Faction, and Cloaking
stargrace 
Right now I’m working with four research & development agents in order to collect RP (research points) and then I use those points to purchase datacores, which are used in various forms of crafting. Each R&D agent has a level, just like mission agents have. You need faction in order to work with higher level agents. I’ve been working on my CreoDon faction for the majority of my agents, but it just so happens that I couldn’t find one who belonged to the Graviton Physics field without needing a standing of 7. Right now my standing is 5.
I’m also working with R&D agents for gallente starship engineering, electronic engineering, and mechanical engineering. Those agents are scattered between L2 and L3. Since I don’t have the standing to work with a higher level R&D agent in the graviton physics field, I’m working with a level 1 agent of another faction so that I can collect RP while I work on raising the CreoDon faction to above 7. Then I’ll switch agents. Why would you want a better agent? The same reason you want to ‘level’ anything in an MMO, better rewards.
A level 1 agent is currently supplying me with only 12.60 RP a day. My level 3 agent is providing almost 70 RP a day. The better level of agent you work with, the more RP you earn, and the more datacores you can purchase. Pretty simple, right?
I used to stick to some pretty tame missions to work my faction up (delivery, mining), but now that I have my Tengu I tend to run security missions because I can complete them quickly.
Today I also finished training cloaking: 4 – this lets me use covert ops cloaking device II, and lets me warp while cloaked. Excited? Why yes, yes I am.
Next I’m working on a few generic skills, graviton physics 3 and 4 so that I’m able to work with R&D agents of those levels (once I get the faction), capacitor management because I haven’t finished leveling it yet, and at the end of the list research project management V which lets me work with a 5th R&D agent. I don’t really NEED one of those yet, but you can never have too many R&D agents.
I have been doing some hammerhead II inventions (the plans), and succeeded in all of them lately which is nice. Normally my jobs have 10 runs, but I made some 1 run blueprints by mistake, so I’m crafting those into hammerhead I’s to use them up (and then I’ll use them as components to Hammerhead II’s). No special reason other than they only take a few minutes to complete and I’d rather get them out of the list of my available blueprints.
I really like the new crafting UI, it’s much smoother and easier to tell at a glance what you’re missing.
With PI, I’m making guidance systems. It starts with four basic materials. You need base metals, aqueous liquids, suspended plasma, and non-cs crystals. You then refine the first two items into reactive metals and water. Then you combine those two items into water-cooled CPU. Meanwhile, your suspended plasma and non-cs crystals create plasmoids and chiral structures, which create transmitters. When you finally have transmitters and water-cooled cpus, you can use those to create a guidance system. It sounds confusing, but it’s pretty easy to set up your PI that way, and then it just auto runs so that you’re left with collecting the supplies at the end so long as you remember to set the PI programs. Right now my PI is set in high sec (where I have a home base and spend 70% of my time) but I’ve been contemplating getting set up in a wurmhole, which would provide me with far better PI supplies. Unfortunately it has been so long since I set my PI up, I would probably need to do a bunch of research first to make sure it still works the same way I recall (which I know it doesn’t, things have changed of course).
That’s what I’m up to these days. Flying the skies working on faction, and continuing with my industry exploits. I know it doesn’t sound all that exciting, but it’s incredibly relaxing, and a lovely way to spend my time in game.