The Ploy

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Get all Empires to 5.0, aka "The Ploy"

Getting good standings for four major empires is a target that many players want to achieve. It's not extremely hard, but it's tedious and time consuming. The target of this guide is to provide info how to reach 5.0 standings with all four empire factions without too much work involved, and maybe it will also explain details of standings mechanics.

Why:

Having 5.0 standings with empires is beneficial to pilots interested in running missions:

• Access to all Level 4 and below missions from all corporations in these empires
• Access to all 4 Epic Arcs from empires, and additionally 2 pirate Epic arcs
• No need to run Storyline missions
• Potential to re-roll missions from agents with hit to standings to get favorite mission

• Significant downside - you won't be able to run Storyline missions after this plan is finished, as they will lower your total standings

Be aware that finishing this goal is a long term activity - you need to run a lot of missions to complete it

How:

Standings gain mechanics

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

[math] \text{ New standing} = \text{Old standing} + ( 10 - \text{Old standing} ) \times \text{Standing increase} [/math]

The formula for standing decrease is almost same, just towards -10

[math] \text{ New standing} = \text{Old standing} + ( -10 - \text{Old standing} ) \times \text{Standing decrease} [/math]

where Standing decrease is the decimal form of standing change. For example 0.4% would be 0.004.

The consequence of this math is that the higher your standings are, the less effective standings increases become and the more dramatic penalties become. For example a standing loss of 1% turns 9.0 standing into 8.81 but increase of 1% would bring 9.0 standing to 9.01.

Advanced Standings mechanics

There are several consequences of standings gain/loss mechanics and math behind it. In no particular order:

• When concerned only about 4 empires, the standings between them are not symmetrical. Inter-faction standings modifiers are shown in table below:

TBD - table formatting

Standing	Amarr	Caldari	Gallente	Minmatar
Amarr	1.0	0.7	-0.2	-0.5
Caldari	0.5	1.0	-0.5	-2.0
Gallente	-0.2	-0.5	1.0	8.0
Minmatar	-0.5	-0.2	0.8	1.0

This means that if you run storyline mission for Amarr, Caldari will get 0.7 (70%) of standings gain, Gallente will recieve 0.2 (20%) penalty and Minmatar 0.5 (50%) penalty.

• After reaching certain point in standings, Storyline missions will not increase your net standings - you will receive the same bonus as penalty. If your standigs are higher than this point (for example due to Epic arcs), storyline missions will reduce total standings - which is not the outcome we need
• Each faction has one ally, one main enemy, and one minor enemy - like shown in below table:

The Amarr and the Caldari fight against the Minmatar and the Gallente.

• Corps opening Epic Arcs - needed for The Ploy

Early game strategy

There are few recommendations to follow since start of the game - without them, the process of getting 5.0 will be much longer:

• Avoid missions against factions. This is by far the biggest threat to lowering standings with factions during mission running
  
• Complete Career agent missions ONLY once. Each faction has 3 sets of missions - finishing them grants good standings increase to factions, but this is needed later to avoid grinding Storyline missions
  
• Choose your main faction - the one you run most missions for. This faction and faction allied to it will require high standings to start
  
• Try to run missions for all factions, but limit yourself to 1-2 corporations from each faction - you will reach the point where your faction standings are still low, but you'll be able to run L3/L4 missions - to be able to do that, you need corporation standings above 3.0/5.0 respectively - but it's not strictly necessary to start

Skills needed

Most important skill to start is Social - it improves standings gain from each mission. Training to V is recommended to shorten the time needed to achieve 5.0 with all empires. It will be possible without it, but significantly harder.

Skill needed to finish is Connections. Raised to V improves standings by 20% - this means that in order to have effective 5.0 standing, you only need 3.8 unmodified standing for each faction, which is much more easily obtainable.

Improving standings

You can think of getting all 4 factions to 5.0 as getting total of 20.0 in faction standings gain - that's the target to achieve. How to approach it:

• Storylines are your bread and butter for faction standings gains - each L4 storyline gives about 0.2 net gain of standings (it depends on your actual standings - the more you have, the lower net gain you will get)
• If you want to speed up this process - blitzable missions are your friends. If you approach this as a long term goal - you can run any missions you like. Keep in mind that the requirement to run a lot of storylines makes it long term activity anyway
• Circle agents are not worth your time - it's not necessary to do them
• SoE epic arc gives 7% of standings - it's +0.75 if your standings are at 0, but only 0.375 if your standings are at 5.0 - run SoE arc as last fix before you start The Ploy, and as a last Arc to get final Empire to 5.0
• Invite other players to run missions with you, especially L4s if they are alpha or they do not have standings to pull them * you will share rewards, but you will also complete missions faster = faster storylines

The Ploy

WARNING: Below guide is currently only theoretical, it was not tested. Test is currently in progress, but it will take a while to finish. Follow at your own risk

"The Ploy" is detailed plan how to get to 5.0 standings. This is the fastest way I've found - and has specific requirements:

• Total standings (unmodified) for all 4 faction is higher than 8.1 (if your main faction is Gallente or Minmatar) or 7.6 (for Caldari or Amarr)
• Social and Connection skills are trained to V - Social has to be done before starting, Connections can be trained later - it's needed for 2 first Epic arcs, so it's recommended to train it to V before starting
• At least 2 Career agents from each faction are available to run - if that's not possible, other means can be used, but with significant drawbacks
• Capability to run empire Epic Arcs - in terms of ship/skills
• Main faction chosen - faction for which you have the best standings (or the worst standings for it's enemy)

Step 1. Adjusting standings

To be able to start this plan, you need standings set in following way:

• If your main faction is Gallente:
  

Gallente - 3.20
Caldari - 1.20
Minmatar - 3.20
Amarr - 0.50

• If your main faction is Minmatar:
  

Gallente - 3.20
Caldari - 0.00
Minmatar - 3.20
Amarr - 1.70

• If your main faction is Amarr:
  

Gallente - 0.80
Caldari - 3.50
Minmatar - -0.50
Amarr - 3.80

• If your main faction is Caldari:
  

Gallente - -0.50
Caldari - 3.50
Minmatar - 0.80
Amarr - 3.80

This is minimum required to follow. Differences between main faction and required standings are result of asymmetrical standings gains modifiers between Amarr and Caldari. It's way easier to grind standings now, than to try fix it later. If you're stuck in place where on faction is too low, you can run COSMOS missions or datacenters or more storylines to make it up. If you start with standings below these, you will not be able to finish it - keep that in mind before starting. Since the whole process is long, you might want to run SoE epic arc to fix last faction to required level. Keep in mind that SoE will give you around 0.7 gain if run for enemy faction - so grind it to 1.2 to get required 1.9

If you have required total standings, but they need to be balanced, you can run Storyline/COSMOS/Datacenter missions for faction with lowest standings. COSMOS and Datacenter missions are one-time only - keep in mind that you won't be able to repeat them.

Step 2. Last check

Check if you have Social at V, standings above minimums. For now you should stop running storyline missions - they will mess up this plan

Step 3. Career agents

Run all 8 Career agent chains, in following order:

• Major enemy
  
• Minor enemy
  
• Major enemy
  
• Minor enemy
  
• Chosen faction
  
• Friendly faction
  
• Chosen faction
  
• Friendly faction
  

Alternatively, you can copy this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XqJqgMUvu9oWGj5YkK03x2AR0VQ5LQ0AaLevpzAWfzg/edit?usp=sharing , leave only your faction path, and put your standings - and then follow plan described there.
The main point if this part of The Ploy is to get both friendly empires to 4.0 standing (to be able to run Epic Arcs) and keep both enemy factions at correct level, which will be required later. If your total standings are above 11.2 and both friendly faction are at 4.01, you can skip some Career agents - keep in mind that you should be sure that you have all standings above required minimum for next step.

Step 4. Epic Arcs

With 3.81 you have 2 Epic arcs unlocked - run them both, picking standings reward (Minmatar!). This will push friendly empires to 4.75 - which allows us to lower them to 3.80 in next step, while gaining standings for 2 enemy factions.

Step 5. Rebalancing

This is the tedious step. Right now storyline missions give very small net standings gains, they only shift them around. What you need to achieve are following standings:

Chosen faction - 3.81
Friendly faction - 3.81
Major enemy - 3.00
Minor enemy - 2.30

To get to that point, you need to run 7 Storyline missions with 1% reward - this translates to XXX L2 distro storylines, which are the fastest to farm. Simply run L2 distro missions for Major and Minor enemy factions, either swapping them every couple of missions, or start with Major enemy and run it until Chosen faction drops to 3.96. If you choose corps required for Step 6 - it will shorten whole process

With this step 2 faction are complete - at 3.81 unmodified, you have effective 5.05 with Connections V

Step 6. Last two

This step might take the longest. To Close the gap for two remaining factions, you need:

• Major enemy - run faction Epic Arc
• Minor enemy - run faction Epic Arc, then SoE Epic Arc - the order is important if you started with minimum standings!

Step 7. Deviations from The Ploy

If needed, whole plan can be adjusted to suit your needs. Two possible adjustments:

• Step 3 - If your initial standings are higher that minimum required

You can skip some Career agents (they are very useful for Step 5 if available) - but keep in mind that you still need to achieve desired results after Step 3, which are available in https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XqJqgMUvu9oWGj5YkK03x2AR0VQ5LQ0AaLevpzAWfzg/edit?usp=sharing . Due to asymmetrical standings modifiers these requirements are different depending on Friendly/Enemy faction chosen. Having wrong requirements after Step 3 might delay whole process by 90-180 days, needed for next run of Epic Arcs. In provided sheet all milestones are marked with green color - if you reached milestone early, you can move to next section of plan.

• Step 5 - If your standings are higher, or other means of standings gain are available

You can skip some Storyline missions and replace them with Career agents, COSMOS or Datacenters - again, important thing is to achieve desired results. For all starting factions it's 3.81 with two friendly factions and 2.3 and 3.0 with enemy factions. With initially high standings it's also possbile to achieve 3.0 with both enemy factions, which skips one SoE Epic arc. If 3.0 and 3.2 is achieved with enemy factions, one faction Epic Arc can be changed to SoE Epic Arc, which is significantly easier, but offers less rewards.

Proof of concept

In this section I will describe my run, together with skips I did, and time needed to finish complete Ploy. Keep in mind that my starting point might be higher than yours - this has the most impact on difficulty/time needed to complete it.

Starting situation

My initial standings were... [TBC]

FIN?