Faction standing for dummies

[Baldrake]

I've been confused about how faction standings work, and I know from hanging in the in-game chat channels that I'm not the only one. So I read up on it, and am happy to present the basics.

The problem: When you move from one race's area to another, agents will no longer talk with you. E.g., I as a Gallente am trying to get closer to Minmatar space to be nearer the F13 base, and can no longer get decent combat missions.

Solution: You have to gain faction with the corporation that these NPC agents belong to. Faction is a numeric value that can be influenced by in-game actions. There are numerous ways of lowering faction with another race. There are exactly two ways of raising it:

• Train the connections skill
• Do story-line missions given by agents from that faction.

Additionally, it is helpful to train the social skill. This increases the faction gained by doing story missions.

Pragmatics: Gaining faction is an awfully tedious and time-consuming process. The best (only?) approach seems to be:

• Train connections and social as high as you can
• Find the highest level agent for that corporation that you can, and do missions until your eyes bleed. At some point you should unlock story missions. Yes, you may wind up doing level 1 missions in your battleship.

Misconceptions: A few things are commonly believed but are not true:

• Training negotiation does not improve faction. Negotiation increases the payout from missions (in isk), but has no effect on faction.
• Normal missions do not directly improve faction; doing normal missions may open up story-line missions, however, which do help.
• Ratting (killing mobs in the faction's space) does not improve faction.

Technicality: The diplomacy skill raises faction of corporations for whom you have negative standing. In this rare case, train enough diplomacy to make your standing positive, then train connections. If your faction is positive, diplomacy has no effect on faction standing.

Resource: All this and more is covered here.

If anyone has anything to add, please do!

[dwindlehop]

I think you can train a higher-tier connections skill once you've trained the basic. There's military connections, resesarch connections, etc.

[Baldrake]

Hmm, you had me excited there. But unless I'm reading the description wrong, these improve loyalty point gain, but have no effect on faction.

[Strazos]

You don't Have to do lvl 1 missions in a BS...you could always swap out to a smaller ship. I plan on bringing my Destroyer down to run lvl 1s.

[Llyse]

btw you can talk to agents of factions that hate you with diplomacy btw so please get it if you've got 5.0 standing with a FACTION (i.e. Caldari, not a corp)

[Baldrake]

I think you meant -5.0, not 5.0? :)

Diplomacy only works if you have negative faction. Otherwise, it has no effect whatsoever.

[Reg]

One thing that's related to this topic is that the Gallente and Minmatar are allies so doing missions for your Gallente agents will raise your Minmatar faction as well. The same applies to the Caldari and Amarr. There are also neutral factions like the Sisters of Eve. Doing missions for them will raise your faction with all 4 nations.

[Baldrake]

Good point!

I think the effect is fairly marginal, though. E.g., my standing with Gallente faction is 1.09 (pre adjustments for connections skill.) My Minmatar faction is 0.08. So doing Gallente missions does not seem like an awesome way of raising Minmatar faction.

[Silus Fromme]

I think you can train a higher-tier connections skill once you've trained the basic. There's military connections, resesarch connections, etc.

Those skills improve loyalty point gain for doing missions for agents of a specific department, but don't affect standing increase at all AFAIK.  So, for example, if you have 1 point of Military Connections you'll get 5% more LP for doing missions for Command agents, regardless of corporation.  Of course, those skills are mission-drop/agent-offer only skills, not available on the NPC market, and tend to go for 85+ million isk per skill book.

Also, the blurb about "doing missions doesn't increase faction, only storyline" (para.) is true but a bit misleading.  Doing missions for a corp raises standing for that corp regardless of your standing with the faction that corp belongs to.  In general, corp standing is more important (and more easily manipulable) than faction standing.

I've heard it said that Criminal Connections and Diplomacy do basically the same thing, and don't stack.  So, for every corp with which you have negative standing, you'll get a standing boost from either Criminal Connections or Diplomacy, whichever is highest.  Can't verify that last bit though.

[Baldrake]

Also, the blurb about "doing missions doesn't increase faction, only storyline" (para.) is true but a bit misleading.  Doing missions for a corp raises standing for that corp regardless of your standing with the faction that corp belongs to.  In general, corp standing is more important (and more easily manipulable) than faction standing.

Ah.

That raises a question then. In gaining access to an agent from corporation C of faction F, is the issue your standing with C or F? Or both? And if both, blended how? On re-reading, the link I gave above seems to imply that sufficient standing with either C or F is sufficient, in which case indeed, doing missions with an agent of the same corporation directly helps out.

So for example, if you want to do sec missions for Minmatar, try to improve your standing both with Minmatar and with the Sebiestor Tribe corporation.

[dwindlehop]

Do belt rats have agents? Is it possible to raise your standing with them so they don't attack? Not that I would ever grind that out, but it would be amusing.

[Roac]

Do belt rats have agents? Is it possible to raise your standing with them so they don't attack? Not that I would ever grind that out, but it would be amusing.

Rats have agents, but dunno if that'll stop the ships from attacking.

[Wolf]

Do belt rats have agents? Is it possible to raise your standing with them so they don't attack? Not that I would ever grind that out, but it would be amusing.

Yeah I was thinking that too the other day. And stations and stuff. I'd love to join the serpentis faction for the factional warfare if it's possible.

[Toast]

faction implementation will be really nice for non-pvp players.

[Silus Fromme]

Ah.

That raises a question then. In gaining access to an agent from corporation C of faction F, is the issue your standing with C or F? Or both? And if both, blended how? On re-reading, the link I gave above seems to imply that sufficient standing with either C or F is sufficient, in which case indeed, doing missions with an agent of the same corporation directly helps out.

So for example, if you want to do sec missions for Minmatar, try to improve your standing both with Minmatar and with the Sebiestor Tribe corporation.

I think that increasing faction standing does give some across the board increase to the standing of all corporations associated with that faction but I can't say to what degree.  I think you'd generally find it easier to just increase corp standing for the corp you want to work for, unless it's possible to have a spread of standings such that you can't get an agent for FactionA-CorpX but can get an agent for FactionA-CorpY.

[Reg]

Doing insane numbers of missions for the Gallente Navy has increased my faction with all Gallente corps such that I have access to level 3 agents in most of them without ever having done a single mission for them. I think my base faction for all Gallente corporations must take my standing to the Gallente nation into account somehow.