Too hard to gain reputation at the start

[sandbags]

I started a new captain decided to be a smuggler rather than a bounty hunter. I still did the first story mission and despite remaining neutral I still immediately end up significantly negative with Steel Song such that there is a strong risk they are going to start denying me service.

Having seen the problems with allowing your reputation with a faction to get very negative I decided I would try and repair my reputation immediately. So far as I know the only way to do that at this point, since I have no-one in Steel Song to give me missions, is to patrol.

Maybe I got unlucky but there are very few green cards that even raise your reputation and most of the encounters will actually lower it. I started at -19 and despite trying my hardest by the time I was done I was at -29 and gave up before it could get worse.

Perhaps there is another way that I am missing but it feels like I am on a hiding to nothing when I should be able to repair my relationship, at this early stage, if I want to.

[Trese Brothers]

@sandbags - the game certainly intends for you to make friends AND enemies. One loved and all others hated, definitely not. Lots of captains are playing with positive Rep on every faction without patrolling constantly.

I'm curious what ship encounter Talents you are using to end encounters quickly?

Are you choosing to bribe when you can afford it?

What other types of Talents are you using to raise Rep? Generous in Service, Magnanimous Victory, Garner Favor. Selling Intel? What is your build and what are the main jobs you are using to raise Rep?

What Contact priority did you start with? Did you buy introductions to contacts in other Factions? If so, keep buying and get around to Steel Song. Or, get an officer who can get you some Contacts on their worlds, or spy/patrol/blockade with an aim for getting a Song Contact.

[sandbags]

Hi.

First of all thanks for taking the time to engage.

It's maybe worth drawing attention to the fact that I am a very new player, I have ~10hr in the game and most of that was spent just learning the basics of play.

I think there are two strands here:

1) What in the external world drives a change in reputation

2) What tools the player is given to control the situation

My memory is not the greatest but AlterEgo's post elsewhere alluded to and I seemed to find myself agreeing that there where situations where I wasn't sure why I was being dinged for reputation in the first place.

I wouldn't go so far as to claim I have a "build", I am a new player still trying to figure it out. My experience of my previous game was that I didn't seem able to keep my reputation with other factions above -20 and eventually just thought "♥♥♥♥ it" and went all in on space piracy. Of course, later, this would hurt me. Hence my conscious desire to adopt a more "smuggleresque" policy of neutrality towards all factions.

I will look into the talents you mention.

But going back to my points above I think it would be helpful if there was more guidance available (e.g. in the Wiki, and forgive me if its there and I missed it) about how the game tries to manage your reputation and some strategies, as you have alluded to above, suggesting what you can do about it. I now have more to try than just trying to patrol, so I am hopeful.

Thanks.

Matt

[sandbags]

Originally posted by Trese Brothers:

What other types of Talents are you using to raise Rep? Generous in Service, Magnanimous Victory, Garner Favor. Selling Intel? What is your build and what are the main jobs you are using to raise Rep?

As a further point the talents you are talking about are level 5 & 8 and quite disparate requiring diplomat, merchant, doctor, smuggler. They have longish cooldowns and are quite situational. As a starting captain none of these are available to you. Hence patrol seems about your only option with the problems I've described, i.e. no chance it will work unless you get very lucky.

To some extent I think my specific problem might be solved by setting the threshold for lack of service lower than -20. It's just so damned easy to get there (for example the starting story mission pretty much does that to you with little to no option) and so hard to get back. If it was -50 for example then you'd have some space to work before getting seriously stuck.

I would have enjoyed that more.

[Trese Brothers]

Thanks for the feedback on the service levels. Perhaps we need to adjust them to be difficulty dependent or a little less tight.

The logic of reputation is that it is not a measure of legality or fairness. In fact, almost the opposite. The factions want you to actively join in their cause and assist them. If you are not, your clearly not helping them and most likely helping someone else. It is their feeling that you are their ally and supporter.

I am curious in all of these cases -- what are you doing that gets you negative rep? Especially when players claim they go to negative with 8 factions quickly, I'm really not sure how you're doing it. It's easy to get one negative and one positive via the story.

[sandbags]

I understand what you are getting at. Although I think someone else made the suggestion (and I agree with it) that faction reputation (not personal reputation) should drift back to 0 over time. This would have the effect of allowing things to cool off if you stay out of their way, but also mean you'd need to be supporting factions at least somewhat regualarly to keep a strong +ve reputation with them. I'd expect some kind of easing curve on the way down (or up from strongly -ve).

As to what we're doing, I'm not really able to remember as the game is not short of things going on.

What springs to my mind is that there may be better ways out of particular encounters where players like me are suffering. But we don't know them yet and maybe we make suboptimal choices in terms of encounters, talents choosen, etc.

Clearly as the developers of the game your context is knowing all the right talents and options.

My feeling is that you need more onramp for new players like us. That could be in the form of allowing for more -ve reputation before being refused service, but it could also be in terms of buffing the guide about play strategies.

If I can I will try and note issues I hit.

[Trese Brothers]

Thanks for the feedback. We made text changes in update #65 that should help with ship encounters. We'll keep improving with every update!

[sandbags]

Thanks. I'm looking forward to future updates!