Regain Pirate Faction Reputation?

[PyroMancer]

I started out thinking it was fine taking all these missions against the Pirates and now they hate me. Problem is I found out about the Black Market which supposedly has some of the best items in the game and you need to be on decent standings with the pirates to afford it.

Well because I'm hated I can only do 1 Star missions for the pirates but can't seem to find any of those. All I find are 1.5 and 2 Star missions which it won't let me do to increase the faction rating. I've been flying to multiple abandon systems and finding pirate missions there it's just I can't take them because my reputation is too low.

Is there any other way to increase reputation? Or perhaps where can I find some 1 Star Pirate Missions? I used the star map filter to fly to all THREE of the 1 Star systems in start area and all three have ZERO missions for ANY faction. So do missions not regenerate in a system?

It's really annoying cause at one point I even had TWO Travel missions of 1.5 Star offered by pirates but couldn't take cause of the Low Rep. I'm starting to feel like I'm totally screwed but don't wanna restart as I'm fairly far along with all the upgrades to the ship.

[revenantsknight]

Contracts do regenerate over time in systems you've already cleared, although not quickly. Abandoned systems don't help with Pirate contracts necessarily; it's dependent only on which factions are active in a system. Lastly, the difficulty of a system is a little misleading; contracts are usually but not always 0.5-1.5 skulls higher than the system difficulty rating.

If this is Campaign (and it sounds like it is,) then your Pirate rep may be unrecoverable. As you might have realized, the difficulty of all contracts increases when you complete story missions, so yes, it's possible to get to a point where you can't ever take contracts for a faction that's sufficiently angry at you. That said, if you wanted to put a bit more time in it, try to avoid taking contracts against the Pirates and go work somewhere else for a couple pay cycles, then come back to the low difficulty systems. I'm not 100% sure this would work, though, because contract regeneration in Campaign may be dependent on advancing the story, which is exactly what you don't want to do.

If this is Career, the systems all have set contract difficulties, and there should be more than just three systems that offer 0.5 skull Pirate contracts...unless you cleared them all already.

Other than contracts, the odd random event while traveling could theoretically increase your Pirate rep, but I think I've seen such events 2-3 times over like 5 playthroughs, so deeply unreliable.

Oh, and I should add, the above is premised on you not having the Black Market invitation yet. if you do already have Black Market access and are just worried about the gougy prices, you will probably make enough money to buy some stuff later anyway. Cash is easy to come by in the late game.

[maerchen]

But if this is a campaign playthrough, and I believe it is campaign, then congrats:

a) restart the campaign and whack yourself for not reading any new player guide beforehand and/or reading any discussion thread that starts with *tips for beginners* and thus having cursed yourself to a more difficult playthrough or

b) live with it and be able to buy really just some of it in the black markets at 10x fee. Oh, and the fee for entering the black markets is 10x, too.


It seems you aren't that deep in the campaign at 3.5 skulls. My advise would be to restart.

The BM warez are very nice to have.

[MarkDey]

I generally agree with what revenantsknight said, but will also add that having Black Market access is not at all required. You can still find rare equipment outside of the Black Market, and I found it useful to have an enemy faction that can appear in every system that everyone hates. Makes it very likely that you'll have at least one contract that you can do, and usually more, wherever you go.

[kensw]

Agree with MarkDey Pirates rep is useful if you want to buy your way to victory but by no means essential.

[PyroMancer]

Well I'm over 500 days in to campaign manage to find/buy parts for an Atlas. I been grinding a bit before advancing the campaign.

I did find a way to increase my odds though. When you goto a system and it's spins to load the contracts in the system it's generating the missions. If you load the arrival save from before you looked at the contract page it will generate new contract list. So I can basically save scum the contract list until I get a 1 skull pirate mission.

Thanks to that I just need 2 more mission at max reputation gains and I'll be able to do 1.5 star pirate missions which are more common. Thanks to my heavy mechs that i was using on 2-2.5 star with the other factions the 1 star pirate missions are cakewalk when i find them. Still a heck of a grind as the most I can seem to find is 1 mission per system with repeated loads.

[TheMasterBlaster]

have to check the .5 skull systems and start building rep from scratch.

btw, you can lower BOTH the contract C-Bills reward and the amount of salvage to maximize rep increase for the mission.

Black Market might not be necessary, but it sure is helpful!!! When I play career mode I always prioritize pirate rep from the very start. I dont accept any contracts against pirates and I decrease contract C-Bills and salvage when I accept pirate contracts to get max rep ASAP. the higher your pirate rep, the more discount you get at the black market.

[revenantsknight]

Ah, cool - glad you found a solution! Just in the nick of time, too; those low difficulty contracts will be gone after another story mission or two.

And yes, you don't have to use the Black Market to win but this does increase your options by a good amount.

[maerchen]

I'm happy you found a solution. The grind is real but it is worth it.
MAR with a good tactics pilot and those sweet UACs++ or an ECM you can buy on the black markets is really something to stay stubborn and work for at max rep gain and zero salvage.

[revenantsknight]

Originally posted by maerchen:

I'm happy you found a solution. The grind is real but it is worth it.
MAR with a good tactics pilot and those sweet UACs++ or an ECM you can buy on the black markets is really something to stay stubborn and work for at max rep gain and zero salvage.

Not sure if the OP has all the DLC, in which case UACs and ECM wouldn't be in the cards. Nonetheless, there's plenty of fun and overpowered toys in the base game's Black Market, and with the DLC you can really go to town with just a couple million in C-Bills and a little luck.

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by revenantsknight:

Originally posted by maerchen:

I'm happy you found a solution. The grind is real but it is worth it.
MAR with a good tactics pilot and those sweet UACs++ or an ECM you can buy on the black markets is really something to stay stubborn and work for at max rep gain and zero salvage.

Not sure if the OP has all the DLC, in which case UACs and ECM wouldn't be in the cards. Nonetheless, there's plenty of fun and overpowered toys in the base game's Black Market, and with the DLC you can really go to town with just a couple million in C-Bills and a little luck.

I got all the DLC as I got game in recent Humble Bundle which included them all.

On grinding money it seems like taking max cash rewards is better than Salvage. Starting out getting savage for some more mech was nice but after I got a few mechs it seems like buying parts at shop for Heavy/Assault Mechs is easiest and fastest way to get them. Plus the salvage I get often don't seem to seem to add up to the cash I would have gotten from missions, especially when bonus objectives are add for increased payout.

And the Salvage "Value" the game list which has it priced in the millions just seems there to make you feel better at picking salvage over cash payout as even buying those parts at show don't cost anywhere close to the "Value" it list.

Still waiting for blackmarket event :( so wonder what kind of nice things it will have.

[maerchen]

Early game, cash grab is good, from mid game on, salvage is better as you get better gear from salvage and having the opportunity to grab a COIL or a rare Mech like the Cyclops HQ/MAR 3R instead of scooting around multiple systems in hope of buying them.

[kharille]

I am convinced if I ever do a 3rd playthrough, I'll get on the Taurians good side too. Made an effort but its hard to NOT do jobs against them.

I think relations with pirates helps me build up my relations with other factions.

[WillieSea]

First thing I do is declare war against The Capellan Convederation, Draconis Combine, and Taurian Concordat. Since they are what I call the Axis.

My allies are Federated Suns, Lyran Commonwealth, Magistracy of Canopus, and Free Worlds League.

Doing all missions against local governments, since their reputation is not tracked.

And you 'can' do missions against your allies, as long as you do more missions for your allies to keep the reputation up. After all, you are a mercenary company.

[Axotl]

or just find a save game editor and not deal with the stupidity of poorly engineered reputation systems. :|

[revenantsknight]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

On grinding money it seems like taking max cash rewards is better than Salvage. Starting out getting savage for some more mech was nice but after I got a few mechs it seems like buying parts at shop for Heavy/Assault Mechs is easiest and fastest way to get them. Plus the salvage I get often don't seem to seem to add up to the cash I would have gotten from missions, especially when bonus objectives are add for increased payout.

Cash is better until you can reliably drop 'Mechs by headshot or pilot kill so they give up 3 parts per 'Mech, at which point salvaging and selling reassembled 'Mechs comes out ahead. I don't think I've ever seen cash rewards above 2.5 million C-Bills, while my personal record is about 5 or 6 fully assembled Assaults worth of salvage. Also, at your stage of the game, you're correct that buying is easier than salvaging the big 'Mechs, although that changes when OpFor tonnage increases later. There's also the odd Titan mission that will generally have at least one damaged Assault in the OpFor.

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

And the Salvage "Value" the game list which has it priced in the millionsjust seems there to make you feel better at picking salvage over cash payout as even buying those parts at show don't cost anywhere close to the "Value" it list.

An approximation of the sell value of salvage is 10% of the list price at the end of a contract (or 9% if you want to be more accurate because you're counting score in Career.) It is actually the value of the material if you were to buy it all IIRC, but that would be without discounts and buying all 'Mechs as fully assembled, which both drive up the numbers significantly. Further, usually you wouldn't have wanted to buy those various pieces and are looking to sell anyway.

Note that when buying 'Mechs, buying full 'Mechs is way more expensive than buying parts at 3 parts per 'Mech, and when selling, selling fully assembled 'Mechs nets better returns than either scrapping one in the 'MechBay or selling the pieces individually.