Eve Online Missions

Introduction

Missions form a large part of the Eve Online playing experience. Whether you are grinding missions for a Navy ship offer, simply to earn piles of ISK or just passing time waiting for corporation members before embarking on a mining expedition, chances are you will run a fair few missions during your 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 a significant role to play in the current game mechanics. You may get special treatment if you are favoured with a certain faction, or get shot on sight if you let your reputation drop on too low levels.
Even if mission running can be a very lucrative occupation, a pilot has to constantly keep in mind there has still risks, and underestimating the dangers may lead one to quickly lose a ship. The purpose of this guide stays to prevent this from happening, by not only describing the base mission mechanics but by also providing some advices in the same row.

Mission Types and Levels

Missions do not consist in one type of activity only and offer various purposes depending on a pilot skills and preferences:

Encounter/kill:
Encounters or kill missions require a ship captain to fly to a location and destroy ships found there.
There are currently two types of encounter missions, those located in deadspace pockets (a.k.a. 'dungeons'), where you warp to an acceleration gate prior to engaging with the NPCs, and those where you warp directly to a particular engagement.
Deadspace pockets are composed of one or several areas accessible only by acceleration gates, as a ship can't directly enter such area without them. Each pocket may contain several opponents, while the last zone usually stays the one you need to reach to complete the mission objectives.
Courier missions:
Entail moving goods from one station to another. These goods may be specific sealed cargos or 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 into the hold of a Frigate and only involve a quick visit to the next system.
Trade:
Trade missions differ with the courier ones as they need 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:
Consist 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.
Storyline missions:
After every 16 regular missions completed you will be offered a storyline mission. These will be one of the regular mission types but will differ by having a great impact on your faction as well as corporation standing. The initial 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 as each other. The number of missions is not altered or reset by rejecting or failing an accepted mission.
Cosmos missions:
Most of the Cosmos missions may only be done once, but they provide unique rewards and give a significant boost in standings. However, pilots have to find Cosmos agents inside complexes to receive such an offer.
Research and Development missions:
once started, this kind of missions delivers a fixed amount of Research Points (RP) per day for a certain research field. Theses points may be used to purchase Datacores, used for Invention.
Factional Warfare Agent Missions:
Factional warfare agent missions are special missions available to pilots enlisted for factional warfare for a faction and their allies.
They differ from normal agent mission on several points:
- Pilots will always be required to fly into enemy controlled space to achieve the objectives of the mission.
- Warping to the mission location will broadcast the pilot’s location in space. This allows any pilot in that system to quickly locate and warp to the pilot’s area. This allows members of militias hostile to the pilot to defend their faction and allies.
- These missions are never courier, mining or other acquisition type missions. It will always have a military objective. A pilot will not get issued a storyline mission after doing a number of factional warfare missions as you get when doing normal missions.
- Factional warfare missions are only available to pilots enlisted to factional warfare from their own militia corporation or the militia corporation from their allied faction.
- Factional warfare missions do otherwise function as normal missions. Pilots will receive standings increase, loyalty points and ISK for completing them.

The Agent System

Missions are gotten from various Agents around the Eve Online universe. For more information on agents, see Eve Online Agent.

Mission Rewards

One of the main reasons people run missions is for financial gain. Through mission rewards, bounties, loot and Loyalty Points, you can make mission-running a highly 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, your security status and the system's security level. Basically, mission rewards stay far more profitable in low and 0.0 security space than in high-security zones.
That said, 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 offered. The agent system automatically determines a mission's difficulty 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 from 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 sells on the market.
For kill and encounter missions, you will also receive income in the form of pirate bounties and loot. In many circumstances, the bounties from kill missions greatly outweigh the agent's rewards for the mission itself. 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 or used for offers in the LP Store.
Encounter missions usually have you zipping around several structures. Sometimes 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 untouched.
When running Research and Development (R&D) missions, RP are added daily to your total research pool. You can use this pool to acquire Datacores. Datacores may be either sold for instant profit or used for Invention.
Finally, all non-storyline agents also offer Loyalty Points (LP) for completing missions. The amount of points you get is mission specific, modified by the agent's base quality, the agent's solar system security rating and your present skill levels in the relevant divisional connections skills. Theses points may be used on the LP Store, offering unique items related to the faction you are working for.