Market Discussions

Hello,

I checked and apparently the Broker Fee is not influenced by the Connections skill that is added as modifier for the standings.

Is this normal ? Then why have that skill at all ?
Is there a way to not have to grind like a maniac from standing 9 to 10 ?

I understand that Connections is useful to help players hit the minimum Standings level to be able to use better agents, but why not do the same thing for the broker ?

I know about this thank you. My problem was with the standing + Connection skill effect regarding the Broker fee.

Thanks man, I will check out these methods. Though I can't use FW as this character sucks at combat..

I'd say 75% of the people in faction war don't do combat...they do warp core stabs and sit in plexes and run from anything bigger than a shuttle....and even shuttles might scare a few to panic mode...

Yes, there are lot of people that do it this way. It has a slightly lower barrier to entry than using FW missions, but it's slower, less reliable, less profitable and not the approach I would recommend. It's easier to multi-box that method, but the results are far less impressive than multi-boxing FW missions.

it's not about "being scared" or anything. When your purpose - making ISK, PvP is just disctracting factor.

(this is offtopic here)

That would be cool, I have put off bothering with standings because I hate PvE with a passion, and had thought I did not have the skills trained for flying in FW

I'm not going to provide a full guide, because the pioneers of this approach (myself and others independently) put a fair amount of time and brainpower putting these methods together and taking them to our own optimal extremes and I don't feel like passing that on for free. However, I'll give you what you need to get the results you want and if you want to go beyond one-hitting it and go on to farming it like we have then you can figure out the optimal approaches yourself.

First of all you need the character you are going to gain standings on to be in FW. You can either join the NPC militia corp or you can join your own corp to the militia providing the corp meets the standings requirements. The best Militia faction to join for this is Amarr (assuming you want Jita 4-4 trading standings), but you can join Caldari if you want to make matters harder for yourself. It is also possible to join Amarr and gain one set of promotions before joining Caldari and gaining a second set of promotions and this will get you the best final standing to Caldari State (but it's more work and messing about).

You now have to decide how you are going to farm your missions. There are 3 main options:

1. Use a separate PvE skilled character in FW to collect and complete the FW missions and share the standings gain with you.

2. Use your character to collect, open and hand in the FW missions and use a separate PvE skilled character to actually do them.

3. Use one character to collect, open and hand in the FW missions, use another PvE skilled character to actually do them and share the standings with your character.

For 1 and 3, your character can remain in Jita 4-4 trading while the other character(s) do all the grinding. For 2, you'll have to be actively using and risking your character in the FW area. For 2 and 3 the PvE skilled character does not need to be in FW and for various reasons is actually better off not being in FW.

Next you need to start collecting and completing FW missions. These are some of the simplest and most blitzable missions in EVE so you shouldn't have much trouble. You'll soon learn how they work, how easy they are, how to do them quickly and which ones aren't worth the effort. There is plenty of information on the machanics of doing these missions elsewhere so I will not repeat it here.

You will have many options for ships to do the missions in. I and my friends have tried a great variety. Personally I think the Cerberus is excellent, some prefer to use a Tengu, some like the low-skill requirement of the Caracal Navy Issue, some use a Mach, some use Tier 3 BCs, some use Black Ops many choose to use the old favourite of FW mission farming: the stealth bomber. Whatever you use it's important that it be able to deal some damage at a reasonable range, can tank some DPS for a short time and can move safely around low-sec.

A MWD and cloak is all you really need for safety in low-sec, if you don't know how to move safely around lowsec with an MWD and cloak yet then you have two choices:

1. Learn.

2. Uninstall EVE.

You'll be picking up bunches of missions (don't do them one at a time) from FW mission agents, completing them and then running back to hand them in. You will get some isk rewards, a large amount of LP and the standings you are looking for. It doesn't take long to get all the promotions for one faction (i.e. doing it in a day is perfectly reasonable if your competent) and you'll be able to leave FW with your nice new standings.

There are a load of ways to make use of those standings to make bundles of extra isk, but that I'll leave as an extra credit assignment.

That's all I have time for right now, but I'll pop back and answer questions later.

I did say I was leaving out all the juicy bits.

...and in fairness if someone asks me specifically to provide a guide on how to suck eggs, I'm not going to give him a guide on how to make the perfect egg mayonnaise.

If you're really, really anal about your standings, you do this.

1) Amarr COSMOS, data centers and FW in any combo until your Caldari standing reaches 7.00 (whenever you get standings with one empire, you gain and lose them with allied and hostile empires; this is derived standing, but it's capped, and the Amarr <->Caldari cap is 7.00)
2) Caldari COSMOS, data centers, and FW in full.
3) Caldari Epic Arc (and you can do this one over and over, so repeat every three months as it becomes available again)

There's a reason why all of my market alts were trained into (or bought as) tengu pilots, and it's because a tengu can handle all of that pretty easily.

That'll get you into 9.7-9.8 range for Caldari State standing, and you'll get a decent chunk of Caldari Navy (mid 7.0 or so, depending on where you start) as well. That's fine, since the corp standing is easier to grind, it's the Faction standing that sucks.

You'll have to figure out specifics on your own though.