Freelancer Total Reputation FAQ by Erik Mooney / T-hawk ===============================CONTENTS=============================== [1] The Numbers [2] Legal/Disclaimer [3] Introduction [4] How It All Works [5] Hints ========================== [1] The Numbers =========================== I place these first because this is what you'll want to look up for quick reference. Scroll down for explanations of how it works. =========================== [2] Disclaimer =========================== This document is Copyright 2002 by Erik Mooney under the laws of the United States of America. Availability: On my own site at http://www.dos486.com/freelancer , and on the famous site of GameFAQs ( http://www.gamefaqs.com ). Legal: I give permission to copy, post, translate into other languages including computer representations such as HTML, and otherwise reproduce this document for free-of-charge distribution provided that ALL the information and credits of the author and contributors remains attached and intact. Such uses include but are not limited to posting on a website or email service that generates revenue from advertisements but no charge is assessed to the user. This document and information contained herein may NOT be sold or used in any package for which a charge is assessed. Such uses include but are not limited to reproduction in a print magazine, CD-based collection of game information and tips, or on a websites that charges either directly for this document or for a package containing same. Got it? Copy and distribute all you like as long as my name remains attached, but nobody makes any money from it. Disclaimer: I do not guarantee the accuracy of any information contained herein. Such information is subject to error and to future updates of the game Freelancer. I am not responsible for any physical, logical, emotional, brain, or any other damage incurred from this document or the information contained herein. All trademarks contained in this document are the property of their respective owners. ========================= [3] Introduction =========================== This FAQ is for the game Freelancer by Microsoft. This document details exactly how the faction reputation system works in the game, to the best of my knowledge. The faction reputation system is actually far more complex than the F8 in-game information screen would have you believe. The entries under "allies" and "enemies" there are only rough guidelines. How your reputation with the different factions changes is more complex and deals with a ton of numbers that aren't visible in the game but can be extracted from the data files. [3.1] YOUR REPUTATION Your reputation is indicated on the screen accessible by pressing F8 during the game either while flying in space or docked at a base. This list does not include factions you haven't "met" yet by encountering one of their ships in space. The F8 screen shows a total of twenty boxes for each faction. If your reputation is positive or negative with that group, boxes to the right or left of the centerline will be filled in. This FAQ will use the number of boxes to indicate a particular reputation level; "+5 with Corsairs" means your reputation is five boxes into the positive with the Corsairs , while "-2 with Xenos" indicates your reputation with the terrorist group is two boxes into the negative. The maximum possible reputation during most of the single-player (SP) campaign and all multiplayer (MP) gaming is +9 or -9. The tenth negative box is only used during the SP campaign, and then only for the Liberty authority factions. The 10th positive box is never used. The game uses the 10th box to indicate to itself that your reputation with that faction can NEVER move no matter what you do. A reputation of +6 or better means that the group is Friendly with you. You can land at their bases, buy all eligible weaponry from them, and they will not attack you in space. A reputation between +6 and -6 means that the group is Neutral with you. You can land at their bases, and buy some eligible weaponry depending on its level and your exact reputation score. Members of a Neutral faction will generally not attack you in space, but they will sometimes demand that you drop your cargo if you are carrying any and attack you if you don't comply. A reputation of -6 or worse means that the group is Hostile with you. You cannot land at their bases, they will not sell you weaponry, and ships of that faction will attack you on sight in space. Furthermore, any ship that is hostile with you also triggers any nearby members of ITS allies to also attack you. For example, if your reputation with the Outcasts is hostile, and you encounter an Outcast ship in space, any nearby Liberty Rogue or Lane Hacker ships will also attack you regardless of your reputation with them. Talking to most characters in bars requires a reputation of 0 or better with that faction. Bartenders and bribe fixers will always talk to you, though. Receiving missions from a faction requires a reputation of approximately -1.5 or better with them. (You can take missions for a faction if you're slightly negative with them.) These actions do NOT depend on your reputation: buying and selling commodities, buying a ship, and buying most other ship equipment such as ammunition, shields, and batteries. [3.2] THE FACTIONS Above, you will see a gigantic ASCII table with a ton of numbers, which I extracted from the game data file empathy.ini . These numbers represent the "empathy" of each faction in the game for each other faction. Positive numbers represent friendship, while negative numbers represent antipathy or dislike. For example, the Liberty Navy (Li Navy) has empathy of .3 with Universal Shipping (Univ Ship), meaning those groups quite like each other, and if you do something to please one of them the other group will also increase its opinion of you. On the other hand, the Liberty Navy has -.45 empathy with the terrorist Xenos, meaning those factions hate each others' guts. If you do something to please one of those groups, the other will become more hostile to you. But if you kill a ship belonging to one of those groups, the other will like you more - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". A dash indicates that the factions have no interaction at all. The Liberty Navy doesn't care one bit about what you do for or against the Mollys. Below the ASCII table above is a list of the factions' full names along with the abbreviations I used to make the gigantic ASCII table more readable. [3.3] STARTING REPUTATION When a new single-player or multiplayer character is created, his reputation is assigned as follows: +9 (maximum friendly) with: +6 (friendly) with: 0 (neutral) with: -3 (unfriendly) with: -6 (hostile) with: -9 (maximum hostile) with: [3.4] SINGLE-PLAYER CAMPAIGN REPUTATION The single-player campaign includes a number of events that force your reputation with particular factions to particular levels. A full list is beyond the scope of this FAQ at the moment, but may be included in the future. During the SP campaign missions, all of the storyline missions you complete and hostile ships you kill have NO effect on your reputation. The Liberty Rogues do not become more hostile because of your kills during mission 1, nor does the LSF become more friendly because you completed a mission for them. During the freelancing periods, you may affect your reputation by doing non-scripted actions, although this can be overridden by a scripted rep change. One popular use of this is after mission 4, kill lots of Bounty Hunter ships to get most of the criminal factions to neutral with you, then take advantage of the predetermined event that your Bounty Hunter rep goes to neutral once you buy a new ship. When the single-player campaign ends, the character's reputation is always set to be equal to the standard starting values. The Nomads and miscellaneous campaign groups (Quintaine's Men, The Order, etc) have no empathy entries and do not participate in the reputation system. ========================= [4] How It Works =========================== Outside of scripted SP campaign events, there are four ways you can affect your reputation: 1. Kill a ship of that faction. 2. Successfully complete a mission for that faction. 3. Bribe that faction. 4. Fail or abort a mission for that faction. Obviously, actions #1 and #4 will decrease your reputation with that faction, while actions #2 and #3 will increase it. Action #4 is unique in that it only affects your reputation with that particular faction, and no others. (If it did, one very easy way to get friendly with, say, the Xenos, would be to accept and abort many missions for the Liberty Navy.) ***** The other three actions all affect your reputation with any other faction that has empathy for the targeted faction, by multiplying the value of that action by the empathy number. ***** [4.1] KILLING SHIPS The exact value for killing a ship varies slightly by faction, but it is generally around 0.25 of a box. Suppose you destroy a ship that belongs to Kruger Minerals. Your reputation with Kruger goes down by about 0.25 box. Now, Kruger has 0.25 positive empathy with the Rheinland Military, Rheinland Police, Republican Shipping, and ALG Waste Disposal, so your reputation with all of those factions drops by 0.25 * 0.25 = 0.0625 (one-sixteenth) of a box. However, Kruger has -0.3 empathy with the GMG and -0.35 with the Red Hessians, so your reputation will go UP by 0.075 box with the GMG and 0.0875 box with the Hessians. Put another way, making 16 kills of Kruger Minerals ships will drop your reputation with the Rheinland Military by about one box. [4.2] COMPLETING MISSIONS Successfully completing a mission works the same way, although the numbers are larger. Complete a mission for the Golden Chrysanthemums, and your reputation with them will go up by almost one box. You'll also improve by about one-third of a box with the Blood Dragons and Outcasts, one-quarter of a box with the Lane Hackers, but drop with the Kusari police, Farmer's Alliance, and Hogosha. Note that killing ships and completing missions add up separately. If you do a mission for the Liberty Rogues that instructs you to kill Xenos, you'll get almost one box of rep with the Rogues for the mission, plus likely almost another box from killing the Xenos. [4.3] BRIBING, aka "I bribed the Corsairs and now everybody hates me!" Bribing a faction seems tricky to calculate, but it works the same way as the other actions. Bribes set your reputation with the receiving faction to +6 friendly (a bribe for a faction will not be offered if you are already friendly with them.) The effect on other factions is based on the TOTAL VALUE of the bribe in boxes: 6 minus its original value. The price is always $10,000 per box, so the maximum cost is $150,000 to go from -9 to +6. Say your reputation is four boxes into the negative with the Corsairs, but you want to get your hands on some Salamanca and Tizona del Cid guns. So you bribe them, setting your reputation to +6, for a total swing of +10. It costed you $100,000. Every other faction with nonzero empathy for the Corsairs changes its opinion of you by TEN TIMES the empathy number. The Hogosha and Junkers, who are the Corsairs' friends, improve your standing by 3 and 1.5 full boxes respectively. But everyone who hates the Corsairs - which would be ALG, BMM, Bowex, the BHG, the Bretonia armed/police, Cryer, Daumann, the GMG, Gateway, the IMG, Interspace, Kishiro, the Outcasts, Red Hessians, Republican, and Samura, will decrease your standing with them. This goes as high as FOUR FULL BOXES with the Bretonia authorities and 3.5 with the Red Hessians. So, be very careful who you bribe! [4.4] NOTES Note that all of these reputation changes are subject to the +9 and -9 maximums. If the Xenos already have your reputation at -9, killing any number of more Xenos won't damage your reputation with them any further - but the factions with antipathy for the Xenos will still improve your standing based on Xeno kills. Conversely, if your reputation with the Outcasts is already at +9 after flying missions for them, flying more missions can't raise your rep any farther (and one Outcast kill will always lower it by a quarter-box), but can keep improving your rep with the Blood Dragons and GCs while dropping it with the Bretonia authorities and corporations. Faction reputation is also affected by destroying objects belonging to them, such as the Storage Depots outside Manhattan that belong to the Liberty Police and ALG. Each destroyed object appears to count about as much as killing 5-6 ships of that faction. Weapon Platforms such as those outside Ouray Base in Colorado count similarly, although Weapons Platforms and Large Space Stations created for randomly-generated missions do not appear to count any more than normal ship kills. Your reputation does indeed change even with factions you haven't met yet (not yet displayed on the F8 list.) If a freshly started multiplayer character shoots several Manhattan storage depots, the character will find the Rogues, Xenos, Outcasts, and Lane Hackers have improved to neutral when he encounters each faction. It is possible to bribe a faction that you are already friendly with. That requires having two (or more) bribes for the same faction available at the same time in the same bar, and you accept both. I haven't tested this in some time, but I believe that a bribe accepted when you are already at +6 with them improves your rep by one box. There are a few asymmetries in the Empathy table; this is not my error, they're there in the game data file. One example is that the Bundschuh have 0.1 empathy for the Xenos, but the Xenos have -0.05 empathy for the Bundschuh. In English, this means that the Bundschuh will get mad if you kill Xeno ships, but the Xenos will actually like you for killing Bundschuh ships. I cannot say if this was an error on Digital Anvil's part, or if it was intentional (the Bundschuh think the factions have common goals, but the Xenos include them in their hatred of everyone.) ============================ [5] Tricks ============================== Assuming you want to get your reputation good across the board, one general rule to remember is to go DIRECTLY for those factions with many friends (like House militaries) and INDIRECTLY for criminal groups with many enemies. I have included the Totals in the chart for this reason. The higher a group's total, the better you'll do overall by doing positive things (missions or bribes) for them. If a group has a highly negative total (Corsairs), bribing them will cause you many problems and you're better off shooting up one of their enemies that also has a negative total (Red Hessians). A way to improve your rep with a particular faction (especially if it's in the negative) reasonably quickly without affecting your rep too much with others is what I call the "Mission Squeeze Play." Kiss up to a faction from both sides, by flying missions FOR their friends AGAINST their enemies. Let's suppose the Outcasts hate you, and you want to get them to neutral without messing up your rep too badly, so bribing them is out. Find a group that the Outcasts like, such as the Liberty Rogues, and find a group that both they and the Outcasts hate, such as the Xenos. Go to a Liberty Rogue base that offers missions that direct you to kill Xenos - Dawson Base in Hudson system fits the bill. Fly these missions. You'll squeeze the Outcasts from both sides, both by pleasing the Rogues and killing the Xenos. The police factions won't mind, since even as your rep with them drops by flying missions for the Rogues, you're making up for it by killing Xenos that they also hate. This canceling effect lets you focus on the Outcasts, and not worry about most other factions. (But remember that you can't have everything; usually there will be at least ONE faction that hates your temporary allies and likes your enemies. In this case you would tick off Synth Foods, which have antipathy for the Rogues but (small) sympathy for the Xenos.) ============================= [6] Hints ============================== Everybody knows this, but killing the Xenos is the best thing you can do to improve your reputation across the board. Killing the Xenos improves your reputation (to varying degrees) with no fewer than TWENTY-SEVEN factions, while making only four factions mad: the Xenos themselves (duh), the Zoners, Synth Foods, and Bundschuh. Here is a list of every faction and suggested ways to improve your reputation with them.