Any big penalty to invading independents?

[MikeSF]

Seems like a much more economical (and WAY faster) way to drop some troops on a planet rather than building a colony ship and hopefully they like you enough to allow you to plant your flag.

[fenrislokison]

i think you get a small drop in reputation when you invade independants, but not much, and who cares since you just have to blow up one or two pirate bases to be Heroic again

[Guedez]

It have been working for me, got 3 independents and intend to get more once my private sector leaves red.

The small problem is that you can't keep them pure, or rather, takes too long. The old inhabitants will stay there for a good while, and you can't force your population to move to those planets, and sometimes they 'don't want to belong to xxx empire' reducing your tax potential

The HUGE problem, is that more often than not, there will be a lot of different pirates fighting for those independent colonies, unless you have mad dosh to pay those pirates off, don't bother, fighting it off will bring more harm than good most of the time, unless you can reliably wipe the pirates completely. Guerrilla warfare is too strong in this game

[Kantay]

You do get a reputation hit, but it's rather small. Nothing that destroying a pirate base or two wouldn't fix.

And yes, it's much more effective, especialy at start, where researching troop modules is so much faster than colonization.

[moonraker65]

You definitely "Should" go for nearby independents especially if they're quite close to you. Sometimes it's your own race thus making it a very simple turn up and it's yours (Usually)

[Jeeves]

In a typical game with teeming independents I generally conquer about 40-50 to train up my troops for cloning...
The reputation penalty starts at a loss of four and increases to a maximum of ten depending upon how fast you conquer independents and how low your reputation sinks. I try not to go too far. The levels are -1 to -19 dubious, -20 to -39 nasty, -40 to -59 notorious, and -60 to (don't know) evil - I have only been that way once. Used to be that you could get an improvement to reputation of two per pirate base destroyed, but it looks like that was reduced to one. Your maximum reputation according to the Guardians is Heroic 32...
You get more reputation nowadays from giving gifts to other empires than by destroying pirate bases. The larger the gift, the more you get, but I've noticed that gift giving gets points added more when the empire receiving has no cash at all according to the list under negotiate a trade agreement.


Lonnie Courtney Clay
Edit : Get your money back after giving a gift by selling tech, even if you get raw deal. The next time you talk, he won't have any cash and you can improve your reputation again, whereas if he has even a little cash your gift often has no effect. Also there seems to be a limit on how often you can get reputation increase by giving to the same empire, so don't give to the same one more often than once per month.