Tip #1 - Gaining faction standing (continued)
Another unusual avenue for gaining faction standings is Faction Warfare, a mostly PvP-oriented system that I've covered in several previous column posts. Capturing complexes in faction warfare helps to increase a player's rank and each rank increase comes with a sizeable faction standing boost. With a few weeks of dedicated play, a player could go through most or all of the ranks and gain a large boost to his faction standings. The interesting part of this is that you can join a player-run corp that's signed up to faction warfare even if your personal standings with that faction are terrible. As long as the corp's average standing stays above 0.5, they can remain in the militia and you can then use the system to help improve damaged faction standings.

Tip #2 - Derived standing modifications
The various NPC corporations and factions of EVE have set lists of their friends and enemies. Whenever you gain a standing boost with one corp or faction, you get a corresponding derived increase in standing toward their friends and a decrease from their enemies. For example, gaining standings with the Gallente Federation will yield an increase with ORE, the Servant Sisters of EVE, the Minmatar Republic and a few others. It will also decrease your standings with The Syndicate, Serpentis, the Angel Cartel, Thukker Tribe, the Amarr Empire, the Caldari State and many others. Be careful when accepting a mission which involves Navy ships as each kill will also net you a decrease in faction standings with that navy. If your standings with a whole faction get too low (below -6.0), you'll be attacked by that faction's navy any time you're in their space. Repairing this damage can be difficult and there's a point of no return beyond which hostile standings will be impossible to repair.

Tip #3 - Important Missions
After every 16 missions you complete, you'll be called on by a nearby agent to complete an important storyline mission in service to your chosen faction. These missions are as important as they sound, giving a bonus to your faction standing on completion. Since high faction standing unlocks the agents of every corp in an entire faction, these rare opportunities to gain it are important to take. The storyline agent that requests your help is always the closest one belonging to your faction. So if you can find a storyline agent for the corp you're interested in gaining standings with, you can just run your 16th mission nearby and you should be called to that agent for your important assignment.

Another interesting part of important missions is that they can give absolutely massive bonuses to corp standings with the storyline agent's corp. The resulting increase in corp standing will help you rapidly unlock higher level and quality agents for that corp. The boost depends on the mission type you've been assigned and its level. Courier missions tend to give a small boost while the biggest increases (which can be over a whopping 40%!) come from important level 4 combat missions. The level of the important mission selected is equal to the level of the 16th mission you run, so make sure it's the highest mission level you have access to.

Tip #4: Loot and Salvaging
A portion of the income from combat missions comes in the form of salvage and loot from the NPC wrecks. When you get to level 4 missions, this portion becomes quite large due to the battleship NPCs dropping battleship sized loot and plenty of salvage components. Loot has historically been sold or reprocessed into minerals for sale but items that refine into a lot of minerals will take up a lot of cargo space. This makes looting difficult during the mission, a problem which is further compounded by the fact that both tractor beams and salvagers fit in valuable high slots that most mission-running ships need for weapons.

There are three main schools of thought on looting and salvaging in missions and it's up to you to decide which is best for you. The first method is to ignore loot and salvage entirely, instead blitzing through the missions to gain bounties, standings and loyalty points as fast as possible. The second is to use a ship which naturally has high slots free like a marauder or drone ships like the Dominix and Ishtar that don't rely on high slots for the bulk of their damage. You can then fit a few tractors and salvagers to help clean up the mission while running it. The third method is very popular but not always cost-effective on time. Rather than salvaging during the mission, you can set up a specialised salvaging ship and return after the mission is complete to loot and salvage the wrecks. Destroyers and cruisers are perfect for this job, having plenty of high slots and high maximum speeds. If you do this, remember to bookmark at least one wreck in each stage of the mission as once it's handed in, the deadspace complex disappears and the wrecks are left floating in space.

Tip #5: Skills
In addition to the skills required to fly your ship of choice, it's important to train the relevant support skills your ship fitting requires. While level 1 and 2 missions are relatively easy, level 3 and 4 missions will require careful consideration of your ship's tank and your support skills. There's no sense in rushing to get into a battleship to run level 4 missions unless you've got the skills to make good use of it. Armour tanking ships should have Hull Upgrades 4 to use tech II armour hardeners and repairers. Similarly, shield tanking ships should have tactical shield manipulation level 4 to use tech II active shield hardeners and all other shield skills should be trained up well. Gunnery or missile skills to improve damage are also important as they help speed up the mission-running process.

There are also a number of social skills designed specifically for mission-runners. Training Connections increases your effective standings with friendly corporations by 4% per level, Social increases standings gains by 5% per level and Negotiation increases agent pay by 5% per level. There's also a set of specialist agent skills, each of which increases agent loyalty point rewards by a further 5% per level. Each agent is affected by two of these specialist skills, adding up to a significant bonus in mission rewards when trained up. Details of which type of agent uses which specialist skills are available in this handy table on the official EVE wiki.

Summary:
There's a lot more to missions than what I've been able to fit into this guide. While EVE is most often lauded for its PvP and sandbox style gameplay, I recommend that everyone tries missions now and then. Using the information in this three part guide and the plethora of useful online resources available, it won't be long until you've mastered the art of mission-running in EVE Online.