Missions & Complexes

I spent the better part of two days reading up on the Data Center missions. I failed to see the most important sentence in the whole wiki. "Please note: ISK payments, Faction and Corporation Standing increase will vary due to level of Social skills."


So before this I had wanted to place a pos in highsec for research and invention. I had debated for a week on if I was going to buy a standings corp but being as I wanted to start off with a small pos and move up from there I decided to get the standings myself because I didn't want to have to buy a standings corp every time I wanted a pos.


So I bought my tags and did the missions. I went from 0.46 to 2.62 standings ( unbonused ) with Caldari and spent about 350 mill on the tags.

My skills are
Social lvl 3
Negotiation lvl 3
Connections lvl 3
Diplomacy lvl 2


2.62 faction standings is a freakin long way off from being able to put a pos up and being as I can only haul or mine can you imagine how long that would take? This being my alt I know about EVE and I don't let much bother me but this standings crap has got me down and out about the game and if I'm gonna have to grind standings for 6 months I'm just going to give up on it and transfer this character to my main account and quit training him. I know there has to be something I can do as there are so many poses in high sec already...



Thanks

Faction standing gain from storylines cannot be shared in fleet. They can help you gain the corp standing to run missions if you don't already have access, but after that, you're on your own.

Connections give a flat % boost to standing. Social and Negotiation give % increase in standing gain per mission done.

Datacenters alone will never be enough to let you anchor POS.

Gain standing to a corp first, then do missions for the storyline per 16 missions. Couriers work best if your combat skill is low, as the 16 missions per storyline is the same no matter what type.

The lvl1 SOE epic arc gives ~9% standing gain for faction of your choice. Career missions also give a small % faction gain.

Smaller factions (Khanid, etc) standing increase faster than larger factions (Amar, etc).

Well, Amarr and Ammatar share Data Centers so there's more agents available which will give you more positive derived standings. Also yes, completing level 3 Distribution missions will definitely net you more Storyline mission offers. Don't be surprised if those end up being combat though.

Usually I just link 'The Plan' and be done with it. It seems you're just looking at being positive with Caldari and allied Factions to anchor POS in high sec systems. That should make it much easier since you don't really have to worry about keeping the other unfriendly Factions positive. Also sounds like you've already completed all of the Caldari Data Center Agents.

Anyway, Social skill should definitely be trained up to level 5 asap since that increases the amount of standing gained for completing missions.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Social

I would suggest after training up Social skill, complete the level 1 SoE Epic Arc for Caldari (can be completed every 3 months for +8.75% Faction standing gain with Social level 5 trained). However, since it requires travel in all Empire space, will have to watch the negative Faction standings later in the future (Diplomacy).

After the level 1 SoE arc, complete all the level 1 event agents listed in the first part of 'The Plan' (Career, Circle, Data Center and Cosmos) for both Caldari and Amarr (most Amarr Cosmos Agents are chained so not much help till level 3).

Then concentrate on the rest of the level 2 Data Center Agents and work on up if needed.

Can also check out the Cosmos guides and run some of the level 2 Cosmos Agents that mainly offer courier/trade missions. Most of the required items to retrieve in the encounter missions can be bought from public contracts and regional markets. Since this is your alt, your main character (and friends) can do all the actual combat / ship kills when needed. I doubt you would actually need to do level 3 Cosmos agents.

Anyway, it shouldn't take very long and now you have another few options to consider instead of just giving up.

Good luck to you.


DMC

Storylines give the same faction increase regardless of if you got it through 16 level 4 missions or 16 level one missions. If you want faction standings quickly, grind level 1s.

For Caldari, Top Down Factory in Umokka has 6 level 1 agents in the same station. A decent Destroyer or Cruiser will burn through those 6 in minutes (plus however long it takes you to jump systems when needed, most missions were in the same system). Storylines every hour or so.

Absolutely false. Storylines range from lvls 1-5 to match regular missions. Each lvl and each faction runs on their separate 16 mission queues. In other words, if you run 15 lvl1s, then 1 lvl4, you won't get a lvl4 storyline. You will get a lvl1 storyline after 1 more lvl1, and a lvl4 storyline after 15 more lvl4s.



A lvl4 mining missions asks for 45k m3 of useless mission ore. It'll take far longer to do than lvl4 combat missions, most of which can be done within a few minutes, some, seconds (Stop the Thief, Cargo delivery, Recon, Assault, etc). In addition, they give less standing gain than combat missions.

Consult mission guides for blitzing tips.
http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=MissionReportsLevel4

Tutorial missions do not give a big faction boost. They're lvl1s. They help, but don't go a long way. There were a brief period when they counted as lvl4s due to a bug, but that's long been fixed.

Cosmos help, but the lvl1s and 2s don't give large boosts. 4s often go into lowsec.

Connections give a flat % standing increase, of the difference between your current standing and perfect 10. More important are social and negotiation, which increase standing gain per mission.

you could also try the epic arc and use your main to do the heavy lifting.

Have you run ALL the tutorial missions? I got one of my alts up over 2.0 faction from just running the tutorials, and it did not take long.

I somewhat disagree with you on this.

The op is mainly an industrial character, not combat so it's either Mining or Distribution Agents for grinding missions. Of the two, Mining missions will gain more standing but Distribution missions can be completed much quicker. Connections skill will help enable the player to access higher level agents much quicker, plain and simple.

However, Faction standing is what's needed here, a lot more than Corporation standing. Grinding out 16 regular missions to get 1 storyline mission will take a lot longer than running the Event Agents for Faction standing increase.

Every little bit of Faction standing increase counts and the whole idea is to gain it quickly. Completing all Caldari and Amarr Career, Circle, Data Center and Cosmos Agents level 1 and level 2 first will definitely help a lot, especially since they can be completed very quickly. Add in the SoE Epic Arc and the character should at least be close to +5, if not, he still has the higher level Cosmos Agents left to complete or can just do the regular 16 mission grind for Storyline offers.

I agree that Social and Negotiation skills are more important, especially the Social skill which definitely needs to be trained up first before even working on gaining Faction standing increase.


DMC

Security/Distribution/Mining connections increase LP, not standing.