Missions & Complexes

Hi!

I don't recall ever posting here, so that's a first.

Of course I did some googling on these things I have no understanding of.
I do hope for confirmations, insights and maybe tricks.

Google told me that, to use all locator agents of a faction, it is enough to raise faction standings to their lvl. Based on this assumption I have searched for ways to gain standings for a faction fast.

What I found is the SoE epic arc storyline, some agents called circular courier agents and these individual agents in space who provide one time missions for faction standings.

Solecist did the circular, and individual ones, which pushed her standings to 1ish.


My questions:

What gain can I look forward to for doing the SoE arc?
Are there other arcs that raise standings?
Are there any other ways that aren't commonly known, but YOU might know it?
(like, it seems that the circular courier agents aren't widely known)
Are there any downsides?

I want to avoid grinding missions and rather want to go this approach, especially because increasing faction standings directly seems to give muuch more options in one go.

Thank you for your responses!

You want faction standing 5.0, modified by skills which means train Connections to at least IV; preferably V ofc, but that takes nearly two weeks.

Run that faction's tutorial agents, all three sets of them.

Google "Data Center Agents" or search for it on Evelopedia. Not sure if that's what you meant by "one-time missions for faction standings" so just in case. There are three sets of them for each faction. They want pirate tags in exchange for standings; if you run all of them you should get to about 4.odd (with Connections trained). Note that some of those tags are quite expensive.

The balance between 4.odd and 5.0 you can do either via COSMOS agents (Google) or by blitzing L3s for storylines.

Oh, Social V helps as well ofc.

When you run a stotyline, let's say for Minamatar, your Amarr standings will take a small hit. The more you run, the more you lose with the opposite faction, obviously. In this case, the Diplomacy skill will help to modify your negative standings so you won't get shot by the evil npc faction ships when you enter their controlled space.

Each 16 missions of the same level will give you a storyline. Faction epic arcs with give you a nice boost too. Data centers are basically pay for standings (good luck finding all those tags quick if you don't want to buy them), but if you don't have the required standings the agent won't talk to you. The same goes for Cosmos missions, but you don't have to pay here (most of the times).

In other words, my dear Hek friend, you are going to need to run a few missions if you want to use all the locator agents of one Faction because you need 5.0 standings.

If you don't want to run missions, you should use the channel Locates Are Us and pay for the intel you need and that is probably the best option for you because let's be honest, i don't see you as a very active high sec merc, all the time moving searching for someone and then what, bah.

Yours sincerely,

Because if you use a lvl3 locator agent and the target is in another region he will say he is out of his range and the agent won't tell you his location. You want lvl4 locator agents.

If you can work with lvl3 agents then obvioulsly you won't need 5.0 standings.

Edit. The circle agents give crap standings.

I'm sure L3 locators are interregional as well, I think the only difference between L3 and L4 locators is the average time it takes to get a result.

But you really should look at the Faction Standing Repair Plan, it's in the Evelopedia, covers the Circle agents, data centers, COSMOS, SoE arc, and everything faction.

I just checked and you are right. I'm sry for giving wrong info.

This is an option, but it will cost you. It won't get you faction standings, but it can get you a few locators pretty quick.

The differences between L3 and L4 locators are two-fold: L3s have a shorter cooldown than L4s, but their out-of-region search takes longer (8 minutes vs... 4, iirc).

Thing is, if you're actively hunting a target you want a search result as quickly as possible, especially if the target is moving around. 8 minutes can be a hell of a long time. So this speaks for the L4 agent. The L3's faster cooldown is also not normally an issue since you're moving around yourself and won't be asking the same agent twice anyway.

So, L3s are well adequate but once you have access to L4s you'll never go back to L3s again, especially if you have access to an entire faction's L4s. That's where the "you want 5.0" comes from.

If you're an alt doing the searching while sitting in one station that point becomes less important. But even then - an L3 agent's cooldown is still 15 minutes. Unless you absolutely know that your target is sitting in a belt that's way too long for all practical purposes.

Therefore, once you've gone four - u b back for more! (ok, ok... bad rhyme, I'll stop now).

Disclaimer: "Or so I've been told"(tm)

To the best of my knowledge the target position given by the agent is the position at the time you send the request.

Have to head to where they were according to locator agent, ask another agent to track him while you're on your way there, get an update by the time you arrive, and try to plot their course. Can be a pain to track down pilots who are say... explorers.