What are these factions fighting for? and who are the good guys?

The Terran Republic is an authoritarian fascist regime. They are far different from the benevolent social democracy that they were on Earth.

The New Conglomerate is comprised of dimwitted day laborers who have fallen for the propaganda of their would-be (if they can defeat the Terran Republic) corporate overlords. They fight for corporate freedom, not individual freedom and liberty. Those that call the New Conglomerate "Space America" are dead-on with their analysis.

The Vanu Sovereignty are the good guys which is why I chose them as my primary faction. They want to advance humanity by using the superior technology of the long-lost Vanu (race). The New Conglomerate wants to privatize and profit off their new technology while the Terran Republic is suspicious of them and is not in favor of trans-humanism. The Vanu Sovereignty are a benevolent bunch of scientists and archaeologists who have been forced to fight due to the two opposing factions.

It is my hope that one day we can all drive hovercars with no armaments through the fields of Amerish and ride hoverboards down the sparkling, snowy hills of Esamir while enjoying our trans-humanity together. Also, spandex is pretty comfy.

My, unbiased, 2 Cents:

NC = Corporate backed Rebel Insurgency or Anti-Oppression Freedom Fighters

TR = Tyrannical Police State or Benevolent Dictatorship

VS = Extremist Techno-Theocracy or Scientifically Enlightened Utopia

In war there are never any "good" guys. You need to get that John Wayne ******** out of your head. The only "good" guys are the men fighting at your side.

TR is the federal government, NC and VS are both terrorists with different leadership structures.

Arguably the TR are the most transparent faction. It even states on the character select, the TR wants to reunite the factions and have peace. The NC splintered off because the military control that they (probably) caused by their insurgency actions in space ticked them off. The Vanu splintered because rebirthing technology is really, really dangerous and the TR insisted that the military should be the ones to study it, so the Vanuites got uppity and declared secession.

The TR is arguably draconian and authoritarian, but that gets **** done.

And I've still never seen those bonus checks NC characters are always talking about, so... there's that.

TR fight because their captive families will get tortured if they don't. Persians.
NC fight because they want to be the ones wielding the hot irons. Closet TR.
VS are the good guys. We're fighting against hypocrisy, oppression, and greed. We fight for the inevitable triumph of reason over superstition and to replace the petty and needlessly destructive bickering of slothful, gluttonous cleptocrats and robber barons with logically sound public policy and lasting peace without oppression.

Tuco and Blondie are both NC.
Angel Eyes is TR.
It's easy to overlook the VS because they're all standing in the shade, up against a gray wall.

The different factions in a nutshell:

The Terran Republic
Pros: Fights of safety, stability and the survival of mankind.
Cons: Authoritarian, limited personal freedom.

The New Conglomerate
Pros: Fights for individual freedom, wanting to throw off the strict reins of the Republic.
Cons: Affiliated with Anarchists, Terrorists and lapdogs of dubious Capitalist Corporations.

The Vanu Sovreignty
Pros: Seeks to help mankind advance & evolve into something greater & better.
Cons: Use dangerous alien technology & treat people who do not evolve with them as human refuse and relics.

John Wayne was better known for the "Bad guy" roles he played. Just sayin.

NC are the main bad guys in the game, they keep filling their soldiers minds with false ideals of freedom while controlling them with greed.
The NC are a corporation which only cares about money, if they win, auraxis will be controlled by greedy d*cks.

TR fight for unity so there can be peace, however the way they do it is absolutely terrible. They force their will onto everyone and kill anything which disagrees with them. They belive peace can only exists thru tyranny and oppresion.
If the TR win , Auraxis will fall under massive oppresion and any aspect of freedom will be long gone however there will be peace and unity among men.

The VS don't even want to fight, they're a group of intellectuals and scientist who only want to explore Auraxis and find more alien artifacts to advance technology. All they wanna do is help humanity with the new alien tech they found and re-created.
If the VS win humanity will be able to advance in many wonderfull ways thanks to the advance alien tech, true freedom will exist since there would be no tyranny (TR) and no greedy corporations (NC).
The VS are not insane cultists, read lore and you'll notice than theres no hint of the VS being religious nut jobs. The TR and NC keep saying that all the time since they're afraid they might lose more men if they find out the truth about the VS.
VS are the only true good guys on Auraxis and thats why i joined them.

If they're so enlightened and peaceful, why does the lore pretty much state they preemptively declared war on the other two because they figured that eventually they'd get attacked. They never even tried to open a dialogue like the TR and NC did. They just watched the war start, looked at eachother, shrugged and said 'might as well, grab the spandex.'

The Vanu thought SOE needed a third faction for their game to make it a 3 way so they randomly declared war.

When winter is coming, you need to find shelter. If survival requires me to Lancer open the belly of a Vanguard and camp inside the wreckage, that's what's going to happen. And then I'll do what I can to make the local climate a little hotter.

It warms my heart to see that so many people understand that corporations gaining power is not going to be freedom for anyone but the ones in charge. Now if we could do something about the real ones.. I for one would favor stricter control over giving the greedy ones free reign and the possibility of monopolies, which they would undoubtedly attempt to acquire.

The back story as stated and even more as it has evolved has the VS as a religious organization who venerate Venu, an ancient alien, and who through secret knowledge and techniques are trying to improve themselves and the human race.

Scientology is a religious organization who venerate, Xenu an ancient alien, and who through secret knowledge and techniques are trying to improve themselves.

The Vanu storyline is not that of simple secular scientists they have added strong religious undertones, just look at the way that the announcer voice invokes Vanu when you capture a base as if he is invoking a god rather then an extinct race you do not see anyone telling us to win this one for the Dodo.

Just like the NC are not really the Tea Party and TR is not really the American Federal Government they were simply humorous comparisons so that someone with little or no knowledge of the game background can have real world examples they may be more familiar with. Yes if you know anything about the real world comparisons none of them really 100% line up since the real world is both more complex and much more fluid then a games back story can be, and SoE did not really spend much time on the faction back stories even when compared to other games.

If anything I was expecting the NC = Tea Party comparison to draw fire for not being accurate since there is none of the extremist Christian elements in the NC back story, which more and more seem to be the defining aspect of Tea Party politics. The Vanu = Scientology comparison is actually the closest of the three on the surface. Again since there is such a dearth of actual information on the factions you can only really look at the surface appearance.

You may not like it for either the reason you are partial to Scientology and do not want to see it mocked by a comparison to a video game or because you are partial to Venu and do not want it mocked by comparison to a strange cult but it seems obvious to me that someone at SoE was having a little fun when they came up with the VS.

And I am well aware that Scientology has nothing to do with Science just like Satanism has nothing to do with Satan and many forms of Christianity has nothing to do with Christ

really one comes to mind USA

You play for CERTS.
Whatever faction you play are the good guys because they help you with CERTS.
Whatever factions you play against are the bad guys because they want to deny you CERTS.

CERTS - keeping it fresh.

TR = Government
NC= Corporations
VS= Religion

I let you decide which is Good or Evil

The factions are fighting for control of the biscuits.

TR are the good guys. While the NC cry for freedoms while tying themselves to big business, and the VS worship aliens and probing each other, the TR are trying to keep everyone alive in an emergency situation. NC and VS are just too ungrateful to notice.]

VS have the best women though, that's an inarguable fact.

Do not be fooled by these primitive, fearful warmongers promising you false concepts of peace and freedom!

They resort to ad hominem insults such as fishheads, alien worshipers, and religious nutheads when in reality the Vanu Sovereignty are simply trying to better our race through science and the rediscovery of lost technology. As long as there is a government like the TR there will always be those like the NC who will rise up against them. If the NC win, then they will eventually become like the TR. Look at America today. It started out as a freedom oriented nation (though that is heavily debatable with racism and slavery) and now it's degraded into a country ruled by companies that pay off government officials with kids being arrested for starting lemonade stands without the proper paperwork. Our way is the only way! if we can cast off the shackles of humanity then maybe our race can pursue knowledge instead of war and evolve into something respectable.

Beyond even the faintest shadow of a doubt, the Terran Republic and New Conglomerate are what you call "the bad guys". The TR are the lesser of two evils, though, since their attempts to keep peace are well meaning. The NC, however, started this whole war in the first place. When we were but a cluster of ships drifting through space, they began blowing up ships to get what the TR to loosen up emergency protocol, which backfired on them. If they hadn't started whining then perhaps this whole war would have been averted and us Vanu would have been left to study in peace. Most of the NC are mercenaries like the jarhead in the paragraph below me, so they don't really care one way or another. Immensely frustrating.

Typical NC mercenary, fighting for money. Doesn't even care about the betterment of his species.

If you'd bother to read the lore it says that we declared independence AFTER you two started having a cat fight to stop you from holding back our race. Straight from the lore:

Oh, and we're the sexiest faction. Look at my signature.