Missions & Complexes

No. Yes.

The real questions is, "Why are you looking at The Plan?" If you're trying to raise your standings as quickly as possible, be it because you've been a bad versus a certain faction and want to fix that or that you want to go to L4s asap, then running the carreer agents will help a fair chunk with that. Consider them part of the grind. Note that the standings increase from the circle agents alone is quite small.

"Bouncing" between agents is really only relevant if you're trying to maintain positive standings towards all factions. Basically, you're trying to balance out standings increase versus derived standings hit. If you're only trying to increase standings with the Caldari robots and the Amarrian pax-thumpers you can run their agents in any order you like because they don't have derived standings hits between them.

Hello Sheriff Shaw,

I created the 'Faction Standing Repair Plan' (aka 'The Plan') and as the name implies, it's just a plan which can be worked anyway deemed necessary to raise and or boost Faction standings. All of the Event Agents listed in 'The Plan' give different amounts of Faction standing increase. 'The Plan' itself is based on the premise that the player has negative and or very low positive Faction standings.

As for the Career Agents, Circle Agents and Data Center 'Cert' Agents, the Faction standing increase gained from them is small but when you have negative or low positive standings with their Factions, the increase gained from them actually turns out to be quite large.

Simply put, the Faction standing increase received for completing missions is a percentage based on what you have left to get to +10.00 standing. If you have 0.00 standing and you get +1.00 standing increase, the amount of increase turns out to be rather large. However if you have +9.00 standing and you get the same +1.00 standing increase, that amount of increase turns out to be very small.

That's the reason why 'The Plan' suggests doing all of the Career, Circle and Data Center 'Cert' Agents first when the Faction standing is low. That allows the player to quickly raise Faction standings and access higher level Agents that give larger amounts of Faction standing increase. Also due to the small amount of standing increase gained from the low level Event Agents, it will seem like a waste of time to complete them if the player already has a good amount of positive Faction standing.

Now about the 'Bounce' between Factions, that's done to help raise opposing allied Faction standings equally due to getting derived negative Faction standing hits whenever positive Faction standing increase is gained.

For example let's say your character is brand new and has no standings with any of the Factions. You complete a mission for an Amarr Event Agent and gain +1.00 Faction standing increase with Amarr Empire. Since Caldari State is allied with Amarr, they get a +0.25 derived standing gain with Caldari State.

Due to that the opposing allied Factions, Gallente Federation and Minmatar Republic, will now receive derived negative standing hits. Since Minmatar Republic is enemy with Amarr Empire, they receive -0.50 derived negative standing hit and since Gallente Federation is enemy with Caldari State they receive -0.25 derived negative standing hit.

Now after completing one Amarr Event Agent your brand new character has these Faction standings :
Amarr Empire = +1.00
Caldari State = +0.25
Gallente Federation = -0.25
Minmatar Republic = -0.50

To raise the opposing allied Factions up equally, you now 'Bounce' over to a Minmatar Event Agent and complete that mission which (for this example) gives +1.00 Faction standing increase to Minmatar Republic and +0.25 derived Faction standing increase to Gallente Federation. Along with that comes the derived negative standing hits of -0.50 to Amarr Empire and -0.25 to Caldari State.

After completing one Amarr Event Agent and one Minmatar Event Agent your character now has these Faction standings :
Amarr Empire = +0.50
Caldari State = 0.00
Gallente Federation = 0.00
Minmatar Republic = +0.50

Since you want to bring up standings with all Factions, you now 'Bounce over to a Caldari Event Agent and receive +1.00 standing increase along with the derived standing gain of +0.25 to Amarr Empire as well as -0.50 derived standing hit to Gallente Federation and -0.25 derived standing hit to Minmatar Republic.

After completing one Amarr Event Agent, one Minmatar Event Agent and one Caldari Event Agent, your character now has these Faction standings :
Amarr Empire = +0.75
Caldari State = +1.00
Gallente Federation = -0.50
Minmatar Republic = +0.25

Now you 'Bounce' over to Gallente Event Agent and gain +1.00 standing to Gallente Federation along with +0.25 derived standing increase to Minmatar Republic. As usual there's derived negative standing hits of -0.50 to Caldari State and -0.25 to Amarr Empire.

After completing one Amarr Event Agent, one Minmatar Event Agent, one Caldari Event Agent and one Gallente Event Agent, your character now has these Faction standings :
Amarr Empire = +0.50
Caldari State = +0.50
Gallente Federation = +0.50
Minmatar Republic = +0.50

Course this was just a simple example to illustrate how the 'Bounce' action works. It's basically like a dance, you take one step forward and half a step back. Eventually when the dance is done, all Factions will have positive standings. Course Agents will give different amounts of Faction standing which effects the amount of derived standings and there's also derived negative standing hits for ship and structure kills.

When working 'The Plan', keep an eye on Faction standing changes in the character sheet and don't let the Faction standings drop too low causing you to no longer have access to the next Event Agent. You might work 2 or more Event Agents for a Faction before you 'Bounce' over to the opposing Faction.

Hopefully this explanation answers your questions about 'The Plan'. If you have any more questions or concerns, please post it in the 'Faction Standing Repair Plan' thread so that other players may view the info as well.


DMC