How do I avoid negative reputation while farming it efficiently

[Atréju]

I'm doing CaldarI Navy L2 Distribution Missions to increase standing with Navy and Caldari State for Jita station and trade there. I figured it's the storyline missions who give negative but also alot of the reputation I want. I'm -1.18 with Gallente so far and I don't want it to fall more.

How can I continue to gain Reputation without gaining negative and leaving the storyline missions behind?
Only the Distribution missions alone give very little Reputation.
Also maybe I should switch to lvl 3 and 4 missions? Would that be better?

[Sadpan]

You can't really do anything about those missions besides not doing them. Do some Gallente distribution missions to balance it out, they rack up reputation very fast at lvl 4.

[Atréju]

I just noticed one other thing too. My state Rep doesn't increase through the Distr Missions. Only the Navy does. But I desperatly need state reputation. Do only Storyline Missions Increase state rep?
That means I can't do Gallente Distribution to increase my standings with them as you suggested.

I just did a special mission which involved no warfare, I just delivered ressources and I still lost standing. It was for a security agent tho. was that the important part? It was something like "war effort deliver me 1500x" which I did.

Is there a list which missions give which reputation?

[Sadpan]

Storylines should increase state rep, and I don't know why the distribution missions aren't. Are you sure they're not? Weird if they aren't, but yes it should tell you on the mission overview before accepting that it will harm reputation with whatever target corp or empire the mission is about. Here's a short page that has guides for grinding standings fast for each empire: https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Gaining_faction_standings_fast

[Harrison]

That wiki article doesn't say it, you only gain faction rep from doing storyline missions. All other missions will only gain you standing for the corporation you're working through.

You only get storyline mission every 16 missions, but as you gain standing with a faction, like Caldari State, you lose standings with their enemies, like Gallente Federation. It's hard to be friends with everyone. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Storyline_Mission#Storyline_Missions

The fastest way I've found to gain faction rep is Data Centers: https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Data_centers
If you go that route though, makes sure you only accept the missions once you have everything you need to complete them, DO NOT ACCEPT THEM BEFORE THAT.

I can't stress that enough, accepting them before you're ready is a great way to ruin standings.

Something else you can do to mitigate the standings loss is to train diplomacy, it will help. One of my characters has a base standing of -5.25 with Gallente Federation, Diplomacy 4 raises that to a -2.81.

You can also train Connections, which will increase your positive standings but that becomes less effective the more positive your standings. For example, my Servant Sisters of EVE base standing is .56 and my Connections 4 raises it to 2.07, but my Ammatar Mandate base is 8.42 and gains only .25 from Connections 4.

Something else, best way I've found (through the grapevine, I've only ever really done security mission) to farm distribution missions is to find a place that has a couple of agents that tend to send you to stations with other agents and work them in some kind of circle. Or learn how to blitz security missions.

Also, this site might help: https://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

To help balance your standings out with the factions you're losing standing with, you can also run the Sisters of EVE faction's Epic Mission Arc, "The Blood-Stained Stars". The arc can be repeated once every three months, and one of its final missions rewards you with a +7% (affected by the Social skill) standing boost to the main empire faction of your choosing, without affecting standings with any of the other factions whatsoever. With the exception of the final boss, the vast majority of the arc's 50 missions are very easy, and can be completed in a T1 frigate or destroyer without any trouble.