Missions & Complexes

I wanted to have a little dialogue about things I haven't done related to missions. For a while in my early EVE life, I ran L$S (lol, I wish) I mean, L4s, and was quite good at it. I don't have alts, so I didn't have a booster or salvager or anything, but Iknew most missions inside and out, knew triggers, new fits with just enough tank, etc. I knew aggression mechanics and station games and gate games; we were often at war while I ran missions. I rarely had problems.

Since then my time in the Uni has taken me mostly to our Wormhole Campus, which is at times either boring as all hell or the biggest adrenaline rush I've experienced in EVE.

But now I've come back to missions with the goal of doing new things, which in this case means Epic Arcs, COSMOS, Data Centers, tutorials, and eventually, L5s. A little background about my L4 days, I was competent with a Raven with a Shield Booster/ Cap Booster tank. That freed up slots for damage, tank, and utility mods rather than cap mods.

A disclaimer about alts. Before I mentioned I don't have any. I likely never will for financial and time reasons, and I find it a bit odd. So many people want to play EVE in the comfort of solitude (being alone, not the region), and they get so much flak for wanting to play an MMO by themselves or things similar. Yet those people then use alts as haulers, researchers, manufacturers, cynos for their capitals, and do it by themselves with alts instead of relying on another player. I don't like alts. I support the 'sandbox' and 'emergent gameplay' by paying other players to do stuff for me that I'm not good at.

With that out of the way. I've done my own research on the evelopedia, the uni wiki, and a few other sites. The quality of info isn't very consistent. The Uni wiki for example has an excellent article on the Gallent Arc, but is a bit lacking in the Caldari Arc. So I thought I would come to your guys' knowledge. This is what I know of these different missions.


Data Centers and Tutorials - tutorials are self-explanatory and the data centers sound like you just had in (pricey) tags for faction (and corp?) standing. They one time only. My thought is to do FW at some point, yes, on my main, and when I'm done use these missions to restore my standings. Would they be sufficient to rep my standing?


COSMOS - I know they are only offered in certain constellations, i think from agents in space, and are one time only. From my understanding, the real reward is faction (corp?) standings gains. I could only find a pretty sloppy table on COSMOS, but it looks like they have agents of multiple levels. How would they compare in difficulty to an equivalent level regular mission? How big is the standing gain compared to other types of missions? How are they actual item rewards? Should I save COSMOS for standings repair after I do FW?


Epic Arcs - I have never actually done any of them (namely the SoE arc) until a few days ago. My understanding is the the SoE arc is geared towards new players and I used the standings gain to boost my standings with the empire I had the least standing with. They're on a time limit of every 3 months, iirc. I've started building up standings to access the Empire Arcs. The Empire Arcs I'm told are a bit tougher in difficulty than standard L4s. I know nothing of the Pirate Arcs except someone told me they did one of them in an interceptor. Are they not combat heavy? How could I start pirate arcs with such low standing with pirate corps (kill rats all day)?


L5s - I've never done them and they seem like a fun challenge. Are groups absolutely necessary (because I don't typically trust EVE players in game), and are there groups that focus on L5s? It seems like incursions pretty much killed off any reason to do L5s. Is that the case? Other than being in low sec with a higher (probably not high enough) reward, and tougher rats, does anything else set L5s aside form standards missions?


That's all I can think to ask. My goal is simply to do these to say I did them, and if I enjoy them (and if they're repeatable), to keep doing them as I please. Any advice would be awesome!

no one gives people flak for wanting to play solo, they get flak for treating it as a right that CCP isn't adequately guaranteeing for them. You said you don't trust other players. Not trusting other players is one reason to have alts. A lot less people would own carriers if they had to get someone else to light a cyno for them, especially if they were a solo player and had to pay a stranger to do it. And its a simple fact that for a solo player, having alts broadens the horizons of what you can do. But its definitely true that nothing you asked about in this thread requires alts.


Probably, but I still wouldn't pick my "best" faction to do FW against, and keep in mind that when you're done it'll be a lot easier to get them to stop shooting you than it will be to make significant positive gains. One thing to remember is that if you can access level 4's via corp or agent standings with a faction, then all you need to do is to get the modified faction standing back up to -2.0 to access those level 4's you used to do.

Pirate epic arcs do not have the same standings requirement to start that the empire ones do. You can run epic arcs with pirates that hold you in low regard. I consider it kind of pointless for the faction however, since if you ever go back to ratting those rats your faction will tank again. I would primarily do a pirate epic arc for the fun, the money (not sure how valuable they are). Unless you really want the standings to access pirate missions, the faction is pretty useless. The missions themselves are designed to be run by a AF/ceptor, but they are not supposed to be easy. The empire arcs have a variety of difficulty, but most have at least a few very high-dps missions. All of the epic arcs require a solid level 4 ship or better at at least some point.



there are a variety of means to do them and solo them, from passive shield setups, to multi-account setups, to using carriers. I wouldn't go the carrier route as pure solo, but you can do some wonderful things with tengus. Almost all level 5's have heavy neuting that cannot be easily killed or outranged. They are totally different than incursions really. The payout is in massive amounts of LP however, so you need to be good at converting those.