I did all my stuff before the certificates were put in. They help you out a bit now with letting you know which skills to train up. Well, you can't go wrong with Gallente, they have very good ships.
No idea why mission offers are set to expire or what a level 1 or 2 mission is. I'm just enjoying the tutorial stuff still and training my guy up to be a fighter.
Have you played WoW or Guild Wars? Something with a "reputation" system? Essentially, EVE's mission system is similar. You start as an unknown pilot, so you have to prove yourself.
There are many NPC corps to each faction (if you show info on the Gallente Federation, for example, you'll be able to see a list of all member corps), so there are different standings. The one that rises fastest is the corp you pick to run missions for. For combat, most people pick the Federation Navy since it's the military arm of the Gallente. Doing missions increases your corp standing (corp standing is what limits your available agents). Every 16 (I think it's still 16) regular missions you get a "storyline" mission. Doing it increases your Faction standing considerably. Faction standing is important for several things: first, it supercedes corp standing, so say an agent requires 5.0 standing to get. If you have 5.0 Faction standing, you can have 0 with that particular corp and still get the agent. Essentially, a high enough faction standing lets you use any agent of any corp. Second, negative faction standings start giving you problems. If you get to -5 with some faction, you'll start getting shot on sight by their navies when you try to enter high security space belonging to that faction.
The mission levels themselves scale in cash rewards, loyalty point gains, and standing gains. Loyalty points are per-corporation, and any agent you work for from that corp contributes towards your total. When you dock in a station belonging to the corp you work for you can access the LP Store, which gets you faction modules, faction ships (like the Federation Navy Megathron), cheaper implants, etc. Each corp has their own store. As you can imagine, the Navy store is mostly combat oriented, while stores for science or mining corps would be more tailored to their stuff.
Agents are split by levels and ratings. Agents level 1-5 offer level 1-5 missions respectively. Level 1s are the easiest and meant for newbies, level 2s start seeing stronger frigates, destroyers, and the occasional weak cruiser hull in the tougher missions. Level 3s start seeing cruisers mainstream, and the occasional weak battlecruiser. Level 4s is a mix of everything, including battleships. Some level 4s are heavy on battleships, others are light. Level 5s are designed to be done in a group, and have more battleships and other nasty stuff. Each agent is also rated from -20 to +20, with -20 being the worst quality and +20 being best. Missions from higher quality agents are closer to home (a -20 might send you 3 jumps away, a +20 might keep you in the same system most of the time) and the cash rewards and LP rewards are also better.
In general, level 1s are designed for frigates, level 2s for cruisers, level 3s for battlecruisers, level 4s for battleships, and 5s for groups of battleships.
I'm deffinately interested in PvP, and by PvP I mean pitting skill against skill, not sociapathic 10 vs 1 inferior ship ganking to hurt some other humans feelings
Most non-fleet PVP inevitably turns into ganks, whether it's piracy in Empire space or roving gangs in 0.0 Alliance space. Fleet stuff is usually very organized with (mostly) competent fleet commanders. The only drawback is in a small gang, you can have more varied and interesting fittings, and get away with interesting ship choices. In fleet, there are only a few roles: 1) recon - usually in covert ops frigates with cloaks, scouting ahead, probing for good targets, and dropping cynos for incoming capital ships. 2) fast frigates/interceptors to tackle (web/warp scramble) ships so they can't warp out and have to sit and die, 3) interdictors/heavy interdictors that are always primaried religiously because they drop bubbles that prevent warping from anywhere within it. They have a large radius and are very dangerous, so 'dictors never last long, and 4) battleships of the line - fleet fights are done at extreme sniping range usually of 100km+, where missile ships are useless and turret ships rule. The Gallente's Megathron and Minmatar's Tempest are two of the best fleet ships. Battleship fleet fits are very specific and always armor tanked/plated.
Are you in a decent Corp Annatar? My name is Harree in game.
Mine is Se'len, also Gallente. I'm in an NPC corp now. I was in a 0.0 alliance a while ago, but with work I just don't have the time to commit to it. It was a ton of fun, but our main ally was a Russian alliance so all of our battle times were closer to Euro prime time and going to bed every night at 11-12 and waking up at 5 for work is rough. So now I'm pretty casual. Alliances take a considerable time investment (unless you just leech free access to 0.0 space, but that's not nice!) so I can't do it.
