It should be very difficult or maybe impossible to get both Serco and Itani (for example) to admire you.
Therefore I suggest that every time your Serco or Itani faction rating changes the other should move in the opposite direction though not as much as the one which originally changed.

Example: You complete a Itani mission and your rating goes up by X, your Serco rating would drop by .7*X. Then you fly into serco space and shoot weapons in a no-fire zone and your Serco rating drops by Y, your Itani would go up by .7*Y.

I like it. Makes people have to choose sides. I think it is important though that people can be admired by one without being hated. We need to have a minimum point where it can't drop this way any more. I'd like there to be some people who can play diplomat and have trade relations for other people. They'd make good smugglers :)

N. O.

There is a reason that i'm trying to work for both nations. I'm *TRYING* to get a prom. You need REALLY high levels to get special ships with another nation, even your own. It's hard enough getting shot at by serco pilots as I'm doing missions for THEIR government.

Y. E. S.

Good idea Eldrad. After all, it's a war!

N.O.

I agree it that it should be difficult to become admired by both Serco and Itani, but it should not be impossible.

N... YES!!!

If you want to be liked by everyone, be NT. IMHO, If you're itani, when your itani rating goes up, your serco rating goes down and vice versa. If you're NT, then if your itani rating goes up, it should NOT affect your serco rating.

Ok if you read my suggestion it is not impossible. It is just difficult. For example you could gain 10 itani points and lose 7 serco, then gain 10 serco and lose 7 itani (a net gain of 3 points for each).

I'm also assuming that "SOON" (tm) your initial nation choice will only effect your starting faction standings and after that standings would be all that's important.

Furball, groups at war tend to have a very short tolerance for "neutral" people helping/supplying their enemies.

Serco and Itani were just examples this could also be applied to sub-factions Neighboring competing trade corporations for example.

I realize faction ratings are a little artificial right now, but from a story standpoint, how are these numbers known by one faction or another? Are they painted on the side of each ship? I would like to see a less centralized system where each faction keeps track of its own list (maybe friendly factions could share their ratings list). Then, unless the act that changes your rating is visible by both factions, one rating would not automatically influence another. But in practice, the actions that affect ratings the most will probably be quite visible (killing opposition, etc), and that should be what makes opposing faction ratings mutually exclusive.

RE: Eldrad: "It should be very difficult or maybe *IMPOSSIBLE* to get both Serco and Itani (for example) to admire you"

The word "impossible" was used.

At a gain of 3 points per 10 gained, it would be damn near impossible to gain "Admire" starting at -600.

that would be +3 to both... and your home nation would not start at -600 so you could lose it until the two were equal then work them up alternately. Also not all nations start with a -600 in other nations. (.7 was just a random number it could be anything between 0(no change) and 1(impossible))

paedric, I agree with you it should be difficult but impossible.

What if this only comes into play in certain missions?

Let's say Itani govt wants me (I'm NT) to bring three "Weapon design blueprints" widgets from Sol II to Itan?

I could do it, and gain alot of Itani standing (I'm thinking +150 to +200) but Serco would not be Demonen-fans. (-100 to -150?)

I'd need a great standing with Itani to even get access to the blueprints, so it's my choise to cut my good relation with them in order to get access to some high-level Serco stuff.

I also think TIME should factor into this.
The longer I've been working for Itani the less Serco trust me.
My faction hit with Itani would go down just as much, possibly even more since they thought they could trust me, but my Serco standing does not increase right away because they don't trust me yet. I've been working for Itan for a year, my turning could be a trick.

When it comes to the whole thing of nations at war not liking their counterpart trading with neutral nations...
How did Switzerland survive WW2 with everyone around them at war in some way?
Trade with the moon?

My dictionary says:
Neutral - Not aligned with, supporting, or favoring either side in a war, dispute, or contest.

Does that exclude trading with both sides equally?

If every other mission I do is for Itan and the other for Sol II I should be counted as "Neutral" since I don't favor either one.

So YEE-HAY to Eldrad's idea!

Thanks to booting i dig up from -600 to +700 in about 2 days... with 30% of efficency it would take you 3 times as much, but it's still doable.

The standings can be more sophisticated. For example

you gained 10 with serco
you lost 7 with itani
you gained 2 with axia
you lost 1 with biocom
(those are only examples, you can pick two or more factions that likes to stick with three main nations)

Since biocom likes Itani, and axia likesx sercos it's natural for them to stick together.. so IF you gain serco standing, that means you don't like Itani (and biocom), but you like axia..

It's still possible to get admired by all. It just more.. varied and difficult ;P

aw :(

even more timeintensive...

I have a life you know ...

time intensive is GOOD.

It should not be easy to achieve such a goal as having everyone like you. several years should be neccesary for a player to reach a situation where he/she is +900 or higher with every faction.

Think of it as trying to become a national hero to the real world countries of the USA, Russia, Iraq, France, Germany, Iran, China, Cuba, Japan and Korea; all at the same time.

several years? fuck no.

months maybe. this is a game, not Earth 2004 in Space.

Analogies and details aside, conceptually Eldrad's idea is a good one.

Along the same lines it would be neat to see some higher up missions for particular factions that harm other factions in some way, so that for these missions not only would your faction standing go up with the faction you did the mission for, it would go down for the harmed faction as a consequence of your actions. For example, a corvus mission could be "An Neutral courier from Dau L-11 is delivering a weapon prototype blueprint to Sedina C-2. Destroy the courier, retrieve the blueprint, and bring it here." For this mission not only would your Corvus standing go up significantly, your Neutral standing would most likely go down if they witnessed you destroying their courier.

not to mention that you can loose your standing a lot faster then you can gain it.

And at that time botting for like 5 months, just to get it back up to its previous level due to one error or one occurance, would be very funbreaking...