At present reputation, ranks and missions are pointless. You can far quicker increase your reputation by trading and if you trade with rare commodities this is even faster. Players can quickly progress through the ranks in the Empire / Federation within couple of days by taking rank progression missions. Other missions are shallow, random and are lacking in variety. I've been thinking and came up with some suggestions in order to improve the whole system by tying reputation, ranks and missions together which in turn should hopefully make all these elements meaningful and interesting. The whole system revolves around whether player actions are direct and intentional or not.
First of all there indirect player actions that affect his / her reputation:
All the above should only affect reputation within Unfriendly <=> Neutral <=> Friendly status, both for minor and major factions. If you want to further increase your reputation you should work directly towards it by:
Overall, direct actions should allow you to ultimately increase your reputation beyond Friendly status as opposed to indirect actions. This way reputation / ranking system has more depth and require players to actively work towards specific goals if they want to. You can't accidentally become an ally which is the case now by simply trading between systems.
I may have forgotten to include something but you should be able to get the idea.
First of all there indirect player actions that affect his / her reputation:
- Trade - In my opinion it should have only tiny effect on minor/major reputation, even with high volume / profit, gain / loss should go towards trade rank instead. Since we are working for our own benefit our reputation gain should be minimal, we only marginally improve economy in the systems we trade. This does not include trade missions.
- Ships and equipping - I noticed my Imperial reputation changed from Neutral to Friendly after I equipped my Asp with the most expensive modules and weapons. I don't know if this type of activity should generate any rep gains at all but it did change my reputation. If this is the case then the change should be minimal.
- Exploration - indirect action so increase should be also minimal. Later we could take direct actions by doing exploration missions which could improve not only our rank but also reputation. However missions should be considered as direct player action.
- Other indirect player actions like piracy / bounty hunting / assassinations and actions in conflict zones, where the rep gain / loss depends on which factions these actions affect. When I mention conflict zones I mean any actions not related to missions.
All the above should only affect reputation within Unfriendly <=> Neutral <=> Friendly status, both for minor and major factions. If you want to further increase your reputation you should work directly towards it by:
- Missions - the most important tool which allows you to build up highest reputation and become allied with certain minor / major faction. On the other hand it makes you hostile with other opposite minor / major faction. Because we actively work towards higher rep and to gain trust with faction our rep gain / loss should be significantly higher compared to indirect player actions mentioned earlier. We are consistently working towards our goal by fulfilling specific needs our faction has. With high enough reputation and high enough combat / exploration / trade rank this should open up rank progression missions which also should be a little bit harder to complete than regular missions you get based on your current rank. This solves the problem of far too quick progression through Imperial / Federation ranks. Basically, it works in similarly to the mission system in FE2, i.e. assassination missions opens up if you are competent in combat etc. Some missions should offer permits as rewards and some permits should also require specific rank like it is now. You could also change benefits of the missions to offer additional rewards toward your combat, trade and exploration rank based on the mission type, this way you can focus on specific rank and you could have more variety within mission types itself.
- Bounty hunting / Piracy / Assassination - this comes as missions but not naval missions, also dependant on your combat rank. The goal is to help you change influence of specific minor factions and major faction in the system by killing dangerous pirate lords / destabilising system / killing key personal figures from the opposing faction. The higher rank you have the better missions you get and the more dangerous pilots you need to kill.
- Missions tied to the events - i.e. specific missions that appear in conflict zones, these can be taken from NPCs there (i.e. Capital Ships) or from BB in affected systems. Missions of this type should allow you to improve your minor or major reputation at a bit faster rate than through completing regular missions. Same applies to faction influence in affected zones.
- Other direct player actions that increase your reputation.
Overall, direct actions should allow you to ultimately increase your reputation beyond Friendly status as opposed to indirect actions. This way reputation / ranking system has more depth and require players to actively work towards specific goals if they want to. You can't accidentally become an ally which is the case now by simply trading between systems.
I may have forgotten to include something but you should be able to get the idea.
