Monday 21 May 2012

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.

7 comments:

  1. If you're running distribution missions do you have 'distribution connections' ?

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  2. For region wide buy orders how will you deal with minerals in low sec stations?

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  3. Ah, see, this is what my comment was about. The standing system is a little bit more complex than at first glance. This is why I chose to max out refining rates at one or two factions that are heavily dotted around gallente space (Chemal Tech and Federation Navy).

    Also, here is where a bit of a downfall from your previous run comes from. While you may have 5 with the Gallente, and therefore have access (Note for emphasis, Access) to L3 and L4 missions, your standings with that Corp might still be 1 or 2. You might have a lot more grinding ahead of you then you might think.

    Distribution missions are a little trickier than what I used (Mining missions. Yeah, I'm insane.). I'd recommend trying this.

    Do about 10 level 4's. Write down how many jumps away each is from start. After completing all 10, calculate the standings by right clicking on that corp and hitting 'show transactions'. Take the total % increase, and divide by total jumps. Do the same for 3's. Also divide both totals by the total time. L3's might be less jumps, but perhaps L4's pay more standing per jump and time.

    Last but not least, don't forget story-line missions. If L4's take a lot longer and at least give the same standing for approximately the same amount time, you would still have fewer story-line mission pop-ups, which probably won't give you the direct faction you need.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @tritaniumbackbone:

    Before I went looking for faction standing, I could only do L2 missions (with the exception of 1 L3). As such, I am happy that I did the faction grind. It is a nice problem to have to chose between chaining L3 and running L4.

    I will appreciate jump clones (faction standing 8?), but needed a way of getting access to (more than one) L3 mission and L4 missions. With access to L4 missions I no longer need to grind faction standing.

    Also, as crazy as it sounds; ISK/mission is not a high priority. Even with my meager ISK balance, trading brings in more ISK than missions.

    Missions should still be cash flow positive, and supplement my cashflow, but I don't see myself doing many missions on my current toon in 6 months.

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  5. Oh, I didn't mean 'Isk' when I mentioned transactions, I purely mean standing gains. For me, doing a single L4 mining mission (Even the annoying ice one with bad ice skills) gives more standing than chaining L3 mining missions that can be done in 5-7 minutes.

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  6. I thought that the concept of agent "quality" was now gone, those I know a lot of wikis and websites still refer to it. Though I think in this post you're referring more to the level of the agent, right?

    (another newb)

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  7. In this article, I am merely referring to agent level. I am uncertain whether agents still have differing 'quality' within a specific level.

    Differing missions from the same level have differing standing improvements, loyalty points and ISK , but that may be due to other issues (security level of destination? distance? something else?)

    ReplyDelete

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