Relationships in Mega Primus generally follow a very simple principal: The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend.

This means that if you attack organisation A, which is disliked by organisation B, organisation B will be much friendlier towards you, and vice versa.

Trying to understand these relationships can be quite difficult at first (except for the pretty obvious ones like Megapol and the Aliens), but there are ways to gauge how companies relate to each other.

Reading the informational headlines that pop up on your information bar from time to time is a great way to see how certain companies relate to each other. Gangs in particular also employ direct air assaults on their enemies. Unfortunately, they tend to be overwhelmed by the sentinals.

A lot of these relationships are however one-way only. That is to say, if company A likes company B, this relationship is not mutually exclusive. Company B may feel indifferent or have a slight dislike for company A.

Case in point, every time an organisation gets fed up with X-Com and refuses to accept cash settlments because you're attacking their 'alien friends', the aliens will not necessarily feel the same way about the rebelling company. The company may continue to get upset whenever you take action against the aliens, but they will quickly change their tune if the aliens turn on them and start destroying their facilities.

Certain organisations are more important to stay friendly with or protect from alien infiltration than others. I'm sure it needn't be said, but do not bother paying out insane sums to keep the Cult of Sirus happy. It won't work. You obviously want to stay friendly with groups such as megapol (otherwise expect random shootings in the cityscape) and Marsec if you intend on doing any business with them. The government is where you get that insulting amount of funding from, and despite it not covering your troops wages, any amount of funds are very much needed. Other factions to make sure you stay in their good books include anyone else you want to trade with. Transtellar are very important to keep away from the aliens, since if you lose their support you have no good means to transfer equipment between bases. (I once had the ridiculous situation of sending agents back and forth carrying supplys.)

More information on Mega Primus relationships to come whenever.

May want to include a general map of the like/dislike chart for the very start of the game. It's imposible to map this out for later stages on account of the wildly unpredictable public relations that can happen during the game.

Donations/Reparations/Bribes/etc

In Mega Primus, Money is the medium that makes the cogs move. A generous helping here or there will allow X-Com free to free themselves of the uncooperative companies that are obstructing X-COM from saving the city by withdrawing their services.

There are two occasions where you can offer money to a company to improve their standings with you. You can voluntarily offer the money to a company, or the company will demand that you pay them a tribute of cash. The second option only happens if the company is decidedly hostile towards you. The Cult of Sirius for example always do this in every new game.

Both of these methods differ in their purpose.

Offering Money

When you offer cash to a company, their standings with you will improve a level. Neutral companies can go to friendly, or hostile companies will continue to dislike but will resume their services (where applicable). They will specify the amount that they will accept for this to happen, and if you pay it they will respond in a positive manner.

Companies Demanding Money

If cash is demanded of you, this means that you have insulted the company in some way that they want you to make reparation for it. When paid, the company's general disposition will automatically be set to neutral, with perhaps some lingering hostility.

Note that if you knowingly cause a lot of damage to a building owned by a certain company and you anticipate that they'll be asking for a settlement (such as dropping them from neutral to hostile after a UFO skirmish), do not in any way offer them the money until they come asking for it. If you pre-empt it and bribe them until they are allied, the request for money will still be issued. Once paid, their standing will return to neutral. Paying them again and then buying them back until they are allied means they'll be double dipping into your funds. If you choose to not pay them, this will add further insult and make matters worse.

Companies Refusing X-COM Payments

There comes a time where a company will refuse these Public Relations Improvement Fund packages from X-COM. This can happen in two ways.

The first is through 100% alien infiltration. They become an alien controlled organization, so will not cooperate with X-COM.

The second is when a company loses faith in X-COM and starts to think that the aliens would be a better alternative. This generally happens if X-COM does a lot of property damage in both the cityscape and especially the battlescape. The Cult of Sirius is already at this stage when you start a new game. Do note that while the company thinks this way, the aliens don't necessarily have to agree with it unless they are already friendly with the company involved.

When this happens, the only way you will be able to bribe companies in this state is when they ask for it. Beyond that, the only way to get them to like you again is to do something that'll make them happy. Such as outright attacking their enemies, or tricking the aliens to do some serious damage towards their property (in the Cityscape) that they re-think their positions.

Note that once the companies start behaving like this, they'll continue to behave like this even if you are the best of chums with them again. Also that due to an unfortunate selection of words, these companies will always refer to the aliens as their "friends" in the bribe screen. This is not necessarily the case.

More information on how infiltrated companies behave will need to be gathered to see if they can be recovered in a similar manner.

Typical Relations of Corporations

HATE

Usually, corporations will be competing against only one other corporation. Hence:

Xcom vs Aliens

- hmm... i wonder why?

Megapol vs Marsec

- armament industry

Nutrivend vs Evonet

- food industry

Superdynamics vs General Metro

- transport industry

Gravball League vs Sensovision

- entertainment industry

Nanotech vs Cyberweb

- medical apparatus industry

Solmine vs Energen

- power generation industry

S.E.L.F. vs Mutant Alliance

- bleedin' hearts industry

Technocrats vs Extropians

- political spin industry

also:

Psyke vs Diablo vs Osiron

- gangbanging

Cult of Sirius vs Xcom

- different interests

and two unknowns:

Sanctuary Clinic vs ???

- procreation industry

Synthemesh vs ???

- disposable society industry

weird ones:

Lifetree vs Gangs vs Sensovision

- psiclone industry

Sanctuary Clinic vs Mutant Alliance

- only guessing but they both have different interests (humans vs mutants)

Megapol vs Transtellar

- jealousy? Megapol doesn't like Transtellar due to Marsec providing security+weapons to Transtellar.

LOVE

(need to add more, some could be wrong)

Government + Megapol

- law industry

Solmine + Marsec

- off world security interests

Nanotech + Gravball League

- implant industry

Synthemesh + General Metro + Transtellar

- transport infrastructure industry

one sided:

Cult of Sirius + Aliens

- cult love aliens, aliens couldn't care less.

anymore????

EDITING YOUR SAVEGAME

If you want to setup your game to have the HATE relationships as listed above, you could use the Midnight Editor for Xcom Apocalypse to edit your savegame. You don't need to start a new game if you don't want to. If you do edit a new savegame, then you'll see the lovely relationships between hostile corporations and the back stabbing, and the destruction.... Lovely!

Midnight Editor

Available here:

http://devisraad.com/xcom/apoc.htm

OPTIONAL. just a little bit of help with the editor: Select the first corp, then put sliders at nuetral, then click "copy to all corporations" button. Go thru and do this for each corp in the list (except the last one. "Civilians"). Placing everyone neutral to everyone else gives you a good basis to work out who you each corp want to hate or love other. Once you do this, use the list above to tune corp relationships. (CAREFUL! NO = Transtellar vs Megapol = many destroyed transtellar road taxi).
you MUST make Xcom hostile 100% to Aliens, and Aliens hostile 100% to Xcom or the game WILL start being stupid.
if you make Civilians hostile to everyone else (besides Xcom), aliens and security forces will hunt down and kill the mindless civilians running around the tactical map - CAN HELP IMMENSELY when aliens have run out of Boomeroids by the time they are engaged by Xcom agents.

What do the sliders within the editor mean?

There are two sliders for each corp regarding relations (four sliders in total). The top slider of the each pair is dynamic. It moves when a positive or negative aspect impacts the two corps in question.

eg: if Megapol accidently flattens a Superdynamics large flyer factory, then the top slider of the pair will move left (closer to 100% hostile) to denote Superdynamic's anger towards Megapol. Megapol might remain indifferent if it were accidently destroyed.

The bottom slider of the pair denotes predisposed attitude between two corps. This does not change as it is a bench mark which each corp will use against the other. eg: (same as above example) Superdynamics' hate towards Megapol has increased. SD might ask Megapol for monetary compensation to bring back relations to their formal state. If Megapol doesn't pay up, then raids and/or illegal flyer activity could be an outcome towards Megapol from Superdynamics, or from their allies.

Relations (Apocalypse)

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