Research agent
Contents
Research Agents
Research Agents are agents representing various NPC corporations' R&D divisions. Rather than the usual missions, R&D agents can be asked to do "research" for you. Once an agent is working for you, you get Research Points (RP) from them to trade for Datacores (available from the agent with RP as currency) to sell or use in invention. To use a research agent you must have the appropriate skills and standings.
This Research Agent Guide covers interacting with Research Agents as a source of datacores. The invention guide covers inventing T2 blueprints based on T1 blueprints (which uses datacores), while the production/manufacturing guide covers the ME/PE research and later construction you do with the blueprints to end up with a physical product that you can fly/sell/explode.
Required Skills
Skills you must have:
- Science - Level 5
- One or more of Mechanic, Electronics, and Engineering at level 5
- One of the science skills listed below
Skills that will benefit you to have:
- Laboratory Operations - Level 5
- Research - Level 5
- Research Project Management - trained to 5 means you can have 6 research projects at once.
In order to train all these skills you must spend time and money. Supposing you start the game now you will need about 3 months of training to get all the skills above to the right level. If you have played a while you will need less time training depending on your starting attributes, implants you use, etc. The financial outlay is significant, especially because you will need about 40 million ISK to buy the Research Project Management skill (which allows you to have more than one R&D Agent simultaneously).
The next step is to choose one field of research, each field being represented by a special science skill:
- Amarrian Starship Engineering
- Caldari Starship Engineering
- Gallente Starship Engineering
- Minmatar Starship Engineering
- Astronautic Engineering
- Electromagnetic Physics
- Electronic Engineering
- Graviton Physics
- High Energy Physics
- Hydromagnetic Physics
- Laser Physics
- Mechanical Engineering
- Molecular Engineering
- Nanite Engineering
- Nuclear Physics
- Plasma Physics
- Quantum Physics
- Rocket Science
As you can see there are many fields of research, so you have many opportunities. Remember that the level trained for each of these skills will give you the correct level of R&D agent(s) that will agree to work with you, so train these skills to the highest level possible.
Required Standings
Once you have met the skill requirements, you must find R&D agent(s) who will work with you. To use a Research Agent you need to have a personal standing with that agent's corporation specifically, in addition to the normal faction or corp standigns - the extra standings required for the R&D corp is to prevent you grinding up faction standings with eg: Republic Fleet, then starting research with a Boundless Creation R&D agent. Remember, this must be your own personal standing with the R&D corp whose agent you want to interact with. The required standing level is documented in the Agent Info tab of the Agent's details.
Note that Research Corporations have very few agents who provide combat missions, so be prepared to haul a lot of large cargoes around. Remember to run missions for the highest level and quality agent(s) you can, so don’t spend time with level 2 agent(s) when you can increase your standing faster with level 3 agent(s). As a guide, you will be able to manage most level 4 courier missions with a tier 3 hauler (up to 6000m3 of space).
There is some advice on grinding standings with Mechanical Engineering agents over at EVEBott. That guide focusses on Duvolle and Core Complexion, but the general advice and methodology can be adapted easily to other factions and data centres.
R&D Corporations
Each empire faction has its own research corporations, which are the following (links go to the EVE-Agents site):
The Amarr Race:
The Caldari Race:
- Ishukone Corporation
- Kaalakiota Corporation
- Lai Dai Corporation
The Gallente Race:
The Minmatar Race:
Research Points
When you find a suitable R&D agent(s) you can ask them to start working for you. Each R&D agent will generate Research Points (RP) depending on the field of research you choose and the level of your agent. It's very important to know that the RP are generated on a daily basis, so each day your total RP will increase by a set amount regardless of whether you interact with the agent or not.
As an aside, certain fields have a multiplier that will increase the RP for that field. For example the Starship Engineering is a research fields a multiplier of 3x for all RP generated. However, the cost of starship engineering datacores purchased from the agent is multiplied by the same field multiplier, which essentially makes the field multiplier cancel itself out when determining how many datacores you can purchase through a particular research agent over a given period of time. At one time it was possible to win T2 BPOs through a lottery system, with your accrued RP of any flavour being equivalent to tickets in the lottery. After a while CCP realised that flooding the market with BPOs was a bad idea and the lottery was removed, to be replaced with Invention as a means for getting T2 BPCs.
The RP that you will accumulate are based on only three factors: your field-specific skill level, effective quality of the agent, and the agent level.
RP/day = Field multiplier*((1+(EQ of agent/100))*((My skill+Agent Lvl)^2))
You will be offered missions by each of your R&D agents once per day. Completing the missions will give you the same amount of RP that you gain per day with that agent as reward. R&D missions count towards the 16 mission count required for a storyline mission to be offered, but they do not modify your standings with the R&D Agent (since they do not track personal standings), nor do they modify your standings with the NPC corporation.
The RP/day generated by your agent will change if you alter your skill by eg: training from 4 to 5 of the respective skill. Sometimes this will not show up in your journal correctly - this is a display bug only. Interacting with the agent (buying cores, running a mission) will usually update the journal to the correct RP/day.
Agent Selection
One way to locate a suitable agent is to look at the description in the info box for the research agents that you are interested in working with. This will have all the information regarding the different fields that agent can research. An alternative is to search on EVE-Agents for R&D agents who work in your chosen field. There is also a Research Agent profitability calculator available which will help the ISK minmaxers select an agent.
Datacores
Once you gained a certain amount of RP with your agent you can trade them in against Datacores. Just start a conversation and click the appropriate option. The datacores available from R&D agents are as follows (links take you to EVE Central buy/sell order details):
- Datacore - Amarrian Starship Engineering
- Datacore - Caldari Starship Engineering
- Datacore - Electromagnetic Physics
- Datacore - Electronic Engineering
- Datacore - Gallentean Starship Engineering
- Datacore - Graviton Physics
- Datacore - High Energy Physics
- Datacore - Hydromagnetic Physics
- Datacore - Laser Physics
- Datacore - Mechanical Engineering
- Datacore - Minmatar Starship Engineering
- Datacore - Molecular Engineering
- Datacore - Nanite Engineering
- Datacore - Nuclear Physics
- Datacore - Plasma Physics
- Datacore - Quantum Physics
- Datacore - Rocket Science