NPC standings
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 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 standing 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. COSMOS agents are another exception in that they only care about your faction standing and don't care about your corp standing
The faction standing with corporation standing define the broker fees when trading in stations belonging to that faction.
- BrokerFee % = 3% - 0.1% × BrokerRelationsLevel - 0.03% × FactionStanding - 0.02% × CorpStanding
The faction standing also has the most serious effect if it gets too low. At -5.00 faction standing navy vessels will 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 unmodifie |
You may join Factional Warfare for that faction. |
| 1.0 modified |
Access to all normal L2 agents of that faction. |
| 3.0 modified |
Access to all normal L3 agents of that faction. |
| 5.0 modified |
Access to all L4 agents of that faction. |
| 7.0 modified |
Access to all L5 agents of that faction. |
Faction standing is also required for all COSMOS agents. The standing requirements for these agents are different than for normal agents. These agents don't care about your corp standing.
| Standing | Effect |
|---|---|
| 2.0 modified |
Access to L2 COSMOS agents of that faction. |
| 4.0 modified |
Access to L3 COSMOS agents of that faction. |
| 6.0 modified |
Access to L4 COSMOS agents of that faction (not all). |
| 7.0 modified |
Access to L4 COSMOS agents of that faction (not all). |
| 8.5 modified |
The factions will offer you a special COSMOS mission (faction frigate BPC or implant). |
| 9.2 modified |
The factions will offer you a special COSMOS mission (faction cruiser BPC or implant). |
| 9.9 modified |
The factions will offer you a special COSMOS mission (faction battleship BPC or implant). |
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 used to get access to higher level mission agents and to lower broker and reprocessing fees in NPC station. Corporation standing towards the resource wars corporations is also needed to gain acces to higher level wesource wars sites.
| 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 normal L2 agents of that corporation. L2 resource wars. |
| 3.0 modified |
Access to all normal L3 agents of that corporation. L3 resource wars. |
| 5.0 modified |
Access to all normal L4 agents of that corporation. L4 resource wars. |
| 7.0 modified |
Access to all normal L5 agents of that corporation. L5 resource wars. |
| 6.67 modified |
Tax-free refining. |
Agent standings
Agent standings are the weakest NPC standings but also the fastest one to gain. This standing allows you to take missions from that one agent with whom you have standing 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 |
This agent will no longer speak to you regardless of faction or corporation standing. Except L1 agents, these will continue to be available. |
| 1.0 modified |
Access to L2 agent. |
| 3.0 modified |
Access to L3 agent. |
| 5.0 modified |
Access to L4 agent. |
| 7.0 modified |
Access to L5 agent. |
Gaining and losing standings
When standings go up or down they 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 standing decrease, then it's a percentage decay towards −10. For example, if someone with 1.0 standing 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 standing 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.
The formula for standing increase is
- New standing = Old standing + ( 10 - Old standing ) × Standing increase%
The formula for standing decrease is almost same, just towards -10
- New standing = Old standing + ( -10 - Old standing ) × Standing decrease%
Corporation and agent standings increase after each completed mission. Faction standings however are gained from certain missions only:
- Doing Career Agents: Small increase in faction standing. This falls under the category of storyline missions and may only be done once. This includes the 15 career agents per faction.
- Completing a storyline mission: Small to moderate faction standing increase depending on the level of the mission. Large corporation standing increase.
- Doing Datacenter missions: Faction standing 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 standings gains as a 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 time faction standing increase only, the first time you do the loop.
- Doing the epic arcs: Significant faction and corporation 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.
Standings can be lost in few ways. It is recommended that you consider your future before doing these activities.
- Failing a mission results in agent, corporation and faction standings loss.
- Declining more than one mission every four hours results in agent, corporation and agent standings loss.
- Fighting NPC Mining Operations results in corporation standing loss.
- Destroying ships belonging to a faction results in faction standing loss. Not all ships count for this.
Taking part in faction warfare incurs various standings gains and losses:
- Killing enemy militia ship (in NPC corp): Militia corporation standing loss.
- Killing friendly militia: Faction and corporation standings loss without derived standings.
- Killing faction NPC (missions): Faction standing loss and derived standings.
- Capturing complex: Militia corporation standing gain.
- Promotrion: Faction standing gain and derived standings.
- Faction warfare missions: Normal mission standings gains and losses.
Derived standings
Every time you gain faction standing from mission other 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 inter faction relationships 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.
The derived standing modifier is based on the the standing from the secondary faction towards the faction you work with and the ratio of the sizes of these two factions.
- Inter-Faction Standing Modifier = Secondary Faction’s standing view of Primary Faction * ( Primary Faction Size / Secondary Faction Size )
If you gain Gain% ammount of standing with a faction then the derived standing to another faction is
- Derived Standing% = Gain% × ( Inter-Faction Standing Modifier / 10 )
For example you complete a storyline mission to Minmatar Republic and gain 2% faction standing towards Minmatar Republic. This will give you -1% derived standing towards Amarr Empire, +1% derived standing towards Thukker Tribe and many others.
When you lose faction standings you will also get negative derived standings with friends of that faction. But you will NOT get positive derived standings with their enemies.
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 standing as you can not take higher than L1 missions from the faction. The more serious issue comes when you hit −5.00 faction standing 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.
Unrepailable standings
The CONCORD Assembly and Drifters are two factions that do not have any agents in game making it impossible to directly improve standings. In addition they do not have positive relationships with any other faction, making it impossible to improve standings through derived standings. It is in fact absolutely impossible to improve standings with these two factions.
You can however still lower your standing with these two factions through ship kills. CONCORD Assembly will also lower their standing towards you through derived standings if you gain positive standing with any pirate faction.
Very low standing with CONCORD Assembly will have same penalties in CONCORD owned space as low standings have with normal empires. CONCORD owns the constellation of Sanctum in region of Genesis. If you go below -5.00 standing with CONCORD Assembly you will be attacked by CONCORD navy in that area (Not instakilling CONCORD police).
Society of Conscious Thought and Jove Empire are also factions with no agents but they have positive standings to a few other factions making it possible to increase standings through derived standings.
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. The only confirmed uses of unmodified standings are broker fees and faction warfare.
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.
Notable feature of the skills is that with level 3 in connections/criminal connections brings the effective standing from 0.00 to 1.2 allowing the pilot to skil level 1 missions completely.
There is also one skill that increases the standings gains.
- Social: 5% bonus per level to NPC agent, corporation and faction standing increase.
