Factions

There are NPC factions and Player factions. In multiplayer games, Factions help organize players into cooperative groups, where only a select group of people can use shared grids. In singleplayer games, factions are only relevant when interacting with NPCs. Faction membership carries with it a reputation which defines relationships with other players or NPCs as hostile, neutral, or friendly. If there are PCU limits imposed, they are typically split among factions and their members.

You access the Factions tab can be accessed anywhere by accessing the Terminal K key. Here you can create a new faction, join an existing one, read faction descriptions and member lists, and check your standing.

How to Found a Faction?

Each player can found a faction. If applicable, leave your current faction first, because you can only found a faction if you are not a member of one. Press K and go to the Factions tab and click Create to start a new faction. You become its founder and first member.

First, choose a Faction Tag and Faction Name. The Faction Tag is automatically added to the front of all members' names and faction-owned beacons.

• A player faction tag must be three characters long; the faction name must be four or more characters long. (Characters may include letters, punctuation, numbers, but no spaces)
• Note that NPC factions have four-letter tags, which you can see for example in the names of all Trading Outposts.

Next, click the Edit button, and then click the Eye button in the corner of the faction logo. Here you choose a cool logo and set your team color (foreground and background). There are mods and DLCs that add more logos as well.

Optionally, provide a public and a private description:

• The Public Description is visible to other players on the Factions tab, regardless of reputation; use it to tell others, for example, whether your members are interested in PvP, which languages you speak, if you are accepting new members and which skills you are looking for, which territory you claim, and so on.
• Fill in the Private Description to welcome new members, explain your faction's secret goals and rules, command hierarchy, and so on.

The Founder can choose to set the faction to Accept Anyone.

• Allowing everyone to join can make sense if the game's online mode is set to Friends or Private.
• If you are playing on a Public server, auto-accepting everyone is however not recommended, because griefers could join your faction too easily and destroy your bases from the inside.

The Founder can choose to set the faction to Accept Peace in order to automatically accept peace proposals by other factions.

• Similar to Accept Anyone, accepting peace makes sense when playing with friends, but leaves you defenseless against griefers on public servers.

The Add NPC button adds virtual members to the faction. This does not literally add NPC avatars to the game. It is used in scenarios so that a faction does not cease to exist after the last player leaves. NPC factions also have virtual Founder NPCs added named "<Faction Name> CEO".

How to Join a Faction?

When joining a multiplayer server or in singleplayer, you are at first factionless. To share access to grids, you can joing a faction. On the Join screen, every player can either found a new faction, choose no faction, or join an existing one. Players can ask to join any faction, but must be accepted by a leader or founder before they actually become a member.

To apply to become a faction member in a running game, do the following:

1. Press K and go to the Factions tab.
2. If applicable, leave your current faction first, because you can only join a faction if you are not a member of one.
3. Select a faction from the list, and click Join.
4. Negotiate in chat and wait for the Leaders to accept your application before approaching their turrets.

After you've been accepted, you can share blocks and grids which you own, and use shared grids from other members.

What Can Faction Ranks Do?

There are 3 ranks of membership in factions.

• Members can interact with faction-shared blocks, and are not targeted by faction weapons. Most players will have this rank.
• Leaders can do everything a member can, plus invite new members, confirm new members, and kick existing members. Only very few are given this rank by the Founder.
• Founders can do everything a member and leader can do, plus promote trusted members to Leader; demote members to lose Leader status; and make or cancel peace treaties with other factions. There can only be one founder per faction.

If the founder leaves, then the faction has no founder and the remaining players should start a new faction with a new founder.

How to Promote/Demote Members?

As the Founder or Leader, you will see new membership applications in the members list of the Factions tab. Members will possibly also contact you with requests to change their permissions here.

Founders or Leaders can:

• To turn an Applicant into a Members, select the player name and click Accept.
• To turn a Member into a Leader, select the member name and click Promote.
• To turn a Leader into a Member, select the member name and click Demote.
• To unlock buildable block recipes for a player, select the member name and click Share Progress. (Only if Progression is enabled in the World Settings)

What is Faction Reputation?

A hover tooltip lists faction alliances.

To see a faction's allies on the Faction tab, hover the mouse pointer over a faction name.

Knowing alliances is important because automated turrets distinguish friends, neutrals, and foes based upon faction membership and reputation. By default, turrets will not target members of the owning faction or allied factions.

• Neutral: A reputation of -500 to 500 is neutral. You can trade with neutral NPC Trading Outposts, but get no discounts. Turrets don't target neutrals unless they were configured to do so.
• Enemy: A reputation of -1500 to -500 is the worst. Ships of hostile NPC factions will attack you when you approach and not let you trade at their stations.
• Ally: A reputation of 500 to +1500 is the best reputation. You can trade with friendly NPC Trading Outposts and get up to 10% discount when buying, and up to 5 % bonus when selling there. Turrets will not target allies by default.

Certain NPC factions, such as SPRT Space Pirates, start out hostile. By default, all factions are considered neutral. Faction founder can change the reputation among player factions by declaring war or peace. Use this to help your team members (and turrets) keep track on a multiplayer server of whom you trust or don't trust.

How Does Reputation Improve/Worsen?

Hover the mouse over a faction name on the Faction tab to see a faction's allies.

• You raise your reputation with NPC factions by fulfilling their and their allies' contracts at Trading Outposts. Good reputation gains you better trade prices at allied NPC Outposts. This is a way to schmooze your way into the heart of an NPC faction that is nearby and sells what you need.
• You worsen your standing with NPCs by attacking their or their allies' ships. More and more Trader NPC ships will start shooting at you and Trading Outposts will lock their doors to you. At the same time, this increases your standing with the SPRT Space Pirates.

To change your reputation with a player-owned faction, select them on the Factions tab and click Declare War or Propose Peace -- then negotiate in chat. Wait for their Founder to accept or decline. Your standing with players influences the behaviour of automatic turrets and is otherwise only relevant for role playing.

In general, grinding down or shooting at faction-owned grids decreases your standing with that faction. Other actions that lower reputation include hacking, attacking faction members, grinding or shooting their turrets and doors, and so on.

Destructive actions against NPC factions increases your standing with the SPRT Space Pirates until you become their ally. This may be of interst to players who want to found a pirate faction. The Pirate faction can have trade stations as well. If you want to return to trading, fight pirates to turn the pirates hostile again, this will slowly make the NPC traders become neutral towards you, so you can trade with them and gain their favour again.

Which Factions Are Here?

You may want to look up which NPC factions or Player factions exist, what their reputation is, and who the members are.

On the Faction tab, filter the list by:

• All -- List all factions
• Show Me -- List your own faction quickly
• Non Player -- Show only NPCs factions, for example, NPC traders
• Show Friends -- Show factions who are your allies
• Show Enemies -- Show factions that have declared war
• Show Neutrals -- Show factions that have not gained or lost any repuation with you yet
• Unknown -- Show undiscovered factions, typically, NPC traders
• Discovered -- Show NPC factions that you have encountered (or all player factions)
• Players Factions -- Exlude NPCs

Who is Friend or Foe?

Your HUD displays signals of other players' names and the names of ships' beacons. Prefixed before the name, the signal text includes the faction tag. Signals appear in different colors depending on the faction's relationship to you.

• Blue -- Beacons that you own.
• Green -- Players and beacons in your own faction.
• White -- Neutral players and beacons in friendly allied factions.
• Red -- Enemy players and beacons, or someone who's not in any faction.

How to Handle Shared Finances?

After joining a faction, you can see the faction's private info including the shared "space bank account". Using the bank account is optional but useful to collect “taxes” to purchase Zone Chips. An Activity Log keeps track of which daction members deposited and withdrew money. Beware of thieves of opportunity within your ranks.

1. Deposit Space Credits in your personal player account through a Store or ATM].
2. Press K key and go to the Factions tab.
3. Select Show Me from the menu and select your faction.
   You now see its account balance in the bottom row.
4. Click either Deposit or Withdraw.
   A window opens where you see your Personal Balance and the Activity Log.
5. Enter an Amount to either deposit or withdraw, then click OK.

The credits are transferred from your personal account to the faction account.

Important: You cannot directly withdraw money from the faction account while trading at a Store or ATM.

To buy e.g. Zone Chips for the faction, you need cash:

1. Open the Faction tab.
2. Withdraw money from the faction account into your personal account.
3. Go to an ATM or Store and withdraw cash.
4. Pay cash at the Store.

How to Leave the Faction?

Once a faction is created in a world, it will not be dismissed until the last player or last NPC leaves. (Note that "NPCs" in the vanilla game don’t appear as Engineers characters, there are only drones, ships, and stations.)

Press K key, go to the Factions tab, and find your current faction which is highlighted in blue. To leave your faction, select your current faction, and click Leave.

If you leave your faction, or never join one, or are kicked, you are factionless. If a multiplayer server imposes faction-based block limits, factionless players cannot (?) build anything. Arbitrarily leaving factions is discouraged by a reputation penality.