EVE New Citizens Q&A

I am not a guru, but a newbee on the same boat ;)

So, from what I know,
1. skills "Social" and "Connections" should help you out.
2. security missions gives more standings, than distribution missions; no idea about mining.
3. Often it takes time till you see the correct, actual value of corp or faction standing. Seems to me, that they do not refresh each x minutes, so sometimes you have to wait to see them grow.
4. Doing mission for one agent will not make your corp standing grow quicker, but you will get bigger rewards in ISK. So choose the 1 reasonable security agent and stay with him.
5. Each 16 missions you will get a special misssion from agent not far away - do it as this is the best way how to increase your factional standing. But alwayscome back to you normal agent after you finish it.
6. You can do tutorial missions for all three minmatar schools to get your faction standings close to 1. This way you can get level 2 missions from any minamtar agent. After you get good fitted and backed up by skills cruiser you can go do sisters of Eve mission arc . It will give you good boost in faction standings.
7. Level 3 missions will open up first after you get standings above 3, not above 2.

1.0 to do level 2
3.0 to do level 3
5.0 to do level 4

Relevant standings are the higher of the corp and faction standings (in this case Minmatar Mining and Minmatar Republic)

Train a level or 2 of Connections and you can pretty much skip level 1 missions as it's the modified standing that applies.

There is no blue or red "reputation progress bars" in EVE like...other games. Instead, your standings with a particular Faction/corporation/pilot are measured in a range from -10 (being they utterly hate you) to +10 (you are an internet spaceship messiah).

If you want to think about standings in a more "color coded" sense, you can see the same grades when you look at contact standings:

Red = Terrible (-10)
Orange = Bad (-5)
Gray/white = Neutral (0)
Light Blue = Good (5)
Dark Blue = Excellent (10)

That said, your character sheet will only show the numeric value (and a short version like saying "good" or "bad") because standings are gained or lost on the fractional level. Like everything else in EVE, raising standings takes time so that you don't just instantly become a beloved legend for bringing back 200 bear pelts in an hour... I mean pirate tags. Yes, pirate tags.

If you are just looking for access to higher level missions, and you don't care about what division they are in (security vs mining), I would also suggest security. It tends to be more exciting than distribution or mining and standings will raise faster.

As others have said, particular social skills will also raise your standings with factions. You could potentially have a standing of 1 with X Corp but with your Connections skill up, you have an *effective standing* of 2 or 3 which would net you access to higher level missions.