Loyalty Agribussiness...DV-MS LP Farming Guide

Editors Note

I am by no means a superstar at running missions. I also well not claim to know everything about Faction Warfare Misson. This is guide for those who want to start running these missions, but are unsure how to start. 

Faction Warfare Loyalty Agriculture

     Faction Warfare Missions are missions that you can do while in Faction Warfare, it is a simple as that. Like normal missions that they contain both an Isk and Loyalty Point pay out. Faction Warfare Missions also come in four different levels I, II, III, and IV like a normal mission. The major difference is that all Faction Warfare Missions take place in Low Sec.  They are also not clear missions like most High Sec missions where you have to kill everything in the site. In a Faction Warfare Mission you only need to kill one ship, or a small group of ships. This means that every mission can be blitz and completed in under 10 minutes minus the time of flying to the mission site. The second and major difference is the Loyalty Point pay out. On a good non Faction Warfare Level 4 miss on the LP payout is 3000-5500 LP, in Faction Warfare this LP gain is more than three times that and depending on the tier could be more. For example with Social to 5 and the Security Connect skills to 4 you will be making 27452-33642 LP a per level 4 mission in a level 5 upgraded mission hub 0.1 system such as Intaki. If your faction makes it to tier 3 you are looking at 76738lp. The last thing is that they provide is huge standing boost. In under of two weeks of running FacWar missions you can get your standing to +9 in the Federal Defense Union and with each rank there you get 1 rank of Gallente Federation. 

     The good news is that standing wise it will only take a few weeks of plexing or a couple days of running level 1-3 mission to get the standing to run a level four mission. The bad news that you will have to skill up to Tech 3 Strategic Cruiser such as the Proteus, Tengu , Loki, or Legion.  It will take just over two months to train into these ships with out even the support skills. During the time I would suggest simply running plexes as they are in many ways safer than the lower levels missions, and sense you are PVP fit you are more able to fight off an incoming enemy. This will also give you a chance to earn some Isk for you T3 Cruiser. 

Planting the Seeds

(This section is assuming you have trained into a T3 cruiser or have the ability to fly one.)

    The first thing that you need is a farm, or mission hub. A mission hub is a system that supports the missions you want to farm, ideally this system also has other mission hubs near it. Since we want to do Faction Warfare Mission for the Gallente Federation we need to find some level 4 agents for the Federal Defense Union corporation. Using the Agent Finder we can see their are more than 15 different agents for this NPC corp. Picking the right one can be tricky if we are unsure what to look for. What I suggest is using Dotlan Maps with the Agent Finder to see where the systems are to each other. You all want to choose a 0.1 system as they give out the better payouts. The system that I choose was Intaki. The reason why is cause it is 0.1 system, there are two more FDU station only three jumps away in Moclinamaud and Eugales. Cause many of the missions that I take out of Intaki go through these systems I can also take missions from those agents as well. Depending on the location of the missions you can do all three in 20mins to 80mins. If I am fast on my warps, I usually can do 6 missions an hour, which at tier two is about 170,000 LP.
     The second thing that you need to need to do is some skill training. The first skill that you want to train up is the Social Skill to 5, this skill will give you a 25% increase to your faction standing. The second skill is Security Connection to at least 4. It would be best to get it to 5 for a max LP pay out, but a 40% increase is fine for the standard LP farmer. I would recommend training it to 5 if you plan on being in Faction Warfare for a long time and you are using missions as you major source of LP.

The Combine

     A Combine Harvester is machine that farmers use to reaper, thrash and separate the grain from the chaff. Like the humble farmer needs a combine, so do you. Introducing your combine the Proteus Strategic Cruiser. It is made for farming LP, it is a reaping, thrashing and winnowing machine. While some pilots use the Tengu, I use the Proteus as I can use med slots for ECCM modules and still keep it cap stable. While it lacks the DPS and Speed of the Tengu, it is hardy ship, without a lot of bling.There are only Faction modules for this fitting is, a Corpum B-type Medium Armor Repairer and two Serpentis Magnetic Field Stabilizers (currently I am playing around with some different fits that might bring the price up, but increase performance). With 390 DPS it is able to deal with all missions and the with 93% and 93% Thermal resist it able to tank 1300 Caldari DPS.  This well easily tank even the harshest Level 4 missions. The two ECCM give it 70 sensor strength which will prevent you from being perma-jammed over heated it increases to 94. This should cost you around 1bil ISK.

     The most important part of this Combine is the Covert Op Cloaking Device II. This will allow to fly more safely from mission to mission (note that I said more safely and not safely, these missions have a bit of risk to the and if you are not paying attention you will lose your combine). With the ability to warp cloaked makes a T3 Cruiser a hard nut to catch. Not impossible but hard. Like all things you have to fly it smart.

     The last thing you want to do is make sure that you have enough ammo with you at all times. I run with two types of ammo, Faction Antimatter for high DPS and Null if I have to have better tracking to kill frigates that have me tackled. 

Reap What You Sow...

     This basically as simple a regular level 4, with a few twists. First you need to get need to pick up your missions. Since you can only pick one mission up at time from a single agent, I recommend picking up at least three from three different agents. Like I said that is why I like Intaki, because with in 3 jumps on a the normal routes are two more mission hubs that I can farm from. When you first start if you are worried about losing standing with the agent then you should run every mission that he gives you. After you build up some standing with him you can be more selective in your missions choosing to only take those closer to your farm. I try to take missions that are with in 10-13 jumps from Intaki. Some systems in Black Rise are pretty big so limiting your jumps will make make sure that you still making the best time on your mission.
      REMEMBER TO ALWAYS USE YOUR CLOAK WHEN WARPING. Not just some of the time, but all time when warping, the less intel that you give people on what you are doing the better. The other thing is that if you use your cloak all the time, during prime fleet times, people will think that you are just the fleets booster. This means that they'll still try to kill you, but they will not usually chase after you after the miss you.
     Some people would suggest to use a scout for jumping through gates, and if you have an alt then I suggest that you do to. But if not simply being smart and following intel channels well go a long way to keeping your combine alive. It is not always perfect and every now and then you'll run into a gate camp. The first rule if you do is don't panic and hold your cloak. See if you are already aligned to anything. If yes then right click warp to it and hit your cloak as soon as you do. Even a boosted Loki is not fast enough lock you it you do. As soon as you land warp to you out bound gate and you should be clear. If you are not aligned still don't panic, you can still should be able to get out by doing what I said just said cept to your out bound gate. If they manage to point you then you need to turn on all your tank and over heat your after burner and burn back to the gate. Depending on their ships you ships should make it. But sometimes you can be unlucky it does happen even to me.
     Once you are in the mission system you need to make a safe spot. I simply warp to the sun at 100 and make a bookmark in space as I warp. When you get into you mission site you need to see your D-SCAN to 147,000km and start scanning. When you engage your targets that are not ships, stargate or POS tower, then you need to align out to your safe spot. If you see a ship come on scan then you just need to warp to your safe and cloak up simple as that. Once you make your kill just warp back turn your mission in and repeat.

List of FacWar Mission

and Tasks

Mission	Completion Task
Uproot	Kill Main Reactor (have to refit Railguns)
Supply Interdiction	Kill three Industrial Ships
Shades of Grey	Kill five Industrial Ships
Lethal Strike	Kill Field Commander
Halt the Invasion	Destroy Stargate
Cutting the Net	Pick up cargo past the second gate
Dead Man Tells No Tales	Destroy the POS Tower
The Reprisal	Kill the Sector Commander
Roidiest Rage	Kill the 4 Industrial Ships on the left of the warp in.

Harvest

     I have found that this have been a great way to gather LP. While you do not find the PVP that you do in plexing it is less disruptive and much more profitable. In the short week that I have conducted this study and tired different tactics to improve my LP gain, I made just over 2.1 million LP, I used 500k upgraded systems that I was farming from. While I did lose a ship I found that made enough ISK to pay for that lose three times over and still have enough LP that I can start again. I am already fitting up a new combine and gathering the modules for when the Gallente Federation reach Tier 3 and then the farm will be a great place to live.