Karma serves as a player controlled reputation system. Someone helped you out? Give them a positive karma point. Backed out of a trade? Give them a negative karma point.

You can use a player's karma as a rough guide to how "good" or "bad" they are as a player. In general, players with lots of positive karma are trustworthy and helpful, while you'll find those with lots of negative karma (or very low for their age) aren't.

Aside from the actual amount of karma someone has, there is a listing called Community Score under Alien Details, which is based off of their karma points versus how long they've been playing. Players can either be labelled a Troublemaker, Possible Troublemaker, Normal Player, or Trusted Community Member. To become a Trusted Community Member, your karma needs to be 1/5 higher than your age. Also you need to be at least 60 days old. Remember, your karma score follows you your entire game career, and other players will judge you off this score, so it pays to be nice and helpful!

You can give/remove karma from the Alien Details screen, from the Sidebar of any message board post they have made, or from their Mini-Details screen inside the Chatbox. When you first start playing you won't be able to give out any karma, but after 30 days you will be allowed to give your first karma. For every 30 days you play, you can give an additional karma raise or lower out to players per day. You will not be able to send karma to another player who is on the same IP, or network as yourself. This is to stop people using multies to raise their own karma. You also need to be subscribed to give karma.

Thank You's
For those of you under 30 days old who can't quite give karma yet, but want to "thank" someone for helping you out, now you can! Go to that player's alien details by going to the Battle or Find Account page, and type in their name or ID. Then, scroll down and there will be a link to thank them. You can give up to 5 Thank You's a day.