I don't think you can.

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There is no Silicon Heaven[! But where do all the calculators go ?

You could no more evade my wrath... than you could your own shadow[!

But i've seen people with the strangest factions before their names, Navy, some of the house corporations etc.

surely it should be possible to become a corsair?

Even if that means i have to be hostile with everybody else
i say Kill 'm all, let god sort 'm out

If it's MP that's just the name.
SP- you cannot join a faction.

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There is no Silicon Heaven[! But where do all the calculators go ?

You could no more evade my wrath... than you could your own shadow[!

I mean in MP, but what do you mean, it's just the name?

Yes you can get a faction before your name. In the beginning, if you avoid Navy missions and do missions for the shippers instead, you will end up with one of the shipping CO's name in front. (EG: Algeria) You can change this pretty much at will with some work. The trick is to make the faction happy enough to become your No 1 ally and make sure the green side of the scale is pegged all the way. Keep doing missions and checking your ally list. When your desired faction starts "flashing" then you will have that name in front of yours in other players huds.

This is actually designed to encourage PvP encounters as the best way to get in good with a faction is to kill a player who has the name of an enemy faction in front of his name. The more powerful the player you kill, the bigger the boost with your desired faction. (EG: A friend and I did some PvP in starfliers once, he was Navy and I was unaligned. I won the battle and suddenly found myself a Rouge.)

If you lose a fight, it can even improve your standings with the enemy faction.
(EG: NEO once decided to camp me at a base so I just let them blast for a while. It had the interesting effect of getting me in real good with Corsairs, thus saving me nearly 300k in bribing (Everyone in Corsair space hated me). I was able to waltz in and grab a Titan the next trip out.)

One last thing. When a faction attempts to rob you of cargo, sometimes the best thing to do is fight if you're looking to befriend them. Hessians are like that. If you drop your cargo they will kill you anyways and you'll lose standing, but defeating the robber (Not destroying) seems to improve your standing with the Hessians slightly.

One thing I'll say about Freelancer, the depth of the faction personalities is amazing. I only wish that that depth was more noticable in game.

well thats good to hear, now i just wonder when i'll be corsair then, because i'm already totally maxxed out friends (doing about 30 200K+ missions for them will get you there in a hurry )

Are they your No. 1 ally? If so, then look to see if the Corsair Icon is flashing in the factions list when you log on. If it is, you are Corsair and others will see this when they encounter you.

Edited by - Nog on 17-04-2003 17:15:28

the tag thing seems to consider aswell what your standing with other factions, you get never the corsair tag, if your still friendly aswell with their enemys, sounds logical right

O then some1 tell me hod the hell did i get a NOMADS!!! tag??? cuz ive been trying to get it again but i cant so far

heres the pic:

I don't know.. How did you get the Anubis?

It's bugged out. I noticed a groupy in a trade lane with Nomads next to their name, and by the time we got out of the trade lane it was Outcasts.. This person never even seen the Nomads before this time and Outcast was hostile.

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I think there are a few bugs in the tag system. I saw one guy that had a "Hessians" tag, but he told me he was extremely hostle with them. Go figure :\

Yeah. Saw another bug as well. I played with a friend of mine and we decided to go to Detriot to help the Ageira with their Xenos problem. He had Republican as tag and when he came to Detriot all the Ageira were after him. But the Ageira were friendly in his player status. Really weird.

From what I hear the game just gives you a tag at complete random. Apparently, the faction-joining aspect of the game is incomplete.

why would you want to join a faction? the name of the game is freelancer.

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that my idea of building a giant robotic parrot out of melted down coins was a bad idea, I would have one kick a$$ giant robotic parrot.