How I see it... ( if you understand it you deserve a cookie)
Discovery is a big marketplace with several varied brand ... some are more popular, some are more unique, some are ''closed'' .. some require you to be in a certain club ''the ID'
Obviously there might be more then one seller per brand in the same marketplace ( the factions) ,The ''big , modern, and famous seller ''A Wall-Mart'' is the official faction, you also got other smaller seller ( the unofical faction) ranging from ''a grocery store to a bad hot dog stand''.
But, thats not all, this market place is also filled with random people. Most of them wear a T-shirt with their favorite brand Logo, . These people are indy, they associate themselves to a ID, and their products ( tech and ship). Their behavior can be very civil, confused, dumb or even crazy because it takes all sort of poeple to make a balanced world.
If all seller (and their employee ''members'') in a specific Brand sell a common product ''what you expect to do with said ID''( like IMG would be mining Niobium for instance) , then for the one who wear their T-shirt (indy), the seller ( faction) are not important to know deeply, or to get involved with them.
The Brand are bought, by other seller from other seller .. that would be all the interactions possible.
But, a Brand is represented not only by the seller (faction), but also from all the other only wearing a T-shirt (indy associated with the same faction)
Because the seller (faction) know that that the brand (ID) is not always accuratly represented by these ones, they tend to ''monitor the indy'' ... and if they fail or are not permitted to do so, they ingnore them or no longer fully trust them-
Too bad a famous seller reputation toward other sellers consider its brand as a whole, ... think about how many communication channel post fowarded to official factions are talking about a indy doing said ''do not do thing''
Too bad also that even the name of the game ''freelancer'' defend such attitude from those T-shirt.
WARNING ! some seller ( faction) , can also be equally bad'' I am not by any mean insulting the indy here.
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There is 2 big relation between indy and factions:
On the indy side, its often a natural state where its simply a player just... not that aware of the hiearchy in disco. They then don't really care about faction... its as simple as that... simple as innocence.
However, on the faction side because they don't like a significant amount of indy, tend to also ignore them or at least give them much less worth in their roleplay.
When you combine those 2 relation, it create a rift- a natural rift that is unfortunatly often extended because of the behavior of the community and also the nature of the game. Quite honestly, its something that can not be fixed by a human been because it involve the infamous ''common-player-mentality'' call it the ''CPM''
![[Image: signatirebycrusader.png]](http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/9202/signatirebycrusader.png)