Missions

For more information on mission running try clicking on the Missioning category link to view pages relevant to mission running at the bottom of the page.

Background

A "mission" is a one-time job offered by an NPC (called an "agent") to a player wherein the player must accomplish a set of objectives in exchange for a set of rewards. A player will dock up in a station that has an agent, look at the Station Information window, click on the AGENTS tab, right-click an agent, and select START CONVERSATION. This opens a dialog box where a mission is offered. You cannot request or accept a mission remotely. (In the event that the Agent is also a Locator Agent, there will be two buttons: "REQUEST MISSION" and "LOCATE CHARACTER". In this case, one would click "REQUEST MISSION".) In the dialog box that appears, the mission being offered is explained and the player has the option to ACCEPT, DECLINE, or DELAY. Usually, the player will ACCEPT the mission, undock, fulfill the objectives of the mission, dock up, and speak to the agent again to complete the mission. The reward to complete the mission is usually ISK and Loyalty Points; Loyalty Points (LP) are a specialized currency that can only be spent in the Loyalty Point stores of the corporation that gave you the points. You can review your Loyalty Points in-game in NeoCom > JOURNAL button > AGENTS tab > LOYALTY POINTS subtab. If the primary reward is an item instead of ISK, then the item will appear in your personal hangar at the agent's station. All missions also have a bonus reward if you complete them quickly enough; this bonus only consists of ISK.

Types of missions

There are four different types of missions: Encounter, Mining, Courier, and Trade.

An Encounter mission is a mission to go to a location somewhere in space and complete an objective of some kind. This is usually to kill a ship or a set of ships located at the encounter, but it could also be a mission to destroy a structure, a mission just to get close to a location and then escape, a mission to pick up an object at the location (which may or may not be an ambush), or a mission to fly from beacon-to-beacon. An Encounter mission will always create a mission space when the mission is accepted. A mission space is a region of space in some solar system and is populated by objects also created specifically for the mission. Most mission spaces are also deadspaces (where you cannot use microwarpdrives at all and you can only use your warp drive if you are leaving that deadspace), but this is not always the case. Most mission spaces will start with an acceleration gate, which may or may not have hostile NPCs guarding it. Encounter missions can usually be recognized as such when reading the description by looking for a bookmark link that only has a solar system name. For example, if a mission description has a bookmark link that only says "Aldrat", then it's definitely either an Encounter or Mining mission. Cargo Delivery is an example of an Encounter mission; you have to fly to a warehouse to pick up cargo, but are ambushed as you get close.

A Mining mission is just like an Encounter mission, except that the mission objective is mining-oriented. This excludes certain Encounter missions that require a mining laser as a gimmick, where you bring one mining laser to a mission space to mine an asteroid for the purpose of luring in a target ship and then destroying the target ship. Such gimmick encounters don't care about how much ore you mine, and any ore you mine is completely secondary to the mission. Mining missions, on the other hand, require you to mine an asteroid or set of asteroids in a mission space until the asteroids are depleted and bring the ore back to the agent's station. There is a risk of combat in mining missions, though the hostiles that show up tend to be much weaker than hostiles found in encounter missions. It is advisable to have some offensive capability (like a set of combat drones) or have a strong enough tank that you can basically ignore any hostiles that show up and start shooting at you. The mission may require you to mine more ore than can fit in your cargohold; this is typical of mining missions.

A Courier mission is a mission to take a piece of cargo from one station to another station. When a Courier mission is accepted, the necessary cargo is spawned in your personal hangar at the pickup station. You then need to get it to the Dropoff station. Courier missions never spawn any hazards of their own; you only have to deal with the normal hazards of Stargate travel (gatecamps, suicide gankers, warp interdiction bubbles on Stargates in NullSec, the sovereign space of Empires that hate you, and so on). It is worth noting that you must be at the dropoff station to turn in the mission; you can still talk to the agent who gave you the mission in the AGENTS tab despite the fact that the agent is not actually at your station. If a Courier mission has an item as a reward instead of ISK, then the item will appear in your personal hangar at the agent's station (which may or may not be the dropoff location for the mission).

A Trade mission is to obtain a quantity of some material and deliver it to a destination station. Unlike a courier mission, the necessary materials are not spawned for you, you have to obtain them yourself: mine it out of asteroids, buy it off the Market, steal it from another player, and so on. How you get the materials is irrelevant to the mission (though if you steal it from other players, those players may hold a grudge against you).

Standings

Standings are a measure of how much one entity likes or dislikes another entity and are measured on a real number scale from -10 to +10. -10 is complete and total loathing and +10 is complete and total adoration. The standings of NPC entities towards a player are very important because completing missions increases standings, and higher standings makes more profitable missions available. When standings go up or down they usually do so as a percentage; this is always a percentage decay towards the extreme end of the scale. For example, if someone has 1.0 standing with an NPC corporation and completes a mission that changes standing by +5%, then the current standing is increased by 5% of the difference from +1 to +10; that's a change of +0.45 with an end result of +1.45. However, if someone else with a 4.0 standing completes the same mission under the same circumstances and also gets a 5% increase, then that's 5% of the difference from +4 to +10; that's a change of +0.30 with an end result of +4.30.

If something causes a standings decrease, then it's a percentage decay towards -10. For example, if someone with +1.0 standings suffers a -5% change, then that's 5% of the difference from +1 to -10; that's a change of -0.55 with an end result of +0.45. If someone with +4.0 standings suffers that same -5% change, then it's 5% of the difference from +4 to -10; that's a change of -0.7 with an end result of +3.3.

What that means is that the higher the standings you get, the harder it is to increase it and the easier it is to decrease it.

Regular Agents

All regular agents have a name, a Level, a Quality, and a Division. Storyline Agents will be covered later. "Level" describes the general difficulty level of the mission that the agent can offer you; it also has a major impact on the standings you need to reach in order for this agent to give you missions. "Quality" describes how much the agent will pay you for the same mission as compared to other agents (when all other factors are equal); it also has a minor impact on the standings you need to reach in order for this agent to give you missions. "Division" describes the probability distribution of the different kinds of missions the agent might offer you. "Division" is also relevant to certain Social-category skills that increase Loyalty Point gains when working for agents of particular divisions (such as Trade Connections and Military Connections). A table of the relevant characteristics of Divisions can be found here.

Mission Walkthroughs

A great igb link to add in for missions is Eve Survival http://eve-survival.org/missions

Finding an agent

• EVE-Agents.com could be out of date
• EVE Commander Agents

Guides

• Another great mission guide is the EVElopedia mission guide EVElopedia Missions Guide

• Basic and Advanced mission guide: Microsoft Office OneNote 60 day trail (required to view) http://trial.trymicrosoftoffice.com/trialukireland/product.aspx?re_ms=oo&family=onenote&culture=en-GB

The guide: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D5YVBM4Y By Mattch