NPC standings

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The faction standings, corporation standings and agent standings are a measure of how much NPC entity likes or dislikes another entity. They are most well known in the context of missions and crimewatch but they effect some other gameplay systems too. Standings are measured on a real number scale from -10 to +10. A standing of -10 is tantamount to complete and total loathing and conversely +10 is complete and total adoration.

Faction standings

Faction standing is the strongest NPC standing. Faction standing gives acces to all agents from all corporations belonging to that factions. This includes normal agents, COSMOS agents and epic arc agents (L3 for pirate epic arcs, L4 for empire epic arcs). Unmodified faction standing of 0.0 or higher is also requirement for joining the faction warfare.

Most agents will accept either faction, corp, or personal standings to fulfill their requirement. That means, even if you have no corp standing with Caldari Navy, if you have faction standing with the Caldari State then you will be able to access agents using that faction standing. The exception to this is R&D agents: if you attempt to use your faction standing to access an R&D agent, you must also have the appropriate corp standing up to the agent's requirement -2. If a Kaalakiota agent requires 5 standing and you have 6 standing with Caldari State and 2.5 standing with Kaalakiota, you will not be able to use that agent.

The faction standings with corporation standings define the broker fees when trading in stations belonging to that faction.

BrokerFee % = 3%-(0.1%*BrokerRelationsLevel)-(0.03%*FactionStanding)-(0.02%*CorpStanding)

Low enough faction standing will cause navy vessels to chase you down in high security space that belongs to that faction. As long as you pay attention you can travel through their space as they will not point your ship but just attack and web.

Standing	Effect
−5 modified	You are "kill on sight" anywhere in that faction's space. NPC Navies will spawn and attack you. Note that unlike Concord, Navy ships will not warp disrupt or scram you.
-2 modified	Agents of that faction will no longer speak to you regardless of corp or agent standing. Except L1 agents, these will continue to be available.
0.0	You may join Factional Warfare for that faction.
1.0 modified	Access to all L2 agents of that faction.
3.0 modified	Access to all L3 agents of that faction.
5.0 modified	Access to all L4 agents of that faction.
6.67 modified	Tax-free refining. (Confirmed that you need corp, not faction standing for this)
8.5 modified	The empire factions will offer you a faction frigate BPC via a COSMOS agent. Corporation standings work too.
9.2 modified	The empire factions will offer you a faction cruiser BPC via a COSMOS agent. Corporation standings work too.
9.9 modified	The empire factions will offer you a faction battleship BPC via a COSMOS agent. Corporation standings work too.

Overall recommendations

• Judge early in your career whether or not you want to stay friendly with all empire factions. There are some benefits to this (freedom of travel mainly), which must be weighed against the rewards of achieving excellent standing with one faction.
• If you do want to keep faction standings balanced, the best way is to not let them drop in the first place. Do not kill faction ships (decline those missions), and have a way to balance the effects of storylines once in a while. With good forethought you can avoid the horrible grinding mess that it can be to recover extremely low faction standings.
• It is not difficult to keep positive standings (all above zero) with all the Empire factions simultaneously, even if running only normal missions. Just run missions for a faction when it approaches or dips below zero, and decline all missions which require you to kill an Empire faction's ships. Only the L4 epic arcs can be used to gain factions standings without losing other standings as a side effect.

Corporation standings

Corporation standing does not effect as many systems as faction standings. Corporation standing is most commonly used to get access to higher level mission agents and to lower broker fees with faction standings but corporation standings also affects broker fees as explained in faction standings section and refining in NPC station.

Standing	Effect
-2 modified	Agents of that corporation will no longer speak to you regardless of faction or agent standing. Except L1 agents, these will continue to be available.
1.0 modified	Access to all L2 agents of that corporation.
3.0 modified	Access to all L3 agents of that corporation.
5.0 modified	Access to all L4 agents of that corporation.
6.67 modified	Tax-free refining. (Confirmed that you need corp, not faction standing for this)
8.5 modified	The corporation will offer you a faction frigate BPC via a COSMOS agent. Alternative to faction standings.
9.2 modified	The corporation will offer you a faction cruiser BPC via a COSMOS agent. Alternative to faction standings.
9.9 modified	The corporation will offer you a faction battleship BPC via a COSMOS agent. Alternative to faction standings.

Agent standings

Agent standing is the weakest NPC standing but also the fastest one to gain. This standing allows you to take missions from an agent even if your faction or corporation standings are not high enough as long as both of them are better than -2.00.

Standing	Effect
-2 modified	Agents will no longer speak to you regardless of faction or corporation standing. Except L1 agents, these will continue to be available. (Requires hard work to get this bad)
1.0 modified	Access to L2 agent.
3.0 modified	Access to L3 agent.
5.0 modified	Access to L4 agent.

Gaining and losing standings

Corporation and agent standings increase after each completed mission. Faction standings however are gained from certain missions only:

• Doing Tutorial missions for that faction: Small increase. This falls under the category of storyline missions and may only be done once. This includes the 15 career agents per faction.
• Being promoted in Factional Warfare: Increase.
• Completing a storyline mission: Small to moderate standing increase depending on the level of the mission.
• Doing Datacenter missions: Increase, with higher level missions granting more standing. These missions require turning in pirate tags, and may only be done once. To access higher levels requires higher standing, L1 can be done at any time.
• Doing COSMOS missions: Similar increase as hard storyline mission of same level. These missions are more complex than normal and may require special attention and research. They may only be done once. To access higher levels requires higher standing, L1 can be done at any time.
• Doing courier circle missions: One increase only, the first time you do the loop.
• Doing the epic arcs: Significant standings increase without a derived decrease in opposing factions' standings. This is the only way to gain faction standings without losing standings with other entities.

Corporation and agent standings are lost only when failing a mission. Failing a mission will also incur a hit on your faction standings. You also lose faction standings when you destroy a ship belonging to that faction. This standing loss is based on the value of the destroyed ship and does not hapen on all ships.

Derived standings

Every time you gain faction standings from somewhere else than epic arc mission you will also gain derived standings. You will automatically lose standings with factions that dislike the faction and gain standings with factions that like them. The gains and losses depend on the relationship between the two factions and are usually smaller than the original standing increase. This makes it very hard to gain high faction standing with more than two empire faction or both pirate and empire factions.

Recovering low faction standings

You may find yourself in a situation where you have ruined your standing with a faction. This may be result of taking missions against that faction or taking part in faction warfare. The first problems arise at −2.00 standings as you can not take higher than L1 missions from the faction. The more serious issue comes when you hit −5.00 faction standings as the navy of that faction will start chasing you in high security space of that faction.

Quite simply, if you are below −2.00, you have very limited options. First, train Diplomacy skill to as high as you can. This will modify your negative standings upward by a certain percent. You can do all the tutorials, datacenters, and COSMOS missions for one time boost to standings, for both that faction and ones that are friendly with it for the derived standings. Remember even if Caldari State is −3.00, if Amarr Empire is −1.00 you will still have access to all the Amarr agents and can even run L4 missions for them which will eventually get you derived standing from storyline missions. If you have no more tutorials, COSMOS, or datacenter missions available, your only recourse are L1 agents (very small faction standing increases with storylines), playing the derived standings game, doing the epic arc, or joining Faction Warfare as detailed below. It's a long road to travel.

• Once you get to −2, you can again access agents with whom you have a high corp standing. Both corp and agent personal standing can be shared in missioning fleets, so this can be the fastest way to start doing high level missions for that faction. You will never gain or lose faction standing from other people's storyline missions when in fleets.
• If you are in a corp, the corp's relationship to each faction is determined by simply averaging all the member's standings together (ignoring members who do not have standing to that faction). This means that even with low faction standing, you may be able to join a corp that qualifies for Factional Warfare, and work your way up through the ranks to recover your faction standing.
• Remember that all this work will be hurting the standings of opposing factions, to the point where they tend to balance out between −1 and 1. It is extremely difficult to get high faction standing (e.g. 5 or 6) with two opposing factions. It is almost impossible to achieve standings that high with all the Empire factions simultaneously.

Skills

NPC standings are modified by various social skills. This results in effective standings that are higher than the unmodified standings. Almost all standings related requirements are based on effective standings but broker fees and faction warfare are based on the unmodified standings.

Skills that modify standings:

• Connections: 4% Modifier to effective standing from friendly NPC Corporations and Factions per level. Not cumulative with Diplomacy or Criminal Connections.
• Criminal Connections: 4% Modifier per level to effective standing towards NPCs with low Concord standing. Not cumulative with Diplomacy or Connections.
• Diplomacy: 4% Modifier per level to effective standing towards hostile Agents. Not cumulative with Connections or Criminal Connections.

There are also one skill that increases the standings gains.

• Social: 5% bonus per level to NPC agent, corporation and faction standing increase.

See also

• Support page: Standings
• Inter-Faction Standing Relationships