What's With The Rep System...?

[Pantherr]

This Rep system is new to me and I need to mine for resources, especially promethium, but I can't unless I piss off some faction.

Am I "supposed" to be on good terms with anyone, and is there any benefit in it..?

Thanks...

[HurtfulPlayer97]

Hit F1 and do the missions to get friendly with the Faction of your choice. If you are Friendly you can mine in their territory and trade with them.

[Pantherr]

Ah ok, that helps, Thanks :)

[VulcanTourist]

Don't do the missions. They almost always have a contrary effect on reputation with one or both of the other factions. Exploit the passive activities in the faction territories to gain reputation without those consequences, and only perform a mission if you are certain it won't cause a backlash with other factions.

[mathaniel]

I`ve been playing this game for years. I still do the missions. do the missions and get frierndly rep. then mine away, and you can gather food, fiber, etc with no penalty. And you can trade too. You can click through the missions and be a lazy friend with benefits;-) Personally, telling another player to not play a certain way is a little selfish i think. No offence.

[VMVXMK2]

Just walk up to them, and unload all the freedom in your freedom dispenser. You don't need any relation with anyone.

[Darksynapse]

Originally posted by VMVXMK2:

Just walk up to them, and unload all the freedom in your freedom dispenser. You don't need any relation with anyone.

This guy gets it. The game is more exciting when people are shooting at you. All the factions kinda suck anyways. Polaris is a huge corporation, Zirax are xenophobic aliens with a clone army and Talon did some evil voodoo way back when.

[rphillips1986]

The downside to being hostile is you can't trade, and Zirax and Talon will attack your base. Get friendly and you can mine all you want in their zones. With the Zirax, killing animals and cutting trees in their zones improves rep pretty fast. For Talon, Killing preditors in their territory improves rep without decreasing it with the other factions. I actually don't know what improves your rep with Polaris, I normally go all out war on Zirax and so Polaris loves me because I'm killing all the Zirax.

[Werric]

Killing predators will help with Polaris too. It did for me yesterday when I was playing.

[Donny]

I only play SP so maybe it works differently for me but,I found the best rewards were for the Polaris mission the rest mainly give ores plants cash and reputation points however, if you wipe out all the Xirax who are the most hostile anyway you will become honored with the other 2 factions and won't need to go on their missions to get a reputation.
Personal opinion, mission rewards need to be better balanced currently, only one mission will give you 2 epic items, there is no real reward incentive for most of the other missions, nothing that you could not gain in other ways but, it may just be my play style that makes them work that way for me.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by mathaniel:

Personally, telling another player to not play a certain way is a little selfish i think. No offence.

And yet, @HurtfulPlayer97 also advised him how to play, as did you before criticizing me for doing it whilst ignoring both his and your own attempts. "Don't listen to his god, MY god is better!"

Not doing the missions and courting the factions with the passive activities keep you very well fed and your medicine cabinet fully stocked for a lifetime.

[Colossal Sprout]

All the factions have missions that can be completed without angering their rivals, and repeated infinitely. You can skip/ignore any that involve conflict. IIRC only Zirax require getting to a certain rep level before those can be started.

I agree not doing the missions is the preferred and proper way to go, but once you've done it a few times it's not something worth repeating. It's almost akin to killing spiders in order to level up 'ship building knowledge'; just a meaningless and long-winded grind. It wasn't much fun the first time and doesn't age well.

All rep-building systems currently seem like they're just placeholders IMO, it's all a matter of preference until there's a more logical and functional setup.

[Colossal Sprout]

Originally posted by Pantherr:

Am I "supposed" to be on good terms with anyone, and is there any benefit in it..?

It's a matter of preference; Polaris are worth befriending for trade and to mine resources on their land without losing rep; they have near-zero combat ability/presence so you're not missing out on anything by doing so. They have trade stations in every space playfield and on most planets. (Don't mine their asteroid bases though, they don't count as resource deposits).

Talon don't offer much combat either, just their PITA base attacks and patrolling on foot, so they're worth befriending too. Their trade is very limited on most planets and usually not worth bothering with.

Zirax, depends whether you want combat or peaceful progression. They are the only real combat threat in SP/PvE so leave them hostile if you want conflict. Otherwise befriend them if you want peaceful progression and free access to their ore deposits. Some people befriend them early on and eventually turn hostile when they've built up enough offence/defence (not that you'll ever need much of the latter). They have near-zero trade to offer in the vanilla game.

[Sparrowhawk65]

There's a console command that lets you set your reputation. I quite often set everyone hostile to me at the start of the game. More fun when all guns are pointing at you. :)

[Pantherr]

Well shortly after I started this thread I was attacked by Zirax and they wiped out my little starting base, and me, so I restarted lol. Last time I played you would not be attacked if you made a temp base out of a poi, guess that has changed now...

Also I am playing in SP, not on any server..

I saw on the faction tab how to gain/lose rep with each faction, by default I am unfriendly with Z, and neutral with the other 2. I can't see any actual missions for any of them tho.

Yeah, it says killing predators etc on Z land earns you points BUT you lose points every 5mins if I go onto their land, so how is it possible anyway..?

Originally posted by Colossal Sprout:

Originally posted by Pantherr:

Am I "supposed" to be on good terms with anyone, and is there any benefit in it..?

It's a matter of preference; Polaris are worth befriending for trade and to mine resources on their land without losing rep; they have near-zero combat ability/presence so you're not missing out on anything by doing so. They have trade stations in every space playfield and on most planets. (Don't mine their asteroid bases though, they don't count as resource deposits).

Talon don't offer much combat either, just their PITA base attacks and patrolling on foot, so they're worth befriending too. Their trade is very limited on most planets and usually not worth bothering with.

Zirax, depends whether you want combat or peaceful progression. They are the only real combat threat in SP/PvE so leave them hostile if you want conflict. Otherwise befriend them if you want peaceful progression and free access to their ore deposits. Some people befriend them early on and eventually turn hostile when they've built up enough offence/defence (not that you'll ever need much of the latter). They have near-zero trade to offer in the vanilla game.

That helps, thanks, I just gotta find where the missions are, and i have started out after being destroyed...

Originally posted by Sparrowhawk65:

There's a console command that lets you set your reputation. I quite often set everyone hostile to me at the start of the game. More fun when all guns are pointing at you. :)

Not fun when they wipe you out early on in a little temp base made from a poi and you have defense guns set up cuz you don't have the resources to build them...

[Colossal Sprout]

Originally posted by Pantherr:

That helps, thanks, I just gotta find where the missions are, and i have started out after being destroyed...

You're welcome Hit F1 to open the PDA, then click on one of the faction tabs to see their missions. If you're playing a custom scenario they might not be available, they should always be there in the vanilla game though.

Originally posted by Pantherr:

Yeah, it says killing predators etc on Z land earns you points BUT you lose points every 5mins if I go onto their land, so how is it possible anyway..?

The rep hit for trespassing is minimal and very slow, if you kill critters (and cut trees in Zirax zones) you'll gain rep a lot faster than you lose it. If you stay around the edges of their territory with a fast HV it's easy to escape whenever needed and avoid the more serious penalties.