You can work for them, but not join them (hence "Freelancer".. you get paid for missions, and those usually include destroying ships at a waypoint, or capturing a certain criminal, or killing him, or killing an installation (outpost or weapon platforms, etc.).. at least that is all I encountered so far. The more jobs you do for the military (and accomplish them), the more they like you. Which automatically means your, well, victims, will hate you. In Multiplayer you even see which faction a player is most liked by when you see his/her ship and look at the tag in front of the nickname. By default it's "Navy", and I've also seen "Police" and "Universal".

::: Deep Slumber :::

would you think it would be possible to have some people to defend a certain area and work togeather to clear a system for good? also say in a multiplayer game, i was thinking that i could get togeather with some guys on a server and defend the bretonian house, anybody innterested

is it possible to become "Outcast" or "Corsair"?

commando.. you can do it, sure, but I don't think that the pirates, Mollys, etc., have limited resources. I don't think you will ever be able to cleanse a system of good guys/bad guys respectively.

Birdman.. I assume so, if you are friendly enough with them, that tag might just show up in front of your nick when someone sees your ship, since I also saw Navy (default), Police and Universal. So.. why not.

I can vouch for seeing Cryer next to a persons name before =D

in multiplayer can you destroy battleships, and if you could would they come back?

See, I've seen Navy and stuff too, but I'm one bar away from full with Outcast, and I've been doing 300k missions for them for awhile now...still no improvement. Is there something I must do?