If you decide that the main method of earning money for you is agent running, then you will certainly think about where to find the best agent and maximize profits. Today I want to talk about choosing a corporation and agent location that will help maximize your profits. The mechanics of working with agents are very much tied to their attitude towards you and their standings. Let's figure out how the mechanics of standings work. On most sites dedicated to making money in Eve, this topic is touched upon only briefly.
Making friends
The mechanics of relationships, or standings, in Eve are one of the fundamental ones for the entire game. In this article we will not touch on the topic of relations between corporations and player alliances. We will only consider the NPC's standings in relation to a spherical sub-pilot in a vacuum. When you first start the game, all factions, corporations and agents treat you neutrally. As soon as you start working for any agent, you will make both friends and enemies.
After completing a couple of starting missions, you will see that your standing has increased by three. To the agent for whom you carried out the mission, to his corporation and to the faction to which this corporation belongs. Naturally, the higher the level of relations with various factions, the more benefits the character can receive from these factions. Standings grow unevenly and obey a rather cunning dependence. In order not to get too confused, any standing will be called NPC standing in the future; if required, it will be clarified whether standing is required for a corporation, faction or agent.
Relationships are expressed in numerical terms and can have values from -10 (absolutely hostile) to +10 (friendship to death). At certain milestones, bonuses or penalties become available to the player. In addition to your actions, skills from the Social category also affect relationships. The Social skill increases positive standing. The Diplomacy skill increases negative standing. All numbers below are for skill-based ratio values. So, penalties and bonuses for different standing values:
-5.0 – NPCs will attack you near their stations (corporations) or at gates in their space (factions).
-2.0 – You lose the ability to receive missions from any agents except the first level agents of this faction.
+1.0 – Second-level agents become available to you.
+3.0 – Third level agents become available to you.
+5.0 – Fourth level agents become available to you, corporations and factions allow you to install POS in systems under their control.
+6.67 – Corporations stop charging you tax for processing ore and loot at their stations.
+7.0 – Level 5 agents become available to you.
+8.0 – Corporations allow you to create jump clones at their stations.
+8.5 – Some factions will give you a blueprint for the production of two faction frigates.
+9.2 – Some factions will give you a blueprint for the production of two faction cruisers.
+9.9 – Some factions will give you a blueprint for the production of two faction battleships.
Before talking about methods for increasing standing, we need to clarify a couple of points.
First, standings are partially independent. You may have a good relationship with a corporation, but a terrible relationship with the faction that corporation belongs to.
Second, standings are only partially independent. If you have standing +5.0 to any faction, a level 4 agent of any corporation that is part of this faction will be ready to cooperate with you.
The main method of increasing standing is missions. And everything is simple here. The higher the mission level, the greater the increase in standing. The easiest way is to associate the cost of a mission with the number of LPs that you will be given upon completion of it. I note that standing grows non-linearly. Raising it from 0 to +1 is much easier than pulling it from +5 to +5.5. As you complete missions, stands with the agent you work for and his corporation grow. Once every 14 missions you will be offered a story mission - a simple task with a reward in the form of an implant of the appropriate level. Once the storyline is completed, standing for the faction will also increase.
Nowadays, many combat missions are against representatives of the opposing faction. For example, the Caldari will regularly offer missions against the Gallente or Minmatar. Such missions are a double-edged sword. Of course, standing for your home faction will increase not only due to completing the mission, but also for killing ships of the enemy faction. However, the decline in relations with the enemy faction will be no less rapid. I personally prefer to avoid such tasks.
Looking for places under the sun
So, we have dealt with the mechanics of standings, now we can move on to the second part - searching good place to complete tasks. Please note that agents of the same level will give different amounts for the same missions. It depends on the security status of the system where the agent is located. The more dangerous the system, the higher the rewards.
If you are focused on completing combat missions, ideal option– look for the main agent in system 0.5. Check in advance that there are no low-secs around your system. Otherwise, you will regularly be sent on missions to systems where you can easily become a victim of a visiting pirate. It will also be very good if there is a storyline agent within a radius of 2-3 jumps from your main system. This will allow you to quickly complete storyline missions and increase the standing of your faction, as well as receive good rewards for simple tasks.
For a primary security miner, the status of the system is not so important. It is more important to choose a system close enough to the trading hub. At times, mining agents will ask you for various ores that cannot be found in highsec. It is often cheaper to buy them at the hub and bring them to the agent.
The most difficult thing is to choose the right courier agent. Courier missions will often send you in 2-3 jumps. Ideally, you will find yourself an isolated dead-end constellation with a single exit, so that each system has a courier agent. Couriers must be taken en masse and carried out maximum quantity simultaneously. This will allow you to make a solid profit.
Mission space
Each of the main factions has so-called space agents. Unlike ordinary corporate representatives, they do not sit at stations, but drift in different places. The mission chains they offer are only completed once per character. These tasks greatly increase standing for the faction at the initial stages, but are formulated in such a way that achieving victory in them is a non-trivial task. Unlike regular missions, chains of space agents only give you the main direction. No one will tell you where the required item may be, or where you need to fly in order to complete the task. There are often several stationary complexes located near space agents. Perhaps some parts can be found there. Space missions are of the third and lower levels. For a novice player, this is an excellent chance to increase standing, as well as receive BPC for several faction modules as a reward. If you have started performing space missions and don’t know what to do next, look for it. There are many guides on the Internet with step-by-step passage of the most incomprehensible sections.
COSMOS missions and COSMOS Sites are special PvE opportunities focused on certain constellations. The missions reward blueprint copies for storyline modules and offer both faction and corp standings while the sites contain materials for storyline modules, storyline missions and unique drops.
Contents
Why COSMOS missions?
There are several reasons to do COSMOS missions.
- Standing boosts: Every last mission an agent offers is an important storyline mission. It boosts standings with a faction, including derived standings. COSMOS missions are probably the fastest way to receive an one time boost in standings in the game.
- Storyline blueprint copies: Agents often give blueprint copies as reward. While these modules often have weaker or equal stats to tech 2, they have considerably lesser fitting requirements. The production of the modules is very costly. You need unseeded skillbooks like Sleeper Technology as prerequisite and special items found in the COSMOS complexes to build them. Thus the items can be very expensive on the contract market but don't have much movement.
- Bounties/Loot/Salvage: As there is a lot to shoot at in the COSMOS complexes with low respawn rates, ratting/looting/salvaging can be lucrative. This also includes named NPCs that drop items needed for agent missions, keycards for warpgates and items found in hacking or archeology cans used for the production of storyline items. While most of these items only can be traded via contract and don"t have much movement on the market, they can sell for a good amount of money. Salvaging and Looting should be done in a team, as you can"t come back in a dedicated salvaging boat after clearing the NPCs in a pocket without running into respawns. Certain COSMOS complexes also contain faction and deadspace module drops like normal DED rated complexes.
- Exploration/Lore: COSMOS missions are a refreshing alternative to normal missions. While they always give you a hint where to find the item to finish the mission, you have to search for it. Sometimes you even have to scan down the place where you find it, bring a keycard to access the place or need to hack or analyze a can to loot it. The missions also offer a good amount of lore about New Eden. Players interested in lore should take a look into COSMOS missions.
- Faction ship blueprints: There are agents in the constellations that offer faction ship blueprints. You need a very high faction standing and you have to bring pirate tags, but you can obtain 2 run blueprints for faction frigate, cruiser and battleship.
The setback is that all the missions can be completed only once. Though the static complexes can be farmed forever.
COSMOS sites
The COSMOS constellations contain COSMOS sites and COSMOS agents. The sites are connected to COSMOS missions but can be run at any time. These sites appear as static complexes with warpable beacons in space, located by using the star map and coloring the map by "DED deadspace reports", as scannable combat signatures or as unmarked sites on a celestial. Not all static DED sites are combat sites, some of them are landmarks or epic mission agent locations.
The static COSMOS sites respawn periodically (some only at downtime?). They reward items required in COSMOS missions, materials for storyline modules , faction modules and rare items.
Gated COSMOS sites follow same ship size restrictions as scannable DED rated sites. Ungated COSMOS sites have no restrictions.
See the page for each COSMOS constellation for details on the COSMOS sites in that constellation.
COSMOS missions
COSMOS missions form short 3-5 mission long chains. They are mostly independent from each other but some may require items from other missions. These missions can be completed only once, failing to complete the mission after starting it will forever block this agent. The last mission in each chain will usually reward faction standing bonus. Many of the missions also reward blueprint copies for storyline modules.
How to do COSMOS missions? Like anything else in EVE Online: It depends.
If you want to boost your standings with an Empire, pick agents from this empire and work for them. You will find a list of all the COSMOS agents in individual COSMOS pages in next section. Also look at the list of the agent and pick those that offer you BPCs, if that"s what you are aiming for. If you are looking for lore, just pick any agent you have access to and do his missions.
Once you figured out for whom you want to work, the time has come to hopp into a ship with a fitting that will help you to successfully complete the mission. This section shall provide the reader with some basic guidelines on ship classes and fittings suitable for the COSMOS missions. Please note that this section is a personal view from a dedicated Minmatar pilot with some crosstrain into Caldari ships to be able to fly the Drake. Depending on what you are able to fly the experience may change. The guidelines are dedicated to relatively new pilots that only fly T1 ships until now.
Also note that COSMOS missions have different standings requirements from normal missions. COSMOS agents only accept faction standings so you can not take any of the missions with corp standings. Additionally the L2 agents require 2.00 standing, L3 agents require 4.00 standing and L4 agents require 6.00 standing (normally 1.00 for L2, 3.00 for L3 and 5.00 for L4). L1 agents do not require any standings.
The COSMOS missions can be ran only once. Failing the mission or letting it expire will prevent you from ever doing that mission or any mission that is in the same chain. Do not even talk to the agent unless you are going to run the mission , as soon as you talk to the agent you get a mission offer that expires in seven days.
Courier Missions
Courier mission offers from COSMOS agent can mostly be done in a dedicated frigate hauler. a Probe or a magnate fitted with Extended Cargohold II modules and 3 Small Cargohold Optimization rigs, which is more than enough for most of the missions. However, quite some missions will send you into lowsec. The ability to fly a CovOps or interceptor ship helps a lot for those.
Courier missions can be done with your own items. For example if the mission is to take 150 Oxygen from A to B you can just take your own oxygen to B and complete the mission. This can be especially useful when the drop off location is by the agent allowing you to complete the mission instantly. Of course this can only be done with items that are available outside of these missions.
Encounter Missions
The difficulty of Encounter missions - missons that don"t send you into a COMSOS complex, landmark of combat site - depends on the level of the agent. I used a Hurricane or Drake for all these missions, which usually was more than enough tank and firepower. They are, however, pretty slow ships. Some agents offer you missions where you have to travel more than 100 km to the next warpgate, sometimes more than once. The agents offering those missions will tell you to bring a fast ship, so listen to them and bring a frigate with MWD. For L4 encounter missions a battleship is recommended.
complex missions
The interesting part starts once you are sent into the various complexes, landmarks and combat sites.
There are visible COSMOS complexes that have a beacon and are shown on the ingame map, hidden complexes you have to scan down first to warp to the entrance and complexes that are not marked anywhere but are visible when you warp to a celestial object such as planet or asteroid belt If you need to go to a hidden location, bring a ship with a Core Probe Launcher fitted, preferably a scanning frigate like the Minmatar Probe. Note that all these are static locations that never move so you need to scan and bookmark them only once.
Almost all gated complexes and landmarks have a DED rating that tells you what ship hulls can use the acceleration gate. As examples, the complex in Inder has a DED rating of 3/10, which only allows cruiser sized ships, the two visible complexes in Hjoramold and Traun have a DED rating 4/10 and allow up to battlecruisers and the Twink complex (DED 5 /10) allows battleships (Don"t believe the DED ratings given in the ingame maps, they often are wrong). landmarks are generally easier to clear and thus can be done with smaller ship hulls, but for the complexes I recommend to bring a ship that matches the DED rating. The difficulty of the combat sites vary strongly, from "Easy as pie" to "It"s a trap!" difficulty. Please refer to the more detailed descriptions of the various sites.
I strongly recommend that you have some experience with at least level 3 security missions before you venture into the COSMOS complexes. You should also be familiar with the concepts of aligning, kiting and drone aggro. You must be able to fit a very good tank (preferably tech II) on your ships, especially when you are alone. I can"t stress this out enough. While there are large groups of NPCs in the pockets to begin with, they also have a very short respawn timer. Due to the low respawn rates I also recommend to bring tech II or high meta armaments to clear the rats fast.
While most of the NPC rats you will find in the complexes and landmarks are from the local pirate faction, there are also some other factions present, even from empire factions. Please refer to the detailed site descriptions to learn about the opposing factions and try to fit your tank accordingly. However, sometimes it is not that easy to tell what exact faction you are facing and thus fitting your tank against the expected damage type can be difficult.
As the complexes can be quite big, I recommend to bring propulsion mods on any ships you use. Preferably a MWD, as they work in all the complexes and landmarks. If you are interested in the hacking and archeology cans in some complex pockets you obviously have to bring a relic or data analyzer module.
It is a good idea to visit the complex or other landmark location and acquire the necessary items before accepting the mission from the agent. If you are unable to secure some of the parts in time, your mission may expire. Sometimes items can also be purchased from the market or in contracts if you are unable to secure the items and need to complete a mission.
COSMOS constellations
There are four COSMOS constellations in high security space. One for each empire.
Keywords: EVE Online, COSMOS
COSMOS is interesting part PvE games.
The difference between COSMOS and ordinary agents is that COSMOS missions are given only once and specific rewards are given for them.
Each race has its own SPACE constellation.
So, what does the implementation of SPACE missions give:
1. All SPACE missions are storylines. Therefore, standing there is growing simply wildly. After completing all SPACE missions in one constellation, you will most likely have enough standing that all agents of the 3rd level faction will give you missions
2. Good rewards.
As a reward, agents give BPC, from which you can make very good items. Typically this is an item with tier 2 stats, but with tier 1 requirements.
The last missions usually give implants. Moreover, imps are given according to the agent’s level. Thus, you can gain yourself +4 imps
3. Mini professions - archeology and hacking.
5% of missions in SPACE are missions where you are required to know these skills. In fact, in each SPACE constellation there is one complex for archeology and hacking.
In these complexes, items drop that are used as components for those BPCs that agents gave you for other missions.
4. Faction ships. For high standing to a faction, you get a faction ship.
Frigate, cruiser and BS. Standing must be higher than 9.
In my opinion, 9.2, 9.4 and 9.8
BS can be sold very expensive. I don't know how much Navy Apoc is worth now, but it used to cost over a billion.
That's all I remembered, briefly stated. There are detailed guides on the Internet. When I find it, I'll post the links.
There are some special features with SPACE missions :)
Feature 1: The entire line of missions must be completed in a week
Feature 2: You take most missions from the agent only AFTER you have collected the necessary items.
That is, the order is approximately this.
We arrive to the agent. He tells us: there is a mission for you, to collect, say, 50 laser pistols. We are not taking on a mission. We fly to the plex, collect pistols.
Then we fly back to the agent. Everyone takes on a mission and then immediately turns it in, handing over 50 pistols.
Feature 3: After a long period of time, I suspect it’s a year, missions can be taken on again.
Thus, we all fly at once, collect everything we need, then we fly around and each one passes the mission on his own.
Here good description space missions
