Maintaining best relations with all factions?

[Kharille]

I remember when I first got the game the missions were sparse and I had trouble trying to just make my monthly payments. 2nd playthrough to finish I took every mission and ended up hated by pirates. After the main campaign I had little to do since the pirates hated me.

Now on my 3rd playthrough, the only faction that hates me are the Taurians. Since I tend to play alternating sides I have 100 relations with Davion and Kurita and 60 for all other factions. Just wondering whether anyone managed to maintain relations with all factions including the Taurians?

Curious as to your experience. Are any of the allied flashpoints that good? Perhaps an alternative is to ally with each of them in turn since you still get missions unless you're at rock bottom. I figure at the end I'll wander through taurian space and do jobs for free, if that is an option and I got the money for it.

 

[Mabberton]

I think it is very hard to do in the base game, especially if you are trying to keep best relations with the pirates too. That pretty much leaves the various Planetary Governments as the easiest viable target to improve relations drastically, although once you had good relations with everyone, I guess you could just bounce around a lot balancing out the reputation pluses and minuses.

If you are comfortable with them, there are mods that change the reputation system somewhat to make getting work easier. There is also one that allows you do to the Alliance Flashpoints at 100 reputation without creating an Alliance.

Mike

 

[Prussian Havoc]

I remember when I first got the game the missions were sparse and I had trouble trying to just make my monthly payments. 2nd playthrough to finish I took every mission and ended up hated by pirates. After the main campaign I had little to do since the pirates hated me.

Now on my 3rd playthrough, the only faction that hates me are the Taurians. Since I tend to play alternating sides I have 100 relations with Davion and Kurita and 60 for all other factions. Just wondering whether anyone managed to maintain relations with all factions including the Taurians?

Curious as to your experience. Are any of the allied flashpoints that good? Perhaps an alternative is to ally with each of them in turn since you still get missions unless you're at rock bottom. I figure at the end I'll wander through taurian space and do jobs for free, if that is an option and I got the money for it.

You have to be wiling to leave perfectly good contracts on the table from the very beginning of the game, but you can work toward being on good terms with ALL factions to include Pirates.

FLASHPOINTS are key because while they can provide a windfall of good reputation, if you are not careful FLASHPOINT Antagonists may see some significant reputation penalties. So if you are not buffered against said reputation loss, you may need to walk away from some FLASHPOINTS the first, maybe even subsequent times too.

I am still quite early in my current Career Attempt, I will try to run up the Rep of as many Factions as I can and see just how high I can get them. THAT sounds fun and is something I haven't worked toward yet. : )

 

[NGV]

I've played two campaigns and I think 4 career attempts and I've never not been hated by the Taurians - just seems to be one of those odd facts of life.

Even the time I started in Taurian space I had far more contracts against them crop up than contracts for them and I was about -60 reputation by the time I reached my third system

 

[fredman]

After encountering this in my first Campaign play-thru I just became a lot more judicious in my mission selections and as suggested by Prussian Havoc leave some contracts alone that will leave you with a rep deficit for any particular faction. Also make your way down to the 'open' area where most factions are against local government until you build your rep high enough to take these for/against contracts and slowly build rep with all factions a few points at a time ( for instance Capellans vs. Pirates and then Pirates vs. Capellans on the same planet). In the campaign beginning contracts with the Taurians are hard to come by but this means avoiding contracts against them and by the end of the campaign I have ended up with a -20-30 rep which can be easily overcome, and this is particularly important with the Pirates if you want access to the Black Market as soon as possible at the lowest 'join' price possible.

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

I'm doing pretty good with almost all factions in my playthrough. The Magistracy doesn't care for me, but other than them, I am liked or honored with the other factions (even pirates).

I'd Ally with a faction, but I just don't feel it is worth it (other than the allied specific Flashpoint). I'd rather most factions like me so that it is easier to find good paying work (plus I am getting great prices on the Black Market anyway).

 

[Kharille]

I find building relations with the pirates great, you pick on planetary governments and with that, you then work with other factions against the pirates. Nobody gets upset in the long term and you get more relations working with someone than you lose. Say for a 4 skull mission, 14 relations with Capellans and minus 10 relations with the pirates. I tend to play off all sides.

Really want to rebuild ties with the Taurans though. Heard one of their planets has a good hardware store. Wonder if I can find 2 skull taurian missions....

 

[frozx]

Recovering from a -100 rep can be hard due to the lack of missions. Needs some patience to get up again. But once you get regular 4-5 star missions it can be done fairly quickly, since you can get up to 30 rep per mission if you skip money and loot.

A good way to get high rep on every faction is to fight for Davion, Taurian, Steiner etc. against Liao, Marik and Pirates. And then recover the latter rep by fighting for them in the neutral zone against Planetary Governments.

 

[Kereminde]

It's doable, just really hard and it requires juggling reputation gains/losses carefully. And going "all in" for reputation gain when going up against Planetary Government forces. (And conversely, never taking jobs for them.)

 

[NGV]

Recovering from a -100 rep can be hard due to the lack of missions. Needs some patience to get up again. But once you get regular 4-5 star missions it can be done fairly quickly, since you can get up to 30 rep per mission if you skip money and loot.

A good way to get high rep on every faction is to fight for Davion, Taurian, Steiner etc. against Liao, Marik and Pirates. And then recover the latter rep by fighting for them in the neutral zone against Planetary Governments.

That's truly impressive - I hope you got an achievement for that

 

[Kereminde]

That's truly impressive - I hope you got an achievement for that

Far as I know, you do not get an achievement for this. What you get achievements for is entering Alliances. (But not the Alliance Flashpoints.)

A sad thing in my opinion is how the Flashpoints don't have some sort of 'trophy' or 'memento' in the Commander's Quarters to look at. But then, I recently re-installed X-Wing Alliance where that was a thing

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

It isn't always an easy balance, but if you look at what contracts you have available and plan out a strategy (what contracts to take and in what order), it can be possible to be at the least indifferent and above with all the factions.

Also, planning out Flashpoints and who to side with and who to mess with also helps. The Prototype Flashpoint is a good one to inject a lot of rep into any one given faction where needed.

Through some careful planning and scheming, I have been able to be pretty well liked by everyone. The Kuritans and Canopians are the only ones indifferent at this moment, but no one dislikes or hates me.

Of course, the Pirates love me, but that is to protect my Black Market access and to keep prices as low as possible. The one downside of keeping reps up is I can't ally with any one faction, so that Black Market is very important.

 

[Kharille]

I'm 1200 days into my 2nd playthrough. Still no bullshark. Gonna' push the argo around a little bit more and then maybe restart. Still can't find a damned ecm for my argo. Guess its great to be talking with the pirates. Gives me a reason to run around. Got 2 Gauss guns on each of my annihilators and 4 Gauss ++ in total. Those headshots are immensely satisfying.

I suppose I could somehow engineer a game and form alliances with most factions, break them and restore relations to 100 with each but that'll probably take another 800 days... Pity about the Taurians, not sure I can afford another 200 hours to do the same thing again.... Still, some end game goals would be nice, like finding my first ecm for assault rifles (! mechs).