There are several pirate groups to be exact.

And I don't know if the faction relationships affect the story.

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So meny questions, patiance young grasshopper

1) As the title suggest Your a Freelancer, self employed, can't join any one faction. HOWEVER...
You can choose what jobs to take, completing jobs affects your rep, better rep, better relations with the faction that you contracted out to, and worse relations with that particular faction's enemies. Certain actions will also influance your rep, if you decide to do some looting and pillaging (pirating in short) yous rep with pirates and other scum sucking lowlives (kidding ) will go up, while law enforcment agencies and bounty hunters might find you a fat juicy target. It's up to you.

2) There are more then a couple of pirate/terrorist/eco-terrorist factions in the game. To name a few:

Red Hessians are related to Rhineland but have spread to other systems.
Corasirs (sp?)
Lane Hackers - they hack into the trade lanes and hit the best cargos that come in
Rogues in Liberty
Mollies in Bretonia systems
Gaians in the Bretonia system

And there are probably a few more i don't know about.

There is ALOT of info on factions, planets, stations on the offical freelancer site and also at IGN. (www.ign.com), run a search on the news section on TLR to see the diffrent articles IGN ran during the last couple of months. I Think they covered most of the systems in the game.

Hope i helped.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

Criminals/terrorists:
Outcasts
Corsairs
Junkers
Xenos
Mollys
Red hesians
Lanehackers
Gaians
Dragons
Bundschults

This is all i can remember, tehre are a few more out there

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Administrator for World Of Gamers
Webmaster for Red Faction World

Don't forget the Golden Chrysanthemums

here is a little analogy for freelancer and the way things work:
in Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back Boba Fett is hired my the Empire, that doesn't mean he belongs to the Empire hope this helps

I rule the world incognito!

From what I've been reading the Corsairs are some pretty tough mothers! Is there any pirate/outlaw faction that is tougher than them?

Ok I think we should put a hold on all this info we're getting. We should just wait for the game. I thin kfinding out who is the strongest is going to give you an unfair advantage.