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| Like all of the other COSMOS constellations throughout New Eden, there are beacons in each solar system where you can find so-called COSMOS agents in space. All of these beacons are landmarks in the systems that each tell a story of its own. COMSOS agents belong to a NPC corporation in a faction, like the normal agents you find in stations, and offer series 2-5 mission long one-time mission chains. The reward of the missions are often storyline blueprint copies. Every series ends with an important storyline mission that will give a nice boost to faction standings. While some of these missions are like normal encounter or courier missions, most of the missions need a special item to finish. You have to search for these items in the various complexes and landmarks in the constellation. | | Like all of the other COSMOS constellations throughout New Eden, there are beacons in each solar system where you can find so-called COSMOS agents in space. All of these beacons are landmarks in the systems that each tell a story of its own. COMSOS agents belong to a NPC corporation in a faction, like the normal agents you find in stations, and offer series 2-5 mission long one-time mission chains. The reward of the missions are often storyline blueprint copies. Every series ends with an important storyline mission that will give a nice boost to faction standings. While some of these missions are like normal encounter or courier missions, most of the missions need a special item to finish. You have to search for these items in the various complexes and landmarks in the constellation. |
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| The complexes and landmarks in the constellation come with different DED ratings, like other complexes throughout New Eden. This rating indicates the difficulty of the complex as well as the ships allowed by the entrance gate. All complexes in the constellation are somewhat meant to support more than one pilot at once, resulting in fast respawn rates and large pockets with a lot of NPCs. Some of the complexes, landmarks and combat sites are hidden and have to be scanned down with scan probes before they can be accessed. Furthermore, some of the complexes have special pockets with cans that need the hacking skill or the archaelogy skill to access them. While there are very few agents that demand items you can find in these cans, all of the BPCs you can get as rewards from the COSMOS agents need items out of these cans to build.
| | ==Ship suggestions== |
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| ==Why COSMOS missions?==
| | The ship requirements and limits vary mission by mission. A guideline for encounter missions is to bring a frigate/destroyer for L1 missions, cruiser/battlecruiser for L2 and L3 missions and a battleship for L4 missions. Few missions will require you to cover a very long distance (+100 km) multiple times with very little combat so bring a frigate with MWD for those. You will also need a hauling ship for low volume hauling missions. An exploration frigate with cargo expanders works well but a instawarping ship is recommended for the low security courier missions. |
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| There are several reasons to do COSMOS missions.
| | You will be mostly facing Angel or Minmatar pirates so bring ships that excel in explosive and kinetic damage dealing and resisting. But there are few missions where you face rogue drone or Amarr ships so bring tank and ammo to cover EM and thermal too. |
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| * Standing boosts: Every last mission an agent offers is an important storyline mission. It boosts standings with a faction, sometimes even from two factions at once. COSMOS missions are probably the fastest way to boost standings in the game. As all the COSMOS agents have the same mechanics as normal agents, you need to have the required standing with the faction or the corporation of the agent to get the mission offers in the first place.
| | ==Agents== |
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| * Storyline blueprint copies: Agents often give blueprint copies as reward that can't be found anywhere else. Items made from these blueprints are meta 6 items. While these modules often have weaker stats than tech 2 or even meta 4 modules, 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 only 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.
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| * 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 archaeology 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.
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| * 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.
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| * Faction ship blueprints: There are agents in the constellation that offer Minmatar faction ship blueprints. You need a very high Minmatar faction standing and you have to bring a lot of Angel pirate tags, but you can obtain 2 run blueprints for Republic Fleet Firetails, Stabber Fleet Issues and Tempest Fleet Issues for your effort. Unfortunately, the offers are one-time only.
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| ==How to do COSMOS missions== | |
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| Like anything else in EVE Online: It depends.
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| 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 the system in the 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.
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| 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. Additionally, I was not able to work for high level Amarr and Caldari agent as well as for the lone Angel Cartel agent due to low standings. So I don't take their mission offers into account. The guidelines are dedicated to relatively new pilots that only fly T1 ships until now.
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| ===Courier Missions===
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| Courier mission offers from COSMOS agent can mostly be done in a dedicated frigate hauler. I used a Probe frigate 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 ship helps a lot for those, as all but one mission to lowsec can be done with the small cargohold of a CovertOps ship. The only mission I encountered that requires you to haul 1000m3 cargo out of lowsec was offered by the agent Penda Rakken.
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| 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.
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| ===Encounter Missions===
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| 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.
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| === complex, landmark and combat site missions ===
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| The interesting part starts once you are sent into the various complexes, landmarks and combat sites.
| | This list contains all agents in or directly connected to Minmatar COSMOS. These agents offer one or more missions that '''can be ran only once'''. Failing the mission or letting it to expire will prevent you from ever doing that mission or any mission that is in the same chain. {{co|red||'''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'''. |
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| There are visible COSMOS complexes, e.g. the 4 complexes in the constellation that have a beacon and are shown on the ingame map, as well as hidden complexes you have to scan down first to warp to the entrance. landmarks, both visible and hidden, that are not shown on the ingame map (Please note: The Sispur's Estate is only a landmark, even it is shown on the ingame map). And there are combat sites without any acceleration gates and without any beacons to warp to. 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.
| | The COSMOS demand the player to have high enough faction standing to gain the missions. Corp standing can not be used instead of faction standing. Additionally COSMOS missions require higher standing than normal missions. 2.00 for L2, 4.00 for L3 and 6.00 for L4 (normally 1.00 for L2, 3.00 for L3 and 5,00 for L4). |
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| Every complex and landmark, hidden or not, 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, which only allows cruiser sized ships, the two visible complexes in Hjoramold and Traun have a DED 4 rating and allow up to battlecruisers and the Tvink complex (DED 5) 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 further down the guide.
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| I strongly recommend that you have some experience with at least level 3 security missions before you venture into the COSMOS complexes. You also should 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.
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| While most of the NPC rats you will find in the complexes and landmarks are from the Angels 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. I generally fitted armor and kinetic hardeners to my armor tanked Hurricane and Tempest (as long as the NPCs I was facing didn't use lasers against me) and two invulnerable fields II with one emp shield rig on my Drake with acceptable results.
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| 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 archaelogy cans in some complex pockets you obviously have to bring a relic or data analyzer module.
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| 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.
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| ==Agents==
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| ===Barkrik System=== | | ===Barkrik System=== |
