how does this work btw?? I just "joined" a faction but I have no clue what I am doing... flew 30 ly to establish a post only to find you need to collect a thingy from a "controlled system" .... what am I doing?
also I saw someone mention conflict zones, will your factions ships be green on radar automatically in confict zones?
what else is there about pledging to a faction?
Sound like you are talking about Powerplay allegiances.
This is different to the regular Fed/Imp/Alliance faction.
Fed/Imp/Alliance faction rep is gained by doing any mission for groups that are aligned to the major faction. It is also gained by turning in bounties and exploration data at a Fed/Imp/Alliance station. And it can be gained/lost by fighting for/against alligned groups in
Powerplay is different. And complicated. You gain powerplay points/ranks by helping preparation/expansion/defence of your Powerplay systems. Note that while Powerplay factions are Fed/Imp/Alliance/Neutral, their controlled systems don't have to match. So you can fight to gain faction with the Empress powerplay character but that won't necessarily help your Empire faction standing.
The tasks vary for each powerplay person, but generally involve:
Preparation) Taking powerplay cargo items from a 'controlled' system to an unaffiliated system.
Defence) Taking powerplay cargo items from your Powerplay home system to a 'controlled' system.
Expansion) Sometimes taking powerplay cargo to the target expansion system, sometimes going to the system and fighting in specific Powerplay conflict zones, sometimes hijacking cargo from enemy powerplay faction ships in that system, sometimes destroying enemy powerplay faction ships in that system.
Powerplay generally requires a decent weekly time investment for a worthwhile reward. It's not necessarily an end-game activity, but you need to spend a few hours a week doing powerplay stuff to rank up and maintain your rank. If you take a break for a week or two to go exploring or do some distant community goal, or real-life vacation - then your powerplay rank will drop and you lose access to the rewards.
Main faction rank also decays back to neutral over time (real time, not game time! Unless they've changed that in a patch since most players hated the concept). I think it decays quite slowly but it was constantly being tweaked and I'm not sure where it stands now.
