Yesterday, I hit an interesting milestone that I have ‘meandered with intent’ towards for several years. I reached 9.9 faction standing for the Minmatar Republic.

Now, this in and of itself is hardly something to shout about. In fact, many dedicated mission runners get to this stage a hell of a lot quicker than I did. But what makes this particular milestone interesting, is that at 9.9 standing towards a number of factions, you are entitled to toot your Loyalty Horn, hand in some tags to an NPC, and have a 2 run BPC of said faction’s battleship delivered thusly to your active ship’s hangar:

It’s ME20 as well, so that’s pretty cool. And the tags I needed to hand over only cost me 5 million ISK!

Almost Free Stuff? In MY EVE?

It’s more likely than you’d think.

This is not just for battleships either. I have previously tooted my horn for faction cruiser and faction frigate BPCs as well.

The reason I’m even mentioning it, even though it is documented online, is that every time I do hit one of these thresholds, someone I happen to be talking to at the time has no idea that these kinds of offers exist. So, for the sake of further exposure, I’ll explain a bit about it here.

Firstly, you need some decent standings towards a faction:

8.5 for frigates

9.2 for cruisers

9.9 for battleships

Even though in the above-linked article, it mentions that skills count towards the standings requirement, historically, these was not the case – at least it wasn’t when I got my cruisers, so I am going to err on the side of caution and speculate based on my own personal experience that skills don’t count. I’m happy to change this text if someone can confirm that they do now count, however – I’m not here to misinform!

Once you have these standings, you need to buy 30 Silver, Gold, or Diamond tags for the frigate, cruiser and battleship offers respectively.

For the Minmatar ships, you need to fly on over (with the tags in your cargohold) to the Hjoramold gate in Barkrik. The locations of the agents for other factions are also listed in the article I linked to, above.

Mutama Czeik deals with the Republic Fleet Firetail

Thora Desto deals with the Stabber Fleet Issue

Makor Desto deals with the Tempest Fleet Issue

I’m not sure what tags are needed for some of the factions’ ships, and the information is sorely lacking on the EVElopedia article. Perhaps someone in-the-know could add it?

So there we have it. Hopefully the information will be useful to somebody someday!