Missions

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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.

Encounter Missions

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.

Mining Missions

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.

Courier 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).

Trade Missions

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.

It is worth noting that running out of time on a mission you have accepted (usually a week, but the Wee Bug Problem courier mission has a failure timer of 12 hours) will cause a standings loss with the agent, corporation, and faction. Declining a mission for a particular agent more than once every four hours will also cause a standings loss with the agent, corporation, and faction. If an agent you recently declined a mission from offers you another undesirable mission, you can click DELAY, wait out the four hour timer while you go do something else, and then click DECLINE.

To see a history of how your standings have changed, you can go to NeoCom > Character Sheet > Standings, scroll through the list of NPC entities, right-click an entry and select SHOW TRANSACTIONS to see how much your standings went up or down for what actions and by how much. All the percentage changes you see in the Transaction Log are as described above, with the exception that (due to a possible bug) any percentage changes due to "Derived Modification" are percentage changes of 10.0, not percentage decays towards an extreme. (The experimental basis for this statement is here.)

Regular Agents (not of the R&D Division)

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 and can range from 1 to 5; 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) and can range from -20 to +20; 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.

For an agent to offer you missions, you must reach a certain standings requirement which depends upon the agent's Level and Quality. The requirement is:

Requirement = (Level - 1) * 2 + Quality * 0.05

So, a Level 2 Quality 0 agent requires that you have a standing of 2.0 or higher. Level 3 Quality 0 requires a standing of 4.0 or higher. Level 3 Quality 1 requires a standing of 4.05 or higher. ...and so on. The one categorical exception to this is that Level 1 Quality 0 (or less) agents will offer missions to any player regardless of standings; this is a new change in EVE Online: Dominion.

The exception aside, to be offered missions from the agent, either the agent's personal standing towards you, their corporation's standing towards you, or their faction's standing towards you must meet the requirement; any one of the three will suffice. For example, Eveynel Daerne is a Level 3, Quality -11 agent in Orduin IX - Moon 4 - Transstellar Shipping Storage. This agent is part of the Transstellar Shipping corporation, which is part of the Gallente Federation faction. The standings requirement is therefore 3.45, so at least one of the following 3 conditions must be true to get missions from Eveynel Daerne:

  • Eveynel Daerne's personal standing towards you is 3.45 or higher.
  • Transstellar Shipping's standing towards you is 3.45 or higher.
  • The Gallente Federation's standing towards you is 3.45 or higher.

The fact that Eveynel Daerne is located in the Orduin solar system, which is the sovereign territory of the Minmatar Republic, is completely irrelevant. High Minmatar Republic standings will not give you access to missions from Eveynel Daerne. This concept applies as a rule to all agents of a faction who are located in a different faction's sovereign space.

Gaining access to slightly-higher level mission can be eased by training two skills: Diplomacy and Connections (and "Connections" is not to be confused with other social skills, mentioned above, of the names "{Something} Connections"). Diplomacy gives you a standings boost with agents, NPC corporations, and factions that dislike you to begin with, and this boost is 4% per level of the Diplomacy skill. Connections gives you a standings boost with agents, NPC corporations, and factions that like you to begin with, and this boost is 4% per level of the Connections skill. Between Diplomacy and Connections, only one will apply, but it will give a boost significant enough to ease the process of getting access to Level 2 missions.

When you complete a regular mission for an agent, you get increased standings with the agent and the corporation, but not the faction. It is worth noting that if the mission involves destroying ships or structures of a different faction, then your standings with the target faction go down due to "Combat - Ship Kill", but your standings with the agent's faction will not change. Those who wish to be able to fly in all High Security space are advised to decline all anti-Empire missions (that is, anti-Amarr, anti-Ammatar, anti-Caldari, anti-Gallente, and anti-Minmatar). Some exceptions or workarounds exist; for example, a Minmatar agent might give you the mission Friendly Spies, where if you destroy the mission objective but none of the hostile ships, then you don't lose Gallente Federation standings. In other cases, the standing losses due to "Combat - Ship Kill" are almost insignificant, such as Amarrian Tyrants, Level 3, or Against the Empire, Level 3. Some missions, though, will incur -2.4% standing losses for ship kills and might require one or more completed storyline missions for the opposing side to repair the standings losses (for example, Against The Empire, Level 1; yes, the Amarr standing loss on Level 3 is insignificant while the standing loss on Level 1 is bad; losses are only consistent for the exact same mission and level).

Storyline Missions

The game tracks how many missions you've completed for each level and each faction. For every 16 missions of the same level and faction (but not necessarily the same corporation) that you complete, you will get a new Storyline Mission offer from a Storyline Agent of the same Faction; you will be sent this offer by EVEmail in your NeoCom. This will always be the Storyline Agent closest to the regular agent who gave you your 16th mission (in terms of number of jumps) with two exceptions. First, if the closest Storyline Agent has already made you an offer that you haven't accepted or declined, then it will be the second-closest Storyline Agent that you get the offer from. Second, if the agent who gave you the 16th regular mission that you completed was in High Security, then the Storyline offer will always come from a Storyline Agent in High Security. You cannot work for a Storyline Agent unless you received an offer. Completing a Storyline Mission increases your standings with the agent's corporation, the agent's faction, and that faction's allies. You also lose standings with the enemies of the agent's faction, though this is generally a smaller percentage loss than the percentage gain you get for the agent's faction.

When trying to increase standings with a particular NPC corporation, it is possible to plan your missioning such that when you hand in your 16th mission, you get your offer from the Storyline Agent of the corporation that you are focusing on.

Epic Arc Missions

An epic arc mission is a series of about fifty missions which are split up into chapters. Throughout the arc, the player will be offered several choices which will branch the arc in one or more directions. The missions that make up these arcs typically have very good ISK rewards and typically the last mission of the arc carries a handsome reward.

At the time of this writing there five Epic Mission Arcs. One for each of the empire factions, and one for the Sisters of Eve corporation. The last of those is an especially good starting point for new pilots. Most of the Sisters of Eve arc missions can be easily solo'd in T1 fit destroyer class ship. The last few missions may require the help of a corp mate.

The Blood-Stained Stars

  • Faction: Sisters of Eve
  • Corporation: Sisters of Eve
  • Agent: Sister Alitura
  • Agent Level: 1
  • Location: Arnon IX - Moon 3 - Sisters of Eve Bureau

Right to Rule

Penumbra

Syndication

Wildfire

Information Sourced from http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Epic_mission_arcs

Other mission types

Tutorial missions are missions that are supposed to help new players learn how to play EVE Online. Each player character can only do each Tutorial Mission from a given Tutorial Agent once ever, but the tutorial mission chains do count as Storylines in increasing corporation and faction standings.

There are other mission types known as COSMOS, and Data Center. COSMOS and Data Center missions are described in further detail in Gaining faction standings fast.

Mission Walkthroughs and Mission Preparation

The universe of EVE is a dangerous place, and encounter missions are not exceptions. The unprepared and unwary can lose their ships unnecessarily. (Most mining missions are not heavily combat-oriented, though there are a couple of mining missions where a mining barge absolutely should not go in first.) The first thing to know, as always, is never to fly what you cannot afford to lose, which usually means "Never fly anything that you cannot afford to buy completely new replacements for."

The second thing to know is the mission you are being offered. Always understand exactly what you will encounter in a mission before you accept it; if you accept a mission without understanding it, and it turns out to be too difficult, then your only options are to get help from other players (who may or may not be trustworthy) or to quit the mission. You might lose your ship in the process of discovering that the mission is too difficult for you. A great in-game browser (igb) link to add in for missions is Eve Survival. Most (if not all) regular and storyline missions are documented there, and you can read the details of what you need to do in the mission before you accept the mission, including (most importantly) details that the agent does not tell you up front.

A great guide for the Sisters of Eve epic mission arc can be found here.

The third thing to know is that NPCs in missions tend to be very predictable in their setups. The mission guides linked above will go into detail for each particular mission, but there are trends. For example, Gallente and Serpentis use only Kinetic and Thermal damage against you, but are also most susceptible to Kinetic and Thermal damage themselves; when they use any form of Electronic Warfare (EWAR), it's always sensor dampening. Blood Raiders use mostly EM/thermal damage and are most susceptible to EM/thermal damage, and while they don't use (what the University considers) EWAR, they do use Energy Neutralizers and Energy Vampires. Mercenaries and Rogue Drones aren't as consistent from mission to mission, but are a lot more consistent over multiple occurrences of the exact same mission and level. This predictability can be used to your advantage: if you're flying Level 2 or higher missions, you'll want to fit resistance modules for the type of damage the enemy will throw at you: Kinetic/Thermal for Gallente, Caldari, Serpentis, Guristas, and Mordu's Legion; EM/Thermal for Amarr, Sanshas, and Blood Raiders, Explosive/Kinetic for Angel Cartel and Minmatar. You may need two or more resistance modules of the same type if a lot of damage is going to be thrown at you.

Finally, try to set up your ship to do the damage types that the enemy is most vulnerable to. Those who rely on hybrid or laser turrets to do damage are out of luck in this regard. Those who rely on non-sentry drones to do damage should use Minmatar drones if the enemy is susceptible to explosive damage (typically Minmatar Republic and Angel Cartel), and Gallente drones for all other targets (because drones have an ATTRIBUTE called DAMAGE MODIFIER which is 1.6 for Gallente drones and smaller for everything else, so the increased thermal damage done by Gallente drones overcomes the extra thermal resistance of whoever you're throwing drones at). Missiles should be chosen for their damage types. Sentry drones should also be chosen for their damage types (primarily because Garde-class Gallente Sentry Drones have great damage and tracking speeds, but horrible range compared to other sentry drones). Projectile turret ammunition should be chosen according to damage types; this isn't as trivial as for missiles because projectile ammunition does a mixture of damage types that leans heavily towards one type or another. The base numbers for small projectile ammunition is shown below; larger ammunition follows the same proportions:

Projectile Type EM Thermal Kinetic Explosive Optimal Range Bonus Tracking Bonus
EMP 9 2 1 -50%
Phased Plasma 10 2 -50%
Fusion 2 10 -50%
Titanium Sabot 6 2 +20%
Depleted Uranium 3 2 3 +20%
Proton 3 2 +60% +5%
Nuclear 1 4 +60% +5%
Carbonized Lead 4 1 +60% +5%

Finding an agent

Guides


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

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