All,
As a noob alpha, I am nearly finished with the career agents. For my next choices, am weighing to seek missions from either Caldari Navy or Lai Dai.
My goals are to get more ISK, so I can afford good frigs and fits. This way I can build up to doing exploration and combat ops, either solo or in a small- med group.
Or maybe do SOE first, to get more ISK?
Caldari Navy has many, many more Agents to choose from. Nearly twice as many in fact. Out of curiosity, for what reason does Lai Dai enter into the comparison for you?
The only reason you should go for Lai Dai (other than perhaps RP reasons; for example, they are the primary financial backer of the School of Applied Knowledge) over Caldari Navy is if you are intending to use Lai Dai Research Agents to farm datacores. If you were intending to do Security missions you’d probably be better off with Lai Dai’s security arm, Lai Dai Protection Service, than Lai Dai Corporation proper. LDPS at least has Security agents up to L5.
#LaiDai4Laife
Welcome to Eve
The SOE Epic Arc is worth running as a new player. You get a lot of practice with the game mechanics and a reasonable amount of ISK, plus a nice standing boost with the faction of your choice (i.e. Caldari).
Lai Dai is a good choice for research agents - but you will need to upgrade to Omega to use them. They have no storyline agents so the grind is a bit longer than most corporations.
SOE is a good choice for high value loyalty points. You can use them to purchase SOE probes and probe launchers plus their faction ships - Astero, Stratios and Nestor.
Caldari Navy standing will be valuable if you want to do business at the Jita 4-4 trade hub.
Good luck.
Hello and welcome to Eve.
After completing missions for all 5 Career Agents, definitely do the Sisters Of Eve Level 1 Epic Arc. That arc will give you a grand tour of all 4 Empire Factions space. You’ll gain some standings and make some good ISK in the process.
Lai Dai would be a good Corp if you’re interested in getting some Research Agents to work for you. Some players may say it’s not worth it anymore but having Data Cores produced for a small fee to sell on the market for profit or to use in Invention / manufacturing is always nice to have.
Besides doing PvP, Exploration mixed with mission running, invention and manufacturing will definitely keep the game fun and exciting.
If only CCP would remove data cores from FW LP stores and put the spotlight back on data sites and R&D agents again.
Agree 100%, CCP messed up when they placed Data Cores in FW LP stores, definitely broke immersion.
I farm RP - no apologies, it’s a legitimate game mechanic and I have lots of characters with level 4/5 science skills.
1 character with 5 level 4 agents earning 119.07 RP/day/agent adds up to 2173 datacores/year I don’t need to buy in Jita and all I need to do is collect them.
I would like to see CCP eliminate the passive RP and create some reasonably challenging exploration missions to replace them. I’d likely end up buying my datacores if they did that because of time constraints but it would create interesting options for others and that should be good for the game.
anything but caldari navy. LP is awful, your going to make more isk elsewhere. Of course make sure their LP store isn’t the same as caldari navy, I know corporate police force has the same LP store, as well as a bunch of other corps.
Lai Dai I have no idea about their agents, but it has an alright LP store, but nothing special LP Store - Return on ISK - Lai Dai Corporation - The Forge Sell
SoE has good agents and a pretty decent LP store, nothing super high value, but tons of options when you do cash out. LP Store - Return on ISK - Sisters of EVE - The Forge Sell
can easily go through that many in a week inventing stuff.
I mostly agree with the sentiment, but in practice we’d probably run out of datacores without the FW supply.
Everything was fine with Data Cores back when they were only available from Research Agents and Exploration Data Sites. There was no problem with supply and there were a lot more players in game back then compared to now.
there’s been a few reworks of industry and datacores since, and many more t2 things to invent. I don’t have any numbers to compare over the years, but with current numbers I just don’t think research agents could keep up with the current demand. If it takes a year to get ~2200 data cores from research agents, and then 1 week to use them all in invention it just doesn’t sound feasible.
Your statement is based on current Data Core allocations, not on what we originally had before Soundwave & Co nerfed the hell out of Research Agents.
They not only lowered the amount of RP’s gained per day which lowered the amount of Data Cores to redeem, they also imposed a Data Core surcharge fee as well. Along with that they also reduced the amount of Data Cores spawning in Data sites too. All in the name of removing passive ISK gains in a futile attempt to make FW and their LP stores more enticing to players.
As you can see from the replies above, there are various reasons to do missions for any particular NPC corp.
Missions will reward you with:
As mentioned above, standings with the corp just unlock higher level agents from the same corp for you. Exception is that the Jita trade hub is at the Caldari Navy 4-4 station, and so if you build standings with Caldari Navy you’ll get a slight reduction in taxes at Jita. Currently, people use citadels to bypass taxes, and there are several player-owned citadels that offer low taxes for the general public. Incidentally, similarly to Jita being in a Caldari Navy station, the second-busiest trade hub, Dodixie, is in a (Gallente) Federation Navy station.
Otherwise it’s all about the items offered in the loyalty point stores. Most corps offer generic items - implants, basic ships. Sisters of EVE offers their (very nice) SoE probes and probe launchers, as well as the SoE exploration ships. So for the effort that you put in to get LP’s from missions, the SoE store has nice things that you can re-sell for ISK. Unfortunately, most of the SoE agents are distribution (hauling) agents, not security (combat).
To help you figure out which LP stores are better:
Ellatha’s LP Store Database is sorted by each Empire and each corporation, so you can browse.
Steve Ronuken’s Fuzzwork Database (linked above by Chainsaw Plankton) lets you see how much ISK you can get for any particular item. Click the blue button then pick your NPC corp to look at what’s profitable and what’s not.
Caldari Navy to lower your Jita taxes. Lai Dai for nexus chips and Ballistic controls . So - Navy first, Lai Dai second. Of cause if you are ok with missioning in FW zones. Which is very wrong idea for newbie, IMHO. Caldari Constructions offes same LP store and have very nice agent in Atai.
To answer your question - I considered Lai Dai b/c good tech, and so I could benefit by doing security missions in hisec.
I would suggest you go to Arnon to do the sisters of eve mission arc choosing Caldari and then go do the caldari cosmo missions.
The caldari faction standing increase from these will open just about every single NPC corp in caldari to you and to some extent Amarr as well. And doing so will not take you longer than a weekend.
I took my faction standing for Amarr and Caldari to 5 opening level 4 mission and locator agents in both areas.
*Granted I also have my social skills to level 5 to maximize agents standing increases.
I would definetly go Caldari Navy, simply because of Jita market hub. Its the biggest in game and you will end up doing a lot of business there even if it ends up not being your primary. Having good standing with Caldari Navy will help you bring down taxes and fees there quite significantly. You can always get the other factions later, once you get the 1st one, make some jump clones etc.
If you are going to trade often then CN standing is worth it, along with some Caldari state standings. lv3s in suroken are good for that, plus a CN storyline agent next door so you often get CN storylines which give a bunch of corp standing.
if you are just going to jita to buy from sell orders or dump to buy orders, it doesn’t matter at all. Set duration to immediate and the only thing you pay is sales tax. A lot of people don’t seem to know that and end up wasting a bunch of isk on broker fees.
Can also put up orders in citadels where standings don’t matter.
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