Civilian Contracts (Some WZ contracts are slightly different)

[Flying Brick]

Ok, so I'm making some progress on my long-term quest of pacifying Pearl...Navy and Energy are at 100%, but I suppose that the Rebels and Guild are still too high (30% and 40%, respectively).

I've been trying bribes, but I'm not sure how it's supposed to work. What I've done is basically open the trade window, and click on offer, and offered cash. There is no guideline for how much, I've tried 100M but was not allowed to offer that much, so I brought it down to 10M. That was accepted. Checked status - no change. Did another 10M to the same green (Energy or Navy, either of which is supposed to displease both Guild and Rebels). Checked status again - still no change.

So I guess I'm wondering, how _does_ bribery work? Am I doing it wrong? What am I supposed to do, exactly?

I've found this thread http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2903 , but it's since 2008 so I guess for Legends/Renegades, and I don't know if it applies.

Moreover, folks mention "minimum bribing amount", which makes me thing I am, in fact, doing it wrong, since when I open the trade window and offer them money, there is no "minimum" amount or anything else specified there. My only options are "Hire to join fleet", and offer them something to trade (and I offered money without asking for anything else in exchange).

Also, I've been bribing way above the suggested amounts in that thread, and didn't see any change whatsoever - not even 1% to anybody, which makes me assume, once more, that I'm doing it wrong.

So, how does one bribe?

On a related note, man, is it _hard_ to please the miners!
Been doing lots of contracts for Navy, and those please Energy, as well, and they always raise by at least 1% per contract accomplished. But the miners - nooooo! Done as much as 3 contracts in a row for them, without any benefit. Sometimes it crawls up by 1%, but it's slooooooow... those miners are a bunch of ungrateful boogers, I tell ya!...

I'd welcome any other suggestions regarding how to raise reputation, as well...


Also, on an unrelated note, but I don't wanna spam yet another new topic: how exactly are Form and Match speed meant to be used?
Is Form only meant to be used when flying with other humans? Or even with AI in your fleet? Do you have to turn IDS on while you're using any of these?
I've tried using them, with absolutely meaningless results - some direction and speed are chosen, neither of which make any sense to me, and neither of which do anything to align me or anything with the selected target (on the contrary, sometimes the speeds are way in the negative, so....).
So, how is one supposed to use those, please?

Thanks for reading all this!

[Dingo]

Match speed has a lot of uses in combat and escort missions. As to the rest of your post. Dunno.

[Jack Dandy]

To change a reputation, you gotta get Energy+Navy rep to 100 and guild+rebel rep to 0.
Kinda tedious, but oh well. Take on missions where you kill lots of 'em.


And as for bribing, I find it kinda useless. IIRC it's only use is turning reds into yellows.



[Edited on 7-6-2011 by Jack Dandy]

[Marvin]

Raising your reputation with factions can be done in MP and SP but it will only help to raise your system rep in SP.

I use Match speed when delivering cargo if I'm carrying more than one item in my cargo bay. By entering the green box and then matching the cap ship's speed, I can take my time in selecting which item needs to be delivered.

I used Formation in an attempt to form up with a Navy ship as it approached Earth, hoping I could slip under the defense screen along with the Navy. Unfortunately, it didn't go as planned.

[Flying Brick]

Great, thank you for all your explanation, gents!

Are there any differences between how bribing is supposed to work in Mercenary vs. Renegades/Legends? It might be a faster way to raising rep than killing oodles and oodles of baddies...

I'll definitely have to find a kind soul in MP to practice the Form with Target and Match Speed things...

Also, does it matter if you have IDS on or off, for either Match or Form?

[Edited on 7-6-2011 by Flying Brick]

[Edited on 7-6-2011 by Flying Brick]

[Marvin]

IDS on. Else, you either drift past your target ... or he/she flies past you. Btw, in Legends, the enemy would bribe you. I haven't seen that in Mercenary so, perhaps, neither taking or offering a bribe is possible. Just maybe.

[Flying Brick]

Excellent - thank you again, Marvin.
I must have tried it with IDS off, or something.

And yes, judging by what you are saying, bribing must be another case where things are quite different in EM versus EL/ER.

Thank you, and cheers!

[Flying Brick]

Alright, I thought I'd come back and post my experience with my looong-lasting quest of raising reputation, so that other new pilots know more precisely what they're getting into.

This was all done in Pearl, which I've got from hostile to moderate.
As Vice said, reputation changes in SP are separate from anything that happens in MP, and pilot profiles carry the reputations with them.
Remember that you cannot leave the system while you're working on this until your reputation has changed (there will be an announcement and a message that will let you know when that happens, and the game will be auto-saved).
If you do leave the system, your reputation resets to what it was initially in the system.

The details I'm talking about apply to Pearl; other systems may be very similar, but I haven't verified myself, so keep that in mind.

A very useful table is the one in the Legends guide, the reputation section.
The guide is here: http://www.starwraith.com/evochronlegen ... lguide.htm

Pay attention to the type of missions, and to the fact that a mission for one faction will also affect, indirectly, your rep with other factions. For instance, some Navy missions will upset the Rebels, so doing a patrol will increase your rep with Navy (and Energy, though less), and will also decrease your rep with the Rebels (which is the kind of reds you usually, but not always, meet in patrol missions).

I am not aware of how bribes work in Mercenary, if they still exist. See my previous posts in this thread for my failed attempts to give loads of money to various factions without it having any impact on reputation.

According to Vice (older post that I can't find right now), one needs to get Energy and Navy above 85-90%, and Guild and Rebels below 10-15%. At some (random) point after that, your reputation will shift. Don't need to worry about the Miners (not much, anyway).

I'll describe my experience. Please note that these are not scientific experiments, and I don't have enough data points to guarantee accuracy. My observations may therefore contain some inaccuracies that I'm not aware of, for lack of enough data points.

All in all, I think it took me around 100 contracts, +/- 10%.

Note that you'll have a very reduced subset of contracts being offered. As it is said in many other places, "moderate and fair systems offer the widest variety of contracts". You'll notice that right away in Pearl.

It is very easy to raise your rep with Navy: you get many contracts offered all the time; each contract for the Navy will also raise your rep with Energy, although it seems that by a lesser amount. Usually, I saw each contract raise my rep with Navy by an amount between 1% and 3%.

You do not get offered any contracts for Energy, but if you check out the table I linked to above, you'll note that some contracts for the Navy also make the Energy happy; also, killing Guild/Rebels (which you'll do in Navy missions) makes Energy happy as well.

So in the first part, while focusing on getting Navy to 100%, you'll also get Energy to raise whether you want it or not.

The other thing you need to do is reduce reputation with Guild/Rebels.
Rebels are easy enough; Guild is considerably more difficult, because in most missions for Navy your enemies will be Rebels, as I said before; again, this isn't a scientific observation; but it was very rare for me to get Guild enemies in Navy missions, and those were most of the time "new" guys coming in (i.e., reds that appear after you get to the navpoint, guys who come in because they are called by their friends).

So how do you lower your Guild rep? By doing contracts for the Miners (again, see the table).
That's easier said than done, because you get at most one contract from Miners, and often not even that.

So the only thing left to do is take all the Miner contracts you can get, and kill lots of Guild reds. Look at all the reds first in any mission, and choose Guild ones over Rebel ones, if any.

The amount of rep after each contract seems to be between 1-3%, as above.
Except for the Miners - but thankfully, you don't need to care much about them. For Miners, I sometimes did 3 contracts in a row without the reputation changing until after the 3rd contract - by 1%...

When my system reputation finally shifted, my stats were:
Energy and Navy 100% (for a long time)
Guild and Rebels about 9% and 5%, respectively.
Miners: 39-40%.

You should probably start by focusing on reducing Rebel/Guild, as opposed to increasing Navy/Energy. This is because Navy/Energy are much closer to 100%, than Rebels/Guild are to 0%. If this is not the case for you, then do it the other way around (But I assume that everybody's reputation in Pearl starts around the same ranges, with a little randomness thrown in, naturally)

Anyway, that was my experience, hope it helps someone, at least by giving a better idea of what kind of effort is involved.

[zwt2135]

Does this only work in SP? I know that your rating can change is MP but I have heard that it will reset if you do not change your rating in SP.

[Flying Brick]

zwt2135: Everybody's reps are fixed in MP. So changes to your rep will only have an effect in SP. Changes in rep from SP do not have an effect when you log in MP.
As Marvin said above, you can make changes to your rep in both SP and MP, but they will only have an effect in SP.

[Maarschalk]

About the bribing in Mercenary, You only can bribe reds and yellow and you have to bribe a lot of them to have it have an impact on your reputation. But I'm not sure if bribing the red hostile navy and turning them green by bribing will increase your reputation with the Navy since bribing the Navy might be an illegal activity.
And bribing the Red Rebbels and Guilds does not go well with the Navy either and only impacts your reputation negatively!

About getting contracts to kill more Guilds easily: The Navy contracts involving killing an Ace are mostly Guilds if not all Guilds.
So if I wanted to reduce the % of Guilds quickly I would take every miners contract and every Navy contract involving killing an Ace!.....

And about the Form and Match speed: If you use both at the same time you will keep your current distance from the targeted ship and you will just follow it at its matched speed.
If you choose Form alone you will speed up to the targeted ship and form up with it at a distance of 100-200 and then you can engage Match speed to stay at a constant distance. And Marvin already answered other uses for match speed!....



[Edited on 3-8-2012 by Maarschalk]

[Marvin]

Everybody's reps are fixed in MP. So changes to your rep will only have an effect in SP. Changes in rep from SP do not have an effect when you log in MP.

Actually, you can change your faction reputation in MP ... just not the global reputation. Which can be a problem if you're also playing SP ... 'cause there's a possibility of carryover from MP to SP and/or vice versa. As for which contracts affect which faction ... there's an old thread around here, somewhere, with a chart describing all of it. I think it had something to do with modding the quest files.

[Marvin]

Found it.

1 = Rebel contract to spy on a capital ship (Navy)
2 = Rebel contract to destroy capital ship (Navy) and escort
3 = Navy contract to patrol and destroy Rebels; multi-waypoint
4 = Guild contract to deliver goods to a capital ship (Guild)
5 = Navy contract to patrol and destroy Rebels
6 = Navy contract to destroy Guild ace and escort
7 = Guild contract to destroy a capital ship (Navy) and escort
8 = Navy contract to escort capital ship (Navy)
9 = Guild contract to deliver goods to a capital ship (Guild)
10 = Miner contract to destroy Guild ships
11 = Rebel contract to destroy a disabled capital ship (Navy) and escort
12 = Guild contract to destroy a capital ship (Navy); need not destroy escort
13 = Energy contract to clean a solar array
14 = Navy contract to recover an item (cargo, satellite or escape pod)*
15 = Energy contract to deliver goods to a capital ship (cargo or satellite)*
16 = Navy contract to locate a lost item
17 = Miner contract to clear an asteroid field
18 = A race against time
19 = A race against another pilot (Navy)
20 = Energy contract to mine 25 units of a specified item

You will increase your reputation with whichever faction offers the contract. Correspondingly, you will decrease your reputation with any faction you're working against.

[MiaZ]

Everybody's reps are fixed in MP. So changes to your rep will only have an effect in SP. Changes in rep from SP do not have an effect when you log in MP.

Actually, you can change your faction reputation in MP ... just not the global reputation. Which can be a problem if you're also playing SP ... 'cause there's a possibility of carryover from MP to SP and/or vice versa. As for which contracts affect which faction ... there's an old thread around here, somewhere, with a chart describing all of it. I think it had something to do with modding the quest files.

I am not sure there is any problem with reputation carrying over from MP to SP.
I don't think it will upset your good SP rep.

I did a little test using Fauston;
SP overall = good
Energy 82
Navy 82
Rebels 21
Guild 27
Miners 90
-
loaded for MP. All faction reps the same but overall = Moderate.
and BTW. There were no reds around near the station or the gate to sapphire with my faction rep at these levels in MP.

So I do a few contracts saved then go back to SP
-
Still overall rep is good in in SP. factions have changed a bit
Energy 83
Navy 84
Rebels 21
Guild 26
Miners 90
-
So went back to MP and up to Talison warzone for some contracts.
then come back to fauston did one or two contracts there and saved again.
Loaded up for SP.
Overall rep still = good: but faction have changed a lot more this time.
Energy 83
Navy 83
Rebels 30
Guild 30
Miners 85
--

looks to me that faction rep is saved the same no matter where you are in SP or MP, just that overall rep will always be stuck saying the same thing in MP.

[Edited on 3-9-2012 by MiaZ]

[Marvin]

Sometimes we forget about SP when roaming in MP ... where we feel safe because global reputation never changes. But faction rep does change ... and can alter an almost 100% reputation with the good guys we might've worked hard to develop in SP.

[Flying Brick]

I stand corrected, thank you for the clarifications, guys!

[Raynor]

Well this thread was helpful. Mainly in figuring out that it's not worth bothring to change my reputation:p. 100 contracts? I've done maybe 300 contracts in 3 months of playing. I've said it before, i think rep shoul change faster AND stay to whatever % no matter if you move out of the system. As it is, it's not worth the time and effort to bother changing it in my humble opinion. I don't see why it has to be so slow. It's just tedious.

[Marvin]

It's like girlfriends. If you keep flitting like a butterfly (farfalla) from one to another, your reputation will suffer. The inhabitants and factions of each star system feel the same way. You want to flit like a butterfly from one star system to another? Fine. But don't expect much from the factions as a result.

[Raynor]

My idea on this is you're a mercenary so your allegiance doesn't lie with anyone. You go where the money is, all that's supposed to be asked of you is that you do a good job. I suppose it would be one thing if you went and did contracts in systems led by a rival faction (say if you do contracts for the federation and then for the alliance). But otherwise, are they supposed to be forgetting about you? Ok maybe then your rep drops back slowly after several hours not doing contracts in a certain system. They certainly shouldn't resent you for basically being a mercenary and not sticking with them. It seems logical to me that if you were a mercenary and you did goog work for a certain party and then went on to do other things and five years later you came back and went "hey you got some work for me?" they wouldn't turn you down for the fact that you worked elsewhere for a while. You're not their employee and your last work was satisfactory so why would they suddenly hate you? I really think the way rep works needs to be overhauled and not just that aspect of it. In fact i'd like for more factions and for them to be active universe wise. Like say i'm working for the merchant guild (which doesn't exist right now but say it does) then the rep i have with this guild should be evochron-wide, not jus system wide. I can understand that some systems are independent, but certain factions could operate in the whole universe. If i'm workin gfor the federation, then shoudn't my rep be good and the same in ALL of Federation space? I think every game of the genre i played worked that way and i daresay, i prefer it that way.

[Marvin]

Guess what would have happened to the Magnificent Seven had they decided not to come directly back after getting run out of that villiage? But went somewhere else for awhile ... had a good time mining and trading and working as hired guns in Kansas City? And then decided to return after half the villiage was dead ... or worse? How welcome do you think they'd have been?

[DaveK]

My idea on this is you're a mercenary so your allegiance doesn't lie with anyone. You go where the money is, all that's supposed to be asked of you is that you do a good job. I suppose it would be one thing if you went and did contracts in systems led by a rival faction (say if you do contracts for the federation and then for the alliance). But otherwise, are they supposed to be forgetting about you? Ok maybe then your rep drops back slowly after several hours not doing contracts in a certain system. They certainly shouldn't resent you for basically being a mercenary and not sticking with them. It seems logical to me that if you were a mercenary and you did goog work for a certain party and then went on to do other things and five years later you came back and went "hey you got some work for me?" they wouldn't turn you down for the fact that you worked elsewhere for a while. You're not their employee and your last work was satisfactory so why would they suddenly hate you? I really think the way rep works needs to be overhauled and not just that aspect of it. In fact i'd like for more factions and for them to be active universe wise. Like say i'm working for the merchant guild (which doesn't exist right now but say it does) then the rep i have with this guild should be evochron-wide, not jus system wide. I can understand that some systems are independent, but certain factions could operate in the whole universe. If i'm workin gfor the federation, then shoudn't my rep be good and the same in ALL of Federation space? I think every game of the genre i played worked that way and i daresay, i prefer it that way.

Most of the systems are in either Alliance or Federation space - some are fiercely Indie. That doesn't mean that the systems are wagging tail beholden to the overarching ruling body that claims control of their space - read the Evochron History and you'll see that systems want to be independent and control thier own space. The outer colonies got together to fight the core and core colonies attempt to dominate them and claim their resources - the "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of thing. System govenments, industry etc don't really care if you go off and work in a another system - they get no benefit from your time, effort, skills and risk taking and so you can't really expect them to hail you as a hero when you deign to return. You're only as good as your last job!