Quote Originally Posted by Xiander View Post
Thanks for the tip, I haven't seen much of the syndicates in the game yet. What exactly are they and how do i join?
Inside your ship, just to the left of the Navigation console, is another marked "Syndicates" that flashes through 6 different coloured logos. You can read all about them by interacting with it, but the short story is that you pay a small fee to join a syndicate and they give you extra missions to complete. The more you complete, the more Standing you accrue, which allows you to pay slightly more fees in order to advance through the syndicate ranks. The higher rank you are, the better the rewards you can get. At Rank 5, you get access to some unique and usually very effective weaponry.

You can join as many Syndicates as you want, but some of them are at war with each other - if you gain standing in one, it will give you a small bonus to its' allies but take standing away from it's enemies and THEIR allies. Typically, you can juggle three Syndicates without effecting the others - Cephalon Suda/Arbiters of Hexis/Steel Meridian is very common, as they have some good mods and two of the three best weapons in the game. If you want to make money later on, buying the Cephalon Suda weapons for Standing and then selling them for Platinum tends to be very easy.

They don't really have any effect on the game - there are no Syndicate related PvP missions or anything like that, they're just in-game plot hooks that give you stuff for playing. If nothing else it gives you a bunch of missions to do every day, so if you're waiting on something to build or need to grind for XP or resources then it's a goal to work towards and make best use of your playtime.