Missions & Complexes

According to http://eve-agents.com/ all Caldari Level 4 Security Agents are L4 Q20.

Does this mean that they all pay the same and grant the same missions?

Thanks,
Baling

Back in the day, agents use to use a mechanic called agent quality, wherein agents of increasing quality had both an ever increasing worth for payouts (mission reward and bonus) as well as an ever increasing standings requirement. When CCP removed agent quality, they basically set every agent to an effective quality of 20 (the highest possible) for the payouts and to effective quality of -20 (the lowest possible) for standings requirements, thus eliminating agent quality from the equation.

What agents are willing to offer in terms of payouts are no better or worse regardless as to the agent you talk to. What they offer in terms of what missions they hand out is not nor ever was affected by agent quality, that's handled by a different system; when you talk to an agent, they have a pre-selected pool of missions they pick from which is further refined by preferring to offer missions you have accepted and completed out of that pool the most.

tl;dr...

In short, agent quality is an obsolete mechanic that, while still technically exist, has no true influence on agents. Pick your agents for other reasons, like the relative safety of the location, ease of access and proximity to adjacent agents, system sec level (lower is better, but is often less secure or more likely to be a gank risk), etc.

By, "better" do you mean that they pay more?

Thanks for all your answers so far!

The lower the security status of a system the higher the rewards, time completion bonuses and LP payout will be.
As Chainsaw noted above these payouts are based on the system the agent is located in, not on the system the mission is run in.
If you want to max all of these then only run missions for agents located in a .5 system.

most of the navy like corps have bad LP stores as the FW lp stores have all the same items, and FW generates a ton of LP so they are willing to take a lower conversion rate at times. my go to 1000 isk/lp+ items are all gone (amazed me how long that lasted with all the bots/farmers generating LP, but FW managed to kill that). I have over a million LP with corporate police force that I've been sitting on for a long time now. If I needed the isk I'd probably find something to do with it, but I'm lazy and don't really mind leaving it in my journal.

basically you are looking for a good LP conversion in the lowest security you are willing to take. for most people this means sisters of eve missions in Lanngisi (true sec is ever so slightly lower so it pays more) or Apanake.

the only things that change payout that I know of are the appropriate connections skill (security connections for security agents) which increases LP payout and the Negotiation Skill which increases the isk payout.

as far as sticking with one agent, I tend to do that just because it is annoying to move everything to a new location.

Lower security systems pay out better and have a higher probability of offering the highest paying missions.

Which missions are offered depends on the agent type. Security agents will offer predominantly combat missions. Mining agents offer mining missions. etc.

Your personal standings with a particular agent still affect the payout iirc. But I could be wrong. Last time I ran missions was for standings rather than payouts.

also SoE has a number of decent ways to convert LP so the market is rather stable. 2 probe launchers, 2 probes, 2 ships, 6 virtue implants.

the empire faction LP stores have a lot of competition with FW lp stores. On some items (mostly ships) FW gets a better price so you can't compete. and there are a few 5 run BPCs that convert well, but incursion runners can convert their LP and buy those items. LP values feel pretty capped. It's not as fun as it used to be when you could do the math and find 3-5k isk/lp conversions.

Thank you all so much for all of your input. It has been very helpful.

It is often unsaid, but the missions offered by an agent is determined by many documented and undocumented factors of which I have never been associated with agent quality.

First of these is the standings the faction of the agent of the agent toward other factions. That is to say the agent is more likely to offer missions against the faction most hated by his or her own faction. for example,Thukker hate Amatar and give missions against them fairly often.

Another factor is the region where the agent is located. A caldari agent located in gallente space will give more "kill serpintis" missions then one located in the forge. As a one off, agents in black rise give a **** ton of "kill blood raiders" missions but i have no clue why.

HTH