Factions

In multiplayer games, Factions help organize players into cooperative groups, where only a select group of people can use certain shared grids. In singleplayer games, factions are relevant when interacting with NPCs.

The faction interface can be accessed anywhere by accessing the Terminal (K key). Click the Factions tab to access buttons for creating a new faction, joining an existing one, reading faction descriptions, and checking your standing.

Usage

There are NPC factions and Player factions. 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, there are only drones, ships, and stations.)

Each player can found or join a faction and choose to share access to blocks they own with faction members.

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.

Founding 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 Faction screen, 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, you are factionless. On the Join screen, you 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. Negotiate in chat and wait for the Leaders to accept your application before approaching their turrets.

Faction Ranks

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 Accept and Promote/Demote Members

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

Select the player name and click Accept to turn Applicants into Members. Optionally, select members and click the buttons to Promote Members to Leaders, or to Demote Leaders to Members.

If Progression is enabled in the World Settings, Founders and Leaders (?) also decide whether they want to Share Progress with individual members. They are not required to do that, so be polite.

Faction Reputation and Consequences

When you hover the mouse pointer over a faction name on the Faction screen, you see a tooltip listing their allies.

A hover tooltip lists faction alliances.

Automated turrets will 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 and Why to Improve/Worsen Your Reputation

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 any faction-owned grids decreases your standing with that faction. Other actions that lower reputation include hacking cockpits to steal vehicles or to take over stations, blowing up or shooting their 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. 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.

How to Distinguish Relationships by Signal Colors

Your HUD displays signals of other players' names and the names of 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.

• Enemy players and beacons, or those not in a faction, display in Red.
• Players and beacons in friendly allied factions display in White.
• Players and beacons in your own faction display in Green.
• Beacons that you own display in Blue.

Faction Bank Account

After joining a faction, you can see the faction's private info and the shared "space bank account". Using the bank account is optional but useful to collect “taxes” to purchase Zone Chips.

On the Faction screen, you can see your faction’s account balance, and deposit and withdraw space credits. The faction account cannot be accessed when trading at a Store or ATM, so you will need to withdraw cash to buy Zone Chips. Beware of thieves of opportunity within your ranks.

How to Leave Your Faction

Press K, go to your 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 cannotTemplate:Clarify build anything. Arbitrarily leaving factions is discouraged by a reputation penality.

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