Sorry, but selling does not help at all in making friends. Prices do very from planet to planet and base to base.

I'm sure I answered exactly the same question last week...

Craziest thing that happened to me was when I was bringing a valuable cargo to a base that I was only neutral with. While I was waiting for landing clearance, a faction member ordered me to drop it. I ignored him ... and just as I was entering the base, it turned hostile! They let me sell my cargo, but when I left I had one tough fight on my hands. The @#$% 's were waiting for me outside!




Jose Chavez: "Trent! It's good to see my kind of scum."

Hey Endemoniada, lets see if I can be of any help.

First of all, you have to remember that Freelancer is not a very complex game.
You kill one pilots and your rep goes down with one faction and up with others.
You buy and you sell commodities at different bases to make a profit. They don't actually manufactor anything.

FOr instance, and lets assume that you have visited most bases already, you want to buy Diamonds at New Berlin. You go to the commodity shop at planet New Berlin and select diamonds in teh list. You see a price per piece and below a short description on the commodity. There's also a list below that that shows all bases you visited. You have to land on the base in order for it to show up on the list.
Behind all the bases you see a price listed. That's the price you get for one piece of that commodity if you sell it at that base. Behind the name of the base you see sometimes "Base sells this item". This means that they also sell it, meaning you can probably sell it elsewhere for a bigger profit. This is also the list you want to check to see where you can buy them cheaper.

There's also another similar list. If you hit F7 to bring up the inventory chart and go to the cargo page, you see the items on your hold. If you select a commodity and hit the button "Trade Routes" on the right below the description ( you might need to scroll down a bit) you will call up a list of places where you can sell this item. You can click on the bases and the nav-map will zoom in on that base, alowing you to set a waypoint.

In adition to this there's a great website called www.battleclinic.com, which has a traderoute calculator. Very handy tool for traders.

To gain a good reputation with a faction you have to do missions for them or kill their enemies.
Also, destroying depots of the opposing factions help you with that, if you can find them.

Hit F8 to bring up the factionlist. It will show you all the factions you encountered.
The ones on the top are your enemies and are displayed in red.
The ones below that, displayed in white are neutral, but they can ask you to drop your loot if they are criminals. They don't do that if they're friendly.
If they appear on the bottom and in Green they are friendly and your allies.

Click on a faction to bring up its description. It will show you a small story of their origins and a list of allies and enemies. This way you know who to shoot and who not to shoot if you want to becoome allied with them.

Ok, I hope this isn't too much info for you, but I couldn't do it in less words I'm afraid. I think I covered most of it anyway. Feel free to ask more

Edit: Damn spelling

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possible definitions of the word Diskette:

1- Female disk
2- The practices and forms prescribed by social convention or by authority regarding disks

You can also get them to be more frinedly by bribing them, this also causes your reputation to go down with their enemies tho

D'oh, the easiest way. Totaly forgot it. Tnx sw

Edit: Damn spelling

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possible definitions of the word Diskette:

1- Female disk
2- The practices and forms prescribed by social convention or by authority regarding disks