that ISK back and for lvl 1-2 missions, you can even do just fine without using rigs on combat ships alltogether if you like to.
Fly your Badger to the trade hub and operate from there. This will maximise your ISK while you are grinding out the standings cause you can sell loot on the spot.
Every 16 missions, you will get a story mission. You HAVE to do this mission to gain standings, if the mission target is in low sec, its up to you if you want to do it or not, just be ready for PvP.
When you get tired of fighting waves after waves of NPCs and just want to get to your next story ASAP, hop onto that Badger, and do distribution missions instead of security. The rewards are very measely at these levels, you do this only for the purpose to get the 16 missions to get the story one. Hence the Badger is a very important ship, supplements your grind as well as lets you transport your own basic stuff around.
Once you reach your set desired standing, rinse / repeat for the next weakest faction, etc. etc. Its a freaking grind. Everytime you do a story mission for one emipre, one more will raise faction (derived) and 2 others will lower it, BUT the amount lowered is a lot less then the amount gained, so you go in circles and all of them will average out and go up.
Try to get one of these corporation factions to get to 5 ASAP. This is important as it does 2 more things. First, it lets you make jump clones at their facilities, and believe me, you want jump clones. Second, it lowers the taxes and fees at those trade / market hubs, so you make more ISK. This is also very important.
Things of note:
Do not decline a mission from same agent more then once every 4 hours, except anomic missions, but you won’t get those yet anyways. If you do, not only agent will take a hit, but there is a slight hit faction wide as well. If you need to decline more then 1 time per 4 hours, just move on to the next agent.
There is no way for agents in this game to give you pirate missions only. You basically have to just go to teh station, speak with agent and either accept or decline. Likewise, there is no way to get High Sec missions only. Maybe not at low levels, but later on you will get missions into low sec, be prepared.
You only get + entire empire standings for completing the storyline missions, not regular ones. However, you get - empire standing if you kill empire ships. So the advice to “skip” story missions is incorrect as those are the ones you need to do. Also, like I said above the + you get outweighs the -.
There are 4 types of story missions as they are affecting faction standings. First is the regular missions, either security or distribution or mining etc. Which will grant you a story mission every 16 completed and that story gives you the positive empire wide standing. Do not decline any mission that says at the top of its window “completing or declining this mission will greatly affect your standings”.
Second are individual agent story missions, with these your faction to a particular agent increases greatly, then they will give you higher level missions these can be different and will have different positive and negative impacts, you can look them up, if you need to just do them if you dont need to, skip them.
Third are actually regular missions, but in a story like parts for example Recon, I recommend looking them up before you commit to one as some may start with pirates but go vs empires down the line etc. Recon you can do safely, but the others not so much, check them out 1st.
Fourth are epic arc missions, you don’t have to worry about those now, but later on you will. By then you will know how all this works.
PvP affects your faction standings greatly, in particular, most of all killing pods in low sec will give you big penalties which stack up real quick. This is why a lot of us have seperate toons for PvP and PvE or often high sec Pve / trade toon, and null / low sec toon. So we don’t have to worry about these sort of things at all.
On the flip side, you can choose to go kill some players to raise your faction with a ceirtain empire, especially in FW. But just remember to stop before the navies start getting agro on you.
In this case you would be spending the 5250 LP for about 4mil in return, which isn’t very good. On a good LP store that same 5250 LP could get you around 10mil in value.
As a new player with low LP totals, it’s probably worth it to get the implants you need. Many of the high value items require a large volume of LP
Check out the various LP stores here: LP Store - Return on ISK Sisters of Eve is what I would consider the standard for highsec mission running. they have a handful of good agents and some high demand items. But you can often find better in more specialized stores.
Each of the empires has 3 stores, The ones you are interested in will typically have 5 run Blue print copies for some valuable mods. These ones have exploration, or industry implants for sale. And then there is a set of corps with the navy store and combat implants. These are typically the bad ones as they shares LP pools with FW and lv5s.
That is correct if you want to go for income, however, a lot of these will give you a massive dive to the point that it will become difficult to use major market hubs, for example thukker tribe faction. And after I tried it short of doing burners, which personally I do not have on farm yet as there are a couple things left for me to train, the income is too low for the time / effort / investment.
The other thing is that when you go for income LP factions you need padding for markets and general QOL, unless you subscribe or plex a 2nd toon. Again, making it a PITA and just not worth it. I ended up re-grinding some of the standings on my HS PVE toon because of this so I could use Jita and Dodixie without hassle and at relatively low taxes / fees. So while different people play differently and take different paths etc. I just can’t recommend doing this for a starter. Only exception is SOE because it balances out more or less, but then you’re not gaining market standings while doing that.