Sunday, 30 June 2013

Cascading annoyances

That wasn't particularly constructive. Well, at least I trained the basic skills, invented some blueprints and produced thirty T2 modules, which I don't think sold because I have no time or patience to play 0.01 ISK games. I will one of these days go to Dodixie and change the price. But I don't think modules are worth it for casual production after all, the profit per module is too small to bother. I have queued Mechnics V, so will check out ships during the week.

The annoyances which gave the post its title started on Saturday, when I tried to do some belt ratting in lowsec. It was in some ways even more empty than usual, except one guy who quite apparently stalked my ship. From curiosity I even backtracked and watched the gate cloaked, and it was Loki. Well, there are reasons why lowsec is mostly deserted, and it is mostly my fault by still not joining a corp or anything. If I was playing the, after all, massively multiplayer game as it should be played it would have been probably fairly easy to set a trap or something. But alas.

In any case, that was merely annoying, but then I chose to do some missions, because I started forgetting why I stopped doing them. That might have not been the reason at the time. I wanted at some point to bring up Caldari standings, so I started doing L3 Caldari missions. When did I get standings to five with Caldari Business Tribunal? Well, factoring the Connections skill, but still.

What I did forget was how long sixteen missions take. But once I started I didn't want to give up. So after several hours of missions, and I also forgot that L3 missions do not actually give all that much ISK per hour, I finally got a simple delivery storyline. And it brought my Caldari standing high enough that with Diplomacy skill it was positive.

What I forgot about was that I had Gallente standing at just above three, which gave me access to all Gallente L3 agents. Including the Roden Shipyards agent I started research at. It doesn't stop research, I think, although maybe it does, but definitely blocks those small courier missions R&D agents give. R&D is kind of crippled right now, what with datacores dropping from exploration and sold in Faction Warfare LP stores, but still. It just bothers me.

So, I started doing distribution missions for Roden Shipyards, while watching things on my tablet very near a keyboard. So, almost not AFK. It took hours and the corporation standing is still nowhere. I got one L2 storyline, but it didn't bring Faction standing above three. I still didn't get another one, but I probably just will. It will most likely bring Caldari standing back into negatives, due to the way these numbers work.

What I should have done is finally do the Bloodstained Stars arc, which I have never even started, since it apparently gives a standing bonus with a faction without penalty for other factions. And I could even read mission descriptions, because that is where part of the lore comes through. Why aren't there any intermediate epic arcs, anyway? Maybe I will start it, but first I want to get Gallente standing back above three, then use epic arc bonus to offset Caldari penalties.

Quick update: I decided to finish doing those L2 distribution missions to see how the storyline goes, and it did push me above three for Gallente while still barely above diplomatic zero for Caldari. And yes, I know zero standing isn't the actually significant point for anything, I just want the buffer. Also I remember reading that R&D agents require specifically corporation standing, but it seems to work anyway? Maybe that changed at some point.

Update update: so apparently you need corp standing two less than normal requirement. That works. Not that L3 agent produces many Research Points.

No comments:

Post a Comment