Privateer/RF reputation

Sharpshooter

Rear Admiral
I've been looking for something like this for a long time and never managed to find it, so I made it myself.:p
So, for those interested, here's what happens to your reputation points for each faction every time you destroy a ship. You start with 0 reputation points with the Merchants, Hunters, Confeds, and Militia; -50 points with the Kilrathi and Pirates, and -128 with the Retros. Factions are hostile below -25, friendly above 25, and neutral between -25 and 25.
Your reputation, apart from being what decides whether factions are hostile and friendly, also affects how many friendly comm messages you have to send to an enemy before it becomes friendly, or how many hostile messages you have to send to a friendly ship before it attacks you. Hostile Retros cannot be pacified with comm messages. Friendly Retros cannot be made hostile with comm messages, either. Also, many ships that are spawned by accepting missions will always be hostile. There are ships that will always start out friendly when accepting some missions, too.
Finally, note that unlike the killboard, the reputation system is ship-based, not pilot-based. For example, Menesch is a pirate, so killing him gives you +1 to your pirate kills on the killboard. But as far as reputation is concerned, the ship he's using is a Hunter ship, and your reputation will be set accordingly.

Tarsus
Merchant : -5
Hunter : -5
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -5
Pirate : +5
Retro : No change

Galaxy
Merchant : -5
Hunter : -10
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -5
Pirate : +10
Retro : No change

Drayman
Merchant : -10
Hunter : -15
Confed : -10
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -10
Pirate : +15
Retro : No change

Orion
Merchant : No change
Hunter : -10
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -5
Pirate : +10
Retro : No change

Demon
Merchant : No change
Hunter : -15
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -5
Pirate : +15
Retro : No change

Centurion
Merchant : No change
Hunter : -20
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -5
Pirate : +20
Retro : No change

Stiletto
Merchant : No change
Hunter : -5
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : +5
Militia : -5
Pirate : +5
Retro : No change

Broadsword
Merchant : No change
Hunter : -5
Confed : -10
Kilrathi : +10
Militia :-5
Pirate : +10
Retro : No change

Paradigm
Merchant : -5
Hunter : -20
Confed : -25
Kilrathi : +25
Militia : -15
Pirate : +25
Retro : No change

Dralthi
Merchant : No change
Hunter : +1
Confed : +1
Kilrathi : -1
Militia : +1
Pirate : No change
Retro : No change

Gothri
Merchant : No change
Hunter : +1
Confed : +1
Kilrathi : -5
Militia : +1
Pirate : No change
Retro : No change

Kamekh
Merchant : +1
Hunter : +1
Confed : +5
Kilrathi : -15
Militia : +5
Pirate : No change
Retro : No change

Brown-winged Talon
Merchant : No change
Hunter : -5
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -5
Pirate : +5
Retro : No change

Gladius
Merchant : No change
Hunter : -5
Confed : -5
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : -5
Pirate : +5
Retro : No change

Dark Talon
Merchant : +1
Hunter : +1
Confed : +1
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : +1
Pirate : -5
Retro : No change

White Talon
Merchant : +1
Hunter : +1
Confed : +1
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : +1
Pirate : +1
Retro : -5

Salthi
Merchant : +1
Hunter : +1
Confed : +1
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : +1
Pirate : +1
Retro : -5

Elite Salthi
Merchant : +1
Hunter : +1
Confed : +1
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : +1
Pirate : +1
Retro : -5

Steltek Scout
Merchant : No change
Hunter : No change
Confed : No change
Kilrathi : No change
Militia : No change
Pirate : No change
Retro : No change

Steltek Drone
Merchant : +25
Hunter : +25
Confed : +25
Kilrathi : +25
Militia : +25
Pirate : +25
Retro : No change

Strangely enough, the Kilrathi and Pirates are much more forgiving when you destroy their ships than the "good guys". In fact, if you were to repeatedly destroy the same number of Stilettos and Dralthis, your reputation with the Confeds would keep decreasing whereas your reputation with the Kilrathi would keep going up.
As you can see, Bounty Hunters are somewhat tough to keep on your side. Once you've lost their trust, regaining it is hard since no ship will ever give you more than a single reputation point with them (aside from the Steltek Drone). I personally like to lure some of the Palan blockade ships towards the 4 Gothri that sometimes spawn at Basra. Then I let them deal the final blow on the Demons and Centurions, since your reputation only gets affected if you personally destroy a ship. Alternatively, you can use the asteroid field in the Palan system. Ships destroyed by asteroids do not affect your reputation. If Pirates happen to spawn in the asteroid field, they can help you as well.

In order to get the Retros on your side, you must destroy 6529 Retro ships (White Talons/Salthi/Elite Salthi). As far as I know, there is no other non-cheating way to do it. Also, these are Retro ships we're talking about, not Retro pilots, so destroying Militia Talons flown by Retros, such as the ones that ambush you at Oxford during one of Masterson's missions in Righteous Fire, will not help you. Sadly, the comm messages for friendly Retros aren't voiced (which is IMO a pity, because I'd have loved to hear them shout "Free all Pot prisoners"). They're not exceptionally talkative either and won't greet you very often. Expect them to ignore most of your comm messages. When you're allied with the Retros, some of the Retros you'd normally fight during plot missions will sometimes let you autopilot away from them, although they will still shoot at you if you stick around for too long. This is very helpful during the RF mission where you have to patrol Death, Pestilence, and War, as every single Retro in that mission will let you autopilot. Despite this, the colossal amount of effort involved in allying with them means that it's still not worth it overall, if you ask me.
 
Huh? Saltis and Co give -5 to Retro. In fact, i don't see any +Retro in your list?!
 
Great stuff!

We'll have to make sure to WCPedia this :D

Thanks!

Huh? Saltis and Co give -5 to Retro. In fact, i don't see any +Retro in your list?!

Unfortunately, yes. That's why the only way to align with the Retros is to attack them a lot. Once you've destroyed 6528 Retro ships, you reach the 16-bit negative maximum, -32768. And once you destroy one more ship, this causes an integer overflow and sets your reputation with them to 32763, which makes them go straight from hostile to friendly. I'm still unsure as to whether it's a bug, or an easter egg, or a bit of both, but I'm slightly leaning towards easter egg due to those silly comm messages and that Death-Pestilence-War patrol mission.
Note that it's quite hard to destroy so many ships. Personally, I went to Hind's Variable N. to do it, as they give a lot of missions against Retros there. There's also a group of four Retros that will occasionally spawn at one of the jump points there.

Something that I forgot to mention : Lynch's offer in Righteous Fire sets your reputation with the Merchants, Hunters, Confeds, Militia, and Pirates to 0. Kilrathi seem to be unaffected, and Retros are reset back to -128. Which means that I wouldn't reset my reputation if I'm on good terms with the Retros. ;)
 
Unfortunately, yes. That's why the only way to align with the Retros is to attack them a lot. Once you've destroyed 6528 Retro ships, you reach the 16-bit negative maximum, -32768. And once you destroy one more ship, this causes an integer overflow and sets your reputation with them to 32763, which makes them go straight from hostile to friendly. I'm still unsure as to whether it's a bug, or an easter egg, or a bit of both, but I'm slightly leaning towards easter egg due to those silly comm messages and that Death-Pestilence-War patrol mission.
Definitely a bug. They wouldn't have even thought to test what happens if you kill 6000 ships :). The comm messages were probably written just in case. You always get lots of leftover stuff like this in game development.

Strangely enough, the Kilrathi and Pirates are much more forgiving when you destroy their ships than the "good guys". In fact, if you were to repeatedly destroy the same number of Stilettos and Dralthis, your reputation with the Confeds would keep decreasing whereas your reputation with the Kilrathi would keep going up.
From a game balance perspective, makes perfect sense. The player is much more likely to be friendly with Confed than with the Kilrathi or pirates, since he gains precious little from being friendly with those two factions (especially the Kilrathi).
 
From a game balance perspective, makes perfect sense. The player is much more likely to be friendly with Confed than with the Kilrathi or pirates, since he gains precious little from being friendly with those two factions (especially the Kilrathi).

Being friendly with the Kilrathi does make the last two Taryn Cross missions much easier, but other than that, yeah; the fact that there aren't many random Kilrathi encounters means that having cat allies isn't as helpful as one might think. Unless you fly a Tarsus, because then you need all the help you can get.

Definitely a bug. They wouldn't have even thought to test what happens if you kill 6000 ships :). The comm messages were probably written just in case. You always get lots of leftover stuff like this in game development.

Good point. And while "Hemp for Victory!" and "Free all Pot prisoners" sound like easter eggs, the third comm message which shows up now and then ("This attitude not possible") seems to support the bug theory. I do wonder what they originally planned for the Retros, the fact that it's possible to affect your reputation points with them at all means that they might have considered the possibility to include ships that would give you (positive) points with them when being destroyed.
This still leaves me wondering why the RF team bothered to make Lynch reset the Retro points to -128, though; and why that one mission where every Retro ship shows up as blue happens to be the hardest mission in the game... I wonder if one programmer from the RF team found out about the bug and decided to include those two things as a bonus in case someone else triggered it. Then again, maybe it was just a coincidence. :p
 
Great, now I'm going to spend the next several weeks gunning down Retros. :)

Outstanding work, though!
 
Thanks!

Great, now I'm going to spend the next several weeks gunning down Retros. :)

Theoretically, someone with a lot of patience and a lot of free time could pull this off in less than two weeks, since you can destroy around 100 Retro ships per hour if you're fast enough.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I won't try it again. I'm still seeing white talons flying in front of me. :p

EDIT : For those who care, here's how to edit your reputation with a hex editor. Open the saved game you wish to edit with your favorite hex editor and look for the following byte sequence : "50 4C 41 59 53 43 4F 52" ("PLAYSCOR" in plain text). Ignore the next 4 bytes (they'll likely be "00 00 00 12"). The next two bytes are your reputation points with the Merchants. The next two bytes are your reputation points with the Hunters. Then the next two bytes are your reputation points with the Confeds. Then, it's the Kilrathi, then Militia, then Pirates, you get the idea. Ignore the four bytes after the Pirates' reputation points, I'm not sure what they do, but they may have been intended for ships that are always hostile and ships that are always friendly. Then the next two bytes after those 4 mysterious bytes are your reputation points with the Retros.

Remember that all values are low endian, so, say, "80 FF" in the hex editor means that the actual current value would be "FF 80", or -128.
 
Being friendly with the Kilrathi does make the last two Taryn Cross missions much easier, but other than that, yeah; the fact that there aren't many random Kilrathi encounters means that having cat allies isn't as helpful as one might think. Unless you fly a Tarsus, because then you need all the help you can get.
Even then, it's actually possible to whine your way out of any Kilrathi encounter. Two of the taunt comm options have special functionality in Priv - if you repeatedly use option 3 on a ship, you will eventually persuade him to become neutral (and again, repeated use will make him friendly). It's a one-off, and you have to do it separately for every ship, but it's a nifty thing to bear in mind. Similarly, option 4 will make a friendly ship go into neutral and then into hostile.

I may be remembering the numbers of the options wrong, it may be the other way round. But you get the picture. I personally never managed to make the Kilrathi friendly as a faction - but I repeatedly used this option, because the Kilrathi neutral and friendly taunts are just such a load of laughs.

Good point. And while "Hemp for Victory!" and "Free all Pot prisoners" sound like easter eggs, the third comm message which shows up now and then ("This attitude not possible") seems to support the bug theory. I do wonder what they originally planned for the Retros, the fact that it's possible to affect your reputation points with them at all means that they might have considered the possibility to include ships that would give you (positive) points with them when being destroyed.
This still leaves me wondering why the RF team bothered to make Lynch reset the Retro points to -128, though; and why that one mission where every Retro ship shows up as blue happens to be the hardest mission in the game... I wonder if one programmer from the RF team found out about the bug and decided to include those two things as a bonus in case someone else triggered it. Then again, maybe it was just a coincidence. :p
Well, generally speaking, it's always easier to make things work the same way - i.e., if you have five factions, having special cases for any of them in the code is a bother. The way the system works, it would be easy to add those missing comms and change the ship reputation modifiers to make the Retros befriendable - all without the need to touch the code.
 
I may be remembering the numbers of the options wrong, it may be the other way round.

It's not, you got them in the right order. I used that trick a lot when I was in trouble, although if you've been too hostile towards a faction, they'll have plenty of time to blow you up before you manage to make them friendly. Paradigms and Kamekhs take longer to reply to comm messages, as well.

because the Kilrathi neutral and friendly taunts are just such a load of laughs

Yep, they don't sound very friendly, actually. More like "be glad I don't feel like having you for lunch".
"Fear not! My claws are sheathed, my belly full!"
 
Great work, wished I'd looked for it years ago!

"I didn't see you and you're blind, got it."
Just one of the many reasons I love having the pirates for allies.
 
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