Originally by: Zondarus
… running missions to try to repair my negative Minmatar standing. Problem with doing this of course it has significantly reduced my Amarr standing as well which is the faction I'm most concerned with.
Repairing faction standings, by running normal agent missions and then storyline missions, results in increases in standings with allied factions and a drop in standings with enemy factions.
I have recently faced the same problem, except having to repair my Amarr standings rather than Minmatar.
DMC’s ‘plan’ (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1263174) is a very useful tool to help you understand how this all works, and to guide you in the rehabilitation of your faction standings. Prior to discovering this plan I was grinding away at Amarr lvl1 missions (all I could access with -3.9 faction standings) and progressing very very slowly. Once I read the plan I moved to tutorial / career agents, circle agents, and data centre agents and then the Amarr lvl4 epic arc …. Now the Amarr think rather highly of me. This was much quicker than my previous mission-grinding approach.
Originally by: Zondarus
If there's no way of realistically being able to balance the 4 factions then the only other alternative that comes to mind for me would be to have 2 trading accounts, one for caldari / amarr space and one for minmatar / gallente.
It is possible, and not terribly difficult, to have positive standings with the four major factions. Having worked on this over the last month I now only have negative faction standings with some of the pirate factions. I suspect it’d still take me ages to boost all those faction standings to a high level, but I already have my hisec POSes setup and am relying on high corp standings for access to decent missions.
Of course, once you’ve repaired your standings, it’s a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process if you’re a mission runner wanting to keep in the good books with each faction.