X3: Farnham’s Legacy Dynamic Reputation: Mechanics & Low-Stress Mode

TL;DR Takeaway:

 
If you’re looking for an easy way to minimize your effort in balancing reputation and want to play the game more like one of the prior X titles, go to the “Foelist: Part 0” below and follow instructions there, no need to really understand the mechanics further. Otherwise, read on! 
 
 

Glossary & Basic Concepts:

 
NOTE: THIS APPLIES TO VERSION 1.1 OF FARNHAM’S LEGACY, AND THINGS MAY WELL CHANGE IN FUTURE PATCHES. 
It is also only moderately tested so there may be errors; if you come across a discrepancy between what’s described here and what happens ingame, please post so as to help others ^.^ 

 
DR = Dynamic Reputation 
NR = Notoriety, used here as the linear measure of how much a faction likes the player. Notoriety is given as a reward for missions and various actions, and the actual number is not visible to the player. This is not to be confused with- 
Rank = The number of ‘pips’ you have with any given faction, displayed on the pilot status and diplomacy pages. This is what the factions use to determine how to treat you; higher ranks unlock the ability to purchase better ships and goods, low ranks will get you shot on sight. 
Rep/Reputation = A general measure of how well a faction likes or dislikes you. Using this means I’m not specifically referring to either NR or Rank, so read something like “gain rep” as “gain notoriety” or “do missions for”, etc. 
 
It is important to note that while NR and Rank are related, they do not obey a linear scale. Instead, Rank is determined from player NR with a given faction by the following (approximate) table: 
 

 
Note how there is a comparably small amount of NR change between ranks -2 and +4 (-1,000 to 1,000 NR) as compared to between ranks +4 and +5 (1,000 to 3,333 NR). 
 
In the game, Rank is required to unlock the ability to purchase higher quality ships, move into core sectors, etc. However, it is NR that is given by actions ingame, not ranks directly (with the exception of some plot stories that will set your rank to be a certain value, ignoring what it was before). The precise amount of NR is also difficult to predict, and not generally that important for the purposes of this guide/analysis. As a rule of thumb, more NR is gained by harder missions, when your rank is higher with that faction, and by doing more challenging things for that faction (trading larger quantities of goods, destroying larger ships that are intruding in that factions sectors, etc). 
 
In this guide there will be places where there is something like “Consider gaining 100 NR with faction A, then 100 with faction B”, etc. It’s not actually feasible to gain a precise amount of NR with a given faction, but the idea is of an approximately equivalent amount; the statement is akin to “do one easy mission for faction A, then for B” when you have same ranks for both factions. The math is easier to explain and understand if you think of it in NR terms, essentially. 
 
One important thing to note here: Agents are very powerful when used to turn Influence directly into Notoriety, and the UI only shows how much is gained with a faction, not the corresponding loss with others. Same goes when doing a Hard or Very Hard mission for a high-ranked faction; you will gain much more NR for that faction, which means there will be a much larger shift for factions you have less total positive NR with due to the Dynamic Reputation implementation, described in the next section. Many complaints about the system (“they suddenly hate me!”) are from doing a challenging mission or sending an Agent to a faction you are already higher Rank with than others. 20,000 NR isn’t even a full rank up at Rank 7, however, 1/3 of that (6,000 points) is also enough to drop a faction from Rank 6 down to -3! 
 
 

Mechanics of Dynamic Reputation:

 
As opposed to earlier X3 titles, whenever reputation is gained in FL, the reputation you have with other factions are modified as well based on the relationship between each faction, and the faction reputation is gained with. For instance, if you help deliver some Argon military personnel to the front lines of the Argon – Paranid conflict to gain reputation with the Argon faction, the Paranid won’t like this and you’ll lose some rep with them. However, you will also gain some rep with the Borons for helping out their ally! 
 
Note that this applies regardless of the type of the mission: There is no difference between Station Construction missions and Personnel Transport or Taxi missions, with the exception of extra rep gained or lost in the course of a mission that involves combat. In this manner, it is highly important to pay attention to the assigning faction when missions are offered, as well as potential targets. 
 
 
This is a mission being offered in Boron space, but the circled text indicates that the reward is for the Argon faction. Further, the target is Pirates, which means that altogether, there are three effects are in play: 

1. The faction listed is Argon, which means primary notoriety increase for mission completion is given to Argon, with knock-on effects for other races according to basic DR rules. 
2. Target is Pirates, which means there will be a larger than normal decrease in relation with that faction. Note that losing NR with a faction (in this case Pirates) does not have a knock-on effect to gain NR with factions that dislike Pirates; the DR rules only apply to NR gained, not lost. 
3. Because the mission is in Boron space (unless the target moves to a non-Boron sector), and there very well may be combat with Pirates, any pirates destroyed in Boron space (during the course of this mission or otherwise) will increase rep with Boron as well by a small amount because of the Boron-Pirate antagonism, with further knock on effects according to DR rules.

 
These DR rules are more precisely given in the following table: 
 
Each column is the result of 1 unit of NR gained for that faction, e.g. 100 Notoriety gained for Pirates causes the player to lose 30 with Argon and Boron, none with Goner or Split, gain 15 with Duke’s, etc., in addition to the 100 gained for Pirates. The reason for explicitly labeled 0.00 in the Goner row is the asymmetry with that faction; for example, the Goner don’t care if you do missions for Pirates, but Pirates care if you do a mission for Goner. 
 
This information can be found in a more general form in the ingame Encyclopedia. Factions can have Allies (+15% of NR gained also applied to these factions), Friends (+5% unless Argon-Goner, which is 10%), Hostiles (-15%), or Enemies (-30%). Of course, if there’s no entry, they’re neutral and don’t care what happens. 
 
 

Dynamic Reputation Caps:

 
This gets a section to its own, because it’s less obvious: Alongside the other DR rules, dynamic upper limits have been added to faction relations. Being too friendly (above +8) with any faction will prevent you from gaining above +8 with any other factions opposing it. 
 
For example, if you decide to snuggle up to, say the Argon and work your way up to +10 relation with them, you will be unable to reach above +8 with the Paranid, Pirates, Split, etc. This leads itself to a short list of which factions you can simultaneously become max rank with, shown below: 

 
In the Argon example, there will be no cap at +8 with the Boron, Goner, Teladi, or NMMC factions. However, you will need to choose between either OTAS or Atreus and TerraCorp, as there is an OTAS/Atreus and OTAS/TerraCorp feud. 
 
Note it is relatively easy to switch between these; it is quite easy to intentionally lose ranks down from +10 to +8, then increase from +8 to +10 with a different set of factions. 
 
 

Logic for ‘Optimal Foes’:

 
The above table for DR rules does not lend itself to intuitively tell the player which sets of factions can be happily allied with or not. Consider the following simplified example: 
 
Pretend there exists only 5 factions that are all foes with each other, such that 30% of NR gained by any one is applied as a malus to the other four. For example, if the only factions in this universe are Argon, Paranid, Pirates, Yaki, and Terran – all of these are enemies of each other. In such a scenario, consider a player attempting to befriend all of them by doing actions for one at a time such that 100 NR is gained to each faction, when they initially start at 0 NR with each. 
First, 100 NR is given to Argon, which results in: 

This is no good though, so they move onto Paranid next, giving them 100 as well. This results in: 

Argon and Paranid both have +70 due to the sum of +100 and -30, while the others have -60. Moving onto Pirates, giving them 100 as well results in: 

The player is determined to press onward however, so they continue and provide 100 to Yaki: 

However… the problem should now be visible. If they continue and give 100 to Terrans as well, look what the end result is, after investing 500 NR across these factions: 

It’s actually sum negative! This set of factions they’ve chosen to ally with is literally not possible; if you try to befriend too many factions they’ll all hate you for trying. In this case, if they chose to ally with any set of 4 from those 5 however, it would have been possible; after investing 400 NR for instance, they’ve gained a net +40 among the four they invested, for a 10% return on investment. If they selected only 3 factions, investing 300 NR results in +120 net among targeted allies, for a 40% return on investment. 
 
In this simple example, it’s fairly easy to determine what set of allies are stable (any four or fewer) and what set are unstable (attempting to ally all five), but for the full set of 15 factions, it’s really not clear at all! Luckily, that’s what this guide is for, to do the math for you. 
 
Well, technically, I used an algorithm to walk through each of the 32,768 combinations (that hadn’t been superseded) and test if they’re sum positive or negative for all given factions by successively boosting the lowest one; if anyone knows how to do the linear algebra to solve for this type of problem analytically, by all means please share, but that’s more math than I recall learning at college! 
 
 

Foelist (Part 0): Explanation

 
– Short version: 

1. Look through parts 1-4 of the Foelist below (only split into parts due to character count limitation of steam guides lol). Each line is a possible set of ENEMIES to have; choose one line from any section, go to your Global Commands and set those factions (plus Xenon) to “Enemy” as a reminder and have the rest as “Friend”. The percentage is an “easiness” rating; low percentages are hard, high percentages are easier. Consider comparing vs the list of ALLIES that’re uncapped in the DR Caps section above. 
2. You can always add another faction as a foe to any entry in this list to make the process easier, but do NOT substitute one for another without looking for the entry in this list first. 
3. Do missions and/or send agents to increase reputation with your friend you have the lowest reputation with. Do NOT do missions for a faction you are “Enemies” with, even if offered, and similarly avoid missions that “Target” one of your allied factions. 
4. The first handful of missions may have you flipping back and forth between hostile/welcoming with some factions (especially if you start off as deep enemies with one faction or near neutral), but before long all of your friends should be fairly solidly positive. How long this takes depends on the percentage rating, again, lower will take much longer than higher, so beware. 
5. Once you’re high enough (recommend rank 4+ with lowest-ranked friend) play however you want amongst your allies, but remember to check your standing with your friends periodically, and repeat step 3 if you hear “Lost Recognition” for one of your allied factions, or just generally dip too low with any of your friends. Additionally, try to avoid sending a max-influence Agent for rep increase; Agents are very powerful, and will easily unbalance your relationships (though so long as it’s with one of your friends, it will still be net positive, you just run the risk of tossing one or more friends into the negative ranks). 
6. Enjoy!

 
– Longer explanation: 
In the simplified example from the previous section, it’s clear that if you wish to ally with the most factions as possible, one must select one of Argon, Paranid, Pirate, Yaki, or Terran to be a foe. The following lists of foes are analogous to that, but for the full selection of 15 factions that are possible to interact with. As in the prior example, these are just those that are ‘maximally efficient’ for attaining as many allies as possible: For instance, the set of “Pirates – Terran – Yaki – TerraCorp” is not listed, because while it is a stable configuration of foes to have, the set of “Pirates – Terran – Yaki” is also stable, and has strictly fewer enemy factions than when TerraCorp is included. 
 
Similar to the previous example, an efficiency percentage is included, which ranges from 30% to 0.4%. This rating is a measure of how much NR spent goes to actually raising your rank with each faction out of the total NR spent (as some will go toward offsetting the negative impact from raising NR with other factions). If a set you wish to use has a particularly low rating and you don’t want to farm quite that much, there are two ways of increasing it. First, you can always have fewer factions as allies; even dropping a single Corporation will significantly increase the ease with which reputation raises for the other factions. Second, and related, is to take advantage of an effective ‘negative cap’ in DR. For more details see the advanced section at the end, but suffice to say if you temporarily treat one faction as a foe until you’ve maxed out the others before raising that one faction (or multiple factions), the first factions you ally with will raise considerably faster, at the tradeoff of causing you more headache from having more enemy factions for longer. 
 
In any case, the actual Foelist has been broken up into several parts (only due to guide character limits, lol) and sorted by whether or not you want Argon and Boron as allies or not. Parts 1 and 2 (corresponding to an Allied Argon/Boron in Pt 1 which is recommended for newer players, and enemy Argon/Boron in Pt 2) are generally more effective than parts 3 and 4 in which one is allied and the other not. Why someone would want those… I’m not entirely sure, but they’re included for completion’s sake. Similarly Split and Paranid are recommended to take in pairs as they tend to be more effective together (not directly sorted by this though), but not by any means necessary. 
 
To use this list, basically just scroll through and choose a set of enemies that you’d be fine plundering for loot opposing in the name of Peace or Patriarchy or Authoritarianism or what have you. You can then set that faction to “Foe” in the global commands across all your ships, and set the rest as “Friend” (except Xenon, unless you know something I don’t). Of course, to actually raise reputation with these factions, there are still going to be internal conflicts, particularly if you have chosen a low-efficiency set. Toward that end, it’s pretty strongly recommended to do missions or send Agents to your “Friend” faction that you have the lowest ranking with, or near to. This should prevent any friend factions from dipping into the negative after the first handful of missions; once the lowest-rank friend faction is around +4, you can let up and prioritize some, but remember to keep an eye out for rep losses; it can take a while to build back up if you let one slide too far away from the others, so it’s definitely worth checking your pilot status page from time to time. 
 
On the actual list itself, a handful of notable selections are highlighted for emphasis; these are just ones that work nicely or thematically. Other than that, scroll through and take your pick, then have fun! 
 
 

Foelist Part 1: Allied with Argon and Boron

 
#20 from this set plus Duke’s and maybe OTAS or Strong Arms is recommended for new players, or those who want a simple time. 
 

Foelist Part 2: Enemies of both Argon and Boron

Foelist Part 3: Allied with Boron against Argon(?)

Foelist Part 4: Allied with Argon against Boron(?)

Advanced Implications and Exceptions:

 
There are a few more things not yet touched upon: 
 
– Lower DR Caps: 
Somewhat analogous to the +8 upper cap of DR, there is a hidden ‘lower cap’. When your NR is lower than -10,000 with a faction (Rank -4), any rep gains for that faction do not count toward the DR system. As a result, it’s actually possible to be simultaneously friendly with all interactable factions. 
 
Consider someone who gets to rank +8 with all factions aside from Pirates, Terran, and Yaki, then raises Pirates to -10,000 from wherever it was before (probably -1,000,000). Because of the lower cap, raising the rep from -1,000,000 to -10,000 should not reduce NR of any of the friendly factions. So, their rep should look something like like: 

Now, they go and give 50,000 NR to Pirates. This results in: 

Next, Terran is raised to -10,000 without repercussion, then given an additional 40,000: 

Similar for Yaki, raised to -10,000 then given 30,000: 

As a result, all factions are comfortably in the Rank 7 or 8 range. What’s more, if some of the allies started at maxed rank 10 (1,000,000), then they’d only have lost 36,000 of 1,000,000, leaving them still well in the Rank 10 range. 
 
Of course, this situation is not quite stable. As the player continues to Trade and Fight, reputation will change and some will begin to fall. Each time the lowest rep faction is bumped up, overall, reputation will be lost until – eventually – the factions will be closer to neutral, and the process must be repeated. How long this will take in practice however… well, it will probably be quite some time. If anyone actually goes through and does this, please report back how it goes; this is just theory, here! 
 
– Goner Asymmetry 
Unlike other factions, the Goner dislike others, yet are not disliked in turn. This means it’s possible that, depending on how the upper cap is implemented, it may be possible to be rank 10 with the Goners and one of their enemies at the same time, IF one is raised before the other (which implies that no matter which set you select in the DR Cap section, Goner is actually always an option). This has not been tested, but it may be the case that raising Goner to rank 10 first will not disallow Pirates (say) from raising to rank 10, but raising Pirates to 10 first will disallow Goner moving past 8. This requires testing! 
 
 

Acknowledgements:

 
Many thanks the Developers of this game, in particular Cycrow who took the time to clarify a number of the forum.egosoft.com – https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=199&t=438230&start=105#p5055194 forum.egosoft.com – https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=201&t=436989&start=45#p5058704 on Egosoft Forums. 
 
Additional thanks to users forum.egosoft.com – https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=199&t=439319#p5058301, forum.egosoft.com – https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=199&t=439319#p5058508, and forum.egosoft.com – https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=199&t=438936#p5055628 for info and discussion. 
 

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