Mission Running: Standings and Agents

One thing Eve always gets criticized on is its notoriously bad PVE experience. Apparently the PVE aspects are pretty boring and only repeat themself over and over again. However, I think most PVE aspects are simply not known well enough and people think Eve’s PVE mainly consist of null sec ratting and running security Lv4 missions. While that might be true for many players, there are actually a lot more things that you can do to spice things up a bit, like running Cosmos missions, Epic Arcs, farming your R&D agents and even mining missions to name just a few.

Because mission running itself in its many forms is such a big topic, I will cover it in a longer series of posts. I will start from the basic mechanics such as the standings system and the various types of agents to the more advanced topics like solo and team burner missions and farming pirate faction epic arcs.

So let’s start to dive into missions with explaining the standing system and how you actually can get a mission from New Edens various agents.

Standings

The standing system defines how popular you are to the NPC entities in the game. A standing is a numerical value which can be between -10 and +10. Positive values indicate that the organization or person likes you, while negative values mean that you are disliked.  You can have standings to three different categories of entities. You can have standings to Agents, Corporations and Factions.

If you have a good standing to a faction, you will automatically gain the same standing to all corporations of this faction. The same is true for corporation standings, which affects all agents of this corporation. By this, the faction standing also indirectly influences the agent standings of that faction.

You can see all your standings on the recently redesigned character sheet (Ctrl+A) under the section Interactions -> Standings.

Standings Overview

The new screens list all standing values for factions, corporations and agents on the right-hand side and the standings history details for the selected item on the right. The history shows the last 25 standing changes. In the upper section, you can see different thresholds that are triggered by positive and negative standing values to the selected entity. Just hover over the different symbols to get an explanation what happens when a certain threshold is met.

So how do you increase or decrease your standings? The main way to increase standings is to complete missions for an agent. This will increase the standings to the agent and to the corresponding corporation. Sometimes you will get a storyline mission from an agent. If you finish that one successfully, it will not only boost the corporate and agent standing but also boost the faction standing of the faction of the corporation that issued the mission. A boost in faction standing also influences other faction standings, so called derived standing changes. If another faction is on good or bad terms with the one you just completed a storyline mission for, you will get a derived bonus or malus too. These will be indicated by a little plus or minus sign on the standings list the next time you open it.

Derived Standing Changes

Apart from storyline missions, there are also other ways to increase your faction standings. One way is to finish the epic arc mission chains that are available for all four empire factions (Amarr, Gallente, Caldari and Minmatar) and two pirate factions (Guristas and Angel Cartel). The last mission of any epic arc will boost the corresponding faction standing. The Sisters of Eve also offer an epic arc mission chain which will boosts one faction standing of your choice. For an overview of the epic arcs just check the Eve University wiki page.

There are also so called cosmos missions, which are given out by special agents that are located at fixed positions all over New Eden. Some of them give out storyline missions that directly increase standings to their faction.

Finally, the last way is, to hand in tags to certain agents which drop by killing NPC ships of a faction. These agents accept the tags of their enemy factions and increase their own faction standing in return. These can only be used once by ever character in his eve career.

You can decrease your standing by killing ships of a faction or declining missions from an agent. This works for both NPC and player ships, so if you destroy a ship of a player who belongs to a NPC corporation, the standings to that corporation will be lowered too.  You can decline one mission every 4 hours from a certain agent. After that the standing to that agent will be lowered for each declined mission.

Standing Skills

Apart from the base standing value to an entity, you can positively influence your standings by a number of skills.

Connections increases standings by 4% per level to non-pirate NPCs if the standing is positive.

Criminal Connections increases the standings by 4% per level to pirate NPCs if the standing is positive.

Diplomacy increases the standings by 4% per level only if the standing is negative.

Social increases the standings increase gained by missions by 5% per level.

So what does this 4% per level mean? To calculate the actual bonus, you need to calculate the missing amount of standing to the maximum of +10. The bonus is calculated by the percentage of this value. E.g. you standing is 0 right now, so the difference is 10. Let’s say you have a 20% increase by Connections, this results in 2 points bonus.

Finally, there are also two boosters that were introduced recently, that give you additional Social skill bonus to increase standing gains for any mission completed while the booster lasts. The boosters last 24 hours by default, increased by your Biology skill.

Agents

Next, let’s talk about agents. Agents work for NPC corporations and give out mission to players if the standing to that agent is high enough. Remember that corporation and faction standing directly overrides the resulting standing to an agent. So if you have a faction standing of for example 4 to the Minmatar Republic, you will have a standing of 4 to all Minmatar agents regardless for which Minmatar corporation they work.

Every agent has a level, which specifies how hard the missions are given out by that agent. The Level can be between 1 and 5. Level 1 to 4 agents live in all regions of space, while level 5 agents can only be found in low security space.

The required standings values are the same for all agents and can be seen in the upper part of the standings character screen for the selected item:

You can always get mission from level 1 agents, while level 2 need a minimum standing of 1, level 3 a minimum standing of 3, level 4 a minimum standing of 5 and level 5 a standing of 7 or greater. The symbols below the bar indicate available epic arc agents, that are either level 3 or 4 agents depending on the epic arc, but not all factions have these as mentioned above.

Each agent gives out a certain type of mission, which can be either combat missions (Security agents), mining missions (Mining Agents), transport missions (Distribution Agents) or research missions (R&D Agents).  Some agents additionally have the special ability to locate the current location other players and are called locator agents.  Very rarely agents give out missions from other categories, e.g. a distribution agent can give out a security mission.

To find an agent in the game, you can use the agency window (Alt+M) which has nice features to search and filter available agents. You can search by level, availability based on your standing, mission type and distance to your current location. If you select an agent, the details of your relation to that agent are summarized in the detail section of the window. To actually start a mission, fly to that agent’s location and start a conversation.

Agency Window

If you talk to an agent, a summary of the mission objectives and rewards will be presented to you in the agent conversation screen. The right-hand side also usually gives some backstory to the offered mission.  The actual objectives depend on the type of the mission and can be a simple transportation of goods between two stations,defeat some NPCs at a deadspace location or mine some ore. As a reward you will usually be rewarded with a set amount of ISK and some bonus ISK of you finish the mission in a certain timeframe. On top of that, you will get some Loyalty Points that can be redeemed for faction items and implants in the loyalty store of the corporation.

Lv2 Distribution Mission

You can open the LP store in the station services overview of any station that belong to the corporation you want to exchange LP for. It lists the various items you can get with the amount of additional ISK, LP or items that you need to have to trade for a faction item. If you are not sure what to buy, there is a neat website that lists all items from all shops with the current market value and how much ISK you will get per LP spent. So check it out if you want to sell your gear later on the market.

Republic University LP Store

Mission Rewards Skills

Of course there are also skill that increase your ISK and LP rewards for a mission.

Negotiations gives a 5% bonus per level to mission ISK rewards

Distribution Connections increases LP rewards by 10% per level for distribution missions

Mining Connections increases LP rewards by 10% per level for mining missions

Security Connections increases LP rewards by 10% per level for security missions

The three mission specific connection skills are a bit pricey since they are only available from LP stores  but definitely worth the ISK if you run higher level agents that can give out a significant amount of LP.

I think that’s all you need to know to get started with running mission for your favourite agent. In the next part of this guide I will cover distribution agents of various levels and what the expected reward from running the missions will be.

Leave a Reply