Open up mpnewcharacter.fl in the EXE folder and under house you'll see a bunch of numbers followed by a faction id, 0.91 li_n_grp meaning you'll start out pretty friendly with the liberty navy. Change them to 0.0 to become neutral.

But does this affect all players that join my server?

Yes.

I thought about doing this on my server. To let players choose for themselves whom to align with.

Until I played a server which did it.
It made it WAY to easy on the players.
All they had to do was run trade, with NO fear of ever being attacked, until they could afford the "big ships".

So, Now I decided to try to make a set of missions where they can do one to choce their factions reputaions.
EVERYBODY will hate them until they do one of these "choice" missions, and then only the faction they choce, and it's allies, will be friendly to them...the rest being neutral/hostile.

Just have to figure out making missions....ugh.

Pyrate Dredd

That's not a bad idea. It's the first baby steps to finally custom configuring your own multiplayer server, and I think I'll set it up... and maybe package it in a ZIP file with some quick and dirty instructions and give it a name, so servers can write "Running NeutralFaction Mod" or something like that.

Today I'm gonna mess with adjusting the commodity prices throughout the universe, so the trade routes will be slightly different. Maybe even generate a randomizer..

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The only thing I like more than pie is having more pie than I'd like.

Dredd:

I also hate the ton of level 38 uber Titan rigs floating around on most games, all of them doing the same money routes. I think instead of manually adjusting each base's commodity values, decreasing the base value of cargo might ALONG with making players neutral to everyone might make the game more challenging.

That way you could land anywhere but it would take you much longer to accumulate vast wealth by doing cargo runs. The mission payouts would be the same, but of course doing the missions will adjust your factions - which will help "mold" your character into a navy guy, a pirate, etc.

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The only thing I like more than pie is having more pie than I'd like.

i'd like to see a server where its more profitable to kill guys then to just fly trade missions like a zombie all day long. maybe decrease commodity values by half (even then it'd be easy to make $) 'cept maybe contraband, make it a challenge to trade for $. increase the price of ship parts, especially ones that can't be bought.
its pretty stupid that you can make more doing a trade run at level 1 then selling a level 10 nomad cannon.

IMHO there also needs to be a reason to pk, as it stands now its nothing more then a pain in the ass when your killed by another player, unless they shoot your wings off, even then you can get new weps pretty easily. persoanlly i pk everyone i see that over 20, especially if they are doing a cargo run i'm sure it makes me an asshole but hey i play as a pirate.

just adjust the commodity file to restrict the "good buys" to base faction friendly players. For instance, on Mactan, you can't buy Cardamine unless you're in the green with them.

This would force a player to make a choice in their alignment early on in order to establish "good" trade routes.

Would thing that wouled be a wonderful addition (and I have no Idea how hard this one would be) is to make trade prices/demand mutable. IE Lets says Manhatten wants Luxury COnsumner goods and is paying a decent price for them. BUT once they reach say 1k unites of the luxury consumer goods bought the price/deman drops. That way instead of players just going to their local trade route cheat sheet they would actually have to search for trade routes (Like a merchant would/should) that are profitable before others find them. I know this is way above my head but maybe better brains out there could figure out a way.

Yes, a dynamic trade system would be ideal for the universe, even in SP. However it doesn't look like that is something which can be gracefully implemented... but perhaps a randomizer program can be created which outputs to the commodity .ini file, so at least when you start up a MP server you know that the Boron price in Pittsburgh might be different.

Right now you can go on any MP server and use the exact same trade routes, which kinda sucks. When you join a new MP server you won't magically know where to go for the best profit if you decide to trade, you'll have to ask around or check out prices but visiting each base.

It'd also be nice to see bases switch what they Base Sell....

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The only thing I like more than pie is having more pie than I'd like.

yah that'd be nice sheoul, least that would mix up the trade routes a little. i highly doubt that servers ever even know what traded though juding by the amount of stuff thats handled client side.
it'd also be insteresting to get rid of the ability to see the best prices for any base you've been to, put it in the news where the shortages are. don't get there fast enough, too bad

While they do sound like nice ideas, what are the possibilities that servers will actually implement them? What of players who already are in R38 ultra-rigged Titans, and other established players that have certain reps?

heres what to do:

Create a new system, name it... Faction Choose. In the base, have it so you can choose a mission. Make a new mission type which changes faction completely... So like the mission is like fly into space and dock with. So the player chooses the faction he wants to join, and then does the trivial task, and then takes one of the jumpgates. On the other side of the jumpgate, put some invincible ships for the faction... (I.E on liberty base, put some battleships, or on corsair put a lot of titans... etc)

This should actually be possible to do. Im too lazy to do it myself =)

Ok,

Everyone talks about opening the mpnewcharacter.fl file to edit values. What program do you have to use to open it? Nobody will answer that question straight up.