EVE New Citizens Q&A

I've taken it upon myself to try and grind all faction standings up to the point I can run Level 4 missions for each of them. I am planning to do all the career agents first, then depending on where I stand after that will determine next steps.

Why am I doing this?

Because it's fun. I've already made a ton of ISK via trading and industry and now I'm turning my attention to standings. You could say this is one of the things on my eve bucket list. And it might be helpful to new players.

Current applicable skills:
Connections 4
Diplomacy 3
Social 4

Here are my baseline standings:

Faction, Standing, (base standing before skills)
Amarr 1.63 (-0.05)
Gallente 1.07 (-0.14)
Mimatar 0.96 (-0.33)
Caldari 0.83 (-0.41)

I just ran through one of the military career agents for Caldari and here's where I stand after:

Amarr 1.64 (0.04)
Gallente 0.99 (-0.23)
Mimatar 0.88 (-0.36)
Caldari 1.00 (-0.23)

So I gained:
0.09 with Amarr
0.18 with Caldari

And I lost:
0.09 with Gallente
0.03 with Minmatar

So a net gain of 0.15 faction standings (before Connections/Diplomacy modifiers)

Took about 45 mins to run all 10 missions in a Punisher. I think I spent about 2 million ISK in total on the ship (only because I slapped a few rigs on it and some tech 2 gear, really not necessary but whatever).

Will keep this thread updated as I can :)

I would try alternating between amarr (gives large caldari derived bonuses) and SOE (strong gallente, and medium minmatar derived standings) missions. think you will need to throw in a few minmatar missions. Or maybe skip SoE and go for gallente, that way you are getting full gains to gal, and large gains to minny. add in some epic arcs, and you should be able to do it.

Is it even possible to get all major factions to 5?

I know that you have to get corp standings to 5 to run level 4 missions, not sure about faction standings though.

DeMichael Crimson, creator of The Plan
Without skills applied (EVEboard shows base values), he currently has:
* Amarr = 7.0
* Caldari = 6.33
* Gallente = 6.98
* Minmatar = 7.08

You have to do more than just run normal missions to get them above 5 (Connections 5 would raise that to 6).

As for regular & storyline missions for every gain with a faction you also lose half of that to the opposing faction. Missions like the Blood-Stained Stars yield faction standing gain without any loss. You also have to avoid faction-kill missions.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4435245#post4435245

Example of declining all storyline and faction-kill missions: no player faction standing at all, but 9.63 with Caldari Navy.

After Industry agent, I'm up to:

Amarr 1.85 (0.30)
Caldari 1.84 (0.29)
Gallente 0.78 (-0.48)
Minmatar 0.79 (-0.46)

Changes:
Amarr +0.09
Caldari +0.18
Gallente -0.09
Minmatar -0.03

After the Business agent, I'm up to:

Amarr 1.92 (0.38)
Caldari 1.99 (0.46)
Gallene 0.70 (-0.57)
Minmatar 0.76 (-0.49)

Changes:
Amarr +0.08
Caldari +0.17
Gallente -0.11
Minmatar -0.03

Total Standings Change So Far:
Amarr +0.43
Caldari +0.87
Gallente -0.45
Minmatar -0.17

That's a grand total of 0.68 faction standing change from doing all career agents at a single station.

So what I think I need to do is run some Gallente career agents now to get me in a better spot with them before running more Caldari. If I keep switching between Gallente and Caldari then Amarr and Minmatar should take care of themselves.

Also I need to run the SOE epic arc, but that is a really long mission to run.

I have never tried mining missions even though I can fly T1 barges. How tough are the rats that appear on mining missions? And do you get decent standings from mining storyline missions?

This is precisely why it is critical to rotate your agents based an their faction affiliation on a regular basis.

Mining missions are good for industry oriented chars if you're trying to build corporate standings for refining or clones. I find them much less painful than distribution missions since they pay out about 5x the corporate standings increase per mission and you're not warping all over the place. Most missions stay in the local system. I think the storyline missions boost is about equivalent to combat storylines, but I forget the details.

Rats are easily handled with T1 drones.

There is a big difference with the mining missions based on the Level. Once you get to L4's you can use a Retriever for the hold size and will have to warp back to station once to drop off. There are also ice mining and gas mining missions which are some of the best isk/effort in the game. An L4 gas mission can be run in a Venture for a 5K LP payout + 2million isk reward in 1 warp and no attention required. Gevlon has written on the topic if you want a lot more info.

If you find a station that has multiple mining agents it's easy to decline missions which you find too slow to run.

An Orca in system can speed up the missions 30-40%.

SOE arc gives a 7% standings boost to the faction the players chooses at the end of the arc. This standing increase will be higher if you have trained Social, up to a maximum increase of 8.75%. (source: Eve-U)

As a short addendum to the (rightly) lauded "plan," of DMC, Bob bless his soul for the great work he has done, I will mention that it is quite possible to run a profitable business without fantastic standings and one should take care not to become embroiled in the chase for optimal standings unless that is an interest in and of itself. (I'll be the first to admit, I love the epic arcs and pretty numbers too. None of what follows should be misconstrued as an attack on the respectable career of enjoying NPC missions and their stories.)

One of my previous iterations existed solely as a trader from around 24 hours old until the time I sold him a few years later. He never earned a single point of standings in his life (or trained a spaceship command skill, but that's a story for another day) and still managed to amass several billion isk in profits. Building and trading with tighter margins is an absolute advantage, but take care in that line of work not to forget about the almighty comparative advantage and cyclical returns.

To end on a less metaphorical note: Time spent on standings is time not spent doing something else. Do what you enjoy and don't make the game about something you're not interested in because you perceive the reward to be absolutely necessary. EVE is a sandbox. When someone on the forums tell you that some such MUST be done to accomplish something, it usually takes five minutes of google searching to disprove that assumption.

Best of luck in your endeavors!