This screen, however, does not display any of the additional (useful) information about the relations between the NPC factions themselves, nor does it display some of the more interesting details such as faction HQ/representative location, illegal wares, or known sectors. That information is instead exclusively available under encyclopedia.
While having all this information in two separate sections ("Player Information" and "Factions and Relations") has the benefit of having less cluter on those two pages individually, it also has drawbacks:
- Player may not even be aware that the extra information about faction relations can be found within encyclopedia. If player sees the page titled "Factions and Relations", it is natural for player to assume that that page will contain all information about relations between different factions etc. Additionally, encyclopedia is also normally used only for static information, whereas most of the encyclopedia faction information can change over time (sole exception in vanilla being the list of illegal wares).
- Player will often need direct access to this additional information from encyclopedia page while reviewing own relation to an NPC faction. List of illegal wares may affect trading decisions, list of friendlies, enemies, and hostiles may affect combat-related decisions, and the HQ location can also change quite a bit depending on the current war efforts of various factions (player's own included).
This would benefit the player by having a central, easily accessible screen for knowing all the useful tidbits about a given faction, instead of having to switch back-and-forth between different menus.