Just what is that diplomacy?

[poryg]

I have found out that the diplomacy is not just strange in this game... It is totally wicked!

Sometimes when I send messages, I have random reputation penalties, sometimes I have no penalties.
I accepted a contract with Syndicate Rychart. It was a contract of delivering Rychart hats into an independent wild zone. House Thulun became pissed off, even though I have received the window "Captain, the crew doesn't like working against Independents.".
Once I accepted a capture contract against Independents. No chameleon. After crushing the engines, I saw a message that I struck a blow against syndicate Rychart.
Once I accepted an assassination for House Thulun. So I took flight to the Independent sector... And saw it was an independent ship, no chameleon. So I attacked the ship, destroyed it... And after that, I saw that I had taken sides in the Bounty hunter wars for Cadar, De Valtos and Clan Javat. Only Rycharts got a bit pissed and Steel Song decided to stay neutral.
Interestingly enough, I can destroy independent ships as I please without any reputation bonuses or penalties. But still, bounty and assassination contracts have brought quite an amusement, because I thought that the politics towards Independents are always neutral...

The last thing was something that was really incredible. I began with a really low signature ship (7 hull, 1 armor, 6 engines, 6 solar sails, 8 crew, 25 cargo, 4 guns and 0 torps) and I tried my usual task of gaining trade permits with everyone before I die. Syndicates were fairly easy. Then I went to Javat, increasing the reputation with it to 8. But then something really interesting happened. Alliances occured between Steel Song and Javat, Thulun and Javat.
So I went to Thulun, since Javat was out of quests. First I accepted three quests. One was against Steel Song, second against Javat, third against the Indies. I I fulfilled the first two, but the third one expired. Overall reputation gain: Steel Song +1, Javat +1, Thulun -2.
Then I had sequences of two contracts against Javat and one against steel song, but because of the silly alliance, I had no reputation gains for Thulun. (But Javat raised rep up to 12) Not even intermezzo contracts against Indies were helpful. Soon I ran out of patience. But since Steel Song was already on 5, I went there. I accepted a couple of contracts against Thulun and Javat. Overall it was like 8 contracts against Thulun and Javat. Due to the silly alliances, the reputation gains were like this:
Thulun -1 for the total of 1 (gained like two rep for contracts against indies)
Steel Song +1 for the total of 6
Javat +3 for the total of 15

So basically I received reputation penalties with contractors due to alliances between contractor and his target, even though I actually gained reputation with the target Or is Javat just so evil that he likes it when an ally is targeted? I don't really know.

[Darth Cthoras]

This kind of crap happens to me all the time. Am debating keeping a Military or Political Officer on board to ensure people stop duping me into trick contracts.

[redartrats]

This kind of crap is what ticked me off so much, that my Captain lost his screws and decided to shoot for the Independent Captain (-151 rep with every faction) award post-haste. I'm actually contemplating doing that again, in fact. Nothing more satisfying than to be able to blow every ship out of the sky and loot them wantonly without having to deal with stupid faction politics crap!!!

OTOH, by taking advantage of Spy Wars and Solar Wars, you can easily boost your RP by the hundreds, and once you have 400+ RP or more with every faction, you can stop worrying about taking up any assassination contract you want, since each contract will only change your RP by about ±10 at the most, which is just a drop in the water at +400 RP. If your rep starts dipping a little too low for your tastes, you can just wait for another Solar War and boost it up again. I especially like Solar Wars 'cos you can gain tons of rep just be blockading the same planet over and over, and you also gain XP while doing that.

[redartrats]

Oh, and btw, a military / politics officer doesn't help you *identify* bad contracts; they only tell you the contract is bad after the fact (or just as you enter the battlefield). It still won't prevent you from accepting the bad contract in the first place.

[poryg]

Jun 25, 2016 11:33:46 GMT -5 redartrats said:

This kind of crap is what ticked me off so much, that my Captain lost his screws and decided to shoot for the Independent Captain (-151 rep with every faction) award post-haste. I'm actually contemplating doing that again, in fact. Nothing more satisfying than to be able to blow every ship out of the sky and loot them wantonly without having to deal with stupid faction politics crap!!!

OTOH, by taking advantage of Spy Wars and Solar Wars, you can easily boost your RP by the hundreds, and once you have 400+ RP or more with every faction, you can stop worrying about taking up any assassination contract you want, since each contract will only change your RP by about ±10 at the most, which is just a drop in the water at +400 RP. If your rep starts dipping a little too low for your tastes, you can just wait for another Solar War and boost it up again. I especially like Solar Wars 'cos you can gain tons of rep just be blockading the same planet over and over, and you also gain XP while doing that.

Of course, once you have huge rep, you can destroy anything you want. I don't even bother with trade embargoes with huge rep, since as long as you have a trade permit, the rep loss is greatly diminished, and even so, the rep drops aren't that huge. My highest drop from an embargo was 50, because I sold lots of weapons into a shortage.

[fallen]

Thanks for all the feedback, we'll keep working on improving!

[redartrats]

Only -50? That's pretty good... wait till you sell 80 units of Artifacts into a shortage (y'know, if you own one of those freighters with insanely huge cargo bays), you might get RP drops of a few hundred. Not a big deal if you have tens of thousands of RP, but not many of us are at that level.

[poryg]

This wasn't that much of a feedback, just a couple of interesting facts about the politics in ST RPG After all, without it's crazy politics it wouldn't really be the same game anymore (kind of reminds me of Master of magic and Master of Orion, games in which I can be glad when I live in peace and games where I just can't have allies)

[poryg]

Jun 25, 2016 12:42:02 GMT -5 redartrats said:

Only -50? That's pretty good... wait till you sell 80 units of Artifacts into a shortage (y'know, if you own one of those freighters with insanely huge cargo bays), you might get RP drops of a few hundred. Not a big deal if you have tens of thousands of RP, but not many of us are at that level.

You don't need to have tens of thousands of rep points. Few thousand points are enough, since selling into a shortage is an one-time event.

[fallen]

Jun 25, 2016 13:31:54 GMT -5 poryg said:

This wasn't that much of a feedback, just a couple of interesting facts about the politics in ST RPG After all, without it's crazy politics it wouldn't really be the same game anymore (kind of reminds me of Master of magic and Master of Orion, games in which I can be glad when I live in peace and games where I just can't have allies)

The politics are extremely messy, especially as the web of conflicts gets really established. Too often, a Prince or the shady folk you are getting the mission from in the Spice Hall have their own interest in mind, not the interest of their own faction, or allied faction. Hard to navigate.

Can't wait to see this in action in ST2

[redartrats]

Yes, that's just the kind of every-man-for-himself politics that leads my Captain to the conclusion that he should just throw out the whole thing, do whatever he wants, and shoot whoever disagrees out of the sky.

[fallen]

Jun 25, 2016 15:52:38 GMT -5 redartrats said:

Yes, that's just the kind of every-man-for-himself politics that leads my Captain to the conclusion that he should just throw out the whole thing, do whatever he wants, and shoot whoever disagrees out of the sky.

Can't wait for Star Traders 2 The expanded contacts and tiered services are going to bring whole new meaning to throwing it all to the wind.

[poryg]

Well, tiered services sound like finally a reason to buy promotions

[fallen]

Jun 25, 2016 23:47:51 GMT -5 poryg said:

Well, tiered services sound like finally a reason to buy promotions

Lol - always interesting how different everyone's strategy is.

[redartrats]

And just for the record, I was just speaking on behalf of that Captain of mine who prided himself on being a completely Indy captain. My other captains are less extreme.

I just recently, finally, figured out how to survive on difficulty Crazy. Well, I'm sure there are many ways to do that, but the way I figured out involves a lot of sucking up to fickle faction politics until the captain is powerful enough to stand on his own. It took me countless captains before I got one that survived past lvl 10. Most just died at lvl:1 or lvl:4 or so. The current one has finally made it to mid-game, and has built up a good (but spotty ) reputation with all factions, but is right around now contemplating throwing it all to the wind because he has just unlocked the 10 million credits award, and the next one on the list is Blackheart. I suppose he should have started with Blackheart first, but he needed the good rep to survive the early game on Crazy.

(Well OK, earning Blackheart doesn't require throwing it all to the winds, you just need to tick off two factions enough for them to post your mugshot all over the galaxy. But my Captain is an all-or-nothing kind of guy. Plus he has a lot of pent up rage he wants to unleash on all those pirate ships that gave him a really hard time in the early game. )