Missions & Complexes

Wanting a clean character with balanced faction standings I took great care in alternating missions between opposing factions (level 2 s at this early stage) including storyline and refusing all security missions requiring major faction kills. It went to plan until I received the same storyline mission for two pilots/accounts on the same day from Gallente and Minmatar requiring me to 'deal' with an incursion by Amarrians. Net result at first Gallente gain 1.36% and Amarr loss of -0.87% which was as expected. But then 30 minutes later I noticed both pilots had negative standing with Amarr as a result of an additional -2.4% debit as penalty for killing the Amarrian ships in that mission. I could not see any way to complete that storyline mission without killing those ships and I did not do any other missions after that storyline.

That any storyline mission applies more than twice the penalty from the opposing faction than it rewards for the faction granting the mission seems nonsensical to me. Maybe it is a flaw in that mission's design? Did anyone else have a similar experience?

Storyline missions can not simply be refused or failed without big negative consequences from the faction concerned so I think that is a real problem. It is hard enough already to avoid slipping into negative faction standing for one side or the other with regular missions, but with storyline missions like that the task becomes impossible.

Regrettably the name of the mission disappeared from the journal after completion, but if any of the Devs should take an interest the ID in the reputation transaction log is 17349669941. (Combat - Ship Kill), the mission came from Gallente for this pilot and from Minmatar for the other.

The further you go negative the slower the loss becomes, and the further you go negative the faster you regain some standing when you go mission for them.

I have a dominix parked with an L4 amarr agent that has some semi rare implants. I used him in 2009, I used him in 2011, and I used him in 2013 to fix standings. I leave a T1 ship there because its cheaper to go to that agent with ammo and updated fit pieces in a viator than it is to keep repositioning more expensive ships. I just cash in the LP and return with the implants when done.

The key is don't let it slide so far you can't mission for them, and make sure you go there before that and get an appropriate agent for your preferred method of regaining standing.

thank you and other respondents for your helpful comments and insights to the question I raised. Yes after faction wars were introduced it was expected that staying on passable terms with most factions would be more tricky. Still as long as the game mechanics allows you to do so, albeit involving some extra grinding I think its a legit target and not 'cheating'.

So far that mission is the only storyline mission I have done where the negative faction consequences exceed the positive ones. Maybe you are right and it is intentional, maybe it is not, only CCP really knows. What irked me was the surprise I got. We get warnings about missions in low sec, but not if a storyline mission has more negative effects on standing than positive ones - 'its not fair' - but then again few of the worlds we live in, Eve included are

Guess I just might have to grind that SOE epic arc then, twice

Actually, its not that complicated. Shooting faction ships always hurts your standing with that faction, and that penalty is entirely separate from the normal derived standings penalty you get for completing a storyline. If you took a normal anti-amarr missions (not storyline) and completed it, your gallente standings would remain the same, and your amarrian standings would drop if you killed an amarr ship. Some missions can be completed without killing any such ships, and in those cases you have no changes to the faction standings from either faction (just regular corp/agent boost with the side the mission was for).

Yeah, Gallente seems to offer a lot more Anti-Empire missions than the other main Factions.

Contrary to what was already stated, you can easily have and maintain positive Faction standings with the 4 main Factions.

'The Plan' not only helps repair negative Faction standings, it can also help boost positive Faction standings.


DMC

There's other Event Agents available as well such as Career Agents, Data Center Agents, Cosmos Agents, etc. Working them will help increase Faction standings much quicker.


DMC

dont need to go to the agent, just contact them through your agent tab in the station and decline. tada. you only need to be in their station if you wish to accept or turn in a mission.

Protip: If you get a storyline mission and you don't accept or decline it AND you do 16 more missions, you'll get a storyline mission with the next closest faction agent. In addtion to faction standings, storyline missions give a very significant boost to corporation standings. If you're looking to boost a particular corporation's standing, you can use this tidbit to speed up the process.

It's not impossible and it's not as difficult as some might think. The standings gains are always better than the standings losses when you complete a storyline. So going from one faction to another is sufficient to starting down the path to balanced standings. Combined with the epic arcs, you can get into 5+ territory with all factions fairly easily. That would give you access to all L4 agents for all of the factions. You might also want to take a look at the derived standings table. A lot of people forget about Ammatar and Khanid missions, which have different derived standings than the main Amarr faction.

It all depends on the level of standing you are trying to maintain, the rewards get smaller and smaller and the penalties higher and higher as you standing grows.

But you are right it's not impossible, but when you consider the work you need to put into maintaining you standing and what you actually get out of it, i don't think it's worth it.