Royal DLC Quest Reward Choices. Rank for Pawn, Tempting Gear, or Goodwill?

[Accel Lex]

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198080474029/screenshots/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198080474029/screenshots/

I really want to rise my Acolyte pawn through the ranks quickly to get more power capabilities, but some of the gear offered looks good enough to make me question if the ranking reward would be best left for another mission.

The rewards are usually ranking for one pawn, some neat gear, or goodwill.
I figured that if I level up my pawn to at least Knight, I'll be able to trade with the Royals and bribe them to get more goodwill. But if I get goodwill first, get them as ally, I can trade via the communicator and bribe them that way. But Idk if the gear offered from the mission will be offered again somewhere else.
Opinions?

[HunterSilver]

You can actually disable honor and faction reputation rewards in the quest menu, changing either or both of the other options into more item+resource reward choices.

Unfortunately I can't see the screenshots you took, as they appear to not be uploaded. In most cases, unless the gear is just flat out Amazing, it's better to focus on honor early on. You should basically never take faction rep, especially with the empire, because of how easy it is to gain it via trade with them.

Any kind of persona weapon with good effects (Fast mover, neural cooling, kill-focus, etc..) is probably worth taking over anything else. If they're offering you masterwork or legendary power armor, that's also an easy choice. An early set of masterwork cataphract armor trivializes raids for your first couple of years.

[fractalgem]

You should be able to fling resources at someone you want to bribe with drop pods anyways, so you can ignore the reputation reward?

[Accel Lex]

I bearly learned how to post screenshots yesterday so I apologize. I don't like the system steam has for that.
One reward for "Shelter for Nobles" includes a Persona Zeushammer (good) Orderbringer, with Calm thoughts as the buff.

I wanted to use a drop shuttle to send goodies to them as a bribe, but while my tribe is near the middle of the map, the empire is closes to the left of the world map. Across a desert. Way out of range for my drop pods.

[Astasia]

I would not usually accept those item rewards personally. The archotech leg is nice, if I had a colonist with a missing leg at the time I might have considered it. The "good" persona weapon might be useful, but you can get much better. I do tend to eventually take a couple missions to improve rep with them to bump it up to ally, it depends on where I'm at in the game. The honor though, if your intention is to raise multiple royals it takes a very long time through just questing so it will probably always be a fairly high priority. If you can get away with slave trading though to get honor from their tribute caravans then it's a lot less important to go for honor in quests.

[Accel Lex]

Thanks for the feedback. Since I didn't do that many missions, almost every item seems like it'd be great. I'm hoping once I manage to trade with the empire (either by goodwill or using knight to trade with them), I'll be able to bribe them to get more stuff. But I'm not sure if some items are quest exclusive, so if it'd be better to stack up now.

[HunterSilver]

Ressurector mech serums, healer mech serums, psychic emanators, vanometric power cells, psylink neuroformers, and infinite chem reactors are quest exclusive, otherwise you can buy basically anything either from the empire or from outlanders sometimes. I think only the empire can sell you persona weapons and I have yet to see a legendary persona weapon being sold. Outlanders can sell every type of power armor and weapon otherwise to varying degrees of quality.

[Accel Lex]

That helps a lot to know what to keep an eye out for. Thanks a bunch!