Reputation & factions

Reputation buys access and protection, and it also paints a target on your back. How you trade with a faction’s customers moves your standing with that faction, and standing unlocks perks: some granted for being liked, others inflicted for being disliked.

• Lower LevelsYour neighbours and most frequent customers.
• Upper LevelsWealthy visitors with money to spend.
• SecurityOfficers, inspectors and Officer Lun.
• RevolutionRaiders, quartermasters and fighters.
• Black MarketThieves, the janitors and the Underground Exchange.
• Sector 13 CartelA Dream Dust quota you do not miss.

The six factions

Faction	Who they are
Lower Levels	Your neighbourhood, and your most frequent customers
Security	The station’s law enforcement
Upper Levels	The wealthy, several floors up
Black Market	The underground trade
Revolution	Revolutionaries preparing their next move
Sector 13 Cartel	Sector 13’s chemical business

Customers can also be tagged as Tourists, who have no reputation track of their own. See Customers.

How standing unlocks perks

Each faction’s perks sit at fixed points on its standing scale, from +100 down to −100. Good perks switch on at or above their value, penalties at or below theirs. Every faction page lists all of its perks with the game’s own names and descriptions.

A few worth knowing before you pick sides:

• Lower Levels +100, Pillar of the Lower Levels: 15% off from Joe Wild and Dr. Jackson.
• Security +100, VIP: thieves stop targeting your store, and inspections stop.
• Lower Levels −60, Marked: thieves target you more often, and insurance costs 2×.
• Security −60, Most Wanted: investigations against you progress 1.5× faster.
• −100 with the Lower Levels, Security, the Revolution or the Cartel brings a lynch mob, an immediate arrest, a hit squad or a Cartel hitman.

Raising standing

Reputation is bought with trade volume, at a fixed rate: every 400 credits of value is worth 1 reputation point with that customer’s faction. The same rate converts every other credit-denominated reward the game hands you.

Which credits count depends on the direction of the deal:

• Buying from a customer counts the price you actually pay. Overpaying buys standing.
• Selling to a customer counts the item’s negotiated value, whatever you settle on. The price you agree changes the multiplier below, not the amount.

What multiplies a trade

Each factor applies in turn, rounded to a whole number before the next one:

Factor	When it applies	Effect
The customer’s own rate	Always	×1 for an ordinary visitor; scripted ones can carry their own
Customer budget shortfall	You are selling, and the customer pays less than the negotiated item value	+1 to the rate above
Stolen goods	You are buying	×1.5, ×2, ×2.5 or ×3, as the item’s stolen value passes 25, 50 and 75
Serious contraband	You are buying	No bonus at low level 1; ×2 at medium level 2, ×2.5 at high level 3, ×3 at critical level 4
Lower Levels	The faction is the Lower Levels	×0.66
Upper Levels	The faction is the Upper Levels	×1.2
Diplomatic	The result is a gain	×1.33

Two things worth planning around. Taking hot goods off someone’s hands is the fastest honest way to climb: the stolen and contraband multipliers apply only when you buy, and they stack, so a badly stolen level-4 item can be worth nine times an ordinary purchase of the same price. And the Lower Levels are deliberately slow — your most frequent customers move their own bar at two-thirds rate, while the Upper Levels move at 1.2×.

Standing is tracked as a fraction behind the scenes and clamped to ±200, so small deals accumulate even when the displayed number doesn’t move. The number you see is truncated toward zero.

What each faction wants

Everything above applies to every faction. What differs is which customers a faction sends you, what it pays for besides trade, and what it punishes. Each faction page has its own Raising standing section with those figures:

Faction	The short version
Lower Levels	Most of your traffic, at the worst rate. Slow to build, brutal to lose.
Upper Levels	Pure trade, at the best rate. Nothing else touches it.
Security	Reports, inspections and the gun. You can raise it without selling anything.
Black Market	Buy what nobody else will touch. Every loss counts double.
Revolution	You cannot trade your way in; its two customers are locked behind standing.
Sector 13 Cartel	Not a shop relationship. The weekly Dream Dust quota is the whole of it.

The standing ladder

Standing shows as a label, one per ten points:

Points	Standing
100 and up	Prestigious
90 to 99	Esteemed
80 to 89	Renowned
70 to 79	Highly Rated
60 to 69	Trusted
50 to 59	Recommended
40 to 49	Dependable
30 to 39	Recognized
20 to 29	Established
10 to 19	Known
−9 to 9	Neutral
−10 to −19	Inconsistent
−20 to −29	Disfavored
−30 to −39	Unreliable
−40 to −49	Shady
−50 to −59	Dubious
−60 to −69	Questionable
−70 to −79	Notorious
−80 to −89	Disreputable
−90 to −99	Avoided
−100 to −149	Boycotted
−150 and below	Blacklisted

Perks stop at ±100, but the track runs to ±200, so a deep hole takes real trading to climb out of.

Reading these numbers

• Disliked-side perks are as strong as liked-side ones. Neglecting a faction is an active cost, not a neutral state.
• Penalties compound. Once your standing with a faction is negative, reputation penalties double again on top — see Haggling, blackmail & threats.
• Some perks multiply your losses. Petition to Security, inflicted at −60 with the Upper Levels, doubles every Security loss on top of everything else.
• Black Market standing drains twice as fast. Every loss with the Black Market is doubled before it lands. Honor Amongst Thieves is always on and describes this as 1.5×; in demo build 049-Rev3-L the stored 1.5 is never read and the code doubles instead.

Protection

Joe Wild sells services rather than reputation: an inspection early-warning informant, fixers, evidence removal, one-time favors with the Landlord and Security, and referrals. See Joe Wild.

Sources: the game’s localization tables (RepPerkTable, Mechanic) and code (StoreReputation.OnItemTraded, ModReputation and GetReputationStatus; StoreReputationPerk; StoreClient.GetTradeRepMultiplier; StolenHelper; ContrabandHelper; StartingPerk), demo build 049-Rev3-L; patch notes 48.3.10 and 48.3.12; the Steam store page.