Keep going in the single player missions. eventually you'll get spit out of Liberty and out into Bretonia. On the way out, you'll take a breather at Mactan. After that, you'll be "alright" with the hackers. But if you're talking MP, I can't help you as I haven't tried that out myself yet.

I'm assuming you're talking about multiplayer freelancer (why would you want a relatively defenseless freighter in single player? it gets rough), and the best way to "make friends" with criminal factions is to kill the police/navy/corporations. First I would start in manhattan. there are some storage depots the police use to hold things. fly out there and kill these depots. then the cops will attack you. kill them too, and then fly to westpoint and do the same thing. fly back to manhattan (the depots should have respawned) and kill the depots again, kill the cops again, etc. do this again until you are neutral (white) with the Liberty Rogues and Lane Hackers (for good measure you might want to buddy up with the Outcasts, Xenos, and Dragons while you're at this). Once you're neutral with all of the local criminals, head out to Buffalo Base in the Liberty Badlands, and dock there. Buy everything you need (and the Dagger is an excellent fighter, if you don't have anything better) and begin doing jobs for the Rogues, Hackers, and Outcasts in the bar, also look around for bribes. After doing a few jobs for these factions, you should be green with the Rogues and Hackers, and can thus jump to magellan and pick up your dromedary at Mactan.

rambling off topic, this makes me think. when i first beat singleplayer, i figured it would be best if i kept up my rep with the cops, navy, LSF, etc.. all of the 'nicies' in the game, but i found that the criminals and "terrorists" are much better people to have on your side. They're much more loving (for lack of a better word) and their bases provide much more protection from those hostile to you. They have all the good ships, all the good weapons, all the good hardware, and definitely the best-paying jobs (i had a 140,000-credit assassination request from an Outcast). Primarily though, they actually treat you like you're an asset to them. Many times I've been jumped by bounty hunter swarms of 7 or 8 Barracudas with level-8 weapons(at the time of this example, I was flying a Stiletto with stealthblades. i was probably underdressed for an Omicron-Alpha expedition), and lo and behold, 4 or 5 Outcast Sabres came to assist. Might have been a coincidence there, but this has happened more than once. I guess it's nice when AI looks after you. Moral of the story? Criminals are the nice guys

Edited by - hairy on 08-03-2003 03:47:44

man... this is good info... i was just picking on xenoes, but that was getting me no where with the hackers, and fast... i will try this approach and see how things go.

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jero