Adding or Removing Factions

[FattyPants]

Well, I've got a tiny bit of time here and there and wanted to rid myself of a few factions and add some of my own to the game!

Questions: Having attempted to do this in the past, I can say it was disastrous. The game routinely crashed upon start-up and it was frustrating, to say the least. Obviously, the factions.xml file is the most obvious to change, but are there dependencies I need to also make changes to? Additionally, are there factions that can't be removed without blowing up the game?

So, thanks for any help and hope you're all doing awesome.

[TBeholder]

It looks like there's nothing hardcoded, data/factions.xml defines them all.
But you'll also need to fix all faction references in Python modules.
And of course, the problem with starting the game is that saves with different faction sets are incompatible, and "New game" is a save file, so you'll have to start the game via custom mission file.
If you want "new game" save for your mod, start it via your mission file, then dock somewhere, save and fix that save as needed.