Faction warfare standings
Some pilots may be concerned that joining Factional Warfare will result in irreparable damage to some of their faction standings, either excluding them from a quarter of Empire space for the rest of their EVE career, or forcing them to grind their standings back up. This page aims to clarify how your standings are affected by participating in Factional Warfare.
Actions that affect standings
Participating in Factional Warfare can impact your standings with the four NPC militia corporations (24th Imperial Crusade, State Protectorate, Federal Defence Union, and Tribal Liberation Force) as well as the four NPC empire factions (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar). Your actions affect your standing with your NPC militia corporation change irrespective of whether you are a member of the NPC corporation or not (i.e. whether you enlisted in Factional Warfare as a solo player or as part of a player corporation).
Note that even though you are at war with one of the four empire factions, your standings with them don't actually drop merely by joining Factional Warfare; they only drop through actions you might perform (see table). Since all the standings-affecting mechanics are purely optional (e.g. you are not forced to capture complexes just because you have enlisted in Factional Warfare), you can control how much you want to affect your faction standings.
| Friendly | Enemy | |||||||
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| Militia corporation |
Faction | Militia corporation |
Faction | |||||
| Killing enemy militia (in NPC corp) (3) | 
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| Killing enemy militia (in player corp) | / | / | ||||||
| Killing friendly militia |
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| Killing faction NPC (complex) (4) | / | / | / | |||||
| Killing faction NPC (mission) | (2)
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| Capturing complex | 
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/ | / | |||||
| Destroying i-Hub | ||||||||
| Completing mission |
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/ | / | |||||
| Declining/failing mission |
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| Being promoted | / |
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(1)
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(1) These are derived standing changes, caused by the inter-faction relationships. | ||||||||
Promotions
When your standings with your NPC militia corporation reach an integer number (i.e. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 etc), you receive a "promotion", which is reflected in a higher rank (visible on your character sheet). The first time you reach a new rank, you also receive a one-off bonus to your standings with your faction (and a corresponding drop in your standings with the enemy faction).
Joining Factional Warfare
Keep in mind that, in order to join Factional Warfare, you need a faction standing of 0.0 or higher (without taking social skills into account). If your standing is too low, you can run missions for a corporation belonging to that faction (the storyline mission you get after running 16 regular missions raises your faction standing), the one-off COSMOS and Data Center missions, or the Sisters of Eve epic mission arc.
Maintaining enemy faction standing
If, while enlisted in Factional Warfare, you find your standings with the enemy faction slipping, you can raise them by running missions for corporations belonging to that faction (the storyline mission you get after running 16 regular missions raises your faction standing). However, most agents reside in space controlled by their faction, and the NPC faction navies make it unfeasible to run missions in enemy-controlled high-sec space. Therefore, there are two options:
- Find agents in friendly high-sec space. A number of agents reside in high-sec space not controlled by their faction (for instance, the Minmatar corporation Core Complexion Inc. has agents in Amarr space, such as three in the Knophtikoo system). To find these, make a note of which regions are controlled by friendly factions, then use the in-game The Agency to find agents belonging to the enemy faction in those regions.
- Run missions in low-sec space. As the NPC faction navies only patrol high-sec systems, you have unfettered access to agents of the enemy faction in low-sec. While low-sec mission running is more dangerous than high-sec mission running, active Factional Warfare players should be reasonably proficient at staying safe in low-sec.
- (Non-repeatable) The Cosmos and Data Center missions allow you to increase your faction standing, however the missions are not repeatable. Find more information on Gaining faction standing fast.
- (Non-repeatable) Each faction has multiple sets of Career Agents. You can complete each Career Agents' missions and the last mission in each chain will provide you with a 1.5% faction standing increase with the respective faction.
Note that this will only help you with your faction standings; your standings with the enemy NPC militia corporation will likely drop continuously. However, unless you plan on switching sides and running missions for them, you can safely ignore your standings with the enemy NPC militia corporation.
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