These are not the standings you are looking for

Woo hoo - I have my standing at 5 for both Gallante and Minmatar.  I wasn't quick, but despite spending a fair amount of time in Eve, a lot is /afk (away from keyboard) due to out of Eve priorities.  In terms of time in front of a keyboard it was quick enough.

• Social 4 (standing increase per mission completed), 
• Connections 4 (effective standing improvement for friendly NPC factions, corps, and agents)
• Starter Career agents - up to 10 missions / agent; 5 per system; 3 systems / faction; 2 allied factions; (I think? I have one more starter career system that I can do - not sure)
• Lost that bet mission series
• 1 level 2 storyline mission
• Data center missions :
• 4 graduate certificate missions
• 3 x copper tag missions
• 3 other tag missions

With the exception of the exploration chain the starter career agent missions are quick enough to do.  For the exploration chain once you have found the cosmic signature sites; get enough certificates for as many exploration missions as you are likely to want to do (3 of each for a faction; another 3 for an allied faction; plus more if you want to run your opposing faction / alts).  Also buy up and reprocess any starter reward ships being sold for less than their reprocessed mineral value.


After all of this, I was at standing 5.1 with Gallante, and 5.0 for Minmatar;  should be enough to get a significant discount on my refining (6.67 standing and you no longer lose minerals to the refining stations - depending on refining skill and station level). Umm.   No.


Maybe I was told and didn't understand it.  Maybe I didn't understand what I was reading.  Just because a faction loves you, doesn't mean that their corporations will give you a discount on refining.  Faction standing gives you nice things, but not a refining/reprocessing bonus.  Corporation standing gives the refining bonus.

Corporation missions gives corporation standing.  Faction standing gives you better quality agents (hence better corporation missions).  For an agent to give you a mission; it appears that you must have, with the agent, corporation or faction the following standing:

• Anyone who can get into a station can do level 1 agent missions.
• 1.0 standing allows level 2 agent missions. 
• 3.0 allows level 3 agent missions.
• 5.0 allows level 4 agent missions.
• 7.0 allows level 5 agent missions.

Finding definitive answers to what standings are required was harder than I expected - it appears that there was a standing rules re-write making some older websites obsolete (either that or I am totally lost).  However http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Missions had an explicit table.


The missions I have completed are not wasted; they have given me 4+ standing for some corporations that I wanted anyway, and I now have access to about 80 level 4 distribution agents.

I can not chain the L4 distribution missions as easily.  My Iteron IV can only hold the cargo for 2-3 L4 missions and the agents are not that close to each other.  I will most likely play with chaining L3 distribution missions and compare it to doing single L4 distribution missions.  Gut feel says L4 is better but I should confirm it.



For the record I have been told that you can tag along with some else's L4 missions, but for frequent AFK play - it doesn't work so well for either party.  Plus a lot of players have a mild preference for solo play.

My research was faulty and I did not get the 'reward' (cheap refining faction wide) that I was looking for.  As a consolation I do have access to L3 & L4 distribution missions and cheaper refining at a few stations.

At the moment I am choosing less traveled regions (i.e. not Jita), placing dirt cheap region wide buy orders on minerals until I spend most of my ISK.  I am part way through training 'margin trading', allowing me to have more in 'buy' orders than I can cover in one hit, relying on ongoing sales to replenish ISK. 

p.s. part 3 of server maintenance is not forgotten - just coming soon.