Reputation scores represent how much the members of a faction like and trust you. The player has a separate reputation score with every faction.

Reputation affects what stations you can trade with, what prices you get, what ships you can buy, and what weapons and equipment you can buy for those ships.

Reputation is increased by doing jobs for the faction, trading with stations belonging to the faction, and killing criminals and enemies near the faction’s stations.

Reputation is decreased by destroying property belonging to the faction.

Score

Reputation ranges from -30 (very bad) to +30 (very good), and there are important scores where there is a change in how the faction will treat you:

• -10 and below: you can’t dock at their stations, they may attack you and your property
• -9 to +9 : you can dock at their stations, probably buy some basic trading ships and weapons, maybe some basic combat ships, and blueprints for the same
• +10 to +19: you can buy most all Small and Medium ships, and all equipment for them, plus non-combat Large and X-Large ships and equipment, and blueprints for the same
• +20 and above: you can buy all ships and all equipment

In addition, ranks above 20 have additional benefits (credit to /u/LustLochLeo on reddit):

• The faction may send patrols to sectors where your ships/stations get attacked
• At 27 reputation, you can apply the faction’s default paint mod to your ships, and…
• You are able to teleport to the factions stations
• You are able to see the current orders of faction-owned ships

Each ”point” of reputation isn’t the same amount. Near zero, small actions will change your reputation a great deal. Near +20/-20, the same small action will only be a small fraction of a reputation point.

Reputation is easier to lose than to gain; it’s much easier to lose reputation by blowing things up than it is to gain reputation by helping the faction.

Reputation rank

When you hit +10 and +20 reputation, you will be invited to a “promotion ceremony” with the faction’s representative. Once you do this, you will receive better buy/sell prices at that faction’s stations, and will be able to buy a wider range of ships and equipment at the faction’s shipyard.

Note that just having the appropriate score is not enough to gain the benefits of each rank. You must actually go talk to the faction representative and sit through the (boring and repetitive) speech each time.

If your reputation falls below the score for a given rank, you’ll lose the relevant effects and have to attend another promotion conversation if/when you regain the appropriate score.

Improving reputation

Every trade you perform with a faction improves your reputation. The value/size of the trade doesn’t matter, just the transaction. Some players take advantage of this by setting up a small ship to trade one unit of a ware (one Energy Cell, for instance) in a repeating loop: buy from station A (one transaction), sell to station B (second transaction). Other players consider this an exploit and prefer to let reputation rise more slowly with normal trade events.

You can also increase your reputation in larger size increments by completing missions for a faction. This can raise reputation quickly, but generally requires direct attention by the player to find and complete missions at faction stations.

Another way to increase reputation is by “criminal hunting” at faction stations. All stations have some amount of what’s referred to as “mass traffic” — tiny civilian ships moving around the station. Some of these will be flagged by the station as “Criminals.” Targeting and killing these criminals will earn you a bonus (actually a special case of the next item, “enemy kill credit”). Criminal traffic appears randomly, though one generally appears shortly after you arrive at a station if you wait. After that, others may appear frequently or not at all. Moving on to another station can improve your odds.

If you can find a station where enemy ships are present, you can earn significant reputation bonuses with the faction by killing those “enemies of this station” ships. For details on this, see the Ship Kill Credit section.

Note: with a reputation score below -9 a faction won’t let you land at any of their stations, which drastically limits the types of missions you can be offered. In these cases, criminal traffic hunting and enemy ship kills may be your best options, though there are some mission types that can be completed without docking and these will still appear.