Continuing from Your first hour. A faction is your group identity — owns shared credits (a treasury), owns stations, and flips into and out of alliances + hostility with other factions. You need a faction before you can own a station of your own.
You don't need other players to start a faction. The default config allows solo founding — you become the founder + only LEADER.
In chat, type:
/faction found <name>
For example: /faction found Drifters. The faction is created immediately; you're its Leader; chat now shows you with a faction tag.
That's the whole flow. No ceremony, no proposal, no fee — just the command. (Configuration can require multi-member ceremonies; the default ships solo-found enabled.)
You're a one-person faction. Invite more:
/faction invite <player>
The invited player gets a chat ping. They run /faction accept within a couple of minutes to accept. They join at MEMBER rank.
If you're inviting an LLM agent player, the agent surface handles invite acceptance internally — you just /faction invite Pax (or whichever agent name) and they accept on their next decision cycle.
Three ranks, each with built-in defaults:
| Rank | Default permissions |
|---|---|
| MEMBER | Chat in faction; basic operations |
| OFFICER | Invite, kick lower ranks, post bounties, withdraw from treasury, manage station insurance |
| LEADER | Change ranks (including promoting to LEADER), manage diplomacy, scuttle stations, initiate station relocation |
The Leader can have a co-Leader: promoting another member to LEADER doesn't demote you. You can have many Leaders.
Manage the roster:
/faction members # opens the roster UI (left-click promote, right-click demote)
The defaults work, but each permission's rank threshold is per-faction adjustable. Maybe you want any member to invite (instead of officer+).
/faction settings # opens the settings UI
The settings UI exposes per-permission rank thresholds + the occupant-PvP toggle for station interiors (default OFF — your station is a safe room unless you opt in).
The faction has its own credit pool, separate from your personal wallet. Anyone can fund it:
/faction deposit <amount>
Officers withdraw via the settings UI. The treasury pays for:
The treasury balance shows in the TAB menu next to your personal credits.
Other factions exist (NPC and player). By default, every pair is neutral — no special relationship. Two postures you can flip into:
ALLY_ONLY to let your allies dock at your stations without joining you).To propose an alliance:
/faction diplomacy propose <other-faction>
The other faction's leader accepts with:
/faction diplomacy accept Drifters
You can see all your current relationships with:
/faction diplomacy
It lists your allies, hostile factions, and any pending proposals (both directions). Other verbs:
/faction diplomacy cancel <name> — cancel/decline a pending proposal/faction diplomacy break <name> — break an existing alliance/faction diplomacy hostile <name> — declare hostility/faction diplomacy peace <name> — retract hostilityAll diplomacy mutations require the MANAGE_DIPLOMACY permission (default LEADER). Cross-faction chat announcements broadcast every state change.
You have a faction. You can decorate your chat, coordinate with members, and pay into a shared treasury. Now you're ready to plant the flag.
You can't go straight from Frigate to a faction-owned station — crafting an Outpost Seed requires a fabricator, and fabricators have to be installed somewhere. The intended path is rent a room first: the IPU operates stations with rentable rooms in safer zones. Rent a room, install a basic fabricator (Mk I, T1) in it, craft your Outpost Seed there, then fly out and deploy.
Once you have an Outpost of your own, you can build T4 fabricators on it — those unlock the Battlecruiser shipkit + the larger station seeds. The chain from there is Outpost → BC → Hub → Dreadnought; see Your first station for the full walk.
Rooms are also a perfectly reasonable destination on their own — they have their own industry, treasury rent flows to the host faction, and they're a cheap way to practice the build/refine/craft loop before committing to station upkeep. See Stations → Rooms.