The following is the final draft submitted to EON for the first part of my Insider's Guide to Missions. This is the complete draft and it is quite interesting to compare how the published article differs from the draft and how the editor's hand has been applied!

Like my other Insiders Guides, this article is quite old now and some of the details are out of date now. I may get round to updating this and create a new guide, but for the timebeing I thought I'd share here.

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INSIDER'S GUIDE TO MISSIONS - PART I:
THE BASICS

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TEXT: WRITER'S NAME
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Love them or loath them, missions form a large part of EVE for many players. Whether you are grinding missions for a Navy Raven offer, running missions to earn isk for your toys or just passing time waiting for corp mates before embarking on a mining expedition, we will all run missions at some time in our EVE career.

Missions can be an important source of isk and minerals but as well as these benefits the associated Corporation and Faction standing changes have an important role to play in the current game mechanics. It is likely that standings will increase in importance with the introduction of Kali and Factional Warfare.

Mission Types

There are five specific mission types that all fall into one of two generic mission groups. Missions can either be defined as kill type missions which involve flying to a location and destroying ships found there, or courier type missions which require the delivery of items to specific stations. The Journal entry for a mission will indicate the specific mission type, the most common being "Courier" and "Kill".

Courier missions entail moving goods from one station to another. Theses goods may be specific sealed cargoes or they could be common market commodities. You may need to make multiple deliveries across many systems using an industrial transport ship, or the delivery may be able to fit in to the hold of a frigate and only involve a quick visit to the next system. The "Kill" type of mission involves the pilot warping to a location and destroying the ships found there. Sometimes these missions will involve multiple warps to different locations to deal with several distinct spawns, or may just be a warp to a single location where single or multiple spawns arrive.

Less common types

In addition to courier and kill missions, there are also Trade, Mining and Encounter type missions. Trade missions require a pilot to provide the Agent with the goods requested in the mission briefing. These goods need to be purchased or produced by the pilot and delivered to the destination station. Mining missions require the pilot to deliver volumes of minerals or ore to a certain location. These items can either be mined and reprocessed directly by the pilot or purchased on the open market.

Encounter missions are similar to kill missions except that they are located in Deadspace complexes or ‘dungeons'. There are currently two types of Encounter missions, those located in Deadspace pockets where you warp to an acceleration gate prior to engaging with the NPCs, and those where you warp directly to an engagement.

For every 16 regular missions you complete, you will be offered a storyline mission. Storyline missions will be one of the regular mission types (Mining, Kill, etc.) but they differ by having an impact on your Faction as well as Corporation standing. The 16 missions can be completed for any Agent, as long as those Agents are aligned with the same Faction and are at the same level. The number of missions is not altered or reset by rejecting an offered mission or failing an accepted mission.

Mission Rewards

One of the main reasons people run missions is for financial gain. Through mission rewards, bounties and loot you can make mission running a profitable experience. The level of rewards are derived from a number of factors, including the level of Agent you are working for, the quality and effective quality of that Agent, the pilot's security status and the system's security level. Generally the higher the Agent's quality and the lower the system security level, the better the rewards.

Mission rewards are not fixed. There is a dynamic algorithm in place that averages out the time it takes to complete each mission, so that the longer a mission takes the greater the rewards. The Agent system automatically determines a mission ‘hardness' based on the average mission time, thus any two missions that generally take about the same amount of time to complete will give roughly the same level of rewards for the same Agent.

The most obvious return on a mission is the base mission pay. This is the first isk figure you see on the Agent's offer and will vary greatly depending on the aforementioned factors. The second main reward is the bonus that you will be awarded if you complete the mission in a specified time. The bonus reward can be either cash or trade goods that the Agent's Corporation sell on the market.

Bigger rewards
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For Kill and Encounter missions you will also receive income in the form of pirate bounties and loot. In many circumstances the bounties in kill missions greatly outweigh the Agent's rewards for the mission. Not all ships have bounties, however. Rogue Drones drop valuable alloys which can be sold or reprocessed and the main Faction navies drop tags which can be traded for isk.

Encounter missions usually include several structures. Sometime these structures will drop loot when destroyed, including implants, rare skillbooks and other items. It is best to review mission notes for each mission to see which structures have a chance to drop items and pop only those, leaving the rest.

Finally, all non-storyline Agents also offer Loyalty Points (LP) for completing missions. The amount of LP is mission specific, modified by the Agent base quality, the Agent solar system security rating and your skill level in the relevant Divisional Connections skills.

Agent Offers:

Once you have any LP with a given Agent you will periodically receive an invitation from that Agent to exchange some of your accumulated LP for a particular offer. These offers are not limited to the Agent's level but rather to the Faction the Agent is aligned with. When an Agent makes you an offer, he will randomly select one from the 10 best offers he can give you.

Probably the most desired offers are the Divisional Connection skillbooks which are available at 15k LP and can sell for anywhere between 50 and 200 million isk. Other popular offers are attribute enhancement implants. Each of the implants offers will be for one or more implants with each implant having a base LP value. A +1 attribute enhancement implant is offered at 1.5k LP, +2 implants are offered at 9k LP, +3 implants at 15k LP, +4s at 100k LP and +5s at 450k LP. You can also be offered one, two, four or eight sets of these implants, so for example you may receive an offer for four +3 implants in exchange for 60k LP.

As a general rule of thumb you should aim for returns of around 1,000 isk per LP. It is worth noting that if you turn down an offer from an Agent they will not make a further offer until you have completed another mission for them.

Agent attributes

Agents have a level, a quality and an effective quality. All these factors combine to define the difficulty of the mission you are offered and the level of rewards you will receive. The higher the Agent level, the harder the missions. For combat this means for Level 1 Agents you will face frigates, with Level 2 Agents you will mostly fight frigates but with some cruisers, at Level 3 you will see mostly cruisers and some battlecruisers, and with Level 4 Agents you will be up against battleships, battlecruisers and lots of cruisers and frigates. For courier missions this means larger deliveries and more jumps.

Agents also have a base quality, measured on a scale of -20 to +20, and an affective quality, rated between -30 and +55. An Agent's base quality, coupled with their Level, is used to determine if you have access to the Agent and their effective quality is involved in calculating mission rewards. Effective quality is derived from an Agent's base quality plus a combination of your skill and standing with that Agent. Generally, the higher an Agent's effective quality, the better the mission rewards.

Additionally, each Agent belongs to a Corporation Division. The Agent's Division determines the type of mission they generally offer. (see Agent Divisions left/right/up/down/wherever you put it).

Standings

Standings affect many features in the game. At the simplest level standings control which Agents you have access to. Beyond this, standings impact a pilot's access to Jump clones, their ability to anchor POSs in empire space, amounts of minerals lost in the refining process and a whole host of costs, including sales taxes, research and factory costs. Further, if you have -5.0 standing or below to a given Faction, you run the risk of being attacked by that Faction's navy when in their space. You can view your Faction, Corporation and Agent standings via the ‘Standings' tab on your character sheet.

Agent availability is dependant on your Corporation and Faction standing, with each Agent requiring you to have a certain standing to be able to work for them. The standings you need for a particular Agent can be found on their ‘Agent Info' tab.

Standings increases:

When you complete a mission you will get a base standing increase which will depend on the perceived difficulty of the mission. This base standing increase is used to calculate the Agent and Corporation standing increase and is modified by your Social skill level.

The Agent and Corporation standing increase is stated as a percentage value. This is not simply added to your current standing, rather it defines the percentage change between your current standing and the maximum or minimum available standing.

You will receive Agent and Corporation standings losses if you fail to complete a mission or you let the mission offer time out. You will also receive a similar standing hit if you reject an offered mission within 4 hours of refusing an earlier mission from the same Agent.

When you complete storyline missions, you will receive standing gains to the storyline Agent's Corporation and the Faction that the Corporation is aligned with (the primary Faction). You will also receive standing gains to other Factions friendly to the primary Faction as well as standing hits to Factions hostile to the primary Faction. While the standing gains to the primary Faction will continue as long as you complete their storyline missions, the impact on friendly and hostile Faction standings is limited by their standing towards the primary Faction. For example, the Minmatar Republic holds the Gallente Federation in a standing of +8.00. For every completed Gallente storyline mission you will gain Minmatar Republic standing, however your standing towards the Republic will not raise above +8.00 as a result of these missions.

Standings decreases:

It should be noted that you will also receive Faction standing hits when you destroy certain ships belonging to those Factions. Many pilots chose to avoid these Faction kill missions to help preserve their Faction standings.

You can view the history of how your Agent, Corporation and Factions standing changes through the ‘Standings' tab on your character sheet. Select an entity, right click and select Show Transactions. This will show a list of all your recent activity for that entity and list a standing change for each.

While it is possible to have good standings with Agents, Corporations and Factions, it is also possible to have poor, negative standings with them. Apart from limiting your access to the best Agents, negative standings do not have any significant implications until they fall below -2.00. If an Agent's standing is -2.00 or lower, that Agent will not talk to you. At a Corporation standing of -2.00 or lower, no Agents in that Corporation will offer you missions. A Faction standing of -2.00 or lower means that you will not be able to get any missions from any of that Faction's Agents. Further, a Faction standing of -5.0 or lower will result in that Faction's navy vessels attacking you on sight when you enter their sovereign space.

Negative Standings

There are a number of ways to fix bad standings. The simplest is to start running missions for the affected Faction, but if your standings are too low you may not be able do this. The next option is to train the Diplomacy skill. This may also not raise your standings to such a degree to allow you access to even the lowest quality Agents. The third option is to run missions for a Faction friendly to the affected Faction and receive derived standing gains from storyline missions.

If none of the previous steps work, the last option open to you is to purposely fail storyline missions for Factions hostile to the affected Faction. This will result in a Corporation and primary and friendly Faction standing losses, but at the same time will induce hostile Faction standing gains.

The true mission running professional will make sure that all their Faction standings are in balance. They will do missions for all Factions and carefully check their standings level to ensure they have access to as many Agents as possible.

Further details regarding standings, including the formula used to calculate Corporate and Faction standing changes and detailed charts showing inter-Faction standings and modifiers, can be found at http://www.NewEdenLibrary.net/eon/standings.shtml

Required skills

The unpopular social skills are the mission runner's friend. Alongside the offensive and defensive skills required to be able to deal with pirate threats and the ship skills to be able to transport goods, the social skills improve your access to Agents and the rewards you receive from them.

The social skills fall into two main categories, namely those relating to improving standings (which in turn improve mission pay) and those that directly improve mission rewards. There are five skills relating to standings: Social; Connections; Criminal Connections; Diplomacy; and Negotiation.

The Social skill is the base skill for all the other social skills and must be trained to Level 3 before you can train those remaining skills. As well as being the base skill, the Social skill improves the standing gains you receive for each mission you complete. Each trained level gives a 5% bonus to the base mission standing increase.

The three other connections skills all relate to Agent, Corporation and Faction standings. Each level trained in these skills gives a 4% bonus to effective standing towards all relevant entities. The Connections skill relates to friendly entities (i.e. those that you have a positive standing with), the Diplomacy skill relates to hostile entities (i.e. those to whom you have a negative standing) and the Criminal Connections skill relates to criminal NPCs (i.e. those with low CONCORD standing).

The description for the Negotiation skill states that it improves pay for Agent missions by 5%, however it achieves this indirectly by altering the Agent's effective quality.

Specialist skills

As well as the skills that improve your standings, there are also nine further skills that improve the rewards you receive from missions. The seven Divisional Connections skills improve your LP gain by 5% per level when working for Agents in the related Corporation divisions. See "Divisional Connections Skills" left/above/wherever
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Fast Talk improves the pilot's effective security status, with each level trained giving a 5% bonus to effective security rating. This improves mission payouts as certain NPC pirates have their bounties increased depending on the security status of the pilot.

The final skill is DED Connections. Apparently this skill grants an additional 1,500 isk bounty reward for each NPC pirate destroyed, but as it is not actually seeded in game its effect can't be confirmed.

Further details of how the social skills affect agent availability and rewards, including calculations showing skill effects on standings and other attributes, can be found at http://www.NewEdenLibrary.net/eon/skills.shtml

In Summary...

Mission running can be profitable as well as fun. While they don't reflect all EVE has to offer, missions can provide a distraction for older players and a source of income for new pilots. With the introduction of Factional Warfare in Kali, the standing gains and losses resulting from mission running will likely take on greater significant and give the mission running profession something different to aim for.

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In Part 2 of this Insider's Guide we will look at tips and tricks for maximising your earnings, ship setups, looting and more... Stay tuned!

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BIG LOOT

There are a small number of missions that may spawn a pirate Faction as part of the target ships. These rare spawns will give significantly higher bounties and may also drop valuable Faction equipment. Faction spawns have been confirmed on the Level 4 missions 'Worlds Collide', ‘The Blockade' and ‘Gone Berserk'.

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AGENT DIVISIONS

Corporations are comprised of several divisions and each Agent works for one of these divisions. All Agents can give out all types of mission, but certain divisions favour certain mission types. The following table indicates the most common type of mission offered for each Corporation Division:

Division	Primary Mission Group
Accounting	Courier
Administration	Kill
Advisory	Courier
Archives	Courier
Astrosurveying	Kill
Command	Kill
Distribution	Courier
Financial	Courier
Intelligence	Kill
Internal Security	Kill
Legal	Courier
Manufacturing	Courier
Marketing	Courier
Mining	Courier
Personnel	Courier
Production	Courier
Public Relations	Courier
R&D	Courier
Security	Kill
Storage	Courier
Surveillance	Kill

There have been attempts to calculate the ratio of mission types offered by each division, but no definitive results have been seen. Also, according to some of the CCP developers, the mission type you are offered depends upon the ship you are flying when you request a mission, however this has not been validated by the pilot community either.

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MISSION REWARDS
Low Sec Vs High Sec

The security level of the system where you are running missions greatly affects the rewards you receive for those missions. You will receive higher mission payouts and greater LP amounts the lower the system security level. The highest quality level 4 Agents are all located outside of secure Empire space. According to the Devs, there are certain high reward missions, such as Worlds Collide, that should only be offered in low sec systems.

While the rewards of running missions in lower security systems are greater, so are the risks. It is not unheard of for mission runners to be ambushed by groups of player pirates in low sec space. Techniques for safe-spot busting allow pirates to easily locate pilots and warp to them for quick and easy kills.

Generally, when you set up your ship for mission running you fit for facing local rats, with the appropriate resists and damage types. While these fittings will work well on missions, they tend to be very poor PvP set ups. Conversely, good PvP configurations tend to perform poorly as mission running ships. If you are mission running in low sec, you may want to review your setup to strike a balance between your NPC tank / gank configuration and the demands of PvP. If you are planning on running, fitting a few Warp Core Stabilizers may be a good idea, or if you are going to stand your ground and fight, NOS, Neuts and EW are possible modules you may want to fit. Whatever your choice, keep an eye on Local and be wary of unknown pilots.

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SKILLS
Divisional Connection Skills
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Each Agent belongs to a division (Accounting, Legal, Security, etc.). Each division has two related Divisional Connection skills as shown below. The increase to the mission LP offer can be calculated with the following formula:

Bureaucratic Financial High Tech Labor Military Political Trade Accounting X X Administration X X Advisory X X Archives X X Astrosurveying X X Command X X Distribution X X Financial X X Intelligence X X Internal Security X X Legal X X Manufacturing X X Marketing X X Mining X X Personnel X X Production X X Public Relations X X R&D X X Security X X Storage X X Surveillance X X

These Divisional Connections skillbooks are only available through Agent LP offers and command a high price in markets and escrow.