Topic: Remove the effect of relation ration on manufacturing and refining
Suggestion:
As the title says, I believe the effect of relation ration on manufacturing and refining should be removed (or at least reduced), and instead high relations should primarily increase the payout of missions (or other things directly related to what a mission-er actually does).
Alternative
Implement manufacturing/prototyping missions as the ones described by Arga below, and let the standings from these alone determine the bonus.
Argument:
Why should an extreme mission grinder have a huge advantage in production? For me at least, doing PvE missions is separate activity to manufacturing, just as PvE missions is a very separate activity from PvP. Why then, should days and days of grinding mind-numbingly boring missions be a prerequisite for the production process? If you really want a grind for a manufacturer, why not at least not make it related to what he does? (e.g. dependent on what he produces)
Some numbers:
First of all I know relations ratio has some on manufacturing, but I do not have any numbers for this. However, it's effects on refining has been explored quite at length (http://atg.bplaced.net/p/c/refinery/). Now let's make a few comparisons (let's assume level 10 extension, level 2 refinery).
To create X units of commodity, need this amount of raw material:
0% Relation: 100 (purely normalized)
20% Relation: 95
40% Relation: 90
60% Relation: 85
(So it's 0.25% reduction for each 1% of relation)
So, comparing a mission-hater industrialist with 10% relation ratio, and a savvy all-day grinder with 50% relation, it's a 10% reduction. This is in my opinion a very large effect, especially since this is purely for refining, and does not include the gain to manufacturing.