Faction Bands in Live vs EMU

[seekeronos]

Where should the "Neutral Faction" boundaries be?

In the Suggestion Forum group, I had made a post regarding how to work with faction. One of the things that had come up was the "neutral band" of faction, where mobs of a given faction would con yellow (that is, they would be marked with yellow diamond graphic over their ship).

In the current version of EMU (ST4) that neutral band lies between -500 and +500 (any DEVs/GMs: please correct me if I'm wrong: I am going off of my PW that recently gained neutrality with Shinwa NPCs upon getting my faction with them over to -499... it is currently at +6.0)

I am pretty sure that (sorry, I have no screenshots that are authoritative) the neutral band in Live was between -2000 and +2000 ...

... and that it was nearly as much of a slog to faction up to green to use the RD gates into BBW beyond just getting to "yellow faction" so they'd leave me alone when mining in Cooper or elsewhere.

That brings me to my next question:

Are the starting faction points unbalanced or unreasonably extreme?

I remember in Live my starting RD faction being around -7000, but in EMU it was (after the recent reset, and confirmed with other TS players) -9000.

I totally get that the RDs and other pirate factions should have a general dislike for the average player who doesn't grind faction; but -9000 seems a bit steep even for that.

Also, even between the three races:

Terrans are tolerated, but moderately distrusted by the others, with occasional slight favour shown by one opposing faction than another

Jenquai generally loathe and detest Progen; most Progen would be delighted kick a Jenquai in the rump.

But, the races have a treaty and while hostilities may simmer under a thin skin - and even if my PW has -1500 faction with JE/Sha'ha'dem ... those NPCs should be yellow, non-agro. By all means, the NPCs on JE-owned stations should vary from being curt to outright rude to my toon.

And unless there is a mission series like Ketsugo Outpost for the Shinwa (do these to improve Shinwa faction) for Sha'ha'dem, those JE owned NPCs are still going to try to pot me if I stop near them.

What do you think about this?

[Terrell [BT]]

In Live I started my PE and TT after Sunset announce, when we could see our actual faction numbers, and they started with an RD of -5000. Even when we were at war with the V'rix our factions weren't that low. On my PE, after I started her, I worked on RD faction by killing Progen drones in Primus. I got both her V'rix and RD into the green in little over 1 night of farming the low level drones. V'rix reached -1999 before RD did. This did lower, considerably my PW, PE, and PT factions, but not enough to get kicked out of the Sabine. (I did Jobs before starting to get PW and PE to maximum). I didn't do any work on my TT's RD faction, I just put her in Jove's Fury with a chain long enough to reach the build terminal.

I do think some of the starting negative factions are extreme. -5000 to -7000 sounds reasonable to me. Also in Live, when you started with -5000 RD, and worked to max positive your RD, the max you could have was +5000. At least that was the max you could have if you didn't get kicked out of your faction, not sure if it got higher if you lost your affiliation. It was essentially as if as a Sha'ha'dem, you had a -5000 faction modifier, to RD, so whatever your faction would have been without the mod, your faction was 5K lower by comparison.

[Kyp [LDEV]]

In Live I started my PE and TT after Sunset announce, when we could see our actual faction numbers, and they started with an RD of -5000. Even when we were at war with the V'rix our factions weren't that low. On my PE, after I started her, I worked on RD faction by killing Progen drones in Primus. I got both her V'rix and RD into the green in little over 1 night of farming the low level drones. V'rix reached -1999 before RD did. This did lower, considerably my PW, PE, and PT factions, but not enough to get kicked out of the Sabine. (I did Jobs before starting to get PW and PE to maximum). I didn't do any work on my TT's RD faction, I just put her in Jove's Fury with a chain long enough to reach the build terminal.

I do think some of the starting negative factions are extreme. -5000 to -7000 sounds reasonable to me. Also in Live, when you started with -5000 RD, and worked to max positive your RD, the max you could have was +5000. At least that was the max you could have if you didn't get kicked out of your faction, not sure if it got higher if you lost your affiliation. It was essentially as if as a Sha'ha'dem, you had a -5000 faction modifier, to RD, so whatever your faction would have been without the mod, your faction was 5K lower by comparison.

The neutral band should be -2k - +2k, I will have to look into that. We worked from a bunch of base resources on the initial numbers. They may bear a review but should be relatively close to correct.