Since it launched I’ve been moving cargo through the Stanton system to comply the the needs of the “Clear the Air” event made available in patch 4.6. As of the writing of this post, I have managed to secure the first rewards for both the transport and defense tracks, the “division jackets”.

As of this morning, I have accumulated 2,565 points in the transport track (out of 10,000) and 1,110 points in the defense track (out of 10,000). For the overall track, it’s the sum of the two, so 3,675 (out of 30,000, which is also the sum of the totals of the three individual tracks). All of the transport efforts have been solo, and the defense efforts have been in a 2-man team.

Part of the event is figuring out exactly how many event points I earn for each task. Generally, the larger the aUEC payout, the more points I get for the event but it’s not a 1:1 translation. I started doing the Alliance Aid: Cargo Haul – Small Scale missions which were only paying about 40k aUEC, and were awarding about 255 event points to the transport track. After doing a few of these 6 SCU jobs between ground landing zones and stations in Stanton, I was able to take medium level missions.

The “medium” runs are cleaving pretty close to the designation of the cargo ships. The Hermes is considered a “medium cargo ship” and has a air-quote max air-quote capacity of 288 SCU. The Molina Mold Treatment mission payload shown above was 296 SCU, so after locking down every single cannister that the cargo grid could hold, I had to place one cannister, freestyle, in the central walkway and hope that it wouldn’t bounce around, damage the ship, and cause me to explode. I’m grateful that such a thing hasn’t happened to me in any of the more recent patches, but it has happened. I have also been getting offers for large scale transports which, as I am looking at one right now, is about 600+ SCU. That’s calling for something like a Hercules, or one of the mid-sized Hull series ships. There’s also one mission in particular, transporting filters between Stanton and Levski in Nyx, that is asking for someone to transport 2992 SCU! That is most certainly one of the larger cargo ship requirements I’ve seen, or maybe a group effort, or multiple trips. It pays out a heft 619k aUEC, though, and I’m sure the event point distribution is significant.

I’m not sure that the medium-level payload missions are worthwhile, though. My memory is terrible, but I do remember that the first time I completed one of the medium hauls I realized that the amount of event points awarded wasn’t significantly more than what I was getting for doing a chain of the small 6-crate runs. The medium missions were taking me a good 45 minutes to an hour to load and unload all of the crates by myself, whereas with the 3-chain small box run I could earn almost 800 event points in about 20 minutes if everything ran smoothly. The limiting factor in the small box runs has been the insane amount of traffic around the major planetary landing zones.

At one point, trying to get a parking spot at New Babbage saw a queue of 14 people inbound (about a 20 minute wait) and 9 people outbound (about 10-15 minutes). This significantly increased the turnaround time for a three-mission circuit, but considering the total aUEC payout was 120k, almost 800 event points, and me sitting around scrolling on my phone, I can’t say that I was too put out about it.

The combat missions might be a bit faster — certainly a lot more engaging — but I don’t know if they pay out as well on the lower end. I went out as a turret gunner in @CakedCrusader’s Paladin yesterday. We started with some small defense missions and I determined that they were probably fine for a soloist but weren’t as valuable for a 2-man-plus group. We jumped up the ladder and started taking missions with larger payouts, but it wasn’t until we hit the 400k aUEC range that the points started to accumulate. In this scenario, we had to take out several NPC enemies, providing cover for an NPC transport ship to dock at a remote asteroid base. I liked the premise, and defending the NPC who was actually doing something other than sitting in space like a mossy rock was a nice narrative touch. The enemy NPCs weren’t terrible as we were in the Paladin, but we did have to take out two Hercs at the end of the mission (they’re large, pretty well armored, and pack a punch of they line you up). Certainly not something I could do solo, but @CakedCrusader and I (and maybe @Mindstrike) could easily farm this level of mission for decent event points, although the cash payouts are still split among participants.

I have yet to try the collection track, though. These want mined resources, and I have no idea where to reliably find the resources the missions are asking for. I will have to look into that at some point so I can at least get the 10% tier jacket. Although I haven’t experienced it myself, @CakedCrusader mentioned that the missions that are offered in Nyx (and probably Pyro) differ in composition than the ones offered in Stanton, but contribute to the same tracks. If I get tired of what Stanton is offering, I might head to Nyx to see what’s going on there.

Lastly, I think I can forget the fabricator reward. Although I am happy to work on the transport track, and maybe I can get more progress in the defense track, the collection track might be tricky if the ROI is terrible. Also, I ran a three-leg transport cycle last night, delivering two sets of boxes to one facility, and while I did get a message that my mission had been completed, I didn’t get the aUEC nor the event points for the trouble, so I’m going to have to pay close attention to whatever bugs pop up during this time so I’m not wasting effort.