Your standing with each settlement and noble house is a number from 0 to 100. At 20 or above the faction treats you as an ally; below 20 it drops you as an ally and turns hostile. Hostile acts lower the number, and it drifts back on its own over time.
The number maps to a named standing in steps of 10:
| Relation | Standing |
|---|---|
| 0 to 19 | Hostile / Threatening (below 20 = hostile) |
| 20 to 39 | Unfriendly / Cold |
| 40 to 59 | Neutral |
| 60 to 79 | Open / Friendly |
| 80 to 100 | Very Friendly / Allied |
A loss with one faction partly carries to the other. It only happens on losses; relation gains do not spill.
| Action | Relation change | Applied to |
|---|---|---|
| Cancel a contract | -10 | the faction that issued it |
| Cancel a contract that paid an advance | -20 (a -10 plus a second -10) | the issuing faction |
| Fail a settlement contract | -20 | the settlement |
| Fail a noble house contract | -10 | the noble house |
| Kill one of a faction's units | -0.5 per unit | that unit's faction |
| Attack a faction's party on the map | set straight to 0 (instantly hostile) | that faction |
| Do a faction a favor | +15 | the faction |
(contract.nut:873 and :877; kills at actor.nut:3543; map attack at world_state.nut:782; values at world_assets.nut:34-49)
Relations drift back toward neutral at 0.25 per day for both settlements and noble houses (world_assets.nut:32-33), so penalties heal slowly.
The fast lever is cancelling contracts that paid an advance: -20 to the settlement each time, which also drags its noble house down by 25% of that (-5 each). Killing units is a very slow lever at -0.5 per kill, and it works against the 0.25-per-day recovery, so turning a whole noble house and all of its settlements hostile through kills alone takes a very large number of them.
Note: this is faction relation. The separate company "reputation" (business reputation, contract.nut:869) is a different system and is not covered here.
Battle Brothers 1.5.1.8 game scripts.
scripts/factions/faction.nut:296, 328scripts/factions/settlement_faction.nut:27scripts/factions/noble_faction.nut:40scripts/contracts/contract.nut:869, 873, 877scripts/config/world_assets.nut:32-49scripts/config/strings.nut:612scripts/entity/tactical/actor.nut:3543scripts/states/world_state.nut:782