Story Missions?

[Venkman]

Noticed last night a new (to me) entry in one of my lists (I think either Agents or under my Character): Story Mission. Looks like this was part of the Trinity patch.

Is this just for newbs? Does it culminate in anything useful for someone who's doing newb stuff?

[IainC]

Every 16 regular missions you'llget offered a storyline one. Sometimes they have nice rewards (a big chunk of cash or an implant are common), but mostly you do them for the huge boost to faction standings you'll get if you complete it (and the huge hit you'll take if you fail or decline it).

[Venkman]

Do those Story Missions come from the same agent you did the 16 missions for? Or do they send you somewhere else?

And I apologize to whoever answered this question to me the other night ingame. The "16" reminded me I should have remember that already

[Llyse]

Different Agent. usually in a another system

[Mook]

When you accept your 16th mission, eve will do a search on the storyline agents available/appropriate to you, and the closest one will then send you an Eve-mail stating something along the lines of "Hi <name>, I've got an important task for you, please come see me as soon as possible. I am located at <station name - system name>." I THINK that if there are no storyline agents within range of you (within 3 or 4 jumps I think) when you accept your 16th mission you just skip that "chance" for a storyline mission, but I'm not sure about that one.

[Endie]

It seems to be a bit more complex than that.  You can work the system, though.

Every 16 missions of a given level (you can't run 15 L3s, then 1 L4 and get an L4 storyline, but you can run the missions with different agents of that level) you are given a storyline mission.  The system should look to see what the nearby (same constellation?  withn x jumps?  tricky to tell) agents of the same faction are, and choose randomly between them.  So if you are running Caldari missions you should get a Caldari storyline chosen from amongst the nearby Caldari corp storyline agents.

You can game to dramatically increase this by finding an isolated agent of your chosen corp in foreign space.  So there is a Kaalakiota storyline agent in Sukirah, for instance, and no other Caldari ones nearby.  So you always get a Kaalakiota storyline running missions there.  This lets you accelerate grinding with a corp massively.

Note that you should always get a storyline mission every 16 missions: if you do not you can petition.  You can also petition if you get allocated a storyline agent some huge difference away (this bug used to happen sometimes and messed up the isolated agent practise).

The effect, by the way, of completing a storyline will be a more-or-less substantial standings gain with the faction that the corp belongs to (and changes to standings with other factions depending on their feelings about that faction).  You will also get a very big standings jump with the corp that the storyline agent belongs to.  If you get lucky and draw a multipart storyline combat mission you can see your corp standings leap by 30% or so.

Other footnote: standings gains are expressed as a percentage.  This is calculated like shields and armour: it is a percentage of the difference between your current standings and 10.  So 30% would take you from 0.0 to 3.0, or from 4.0 to 6.0.

[ajax34i]

Other footnote: standings gains are expressed as a percentage.  This is calculated like shields and armour: it is a percentage of the difference between your current standings and 10.  So 30% would take you from 0.0 to 3.0, or from 4.0 to 6.0.

Is that a percentage of the base standings, or a percentage of what's displayed after Social skills are taken into account?

[Murgos]

Social skills are also a percentage.

At low levels of status Diplomacy 3 may add 1.5 or more points.  At status 7 (I checked this last night) Diplomacy 3 adds about .5 of a point of status.

[Nerf]

Do you mean connections? Thats the one that gives standings on top of base, I wasn't aware diplomacy did as well.

[Endie]

Do you mean connections? Thats the one that gives standings on top of base, I wasn't aware diplomacy did as well.

Diplomacy works for people that dislike you (ie on negative standings).

[Murgos]

Do you mean connections? Thats the one that gives standings on top of base, I wasn't aware diplomacy did as well.

Sorry, yes, connections.

[Polysorbate80]

When I was working Amarr Navy faction, they used to ship me off to a storyline agent in another corporation (Court Chamberlain) some 8 or so jumps away, despite the fact there was an actual Amarr Navy story agent in the same system I got my missions from.

Now that I work out of Oisio, I get all my storyline missions from a Caldary Navy agent in the same system I "live" in, and it's much nicer.  The L4 agent there isn't all that great, but the system is much less crowded than the good one in, whatzit, Motsu?

My CN faction has been stuck on 9.99 forever though, I should just give up on that last .01 and get back to working Corporate Police again.

[Phred]

What's the deal with agent quality? Has anyone seen it make any difference? I moved to an agent of 19 quality from one who was at 0 quality and in several ways the rewards have gotten worse? The average payout per mission seems to be down by half on many of the missions and I haven't got any cool rewards or loot to balance this. Before, my L0 agent seemed to spit out missions that payed 45-55k isk each. Usually with bonus they were slightly over 100k. Now I'm seeing way more 25-40k missions.
The only plus I'm seeing is that the faction awards per mission seem to be a bit higher.

[Gets]

If you do missions for an agent you gain standing with that agent. If he likes you then your effective quality goes up quite a bit. My 9.0 with the L2 in Murini who's feet I've been kissing for way too long now, plus my Social skills, has a quality of 11 but an effective quality of 34. I'm actually sad to leave him now. He does have a nice pedicure.

[Raging Turtle]

What's the deal with agent quality? Has anyone seen it make any difference? I moved to an agent of 19 quality from one who was at 0 quality and in several ways the rewards have gotten worse? The average payout per mission seems to be down by half on many of the missions and I haven't got any cool rewards or loot to balance this. Before, my L0 agent seemed to spit out missions that payed 45-55k isk each. Usually with bonus they were slightly over 100k. Now I'm seeing way more 25-40k missions.
The only plus I'm seeing is that the faction awards per mission seem to be a bit higher.

System Sec rating also makes a difference.  Bigger rewards from a .5 than a 1.0